zekopeko :

@Jason
That anon post is mine.
Can i login in with launchpad/openid when posting comments?
If so, how?

Put a valid URL in the URL box. OpenID will leap into action if it’s OpenID.

That anon post is mine.
Can i login in with launchpad/openid when posting comments?
If so, how?

makomk :

Gnome Do certainly does look like one of the more decent examples, though. It’s definitely more… shiny than krunner, which is the rough KDE equivalent. Possibly more powerful, too, though I never use the advanced features of krunner so I couldn’t say for sure.
(It looks like it also has a decent number of bugs – the custom window behaviour required to do something like this is very non-trivial to get right, especially if you want it to work under a wide range of window managers.)

You’re absolutely right. Anyone who says GNOME Do isn’t buggy is lying. Question is “how many bugs is this worth” :p

Dan Serban :

Let me rephrase what you’re saying: you claim that there is a big conspiracy going on in Brainstorm to fudge some numbers in order to make Mono seem unpopular. And you reject the idea off-hand that a large number of people might not want Mono by default. And you do that on what basis? On the basis of a conspiracy theory?

I do it on the basis that online poll’s are notoriously unreliable. And that is your argument with brainstorm. The system can be gamed. Just look at Digg for proof of that.

That is one person’s opinion. You don’t have any numbers, not even a set of keywords to search Google with. I’m rephrasing that statement to:

This certainly is anecdotal evidence. I should have said so. Perhaps somebody that has access to a large pool of users could provide a better insight.

In a parallel universe there exists a very popular Linux distro that ships 2 (possibly 3) gtkmm based applications, and because of that, there isn’t any space left to include the Mono runtime. But it makes a lot of sense to use what little space is left over on the live CD to include Gnote, and that’s because of shared dependencies.
Have I proven to you that Gnote is better in that parallel universe? I hope not.
Have you proven to me that Tomboy is better in the current universe? Definitely not, and you need to do better than that.

How nice. Ignoring the other points and then drawing a conclusion. One might assume you are being dishonest on purpose.
The reality of the situation is that the other points are far more important then the one you focused on.
Ubuntu has limited space for a default CD set.

So what is more prudent? Including applications that have overlapping dependencies (and therefore saving space) or using one that has a completely new set of dependencies that aren’t used (or only a small number of them) by other applications and has overlapping (even less) functionality with the application you are removing in favor of the new one.

And let me drill in another major point: a mature application with >1 developers or a new and untested application with 1 developer? What if the application developer quits? Who’s going to add new feature and fix bugs? The distribution has limited resources and can’t do it. From the viewpoint of the distro what is a better decision? Get the point(s)?
So YOU need to do better then that.

GNOME Do is definitely 100% community and 0% Novell (with Mono picked by lead dev David Siegel). Tomboy I’m not 100% sure, but I believe it’s currently not got any paid developers on it (but DOES have a Novell employee with plenty of free time after other hobbies).

That’s entirely possible. I think task launchers, docks and note-taking apps are fairly common personal projects for open source developers. (By which I mean there are a bazillion of the things, with varying levels of quality and featuresets.)

Gnome Do certainly does look like one of the more decent examples, though. It’s definitely more… shiny than krunner, which is the rough KDE equivalent. Possibly more powerful, too, though I never use the advanced features of krunner so I couldn’t say for sure.

(It looks like it also has a decent number of bugs – the custom window behaviour required to do something like this is very non-trivial to get right, especially if you want it to work under a wide range of window managers.)

Jason :

@Jo,
No. Not necessarily. Which is why I said I would like to flesh the idea out some.
It is my understanding that some projects are basically “showcases” for Mono, and some are “genuine” I-picked-Mono-because-I-like-it projects.
It’s also a tricky area to get into, because I don’t want to reject valid contributions, but I don’t want to promote what is basically paid advertisement, either.
As I said, a tricky idea and one that I would flesh out more before committing to a decision.

Well, the question is, who is showcasing to whom? Generally, people talk about four main showcase apps – Tomboy, F-Spot, Banshee, and GNOME Do. Of those, a couple of relevant history references for you should be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Perazzoli and http://abock.org/projects. GNOME Do is definitely 100% community and 0% Novell (with Mono picked by lead dev David Siegel). Tomboy I’m not 100% sure, but I believe it’s currently not got any paid developers on it (but DOES have a Novell employee with plenty of free time after other hobbies). I’m not sure about Tomboy’s history, though

No. Not necessarily. Which is why I said I would like to flesh the idea out some.

It is my understanding that some projects are basically “showcases” for Mono, and some are “genuine” I-picked-Mono-because-I-like-it projects.

It’s also a tricky area to get into, because I don’t want to reject valid contributions, but I don’t want to promote what is basically paid advertisement, either.

As I said, a tricky idea and one that I would flesh out more before committing to a decision.

Jason :

@makomk,
You make a point I agree with: in some ways, the corporate “push” from Novell is “fudging the numbers”.
It’s easy for a project with a lot of commercial support to look like it has a more active development community, because people are getting paid to work on it!
That doesn’t invalidate the project, but it does leave a funny aftertaste when comparing certain projects. I would like to flesh this idea out some.

I would strongly recommend checking the names of people with commit access (and in the case of Novell employees, whether they are actually paid to work on it) rather than making any assumptions.

Also bear in mind provenance. Banshee (born as Sonance) was started in 2004 by Aaron Bockover, who was hired by Novell in 2005. So is it a bad thing for Novell to see true community projects they think are dynamite, and hire people to work on them full or part time rather than as hobbies?

You make a point I agree with: in some ways, the corporate “push” from Novell is “fudging the numbers”.

It’s easy for a project with a lot of commercial support to look like it has a more active development community, because people are getting paid to work on it!

That doesn’t invalidate the project, but it does leave a funny aftertaste when comparing certain projects. I would like to flesh this idea out some.

Auto update of collection is being worked on as one of the blocker bugs for Karmic.

Along with a bunch of other fairly basic missing stuff, like documentation. As I said, Ubuntu isn’t deciding to include it based on its current state, but based on what they hope it’ll be by the time Ubuntu 9.10 is released.

One of the reason Banshee is being considered is because of the larger, more responsive upstream.

Yeah – IIRC, Banshee is developed by Novell, which means they can afford to throw lots of developer time at it as part of their push for more Mono everywhere. (Seriously, I think even Jo Shields said in one of the comments here that OpenSUSE’s use of Mono apps for everything was over the top.)

Oddly, it’s not actually as good as you’d expect given the amount of effort they’re putting in. Part of the problem, of course, is that Rhythmbox is an old and widely-used app, which means that many of the little user interface and feature niggles have been fixed over the years. (Users are also used to Rhythmbox – this means the barrier for acceptance isn’t “roughly as good”, it’s “noticably better”.)

Also, note that if something goes wrong – Novell lose interest, or they make use of legally dangerous features like Moonlight in a future release like they’re considering doing – there’s no migration path back to Rhythmbox. This is a one-way trip, unless someone’s willing to write migration code back.