freedesktop.org specification process

[Rob Taylor]

Will Stephenson wrote:
> On Thursday 09 July 2009 22:19:59 Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
>> Following up on the discussion about freedesktop.org at GCDS and the
>> additional input on the mailing list, I wrote down a specification for the
>> process how to manage freedesktop.org specifications. It's based on the
>> consensus we built at GCDS plus the input which came from Aaron and others
>> before and after the meetings.
>>
>> To bootstrap the process I wrote it down as a freedesktop.org specification
>> following the proposed process. You can find the text at
>> http://gitorious.org/~cornelius/xdg-specs/xdg-specs-spec0/blobs/master/spec
>> ifications/SpecificationProcess/specification.txt
>>
>> Please have a look and comment.
> 
> * Could do with a spell check and s/it's/its/ as appropriate.
> 
> * "The GNOME and KDE communities have to take into account the needs and  
> feedback of other communities as well"
>   This needs more work.
> 
> * ### Specification Sources
>   How and where will the intentions of the desktop projects be recorded?
> 
> * The sources for freedesktop.org specifications are hosted in a git 
> repository at <http://gitorious.org/xdg-specs>.  
> 
> Perhaps mention that this is pending whether XDG.org will provide adequate git 
> hosting.
> 
> * ### Namespaces for Development of new Interfaces
> If an implementor intends to use a namespace under org.freedesktop to develop  
> a new D-Bus interface specification, there has to be submitted a namespace 
> specification stating the namespace and the intended use.
> 
> An _implementor_ choosing a namespace seems wrong - isn't this the job of the 
> spec drafter?
> 
> * Generic namespace names should be only accepted, if there is a high chance 
> of the interface under it being accepted as well.
> 
> Vague and everyone will think that their org.freedesktop.SlicedBread namespace 
> will probably be expected.  Perhaps have a stricter condition for generic (but 
> then how do you define 'generic') namespace names such as more than simple 
> GNOME/KDE acceptance?


I may have missed someone picking up on this in this long thread, but as
I recall, the decision we reached on this at the meeting was that
*no-project* may take a generic name until it is widely deployed and
accepted. I presume that would take the form of :

 if (is project or specification accepted by at least 2 major desktops) {
   allow them to register for a generic name and use that namespace
 }

IMHO we should not allow projects to start off with generic names. We
don't want a rerun of the org.freedesktop.Notifications debacle.

Thanks,
Rob


> * Example specification metadata
> 
> mismatched <revision> tags :P
> 
> specversion and revnumber appear to be different words for the same thing..
> 
> HTH
> 
> Will
>> The next step would be to work in your comments, and when this is done to
>> merge it back to the main repository and get approval by the release teams.
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-- 
Rob Taylor, Codethink Ltd. - http://codethink.co.uk