21 Aug 2000 (updated 13 Sep 2006 at 08:04 UTC)
»
Updated the GNOME FAQ. 21 names in the contributors now.
Woo! I
really need to sit down and work out how I mark up and fill
in
the right bits for the GNU docs licence, and then it goes
into
maintenance mode, with luck. Because it's not currently on
the main GNOME pages, just in CVS, shoved a version onto my
[edited to remove dead site] pages, and started weeding out potentially useful
threads from a far-too-full folder of messages saved from
gnome-devel-list so that someone else can provide the
answers
and drake can do the developer FAQ.
Talked to jdub and
terral
about
whether developers and users have any shared understanding
of
what makes a useful bug report (frankly, I just guess) or
how much
work you can actually expect a "switched new computer on,
started exciting free OS up, something broke, now what?"
person to do digging for relevant information. Wondered
whether getting a bunch of people who fix bugs, resolve them
in the BTSs, or send in patches
and people who find them and try to report them together in
the same room would help, and considered attempting this in
Australia
(because I'm going there, apparently, in January). Started
thinking
about ways to get some useful info before that. This is
mostly
spawned by a thread about "help! bugs.gnome.org is feeling
full!" on
one of the GNOME lists and the different attitudes to
different... um... styles, shall we say, of reporting bugs.
Saw glenn's
comments about "some people were a bit rude but I coped" and
it reminded me that I need to flame pointlessly about people
flaming
pointlessly. Or something. Another on the to-do pile.
Basically, I don't like a lot of the forms of what pass for
communication on the web and net today, and I think more
people need to think about how they are coming across and
whether someone who is paying by the minute for their access
really needs to be flamed when they ask a question. It's
possible to explain "this is the wrong place for this"
without some of the more obnoxious comments I see. At least,
I hope it is. If this is the example we set people arriving
now, we're going to regret it when they pass it on to the
next generation to arrive and we'll be complaining about
"youth of today... no respect...grumble grumble..." and next
thing it'll be "bring back national service" and I'll be
voting for the tories or something. And that would be bad,
really it would. Especially because the aforementioned next
generation will outnumber us substantially...
Lots of people are talking about LWE, which apparently
claims it's the biggest Linux show. Not that I have seen
reliable numbers, but I suspect this will surprise the
LinuxTag folks. LinuxTag actually sounds to have been more
fun, and that's not just because of the parties, truly.
Lots of people seem to have completely missed the point of
the GNOME Foundation. But then, I had the advantage not only
of the press reports but of seeing raph type in
the summary of the RA broadcast of the thing for we
bandwidth-challenged types. (Wow, he's a fast typer.) The
press
missed out Miguel's comments about GNOME being about people,
and by individuals all over the world, completely. Of
course, I could have missed the point of the Foundation,
too, but my take's at least more optimistic :)
I was going to applaud thomasq
for his mention of rugby, but I just saw that he missed
Wales out of great rugby nations, so I'm going to sulk
instead.
Long entry, but then I seem to be making them once a month,
so you can live in peace for a bit. I do actually have a
couple of potential article/rambles in the pipeline, but
most things in that pipeline seem to get stuck half-way
along. Oh well.