Bringing fdo.org to the next level

[Ely Levy]

On Fri, 15 Apr 2005, Philippe Fremy wrote:

>
> Well, it seems that so far, freedesktop has worked very well in an
> informal way, without formal board and approval process.

freedesktop didn't do anything, it just hosted some project and one
successful mailing list. Standard discussions were before fd.o was around.

> The discussion here are usually enough to foster technical discussion
> and reach consensus between desktops when consensus can be reached.

But why be so passive?
Why not activly trying to reach it?Why not serve as a mediator?
and what about the users?how would they know which desktop supports which
standards in case they decide to use only those who works well with each
other? and about programs who wants to tell you if you support fd.o 1.3
then our program would with with yours instead of listing 10 different
semi standards.

> Can you explain what you think the current problems are with the current
> organisation, and what a new organisation would do to resolve those
> problems ? Your proposition sounds a lot like LSB to me and it was clear
> here that this is not the way freedesktop wants to work.

There is no origanisation. I have no problem with how fd.o is now,
a hosting site. I'm trying to show the advantages that org which work
more activly like OASIS or LSB can have. We need one which would be
dedicated to free desktop.

> If your proposition relates to the lengthy discussion about d-vfs or
> dconf, my very personal opinion is that you should first start to write
> code, and then show it and discuss it (like Linus said, "show me the
> code!"). Freedesktop was created in the spirit of people writing code
> and discussing together real problems. It has worked in this way so far.
> I consider the two recent discussion a major exception to this and I
> hope that this is not going to become the trend.
>
I don't care much for dvfs sorry:)
Writing code is a neccery step but it doesn't have to be the first one.
Actually that exactly what this mailing list is ment for to talk before
writing, to do a bit planning to maybe be able not to write 10 different
protocols and use one instead. To see how non realistic it is
just think what would have happen if internet had 10 version of tcp...


> Write code, show it and KDE, Gnome, XFCE, mozilla and other people will
> tell you "This is crap, I am never going to use that" or "this is great
> stuff, I'll convert my code to it next week" or "good work but you need
> to add this and this before I look at it again". In my humble opinion,
> there is no point in discussing the topic anymore. It will be quicker to
> rewrite a kconfig for a new configuration backend, than to discuss
> whether this is possible, desirable and what the possible problems could be.

Yea this is one way, that it's not the most efficient one by far.
This way takes years dicussing with one project going to the other
making changes going back to the rest of the projects making changes
again.
IMOH freedesktop contributed to the desktop mostly cause no one knew
exactly what it is. People did look at the standards here as standards
and went to code them. If gnome/kde/XFCE people think a standard would do
good for their desktop they would write the code for it. That's the point
I'm trying to make if you had a org which activly encourage people to
write standards and use them it might contribute a lot more than just
hosting a mailing list.

> In the free software world, the consensus is reached upon code, not upon
> discussion.

That what got us into not being able to have desktops which work with each
other in the first place. That what this mailing list tried to change.
> 	cheers,
>
> 	Philippe
>
>

FDFG

Ely