Transforming GNOME Into A Linux-Only Project (link)

[Jeremy Messenger]

On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 3:56 AM, Joe Marcus Clarke <marcus at freebsd.org> wrote:
> On 5/18/11 3:26 PM, Michal Varga wrote:
>> I'll just leave this here as I'm basically speechless, and it's probably
>> not worth commenting anyway.
>>
>> But for those who might be interested and don't necessarily keep up with
>> the latest 'news', clicky:
>>
>> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTQ1Nw
>
> GNOME has been heading down this path since 2.0 was released.  It's been
> a slow process,

Yep.. For example, recently, in the gnome-screensaver 3.x. They
removed src/gs-auth-helper.c with no reason. All we have to do is to
readd it on our own and it works fine.

> but the decisions that were made around hal, devkit,
> etc. are unmistakable signs that GNOME is abandoning the OSS desktop in
> favor of a Linux desktop.
>
> Is this a bad idea?  Yes and no.  These days, people expect a desktop to
> have a tight OS integration.  They like the ability to have mobility,
> hardware awareness, sexy graphics, etc. as part of their desktop
> experience.  So a desktop can't be completely OS-agnostic.  However,
> what GNOME and fd.o could have been better about is to make truly open,
> well-documented standards so that vendors like Solaris and *BSD could
> plug in bits to provide OS integration.  Say what you will about hal,
> but hal had this.  The udev stuff does not.
>
> To me, GNOME could add OS-level integration and provide clear
> delineation as to what is PI and what is PD.  The PD stuff should have
> open specifications.  That's the OSS model.  But if the GNOME guys want
> to make GNOME into the Linux OS, that's their call.  GNOME 2.x is still
> open.  Perhaps the fork efforts being discussed will take off.

Or write our very own WM for BSD only. :-P

Cheers,
Mezz


> Joe
>
> --
> Joe Marcus Clarke
> FreeBSD GNOME Team      ::      gnome at FreeBSD.org
> FreeNode / #freebsd-gnome
> http://www.FreeBSD.org/gnome


-- 
mezz.freebsd at gmail.com - mezz at FreeBSD.org
FreeBSD GNOME Team
http://www.FreeBSD.org/gnome/ - gnome at FreeBSD.org