Notes on GNOME Development and Release Process Discussion

Presentation by Michael Meeks and Havoc Pennington
Notes by Louis Villa
Editing by Ben FrantzDale, Michael Meeks

• Michael has slides here: http://www.gnome.org/~michael/boston-2002/
• Havoc's formal proposal, for reference, is http://pobox.com/~hp/policy.html [Ed: this page cannot be found. If someone knows where it is, let me know.]
• Havoc on RFP:
  • RFPs are living documents. One can be changed if it sucks.
  • We need a base set of requirements, such that all new things can reference them as appropriate.
    • These are included by reference in future RFPs.
  • Voters are basically covered by affected module maintainers.
  • Nuisance RFPs are avoided by the necessity of getting > 3 maintainers to agree to your RFP.
  • What about non-maintainers who file stuff? How can we include them, and yet ensure that it is the GNOME community that decides, and not some even-more-arbitrary body?
  • An RFP is specifically about setting out requirements for a solution, not for selecting a solution for the problem.
  • Remember that RFP is the outcome of the process, which is then used to evaluate solutions. process.
• Mission statement sidetrack:
  • This needs to be boiled down to one page.
  • Michael: We need a vision.
  • Michael: We need to add ‘who are we targeting’ to ‘what are we here for and what does it mean?‘
  • HP: We should split goals from tactics.
  • HP: Mission statement is what you are not willing to compromise on; tactics are what you are willing to compromise on.
  • The mission statement should include ‘put Free Software on the desktop’ [jeff: emphasize all desktops]
  • Other possible goals: Owen: ‘fun’, hp: ‘make millions of dollars’ [tongue in cheek].
  • Billh: ‘Is accessibility a goal we are seeking to achieve or a tactic by which we will achieve our goals, whatever they are’,
  • alexg: ‘need to crush our enemies, by beating them on cost, on quality, on everything’.
  • Lots of talk about bringing people in to GNOME, by improving libraries but also by bringing people in politically.
  • Step one: ‘user comes first’ (suggested)