interestingly, several of the items desrt brought up are actually free software desktop generic. x.org is obviously one of those items. here are some others:
- webkit: started in kde, added to by numerous companies since, it's awesome to see it making its way into so many places in the world including gnome
- policykit: we've already evaluated it for replacing the current "administration mode" buttons in control panels and work is underway to make that transition happen smoothly.
- telepathy: a spec that we're using in decibel
it's very nice to see the free software desktop world sharing so many things in common, helping make all our software nicer.
several other items on ryan's list look familiar to me, e.g. gbus which sounds like a start getting gtk+ apps a bit closer to the kind of sweet, sweet happiness that is QtDBus we've enjoyed for a while now.
other items are concerning. like vala. a whole new language? wowzers. i understand the problems they are trying to solve, it just seems like a rather inefficient way to address it. there are so many other languages out there ...
tracker also digs at me. i'm glad we have xesam now so at the desktop level we can pretend to ignore these things but ... really .. how many indexers do we need? realize that each indexer means re-writing file support plugins, redesigning the common bits internal to each and then trying to sort out the resulting mess. ubuntu gnome will apparently ship in the future with tracker, ubuntu kde will ship with strigi. try explaining to the user base why there are two different indexing systems. i'm all for personal experimentation; i'm all for innovation; i'm all for creating free software where it doesn't exist. i don't get the purpose of having strigi and tracker. beagle and strigi? sure, they are different beasts in various technological metrics. i do wish kde and gnome would share strigi as a solution, however. we could work on it together to the benefit of all. there is a reason, after all, that strigi has no desktop dependencies.
i'm not, btw, suggesting the tracker developers should stop what they are doing. it's not my place to tell others what to work on. i am of the opinion that projects such as gnome and kde ought to be aware of the ramifications of their technology choices. kde has been increasingly mindful of this, and you can see it from decibel to phonon to dbus to ...
if tracker gets proper xesam support then we can, at the desktop level, ignore it somewhat. but i don't think this is doing our user base a great favour.
i wish the gnome project the best as they push forward with their vision. i hope we continue to find ways to explore our individual directions while supporting, or at least not creating unnecessary interference, with each other's individual and our shared directions.
