D-Conf

[Philip Van Hoof]

On Sat, 2005-03-05 at 23:47 +0100, Mikael Hallendal wrote:

>  > Changes in the existing applications WILL be needed. Lots of. The KDE
>  > applications will need MASSIVE changes. Try selling a generic
>  > configuration system by telling them:
> 
>  > - You guys will basically need to rewrite 25% of your applications
>  > - We won't need to do one single thing
>  > - Cool don't you think?

> So, it would be better to say, you need to rewrite most of your 
> applications but to make you happy we will as well so we will both have 
> to spend all of our time in rewriting things?

What I was trying to say is that we probably can't just ask them to
incorporate a specific technology without making compromises. 

I think that the most important part is showing that we are interested
in their technologies and that we DO want to listen and work together.

And that counts for both parties. So what I'm saying counts for the
cases:

	- A GNOME developer to a KDE developer
	- A KDE developer to a GNOME developer


I don't think it would be wise to just throw it at them and start
yelling: "Start using this". I fear (and I'm personally convinced -- but
I'm open to be proven wrong --) that they just wont accept it then.

It's great to know that the GConf people are already addressing issues
by replacing ORBit-2 with D-BUS. And I do applaud it. Really. And thanks
for that.

If renaming isn't necessary then thats great. What I tried to say was
that I don't care about the name. As long as both worlds will share the
same system, it's all cool for me.

> > BTW. What I'm really trying to say is that we need to start working
> > together and that I'm getting tired of non-technical discussions about
> > the differences between KDE and GNOME and reasons not to work together
> > based on non-technical decisions.

> We already have started working together but you can't expect things to 
> change over night.

No. Okay. And I agree that it needs time.


But it's really time that some high-level discussions start. At this
moment the community of GNOME developers isn't informed about any
efforts being made getting KDE and GNOME working together. If you guys
have indeed started working together, how come the results of that
aren't being publicised? Or am I missing something important? 

It would be great if for example the GNOME foundation and the important
KDE organisations started organising meetings and started talking. Why
meetings and talking: To make sure that both environments aren't
creating yet another technology that has already been build by the other
team that can perfectly be shared.

Given the fact that both projects share the same goals. I fail to see
how it could have happen that both created their own VFS-layer and their
own configuration-layer. That was an error in our development models.
Both should have shared one common technology. Period.

I'm not just a user who's whining about this. I am an application
developer and I really really hate the fact that I'm forced to choose
sides. OR I'm a GNOME developer. OR I'm a KDE developer. 

Note that yes I am indeed angry about these things. And yes I should
code and shut up. And yes I sometimes do that. And yes I'm not being
friendly in my E-mails and I'm being harsh and bla bla.

But please, do something about this situation. You guys are loosing
thousands and thousands of young potential developers for your
platforms: Simply because those potential and future developers are
forced to make the same decision I once needed to make. And thats the
true story behind it.

And if you don't solve it. I predict that KDE nor GNOME will ever be
widely used nor accepted by the normal computer-using people in this
world.

It wont matter how much Ubuntu's, Suse's, Knoppixes, Gnoppixes and
whatever-xes you'll make.

Things need to change.
We NEED to start working together.


> Maybe we come to the conclusion that something new all together would be 
> best. Something designed and modelled after our and KDE's experiences 
> with current solutions.

And also that would be okay for me. And I'm willing to actually do
coding. But I'm not willing to start a yet another configuration-daemon
project that wont be used.


-- 
Philip Van Hoof, Software Developer @ Cronos
home: me at freax dot org
gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org
work: philip dot vanhoof at cronos dot be
junk: philip dot vanhoof at gmail dot com
http://www.freax.be, http://www.freax.eu.org