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I do think it's a major shortsightedness... GNOME makes Linux (and not-so-Linux) easier to use for people. That's a big plus. The fact that it's a server version means that only technically competent people will be using it; this part of your post I agree with.

However, I can't figure out whether your meaning is 1) "server admins don't use gnome", or 2) "server admins know how to compile their own gnome".

In the first case, I can say that you're probably wrong... I know experienced linux guys who use KDE 1.x series, still... because it came with their distro...

which leads me to #2.

Gnome is not exactly easy to compile from source, and good luck finding a binary "gnome distribution" for Caldera OpenNotLinux. I realize that anyone who is technically competant is capable of compiling gnome. However, last time I did just that, it took me about two full days to get every source file and meet all the dependancies. There were (I think) about 60 individual source packages, that had to be compiled in a certain order (yet strangely... a different order than they are organized on GNOME's source download page, at least on Slackware 7.1). Not fun.

GStreamer and Gnumeric.

Huh? Do you even remotely keep a watch of the GNOME community? A couple months ago the GNOME 2.0 schedule was released and things are moving along pretty much as planned. A 2.0 API freeze just occured, activity on the lists and in CVS is dramatically rising. We've had recent releases of the new Control Center, a brand new AbiWord, second Beta of Evolution, new releases of development tools gIDE (screenshot) and DevHelp (screenshot), a new file selection dialog, etc...I could go on. I suggest you at least read the GNOME Summaries or check out Gnotices every now and then.

Huh? Do you even remotely keep a watch of the GNOME community? A couple months ago the GNOME 2.0 schedule was released and things are moving along pretty much as planned. A 2.0 API freeze just occured, activity on the lists and in CVS is dramatically rising. We've had recent releases of the new Control Center, a brand new AbiWord, second Beta of Evolution, new releases of development tools gIDE (screenshot) and DevHelp (screenshot), a new file selection dialog, etc...I could go on. I suggest you at least read the GNOME Summaries or check out Gnotices every now and then.

Huh? Do you even remotely keep a watch of the GNOME community? A couple months ago the GNOME 2.0 schedule was released and things are moving along pretty much as planned. A 2.0 API freeze just occured, activity on the lists and in CVS is dramatically rising. We've had recent releases of the new Control Center, a brand new AbiWord, second Beta of Evolution, new releases of development tools gIDE (screenshot) and DevHelp (screenshot), a new file selection dialog, etc...I could go on. I suggest you at least read the GNOME Summaries or check out Gnotices every now and then.

Huh? Do you even remotely keep a watch of the GNOME community? A couple months ago the GNOME 2.0 schedule was released and things are moving along pretty much as planned. A 2.0 API freeze just occured, activity on the lists and in CVS is dramatically rising. We've had recent releases of the new Control Center, a brand new AbiWord, second Beta of Evolution, new releases of development tools gIDE (screenshot) and DevHelp (screenshot), a new file selection dialog, etc...I could go on. I suggest you at least read the GNOME Summaries or check out Gnotices every now and then.

I'm assuming you don't remember the "kiss and make up" publicity stunt. I'll invite you to visit the GNOME-KDE interoperability mailing archive here.
Check out all that cooperating! Note how DnD formed in the very beginning (and was really just a matter of using existing DnD standards such as Motif). File formats are rarely discussed. Clipboards?! X has had a standard clipboard forever it seems. The only real substance I could find was talk of merging Bonobo and KParts which ended, well, nowhere.

I know it's a joke, but to respond anyway:

I read that report and I thought it was very good. However, it did not deal with the same subjects as the FAQ of this story, which is oriented largely towards installation issues and use of the command line.

I don't ever recall seeing a usability study on the use of the command line by ordinary computer users, but I'm sure it would be an amusing waste of time and money. It's obvious what the results would be.

Tim

It would be fun to do a controlled study to watch average users scratching their heads over the thing and asking to be excused early.

