Summary of the fdo disussion at GCDS

[Jannis Pohlmann]

On Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:32:52 +0200
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org> wrote:

> On Friday 10 July 2009 00:10:55 Jannis Pohlmann wrote:
> > On Thu, 9 Jul 2009 09:58:43 +0200
> > Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > 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.
> >
> > Well, you have an ambiguity there. Simply saying "specs require to
> > be accepted by both, GNOME and KDE" on the one hand and "sometimes,
> > specs can also be accepted even if they are not accepted by GNOME
> > and KDE" is not going to work.
> 
> That's not what I wanted to say. I wanted to say that GNOME and KDE
> should also accept specs, which are not directly relevant to them,
> but which are worked on by other communities. So the criteria would
> be simple and unambiguous. It certainly would require some common
> sense and the will to collaborate, but I would consider that as a
> given, as freedesktop.org won't work without that anyway.

I guess it's safe to say that GNOME and KDE are affected by almost all
desktop-related specifications. But so are Xfce and others.

All I'm trying to say is: let's make it very clear when a specification
is accepted and when it's not and, please, let's use a definition that
supports collaboration. Having two projects (or collection of
projects) decide on everything, even if they are the two major ones and
even if they agree to decide based on common sense is not exactly what
I'd call a good foundation for collaboration.

I know, it isn't easy to decide on this matter and we clearly can't
satisfy everyone right from the start (maybe never). But I hope you
understand that for me as an Xfce developer having to rely *entirely*
on other people's good will is not acceptable.

Hopefully, the degree of participation in fd.o discussions will
increase (I think it already has improved a lot over the past weeks),
but I fear that with only two projects having the final word on
everything, we might eventually end up in lethargy with a lot of
specifications pending approval because nobody cares about making a
decision.

> > That being said, I kinda like Jakob's suggestion to give 2 points
> > to GNOME and KDE each, and 1 point to Xfce, LXDE, Enlightenment and
> > other desktops/projects and grant specs the fd.o status once they
> > reach 4 points. I don't know if it's perfect or even good enough
> > but at least it's very simple and well-defined ;)
> 
> The problem I see there is how to define who gets how many points. I
> could easily start yet another desktop project and demand to get some
> points for fd.o. How would the criteria be?

I said I wasn't sure it's good enough. Maybe have a project list called
"Freedesktop.org Members" or something, and have representatives (and
please not the release teams again ;)) of these members decide on new
membership requests?

I know this goes further than the spec repository organization and
acceptance documentation part, but sooner or later we'll have to get to
this again (when the next specification candidate comes up; and I
already have one in the pipeline ;)). I could be wrong but I think
here's where the need for a governance body *might* becomes visible
again. Someone has to do the initial decisions. (And being part of all
these discussions I'd not be super happy to be completely left out, as
Xfce, not as an individual.)

> I do believe that the smaller desktop projects should be involved in
> the specification process, but the practical problems of modeling a
> formal voting process including all possible projects, seem to be too
> hard to solve at the current stage for me.

See, here it comes again - when does a desktop environment end up being
"small". When it has 30% of the user base on its side? Then we'd never
have more than three projects involved. BTW, I don't see fd.o as a
desktop-only platform. There also are a number of (conceptionally)
desktop-independent but still desktop-focused projects out there.

  - Jannis
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