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GNOME GUI

GNOME Foundation Elections Results Are In 158

Posted by timothy from the or-out-depending-on-how-you-see-things dept.
PaaChhaa writes "The GNOME Foundation membership and elections committee has announced the preliminary results of this year's elections for the board of directors. There are a few new faces this year, and Miguel de Icaza, whose candidacy was rejected last year due to late submission, is back. The run up to this year's election saw a threat of boycott, which ultimately resulted in the online publication of the foundation's financial records. Also, a heated discussion followed the posting of the list of ten questions, and the opinions of the candidates and other foundation members on these issues can be found in the foundation-list archives for the months of November and December. A notable exclusion from this year's board is GNOME's release manager Jeff Waugh. who didn't run at all."
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GNOME Foundation Elections Results Are In More

GNOME Foundation Elections Results Are In

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  • Do any of these guys (gals?) work for Sun?

  • Mena (Score:4, Interesting)

    by febuiles ( 743020 ) on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @02:26PM (#11034995) Homepage Journal
    Why the new faces point to Federico Mena? He's been working in GNOME for more time that most of the known developers.

  • Unexpected results (Score:4, Funny)

    by AbbyNormal ( 216235 ) on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @02:26PM (#11034998) Homepage
    The new president of the association: "George Walker Bush".

    We told them not to use those Diebold Machines. You'd think Gnome would read Slashdot or something.
  • I'll take this oppertunity to complain about GNOME's current love affair with spatial browsing, in the hope that it will get noticed.

    Please, please take away spatial browsing. Noone I know wants it. Every time someone talks to me about their first foray into Linux(avec GNOME) they complain about it. They all hated it in Win95 and they don't want it now. They all leave with the impression that Naultilus( and by extendtion Linux) is, well, unusable. (They're only lusers, bless them.)

    Seriously leave spatial

    • Re:No More Spatial Browsing Please (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Curtman ( 556920 ) on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @02:40PM (#11035138)
      Well said. Spacial Nautilus the kind of thing that looks good to developers because someone put forth a proposal and mentioned the HIG enough times. Look below the surface, and you'll see HIG as the reasoning for everything, often both sides of an argument simultaneously.

      I really believe its time for HIG v2, so we can see if things are improving from the user perspective, or getting worse. Nautilus on the whole is VERY confusing to the users that I have introduced to it. Just try explaining why removing the toolbar is a good thing to any reasonably minded person. All you'll get is a blank stare.
      • Have you tried explaining it to a user who has never used a computer before? He most likely doesn't even know what a toolbar is.
        • Have you tried explaining it to a user who has never used a computer before?

          Are you being serious? I don't even think I've met anyone who has never used a computer before, let alone try to explain why buttons are good things.
        • Not to be crass, but they don't matter.

          The vast majority of people know of and have used a computer before. They have baggage from a previous use experience.

          If the sole justification of a UI construct is "if you never used anything else before, it's easy," then it has failed. It has to be easy to new, intermediate, and advanced users. More so when it's something as central as the "thing that pops up when I click the icons on the desktop."

          (full disclaimer, I actually like and think Spartial Nautilus is a
          • So by your reasoning, Linux GUIs should just emulate Windows. Yet when GNOME or KDE does that, people massively whine about looking too much like Windows.
            • NO! Far from it.

              Windows is very, very broken. There is no consistancy between apps. They're designed in large part by people who are, and I have no way to prove this other than the apps, completely insane or sadistic. I'm personally holding to the belief it is a mix of the two.

              But, we have to understand and accept that the user will have some learned traits from using it. For example, if we put them in front of Enlightenment, the users will... Well.. Have you ever seen the movie "Scanners?"

              But, if Enligh
      • I must say, after using the Spatial view, I'm a bit undecided. I dont like it, although I think going back to the Explorer-style view would not be a huge step forward either.

        I dont think the Spatial view "works" properly; Viewing the filesystem folders as seperate entities is fundamentally flawed, since a filesystem itself isnt really modelled on anything tangible. Then again the Explorer-style is just a bit more hassle than should be. Its a fine line really, I guess...

      • Re:No More Spatial Browsing Please (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Pxtl ( 151020 ) on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @03:52PM (#11035915) Homepage
        Idunno, I like the toolbarless look, but that's just because I think its nice looking and I'm one of those people who never ever touches the toolbar. I find that the Gnome people in general don't like toolbars and tend to prefer right-click-menus. This is good for simple apps (like the file browser) but a poor decision for more complicated apps.

        Still, I agree that the "new window for each folder" thing is a bad idea. Why not follow FireFox's success and go with a rocker/radial approach? Middle-click = open in new window, rclick + scrollup = up one level, stuff like that? Just have the context-menu list the rocker gestures and hotkeys alongside the command names.
        • I find that the Gnome people in general don't like toolbars and tend to prefer right-click-menus. This is good for simple apps (like the file browser) but a poor decision for more complicated apps.

          I can see where you're coming from, but in general I think that even the most complex apps benefit from simplicity and well groomed context functionality (context menus being one example).

          The problem is that there are very few examples of well-groomed context menus. For examples of how far astray this can go, l
          • Funny, The GIMP was exactly the app I had in mind with my "complex apps" complaint. That, and vague memories of an old version of Dia.