You mean like the GNOME Usability Study Report? :)

--

Some of what you say is true, but the following comment:

Add *that* to the fact that all most no open-source developer would even consider using Gnome...

is pure bunk. You might want to check out the size of the
Gnome application database before you make ignorant comments like this one. Many people like to think that just because they don't like something means that it's not popular, but unfortunately this is not always the case.

err... like Mozilla's XPCOM or Gnome's Bonobo (heavily inspired by Microsoft's OLE2)

You have to go to your folders to get to imap mailboxes. When you click on something the mailboxes 'tab' immediately dissapears without what you clicked on highlighting, so you don't know if you mis-clicked or not (unless its showing all the time from the view menu).

I've been so looking forward to the nice integrated GUI gpg support. Sadly, my key id (which the interface for sucks btw, you are not given any idication what you're supposed to put in there or where to get the information from) is NOT SAVED when I apply the settings.

S/MIME certificate support. Oh god I thought I was going to blow a load when I saw this. I have been waiting for ages for this in something other than netscape mail (which sucks) and I was overjoyed to have this. Certificate ID? What is that? Where do I get it? The "digital ids" button does nothing. When I type in my name (no clue what else to do) it isn't saved either, so I guess it doesn't matter.

When I click on tasks I get asked to pick a time zone. When I click on calendar I get asked to pick a time zone. Shouldn't they be able to share information?

Even after picking the time zone it doesn't appear in the tools-> settings menu

Under tasks tools->tasks preferences doesn't do anything

At one point I got a 0x0 window that I couldn't get rid of. It didn't dissapear when I shut down evolution and I ended up having to killall evolution-mail to get rid of it

The "Define Views" is a neat idea, but very buggy.

If the main component crashes (which it did thanks to the above item about defining views) wouldn't it be a good idea to give the user the option to restart it?

Threaded message list option is not saved

All in all a bit dissapointing, especially for the pgp and s/mime options. Also absent were smtp/imap/pop3 over ssl (which I thought were said to be there, but maybe not). These things would be good to have, and would (IMHO) show the mark of a truely mature and advanced mail client (and would make me an instant believer!

So conclusion, much better, and probably great for day to day mail, but still has a ways to go before I'll switch. I'm going to go and file some bugs now, and maybe build from source in case the .debs have features turned off or something.

Erhmm... maybe it's just me, but when I go to ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/unstable/sources/evo lution I see LATEST-IS-0.10.

I can see the latest snapshots which are 0.10+cvsxxxx, but well, where do I download this? I run a debian system without ximian and would like to download via deb (the old spidermonkey.* sources.list is gone) without having to depend on all the ximian stuff and replace half my libs.

And I'm sure that'll get worked out relatively soon, but in the interm, where is the source!? :)

Surely there must be some real development going on in the free software world that could be covered instead. A Linux-powered robot that recognizes human faces or Sun's study of Gnome usability?

Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

The gnome-python package is here:
www.gnome.org.

The package includes lots of simple example programs which are easy to read, and handles calling the init functions for you.

There are more tutorials on using python to create Gtk apps here.

You will want to use PLPtools to transfer files from and to Linux (and perhaps other Unix-like systems). It can NFS-mount your Psion disk(s).

I've been installing gnome by just compiling the source since about version 0.30. There is a compilation instruction web page at gnome.org that lists the packages that you must have and the order that they must be compiled.That's what I normally do on my main machine at home. Unfortunately, there are some packages that are in the unstable directories that are needed by packages in stable and these aren't listed on the compilation instructions. For my debian systems, I just use apt-get. I did have a PPC system that the installer couldn't recognize (IBM workstation), so I just installed all the RPMs from the command line, which wasn't difficult.

The message you got is because GNOME doesn't distribute binaries, they leave that up to others.

If you are looking for a binary distribution, Debian's GNOME distribution is very good (you can probably install it on Redhat via alien, or just switch to Debian).

