Keep Tango-artists mailinglist

[Alexander Larsson]

On Tue, 2005-11-08 at 10:56 +0000, Richard Moore wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 04:11:01PM +1100, Daniel Stone wrote:
> > fd.o does not 'accept' standards.  It does not have any process for
> > conferring standardisation or otherwise.  All it does is host various
> > documents (as well as random other stuff) in the hope that some of it is
> > useful.
> 
> Unfortunately that is not the perception people are given. People
> talk about it as if conferring standardisation is *exactly* what
> it does.

People have all sorts of ideas of what freedesktop is, but the
perception given by the projext is surely that which is specified on the
front page:

------------
freedesktop.org is not a formal standards organization, though some see
a need for one that covers some of the areas we are working on. For
Linux operating system standards, look at the Linux Standard Base
project. The X.Org Foundation and the IETF are other groups that do
formal standards. The Free Standards Group is one group that publishes
"de jure" standards for free software -- freedesktop.org is loosely
affiliated the FSG.

Unlike a standards organization, freedesktop.org is a "collaboration
zone" where ideas and code are tossed around, and de facto
specifications are encouraged. The primary entrée to these discussions
is the xdg mailing list.
--------------

There is also this passage from the Mission Statement:

---------------
The goals of freedesktop.org specifically exclude "blessing" or
legislating formal standards, because freedesktop.org does not have the
formal infrastructure for that. This site is about catching
interoperability issues much earlier in the development process, ideally
before code has been written, and providing a forum to work on
specifications. Some of these specifications may be standardized by
other bodies, but only after "de facto" acceptance most likely. You can
look at freedesktop.org as a way to oil the wheels of "de facto" shared
specifications.
---------------

Its pretty clear on this issue IMHO, although we might need to work a
bit on moderating peoples expectations from freedesktop.org.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
                   alexl at redhat.com    alla at lysator.liu.se 
He's an all-American moralistic photographer She's a pregnant red-headed 
archaeologist with the power to see death. They fight crime!