Bug#154950: Gnome 2 transition
Raphael Hertzog writes ("Re: Bug#154950: Gnome 2 transition"):
> Have we ever offered that choice with KDE ? Why would you want to
> provide that choice for GNOME ?
The question hasn't arisen with KDE. Either this was a mistake, or
new versions of KDE are better in sufficiently nearly all situations
that it wasn't necessary to provide the old version as an option.
> Le Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 12:49:14AM +0100, Ian Jackson écrivait:
> > install the Gnome2 from unstable alongside the Gnome1 from stable,
>
> That's not easily doable and nobody has ever proposed it in the
> debate.
Why is it difficult ? I must be missing something.
> > go in sarge. Why can't the Gnome2 packages keep the `2' suffix
> > forever ?
>
> Because user expect to have their usual gnome packages without that
> suffix. Because it's the simplest upgrade method without requiring dozen
> of compatibility empty packages.
I must be missing the requirement for dozens of empty compatibility
packages.
> > I am very strongly opposed to any attempt to provide `incentives' for
> > maintainers to do work in this way. Penalising our users, or making
> > life difficult for ourselves, in order to `encourage' people to do
> > something, is a very bad idea in a volunteer organisation. If
> > something isn't being done that you want done, go and do it. Don't
> > break things in an effort to force the issue.
>
> I'm sorry, but Gnome 2 won't wait until each uninteresting applet is
> ported ... it's up to the applet developer to do the work, and maybe
> they will do if they got complaints. If they don't, well the applet
> disappear, that's life.
The core message I was responding to was the suggestion that we should
deliberately break things to add incentives to update software.
The choice between Gnome1 and Gnome2 should be based exactly on the
question of which is better to have at the time. If Gnome2 gets to be
better than Gnome1 despite some Gnome1 applets not being available for
Gnome2 then fine. But pushing ahead with Gnome2 despite it being
worse due to the lack of those applets, to `encourage' the applet
maintainers, would be a mistake; instead, the effort should be put in
to port the applets, or do whatever else is the most effort-efficient
route to improving Gnome2.
(NB: that paragraph is all hypothetical. I've not heard any clear
statement about whether Gnome1 or Gnome2 is currently better.)
Ian.
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