Regardless of distribution, you can always download the source from ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/sources.
Configure, compile, install and run. It takes a bit more disk space this way, but it's not as hard as you might think.

----

I say : As a maintenance tool for low end boxes.

(Such as, say, the old PPC I use as a gateway to the net. 3 years old, 180 MHz, 32 meg RAM.)

On such a machine, you need something to

1. Browse local help pages;* **
2. Search the web for code and rpms;
3. Download these onto the machine.

* Bonus if it can read man and info pages, (like gnome-help-browser).
** Double bonus if it supports find string on page (unlike g-h-b).

Skipstone is nice (uses gecko and fewer gnome libs than galeon), but I found it still memory hungry and a quite bit slower than g-h-b, or legacy Netscape for Mac on the same hardware.

(The one I tried compiled against Mozilla 0.9. Although there may be good progress since, I wonder if gecko may just not be lean enough... Moz 0.9.2 is still a big memory hog on my other machine -- like 50 meg after a little browsing, where legacy Netscape would stay around 30.)

Encompass uses gtkhtml instead. Can anyone comment on it? Will it do (1), (2) and (3) above? I still need to figure out exactly what dependencies it needs to compile. Anyway, it seems promising -- see this review and some more recent news.

It has been called an "Open Source alternative to .NET", although it is by no means a clone. Rather, it focuses on extending existing UNIX features and programs to the Internet, where they haven't been before.

Perhaps we don't need a clone, just as Linux is not a clone of Windows. And it's a good thing it is not.

Here are some articles and mentions of Piper:

On Slashdot

Linux Software Encyclopedia

Linux Weekly News

Gnome Gnotices (It's interesting to note that the article first posted there referred to Piper as an alternative to .Net. The moderator later changed that. Paranoid minds, such as mine, wonder about this and the future intentions of GNOME with respect to .Net.)

O'Reilly P2P website

SunWorld Online

And some other online magazines/forums:

Infolets

Tecnologia

Hispa MP3

--
This sort of thing has cropped up before. And it has always been due to human error.

I don't know, but I'm guessing it's because every time they try, they pick names that sound REALLY DUMB!

Check these out (no offense to the developers, I'm sure they're all great programs) :

Mr. Project

Pygmy

A (Don't know where that one came from...)

ToutDoux

Gramps

EtherApe

Shogiopening

Moleskine

Krabber

Koog Epsilon

Ogg Vorbis

I could go on, but I think you get the point. These people need some serious help when it comes to name-picking. Microsoft et al have apparently cornered the market on good names. Consider Outlook. Putting aside what you think of the program itself, you have to agree that it's a very good name.

I don't know, but I'm guessing it's because every time they try, they pick names that sound REALLY DUMB!

Check these out (no offense to the developers, I'm sure they're all great programs) :

Mr. Project

Pygmy

A (Don't know where that one came from...)

ToutDoux

Gramps

EtherApe

Shogiopening

Moleskine

Krabber

Koog Epsilon

Ogg Vorbis

I could go on, but I think you get the point. These people need some serious help when it comes to name-picking. Microsoft et al have apparently cornered the market on good names. Consider Outlook. Putting aside what you think of the program itself, you have to agree that it's a very good name.

I don't know, but I'm guessing it's because every time they try, they pick names that sound REALLY DUMB!

Check these out (no offense to the developers, I'm sure they're all great programs) :

Mr. Project

Pygmy

A (Don't know where that one came from...)

ToutDoux

Gramps

EtherApe

Shogiopening

Moleskine

Krabber

Koog Epsilon

Ogg Vorbis

I could go on, but I think you get the point. These people need some serious help when it comes to name-picking. Microsoft et al have apparently cornered the market on good names. Consider Outlook. Putting aside what you think of the program itself, you have to agree that it's a very good name.

I don't know, but I'm guessing it's because every time they try, they pick names that sound REALLY DUMB!

Check these out (no offense to the developers, I'm sure they're all great programs) :

Mr. Project

Pygmy

A (Don't know where that one came from...)

