Re: Desktops, Components and Roles

[Stefan Urbanek]

On Thu, 2005-02-10 at 19:00 +0000, Nicolas Roard wrote:
> Le 10 févr. 05, à 13:10, Quentin Mathé a écrit :
> 

<snip>

> OK, here is my point/rant : at the moment, we have 4 projects related 
> to a "gnustep dekstop": Garma, Backbone, GAP and Étoilé.
> Each one have slightly different goals, so there's a reason they exist. 
> And it's not _that_ a big deal, because GNUstep provides us the basic 
> cooperation services (pasteboard, services, nsworkspace..) -- meaning 
> that Garma can reuse Backbone's apps, Backbone can use GAP 
> applications, etc. All transparently.
> 
> BUT.
> 
> It's still a shame to have basically 4 efforts toward a (very) similar 
> goal, while we are so few gnustep developers.
> 
> Having one well-identified project would be much better for the users 
> AND for the developers. It will help reuse of common frameworks.
> 

<snip>

Yes, there are 4 projects related to a "gnustep desktop" and you are
true that there is division of development power. On the other hand, i
think, that division of power != waste of power. 

Having variation of ideas is definitely good thing. Think of existing
desktop projects as of branches of ideas of "the" gnustep desktop
environment. Therefore, treat it as single super-project. To eliminate
potential waste of development power, all the projects/branches should
cooperate by doing barter with code - exchange whole frameworks,
classes, methods or just snippets of code. Isn't that what is GPL good
for?

Being not selfish on one hand, but having one's own ideas can lead to
great evolution by cooperation. In addition, developers should not be
afraid to discard pieces of code - death of bodies or body-cells is part
of our lives, and it is same for lives of software projects.

To sum it up:
- keep more than one project for variation and idea generation
- exchange code and cooperate
- discard what is not needed

After some time one of the projects will become the "leading idea
branch" which can be marked as "the gnustep environment".

Stefan Urbanek
-- 
http://stefan.agentfarms.net

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then
you win.
- Mahatma Gandhi