Summary of the fdo disussion at GCDS

[Cornelius Schumacher]

On Thursday 09 July 2009 01:52:32 Jannis Pohlmann wrote:
>
> The main problem I still see with this approach is that it doesn't
> really answer the question when to grant a specification the fd.o
> status (as in: under which conditions). This is only really relevant
> for specs that require namespaces (e.g. the icon naming spec doesn't,
> but specs based on D-Bus interfaces do, specs involving XML formats do,
> and the same goes for libraries with fdo or xdg in their name).
> Answering this question is really important.

This is indeed the essential question we have to answer. The answer we came up 
with at the meeting was to come up with the simple condition that, if GNOME 
and KDE, represented by their release teams, accept a spec, then it's granted 
the fd.o status.

Of course you could also come up with more fine-grained conditions including 
more communities, but that would require a much more complex mechanism. 
Especially the question who is eligible to vote about a fd.o spec can become 
very difficult. At the moment GNOME and KDE pretty clearly cover the majority 
of desktop users, so it seems like the most pragmatic and simple solution. Of 
course this could change in the future, if another desktop becomes very 
popular, but today I think it's a good enough approximation that GNOME and 
KDE together cover the majority of the desktop and that against one of the 
two communities you can't push a spec to fd.o acceptance.

That said, it doesn't mean at all that only specs relevant to GNOME or KDE 
should be fd.o specs. Other communities obviously also have to be involved 
and have the same rights to propose and implement specs. It's really only 
about a well-defined, simple, and transparent mechanism to grant fd.o 
acceptance.

> I personally disagree with accepting a spec only if is implemented by
> both, GNOME and KDE. If a spec is implemented by KDE, Xfce and
> Enlightenment and maybe several other applications/environments, is that
> under no circumstances relevant and worth considering as an fd.o spec?

It's not about implementation by both GNOME and KDE. It's only about 
acceptance. So if Xfce and Enlightenment come up with a spec for something, 
GNOME or KDE don't care about, I see no reason why it wouldn't be accepted as 
a common spec.

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org>