ToutDoux

Gramps

EtherApe

Shogiopening

Moleskine

Krabber

Koog Epsilon

Ogg Vorbis

I could go on, but I think you get the point. These people need some serious help when it comes to name-picking. Microsoft et al have apparently cornered the market on good names. Consider Outlook. Putting aside what you think of the program itself, you have to agree that it's a very good name.

I don't know, but I'm guessing it's because every time they try, they pick names that sound REALLY DUMB!

Check these out (no offense to the developers, I'm sure they're all great programs) :

Mr. Project

Pygmy

A (Don't know where that one came from...)

ToutDoux

Gramps

EtherApe

Shogiopening

Moleskine

Krabber

Koog Epsilon

Ogg Vorbis

I could go on, but I think you get the point. These people need some serious help when it comes to name-picking. Microsoft et al have apparently cornered the market on good names. Consider Outlook. Putting aside what you think of the program itself, you have to agree that it's a very good name.

I don't know, but I'm guessing it's because every time they try, they pick names that sound REALLY DUMB!

Check these out (no offense to the developers, I'm sure they're all great programs) :

Mr. Project

Pygmy

A (Don't know where that one came from...)

ToutDoux

Gramps

EtherApe

Shogiopening

Moleskine

Krabber

Koog Epsilon

Ogg Vorbis

I could go on, but I think you get the point. These people need some serious help when it comes to name-picking. Microsoft et al have apparently cornered the market on good names. Consider Outlook. Putting aside what you think of the program itself, you have to agree that it's a very good name.

I don't know, but I'm guessing it's because every time they try, they pick names that sound REALLY DUMB!

Check these out (no offense to the developers, I'm sure they're all great programs) :

Mr. Project

Pygmy

A (Don't know where that one came from...)

ToutDoux

Gramps

EtherApe

Shogiopening

Moleskine

Krabber

Koog Epsilon

Ogg Vorbis

I could go on, but I think you get the point. These people need some serious help when it comes to name-picking. Microsoft et al have apparently cornered the market on good names. Consider Outlook. Putting aside what you think of the program itself, you have to agree that it's a very good name.

I don't know, but I'm guessing it's because every time they try, they pick names that sound REALLY DUMB!

Check these out (no offense to the developers, I'm sure they're all great programs) :

Mr. Project

Pygmy

A (Don't know where that one came from...)

ToutDoux

Gramps

EtherApe

Shogiopening

Moleskine

Krabber

Koog Epsilon

Ogg Vorbis

I could go on, but I think you get the point. These people need some serious help when it comes to name-picking. Microsoft et al have apparently cornered the market on good names. Consider Outlook. Putting aside what you think of the program itself, you have to agree that it's a very good name.

FreeBSD has no market share..." de Icaza said.

BSD is REALLY dead now. Are we done yet?

And yet this "no market share" has been rising steadily.

Lessee there's MacOS X...

And of course there's the relatively new TrustedBSD.

And you remember this article don't you, about RTL/BSD?

Oh yeah, and Windriver's acquisition of BSDi which will greatly benefit the other BSDs.

And here's a small quote:

"The BSD-based OSes all look to be doing better and better at the moment, even without Linux's marketing fury behind them." - ZDNet article

de Icaza musta been coding too late or something because even on the front page of the Gnome site it says that "GNOME is included in pretty much every BSD and GNU/Linux distribution" so it must have some market share if it's worth keeping it compatible. Can't be that DEAD can it?

Well, I might have believed you had I not just read the gnome-2-0-list and seen that the hub issue isn't nearly what you make it out to be. A couple of months ago Havoc did some brainstorming with some other people about a hypothetical component system known as "the hub" to unify linux. The paper was never released to the public, and was only circulated to a couple other developers to get their insight to see if it was actually a good idea or not.

Here is a link to havoc's explanation:

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-2-0-list/2001 -June/msg00311.html

If you read the next message in that thread, you'll notice that the person Havoc is refering to agreed he was acting paranoid.

