Re: [gentoo-dev] Gnome Stabilization 3.6 or 3.8

[Mike Auty <ikelos@gentoo.org>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 11/08/13 00:45, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
> They thought deeply about the changes that are being made to the 
> desktop, and they discussed it and reached a consensus about what
> the direction of the project is; you can usually read about in the
> mailing lists, Planet GNOME, or even watch the videos from the
> GUADEC presentations. You can of course disagree with that
> direction: but acting like they, poor things, don't know what they
> are doing and need that someone go an tell them so they can know
> "before the damage is much to repair", is quite condescending.

I'm not trying to be condescending and I'm not suggesting they don't
know what they're doing.  If I were to suggest it, doing so on a
Gentoo thread about stabilization would be futile.  The only reason
I'm responding on here is to find out from others in my community if
there's a place that people are collecting their opinions such that it
might be heard/discussed by the people at Gnome.

> People have been predicting the dead of GNOME since before the 1.0 
> version came out, but right now it has more contributors than ever
> in the past, and at least half a dozen companies actually pay money
> to people to work in it, so perhaps they actually know what they
> are doing. But even if they don't, there are a couple forks you can
> try or several alternatives you can switch to if "the damage is too
> much to repair".

Just because companies pour money into something does not mean they
know what they're doing, or that they've done their market research
into what their users want.  I've tried several of the forks, and
sadly Gnome, because of the backing it's had, hangs together as a
Desktop Environment the best which is precisely why it's so
disappointing they've chosen this strong a demand of their users.  I
have even tried systemd, which realized rather than allayed my fears,
but this isn't the place for my personal experiences with that.

I'm interested in solutions, specifically to get the most out of Gnome
without being forced to make changes lower down my system's stack.  If
necessary, I'd at least like to have a logind that works distinct from
systemd, according to a well defined specification that can be created
separate to any one implementation (like the PMS provided for package
managers), and ask Gnome to work to that specification.  Until
systemd-205, that was possible.  The fact that systemd has the power
to remove that ability in a single version bump, and did so without
thought for the impact on Gnome, should be worrying to Gnome for the
future, not just to the users that were affected now.  The hope for a
clear specification that can't be changed or dictated by a single
implementation feels like a fair compromise, but unless I know where
to suggest that, or where it has already been suggested, it won't help
in the slightest.

> And at the end of the day, all that code is 100% Free Software,
> with public repositories with all the history of the components of
> the project for all the world to see and use.

I've already addressed how this doesn't help those who contribute to
open source software, but don't have the skills to manage such a large
and important project.

> The GNOME developers already made their decision. The GNOME 
> maintainers in Gentoo followed through (like they have been doing
> in almost every other distro). Now it's up to each user to decide
> if she keeps using GNOME (and therefore switches, if necessary, to
> systemd since 3.8), or if she stops using it.
> 
> Arguing about it is quite useless.

Having read my emails, you'll have seen that I haven't been arguing,
I've been expressing a desire to collect together those who disagree
with the decision and communicate it such that the decision might get
discussed publicly.  I have yet to be pointed to the processes and
procedures whereby the decision to make systemd a hard dependency was
carried out.  In Gnome 2 there were specific meetings, well
documented, to discuss and decide the "blessed dependencies", but
those and several other key decision-making meetings now appear to
happen outside of the public infrastructure.  This is to the point
where there were public emails saying systemd would not become a hard
dependency for gnome-3.8 and yet here we are.

The Gentoo Gnome herd tried their hardest to avoid the move to
systemd, and I have mentioned my appreciation for their efforts in my
previous emails.  I am currently exploring my options, as you
reiterated my point back to me, but one of those is to not give up
hope on the Gnome project or their developers and to try to
communicate with them.  However, having people assume I'm arguing
because I'm keen to get to the bottom of their decision making doesn't
help...

Mike  5:)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAlIG5ZQACgkQu7rWomwgFXrWVACeJakbnBmoJfYP91wOrC/EmG6W
EMAAn1yZItvdNyz6AuPhcnbk9MBxcYVb
=iOpy
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----