Re: Decisions we didn't intend to make [Was: Minutes of the meeting (2006-07-31)]

["Elijah Newren" <newren gmail com>]

On 8/1/06, Federico Mena Quintero <federico ximian com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-08-01 at 17:06 -0700, Jeff Waugh wrote:
>
> > >    New modules may be accepted into the desktop or admin releases
> > >    with a dependency on gtk#/mono, but any modules accepted into
> > >    either of those release sets without a dependency on gtk#/mono may
> > >    not gain one without going through the proposal process again in a
> > >    subsequent release.
>
> This is a rule that will not apply to anything, since existing modules
> rarely acquire dependencies on language bindings, if ever.  I'd kill
> this rule.

Vincent was also of the same opinion.  However, I personally think
that without this rule, community consensus was closer to not allowing
dependencies on gtk-sharp in the desktop (or admin suite) than it was
to allowing them.  I personally think it'd be a bad idea to drop it.

But, this could be another reason to push this to the board.  ;-)

> > I am *really* surprised that this decision was made and published, given
> > that on numerous occasions it was clearly stated within the team that we
> > were *not* going to make a broad decision about Gtk# applications in the
> > Desktop suite... Preferring to focus on the question of Tomboy inclusion
> > *alone* in this release cycle.
>
> Given that we don't even have rules for the Desktop suite, this is a
> blank issue.

s/rules/documentation of the rules/   ...

> http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/ModuleRequirements/Desktop does
> not exist, and yet these pages link to it:
>
>         http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/ModuleRequirements
>         http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/ReleaseSets

We do have rules for the desktop suite that have built up over the
years.  (The most basic being stuff like doing tarball releases on
time, follow the freezes, etc.)  See the release-team minutes on this
issue; we should fix this soon.

> "Should we allow gtk-sharp apps in the Desktop" is the wrong question.
>
> "Should we allow apps which use the language bindings in the Desktop" is
> a valid question, though a very narrow-minded one if you happen to make
> it at all ;)  Not allowing the use of bindings in the desktop is more or
> less the same as saying that we don't dogfood our software.

I disagree with your claims about the validity of those questions, but
you do make a *very* persuasive argument for them.

> [Thought experiments:  What if Tomboy were written in Java+Gnome?  What
> if James didn't exist and PyGtk was a fantastic binding with very little
> publicity/usage --- and then something awesome like Sabayon came out of
> the blue?]

Or another example -- how about sawfish?

(To give my personal answer to those thought experiments, I think that
bindings without a sufficiently large community to be self supporting
if a key individual leaves is not a good risk to take.  So, in both
cases, I'd say leave them out until the community behind the bindings
becomes bigger.  That's just my opinion, of course)


Cheers,
Elijah