Nothing to see here. Move Along.

this is where the gconf vs bonobo-config thread starts. Some Gnome hackers, notably Havoc, definitely do not want bonobo to be a requirement for gconf. Some Gnome hackers, notably Martin, think a bonobo-ized config system would be much better.

Both parties are attempting to predict future usage of gconf/bonobo-conf, as not a lot is dependent on gconf right now. AFAICT, all parties expect more of the core stuff to use the configuration database.

I'd kinda like to see the bonobo-conf for 2.0. According to a few posts in the thread, the gconf API has problems already and that a bonobo reimplementation would fix those problems as well as add the benefits of componentization. Since this is a new major release, I don't see why Havoc is so concerned with backwards compatibility for the gconf API since they already planned to wrap it.

but then, I've always been partial to the Linus Torvalds development kernel approach: ok you convinced me it's a good idea. Let's see what broke!

:-),
-l

References:

• gconf info in .deb package, "GConf is a configuration database system, functionally similar to the Windows registry but lots better. :-) It's being written for the GNOME desktop but does not require GNOME."
• bonobo gnumeric: http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/gnumeric-0. 65 "Please do not package gnumeric-bonobo yet. However, NEW for this release Bug reports are now welcome for the Bonobo build. It will become the default shortly."

Bonobo is the new GNOME component architecture, heavily influenced by Microsoft COM. The flame war seemed to start over bonobo-conf (or bonobo-config - I think these are two different programs, but people seemed to use them interchangably) versus GConf (the current GNOME configuaration system. Originally, bonobo-conf was going to be a wrapper for GConf, but apparently Miguel + Ximian thought that GConf had major design flaws, so they (well, Dietmar Maurer ) created a new system with bonobo-conf. When this became apparent, Havoc (maintainer of GConf) was upset that they had done this whilst originally telling him that it would be a wrapper, and that the new bonobo-conf had problems that GConf already addressed (like overridable default settings). Cue flamage. I think that parts of libgnomeui were changed to use bonobo-conf, which annoyed people even more.

"Thats why I'm now mostly using XFCE. The component mess and the complete lack of thought on user requirements in things like bonoboconf (like inheritable non overridable policy items for sysadmins to set stuff up) really show how clueless the gnome design has become. Its no longer about building a cool environment its about a small number of companies trying to screw each other.

Fortunately for Gnome most of those companies wont be here in 12 months time because they don't have a credible business model. At that point it will be interesting to see how people work together again."

Something for fanboys to chew...

There's nothing you can code that can't be gcc'ed,
Nothing you can commit that can't be forked,
Nothing you can `make`, but you can learn how to gdb
It's easy...

There's nothing you can RPM that can't be tarred,
Nothing you can grep that can't use awk,
Nothing you can post that folks will listen to anyway
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

There's nothing you can 'make clean' without some SOAP,
Nothing you can ps that can't be killed
Nothing you can edit unless you learn how to use vi
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

(She'll flame you, yeah, yeah, yeah)

There's nothing you can code that can't be gcc'ed,
Nothing you can commit that can't be forked,
Nothing you can `make`, but you can learn how to gdb
It's easy...

There's nothing you can RPM that can't be tarred,
Nothing you can grep that can't use awk,
Nothing you can post that folks will listen to anyway
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

There's nothing you can 'make clean' without some SOAP,
Nothing you can ps that can't be killed
Nothing you can edit unless you learn how to use vi
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

(She'll flame you, yeah, yeah, yeah)

There's nothing you can code that can't be gcc'ed,
Nothing you can commit that can't be forked,
Nothing you can `make`, but you can learn how to gdb
It's easy...

