hey, remember the platform?

[Havoc Pennington]

On Fri, 2005-07-01 at 14:38 -0600, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> and who really are we putting this platform together for? the people in KDE, 
> GNOME, OOo, Moz, etc.. all know what we use. this isn't nearly so much for us 
> as it is those we are trying to work with: vendors, ISVs and other third 
> parties.
> 

Right, but it's not for random people on Slashdot. If we (= core
developers of the desktop projects) think a course of action is right
for vendors, ISVs, etc. and those people will appreciate it, then I
don't care what J Random Clueless with no stake in the matter is going
to think. If vendors and ISVs say we're wrong, or core developers say
we're wrong, then I care.

I'd much rather discuss whether you or Waldo or whoever thinks something
is _right_ than whether you think there are people that will get all
whiny about it.

> so to shrug off FD.o's abismally poor public communications efforts as not 
> particularly important is short sighted. as you know (since i've publicly 
> stated it a few times now ;), i believe FD.o is currently on the tracks to 
> underachievement.

Here is my basic view. 

 1. freedesktop.org works the same way as most other open source 
    projects:
      - somewhere between anarchy and meritocracy, where patches/work 
        are the currency
      - mailing list discussion
      - people doing the work
      - etc.

 2. it's just not that complicated and not that scary

I'm not doing a lot on freedesktop.org (or any coding at all these
days), so I can't do a ton of stuff to address concerns - like rewording
the web site - but if people wanted to do that, it would be fine, at
least after appropriate discussion.

BTW one of your suggestions in a blog a while back was done years ago
(s/standards/specifications/), the only place we didn't do it was in the
URLs because it would break everyone's links. But if someone did a
rewrite rule or whatever, that's fine.

Havoc