Re: galeon (not) in Debian stable
On Tue, Aug 26, 2003 at 06:01:51PM +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Sven Luther">
>
> > > Dude, neither choice was political in nature.
> >
> > Each choice of one of the branches of a fork is political in nature, even
> > if you base it on technical decisions and such.
>
> Jeez dude, different things make sense to different people. There's nothing
> political about this.
>
> Ah, so, you've obviously done your research on this topic too. Good to hear.
>
> http://gnomedesktop.org/article.php?sid=1195
Here it is then :
There was a lot of vocal support for Epiphany on the mailing list, but
little for Galeon. So, the consensus points to Epiphany. That was due
to a number of factors: The Epiphany project goals seem to be better
aligned with GNOME's goals, the Galeon developers do not seem to be
100% behind GNOME's goals; Epiphany has had regular releases for GNOME
2.3.x; the Epiphany hackers are working within the project to define
standards and code for toolbar editing and other functionality, etc.
While there are a lot of reservations about offending the Galeon
hackers, and great disappointment that the two projects have not been
able to cooperate, Epiphany does seem to have the consensus, and make
the most technical sense. That is not to say that Epiphany is without
faults, or that Galeon is not excellent software -> we do need to make
a choice at some stage: Right now there is strong support to add a
browser to the Desktop release, and strong support for that browser to
be Epiphany.
If that is not a political issue, then i don't know what is, sure i am
no native english speaker, so we may understand different things about
this, but still.
> > > Despite some disagreement with specific choices that the Epiphany team
> > > have made, it is the right choice. It has a stronger team, dedicated
> > > maintainers,
> >
> > Well, i don't think so, And it is ironic, don't you fing, that the
> > epiphany people are now adding all the features the fork was about back
> > then, like mouse gestures and so on.
> >
> > Also, it is because of the aims and choices that so many people where
> > very unhappy about galeon 1.3 featurelessness. And epiphany doesn't even
> > has the personal toolbar stuff, which is sort of going backward.
>
> Do your research. They're not. There is an extensions mechanism that allows
> for this stuff, and some extensions are already in development. The goals of
> the project are 100% compatible with this.
And this could not have been done in the framework of galeon ? I
remember the lead epiphany coder rejecting such things absolutely back
then, and even a configurable extension mechanism was not acceptable to
him. But then, it was almost a year ago, i might be wrong, but that is
the sentiment i had.
> > And on top of that, they hijacked the epiphany name from the boulderdash
> > clone which has been in debian for years, but then, so has the phoenix
> > project with the firebird name.
>
> Hijacked? Far out dude, get a grip. "Never attribute to malice that which
> can be adequately explained by stupidity." Or in this case, ignorance or
> even irrelevance.
Should have added a smiley or something. But sure enough, i did a
apt-get install epiphany, and what did i got, the boulderdash game :)))
> > Not to forget that the lead epiphany developer is targeting, not your
> > average debian user, but his grandmother who is not computer literate.
> > This may be all well for gnome and its new corporate market target, but
> > it is wrong for debian to make such statement, and has already alienated
> > a big part of the galeon userbase.
> >
> > Disclaimer : notice that the same can be said for most of gnome, but you
> > get used to it some, and there are other tools, but i bet that most
> > people which mades such critics about gnome2 where primarily concerned
> > about the galeon 1.3 state.
>
> Rant, rant, rant, and grossly uninformed to boot.
Err, i did read attentively the flamewars on the galeon list back then,
and he did clearly state that we were not his target group. If you go
back to those archives, you would see it, i even participated in the
discussion, and advocated against the fork, but i was no developer, so
it didn't bring much.
> > It was lamentable, because there could have been a compromise made, and
> > it was not, and thus the teams did split, and galeon was refused as part
> > of gnome 2.2 and so on.
>
> If you had any comprehension of the work done to forge a compromise, you'd
> be more understanding of the end results. Everyone works to avoid forks. It
> was inevitable and unavoidable in this case. Sure, I'm disappointed too, but
> I'm quite happy now that it's all over. Good things have come of it.
So enlighten me, what were the inevitable reasons of the fork ? There
were mostly personal bickering and naturally the question of the user
base and HIG dictatorship. In some way you could say that the HIG was
the reason of the fork, and thus it is natural that the gnome project
has finally choosen epiphany over galeon, since it favored the HIG over
functionaity.
> > > fork as such. Not by a long shot. We now have a maintainable browser, and a
> > > strong developer team, with a LOT of momentum.
> >
> > Normal, they hijacked the galeon developer base, no ?
>
> "Hijacked" again? Far out. The lead developer of Galeon left to pursue
Come on, i am no english native speaker, and thus i grab the words i
can, without maybe having all the nuances you would read into it, and
tentatives of humor or at least lighteness is maybe lost. I should make
more heavy use of smileys and such then, or we could continue the
discussion in french ?
> another browser project. As far as I know, no considerable number of other
> Galeon developers have joined the Epiphany project.
And who joined the epiphany project ? Who are the members of the team
mentioned above ?
> > > Right now, I still use Galeon. But it's becoming very clear that Epiphany is
> > > (faster|better|stabler|etc), and that at some stage, I should shift.
> >
> > Because there is more development effort put in it, but the same could
> > have been said if there would not have been work. And frankly, could you
> > tell me the main feature difference between galeon and epiphany ? The
> > bookmark handling of epiphany, which could has well have been
> > implemented in a branch and then incorporated in galeon or something ?
>
> You know what? It doesn't matter. Go and be bitter somewhere else.
>
> > The lousy preference editor of epiphany, which did go a big step
> > backward from what we had in galeon under the HIG dictatorship ? Even
> > evolution implements something similar.
>
> It is a remarkably clear preferences dialogue for an application that does
> not require a significant number of preferences. Nautilus has more, and it
> is designed in exactly the same manner (using standard tabs). Evolution uses
> a different design because its structure - which, importantly, includes user
> and account information as well as preferences - necessitates it.
Well, but it reverts to text based stuff over the graphical one used
previously and reenabled in galeon. Furthermore, there are many options
which were lost, and with design, i don't speak about the more exotic
ones, but some are really usefull for basic usage.
> "HIG dicatatorship"? Perhaps you haven't read the clear, lucid and flexible
> Human Interface Guidelines... It certainly sounds as if you're railing on
> yet another topic you haven't paid much attention to.
Maybe the wrong words again, maybe it is not the HIG, but the document
about the don't use preferences thingy, you now what i mean well enough.
And when the fork was done, flexibility was not part of the
interpretation of it back then.
Friendly,
Svne Luther
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