There's nothing you can RPM that can't be tarred,
Nothing you can grep that can't use awk,
Nothing you can post that folks will listen to anyway
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

There's nothing you can 'make clean' without some SOAP,
Nothing you can ps that can't be killed
Nothing you can edit unless you learn how to use vi
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

(She'll flame you, yeah, yeah, yeah)

There's nothing you can code that can't be gcc'ed,
Nothing you can commit that can't be forked,
Nothing you can `make`, but you can learn how to gdb
It's easy...

There's nothing you can RPM that can't be tarred,
Nothing you can grep that can't use awk,
Nothing you can post that folks will listen to anyway
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

There's nothing you can 'make clean' without some SOAP,
Nothing you can ps that can't be killed
Nothing you can edit unless you learn how to use vi
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

(She'll flame you, yeah, yeah, yeah)

There's nothing you can code that can't be gcc'ed,
Nothing you can commit that can't be forked,
Nothing you can `make`, but you can learn how to gdb
It's easy...

There's nothing you can RPM that can't be tarred,
Nothing you can grep that can't use awk,
Nothing you can post that folks will listen to anyway
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

There's nothing you can 'make clean' without some SOAP,
Nothing you can ps that can't be killed
Nothing you can edit unless you learn how to use vi
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

(She'll flame you, yeah, yeah, yeah)

There's nothing you can code that can't be gcc'ed,
Nothing you can commit that can't be forked,
Nothing you can `make`, but you can learn how to gdb
It's easy...

There's nothing you can RPM that can't be tarred,
Nothing you can grep that can't use awk,
Nothing you can post that folks will listen to anyway
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

There's nothing you can 'make clean' without some SOAP,
Nothing you can ps that can't be killed
Nothing you can edit unless you learn how to use vi
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

(She'll flame you, yeah, yeah, yeah)

There's nothing you can code that can't be gcc'ed,
Nothing you can commit that can't be forked,
Nothing you can `make`, but you can learn how to gdb
It's easy...

There's nothing you can RPM that can't be tarred,
Nothing you can grep that can't use awk,
Nothing you can post that folks will listen to anyway
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

There's nothing you can 'make clean' without some SOAP,
Nothing you can ps that can't be killed
Nothing you can edit unless you learn how to use vi
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

(She'll flame you, yeah, yeah, yeah)

There's nothing you can code that can't be gcc'ed,
Nothing you can commit that can't be forked,
Nothing you can `make`, but you can learn how to gdb
It's easy...

There's nothing you can RPM that can't be tarred,
Nothing you can grep that can't use awk,
Nothing you can post that folks will listen to anyway
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

There's nothing you can 'make clean' without some SOAP,
Nothing you can ps that can't be killed
Nothing you can edit unless you learn how to use vi
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

(She'll flame you, yeah, yeah, yeah)

There's nothing you can code that can't be gcc'ed,
Nothing you can commit that can't be forked,
Nothing you can `make`, but you can learn how to gdb
It's easy...

There's nothing you can RPM that can't be tarred,
Nothing you can grep that can't use awk,
Nothing you can post that folks will listen to anyway
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

There's nothing you can 'make clean' without some SOAP,
Nothing you can ps that can't be killed
Nothing you can edit unless you learn how to use vi
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

(She'll flame you, yeah, yeah, yeah)

There's nothing you can code that can't be gcc'ed,
Nothing you can commit that can't be forked,
Nothing you can `make`, but you can learn how to gdb
It's easy...

There's nothing you can RPM that can't be tarred,
Nothing you can grep that can't use awk,
Nothing you can post that folks will listen to anyway
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

There's nothing you can 'make clean' without some SOAP,
Nothing you can ps that can't be killed
Nothing you can edit unless you learn how to use vi
It's easy...

All you need is love,
All you need is love,
All you need is love, love,
Love and procmail

(She'll flame you, yeah, yeah, yeah)

GNU Network Object Model Environment--as shown by the title of this page. It's kind of in the name. I know it doesn't just leap out and say "component!", but for the component people, "network object" is kind of a dead-giveaway. Then there is the fact that it is built on CORBA--which is all about objects working separately from one another and interacting and cooperationg via network wire protocols. ORBit is the key piece gluing GNOME together.

