RFC on removing DBUS support from GPSD

[Eric Raymond]

This is a request for comment to the development leads of all known 
GPSD client applications.  I am considering removing DBUS support from
the gpsd daemon. 

freedesktop.org's geoclue service, deployed in Ubuntu since 9.10 and
in Fedora since 9, talks to various providers of locational
information, including gpsd, and provides that information to the
DBUS system. 

geoclue renders gpsd's direct DBUS support redundant on any system
running geoclue. For geoclue, DBUS is a primary mission; for gpsd, it's a
dusty and seldom-visited backwater in our code.  I'd like to remove
it from our code; I think it has become unnecessary complexity there
and could become a hard-to-detect source of version-skew bugs.

Unless I hear an objection to this course, my plan is to deprecate DBUS
support in the next release (2.93) and remove it entirely in 3.0,
which is scheduled for June 2010.  3.0 is also the release which
will remove the last remnants of support for the old (pre-JSON) GPSD
protocol.

Comments and objections, if any, are solicited.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

The danger (where there is any) from armed citizens, is only to the
*government*, not to *society*; and as long as they have nothing to
revenge in the government (which they cannot have while it is in their
own hands) there are many advantages in their being accustomed to the 
use of arms, and no possible disadvantage.
        -- Joel Barlow, "Advice to the Privileged Orders", 1792-93