Summarizing discussion on notification interface name

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Friday 26 June 2009, A. Walton wrote:
> 2009/6/26 Aurélien Gâteau <aurelien.gateau at canonical.com>:

> More than anything, I feel this is just a lesson for everyone
> involved. One: FreeDesktop.org needs better maintainership; it
> shouldn't take me six months to get a reply to a request to move the
> code back to FreeDesktop.org, as an example. This isn't a Notification
> problem, this is a FreeDesktop.org problem. There is no agreement as
> to when something goes into the namespace, as to what is an XDG
> project, or to how they're handled. It's a very loose-knit
> organization, by design, but sometimes a little bit of leadership goes
> a very long way.

hearing other people saying this outloud, as a few have now done, is very 
heartening.

now ... have you (the "royal" you, no just "You, A. Walton" ;) read, 
understood and given feedback on the proposals that have been made here this 
week and in the past few months?

so far i've seen:

* a workflow based on a shared, open git repository (ok, that was mine)
* a push to open up the administration of infrastructure on fd.o

i'd like to see both happen. we have a fairly detailed outline for the first 
one, but only the beginnings of how to accomplish the second one. anyone have 
ideas on how to open up the fd.o infrastructure?

(i think it's telling that not ONE of the current fd.o admins, at least afaik, 
has taken part in this discussion.)

> Furthermore, I know that I haven't had all of the time in the world to
> reply to this onslaught of dozens of emails on the topic, but quite
> frankly there hasn't been much for me to reply to other than some
> bickering about how Galago and Christian are evil, FreeDesktop.org's
> namespace is sacrosanct 

i appreciate your desire to leap to the defense of galago and Christian. in 
the process, let's stay away from hyperbole. nobody has called them evil, only 
mistaken in their approach and involved in encroaching on a shared property. 
nobody has called org.freedesktop "sacrosanct", it's been called a shared 
property. all of those are accurate statements, borne out by the evidence in 
this very list's mail archive.

given that state of affairs, expecting people to take responsibility for their 
actions is only fair. in the context of a series of peaceful and respectful 
attempts to get this rectified that preceded this current row, i think that is 
even more fair.

> and a few emails that actually have pertinent
> details like Aurélien's patches (which I hope to get to review today
> for Libnotify and Notification-Daemon). Can we please try to keep
> things productive and moving forward other than deconstructive and
> mulling over half a decade of history?

so .. when i posted ~1 year ago about creating a git repository with some 
structure to how we create specs, then followed that up by actually starting 
such a thing, then blogged about it, then posted again to the list ... what 
exactly do you think i was doing?

unfortunately the "can't we all just along" route didn't work very well, did 
it?

i'd LOVE to not have to wrestle with people and take it to the brink of 
disaster. but the people on this list do not respond to "productive, moving 
forward" approaches. 

why not? i think it's because we don't value fd.o quite enough, and only 
through the specter of its failure do people sit up and take appropriate 
notice. "you don't know what you got till it's gone" is sometimes too true.

so while i agree with you in sentiment, let me just reiterate: i tried that. 
repeatedly. then i gave up on that, reformulated and tried again. now we have 
the start of some results.

if you wish for people such as myself to be productive and "moving forward" 
minded, you need to start providing support for productive and forward moving 
initiatives. that was actually my first approach to this set of issues.

fair?

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Software

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
Url : http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/attachments/20090626/dcd7455e/attachment.pgp