So it has been there from the beginning. Maybe it has been forgotten (I still have my orginal GNOME foot shirt from the Red Hat Linux conference in 98), but it was the original intent. Many, when it began, remarked it was like OS/2's presentation manager--which was all components and CORBA.

The fact that you haven't heard it could be seen as success or failure (since components are supposed to be seamless to end users). Bonobo is the bulk of the component work. By component, we mean objects that inherit useful, common functionality that allows them to team up with other GNOME apps. Bonobo provides those services. It's very cool stuff.

Miguel makes the point again and again throughout the threads that most of the flaming is from people making statements based on little or no information--i.e. people who did not write the code making statements about the code that are misinformed or just false. If you read it, you'll see that most of the arguments are started with developers and only worsened by non-maintainers crying for process. Most of the maintainers are coming to consensus (albeit slowly and with much replying back and forth).

For the "Is this why GNOME is [so slow/sucks/isn't as cool as KDE]?" people, this has nothing to do with GNOME really. How many times have people on the kernel lists gotten into these arguments? We have the basic thing happening here: people who write the code don't want to have to go through a committee to enact changes, and people who don't know a whole lot about what they are talking about are making very passionate claims in all sorts of directions.

I'm not on the list. I just read the list. I'm not taking sides, since I clearly don't know enough to say anything one way or the other. But for the GNOME naysayers and the prophets of doom, just read the threads. This is typical Open Source/Bazaar/Free Software conflict. It's pretty easy to see if you read the mailing list. But of course, that requires some time and forethought as well ;-)

It will work itself out eventually. The developers will come to a consensus. But people need to calm down and quit clammoring for committee rule. That's the whole reason people develop this stuff--personal freedom. It's like free speech: if you want it, you have to take the good and the bad. Same with free software--or so we claim ("software is speech", etc.).

I think the best part is when George (the Panel maintaner) jumps in and says:

Damn, I missed this whole beautiful flamewar ...
Someone flame me quickly or I'll feel left out.

If I were you, I would take a look at getting involved in the GnomeBasic project. This project is very exciting, they are in the process of writing a 100% language/syntax compatible visual basic compiler to run on GNU systems. It is also capable of parsing ASP pages when combined with Apache! Although an IDE is not currently on the books, if you were turning to C/C++ then this is a great project to be active with!

You can get to them at http://www.gnome.org/gb/. See also http://www.ximian.com for more details.

CyberKnet

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Frankly, that's not really the "Open Source" way of doing things.

Chapter 4 of The Cathedral and the Bazaar describes this. "Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers." Open Source projects tend not to have one monolithic usablity test with focus groups, statistics, PHB's to evaluate the whole thing, etc. Rather, they have a constant stream of incremental releases, each improved by continuous user feedback. Sure, you could do an elaborate usability test with all the trimmings on a particular release, but by the time you got done with it, your tested release would probably be 2 or 3 versions behind the current release and the user interface may already have changed so much that your test results may hardly apply any more :)

That having been said, have you seen the Gnome usability project (join).

Frankly, that's not really the "Open Source" way of doing things.

Chapter 4 of The Cathedral and the Bazaar describes this. "Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers." Open Source projects tend not to have one monolithic usablity test with focus groups, statistics, PHB's to evaluate the whole thing, etc. Rather, they have a constant stream of incremental releases, each improved by continuous user feedback. Sure, you could do an elaborate usability test with all the trimmings on a particular release, but by the time you got done with it, your tested release would probably be 2 or 3 versions behind the current release and the user interface may already have changed so much that your test results may hardly apply any more :)

That having been said, have you seen the Gnome usability project (join).

GNU Basic (www.multimania.com/sxpert/gnuvb/ for the goat wary)
Gnome Basic (www.gnome.org/gb for the goat wary)
KBasic (www.kbasic.org for the goat wary)

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