            Seriously, I think radial-context-menus, if done properly (read: not like the awful ones in FireFox), could be the future.
        • The biggest problem with spatial nautilus, however, is not giving users a preference for it. The gnome devs must have known some people would hate it. And yet they not only made it the default but made it impossible to switch back (ok, you can switch with a registry edit, but they made it as difficult as they could). To me that says there is something very wrong with the way their process works.
          • Admittedly a problem in Gnome 2.6, but in 2.8 I'm looking at the file management preferences dialog, "behaviour" tab, and seeing an (unchecked) option that says "Always open in browser windows"

            And while the majority of people seem to not want this as an option, I quite like it, especially after learning a few tricks.

            Tricks, in case anyone wants:
            Double middle-click on a folder to open that one and close the current folder
            Control+Shift+W to close all parent folders
            Control+Q to exit out of all nautilus windo
        • "Gnome people in general don't like toolbars"

          So why the heck they put 2 toolbars on the screen one on top and one on buttom. Why developers assume that anybody has a 19 inch monitor?

      • ### Nautilus on the whole is VERY confusing to the users that I have introduced to it.

        The throuble really is that spatial only works on very flat directory trees, there however it works great. I for one loved the spatial nature of Workbench back then on the Amiga, it made perfect sense there since directories where always pretty flat, after all I didn't had a HD, just a single floppy drive and directories where basically never deeper then two levels.

        Today on a PC however its much more throublesome, the wh
        • The point is, open a Nautilus (classic) window. Now in the View menu, deselect "Side Pane", and "Location Bar" then tear off the toolbar. With all that functionality removed you've got a spacial Nautilus.

          This was forced on us as if it were some fantastic innovation. Its not, at the very least put those items in the View menu of the spacial Nautilus so we can turn that stuff back on, there's nothing wrong with it and without them it makes it harder to navigate. Simpler isn't always better.
    • I have to completely agree. The new GTK file selector is awful; I can't understand why they won't even offer the old one as an option, except that it would mean admitting that they might be wrong. I really can't stand the new file selector.
      • Er, that should read "is awful, too." >.; I don't mean to sound like I didn't actually know what you were talking about.
      • No no no no no.

        It should just _work_. Not offering multiple ways of doing things and adding hundreds of options. Mozilla Suite vs Firefox should be reason enough to show that people DON'T like LOTS of loads of options.
      • Hear Hear - I hate not being able to type the damn path where I know the file is.

        This especially bites when using automounted directories, as the directory I want to go to WON'T EXIST until I try to go to it - thus there IS no entry to click on in the new Gnome File Selector.

        • This especially bites when using automounted directories, as the directory I want to go to WON'T EXIST until I try to go to it - thus there IS no entry to click on in the new Gnome File Selector.

          Just press Ctrl-L and type the location. Quite easy, isn't it?

          As a matter of fact, GTK+ offers the two file browser widgets. It's up to the developer to choose which one she'll use in her app. I've moved all my software to the new one, and everyone I've asked thinks it's an improvement over the older code.

          • The old one is depreciated and may be removed at a later date. All of the software developers I've talked to won't even offer the option at compile time to use the old one because it's officially depreciated.

            As for Ctrl-L, it seems needless to add an extra step to what I could already do before. If they recognize that some people will want to type in the path, why in Goddess' name should they impose an extra keyboard press? Surely they could include the rest of the improved interface as it is, but not req

          • Re:No More Spatial Browsing Please (Score:4, Insightful)

            by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @05:22PM (#11036679) Homepage Journal
            And where, in the dialog, does it tell me about that?

            For all the Gnome guys seem to love these human interface guidelines, they seem to forget the single biggest item when making a GUI:

            Any item the user is to be able to manipulate should be represented on the UI

            Every time they fail to follow that, and every time they get called on it, they come up with some "Well, just press CTRL-ALT-META-LSHIFT-Q to enable that".

            So a user is to pour over the documentation, reading every bit of it to find all these key combinations that are NOT indicated on the UI itself.

            And this, somehow, is going to make it easier for the non-31337 user to use...

            • Hey, I do agree with you on that. Actually I also agree with the documentation point. I was recently implementing drag and drop on one of my programs and found the lack of documentation a bit frustrating, ended up looking at how other programs did it (gedit, some GTK+ examples, etc). The good news is that you can contribute to the project and make a difference :)

            • File -> Open Location (Ctrl+L)

              Spatial Nautilus isn't perfect, but it's improved in 2.8. It's not easy to adjust to it after years of hierarchical file browsing, but after using it for a few months, trying the old way feels just as uncomfortable as the original transition. If you don't want to try it, go ahead and turn it off. Just don't get mad about what they choose for the defaults if you refuse to even look at the merits of the decision.
            • Heheh. Yea, I started complaining with the whole "Press Control-L to enter a location".

              Right-O, that's obvious.

              Now, I use it all the time. I didn't like the spatial thing, but I wanted to see whether they were right all along.

              I'm still out on the issue, but it hasn't been a real winner for me so far :(

              One question, and maybe everyone knows but me: in Windows at least (and maybe it originated on Mac) if I have a list of files, I can Ctrl-Click them and highlight many. Or, I can click on one and shift

          • Just press Ctrl-L and type the location. Quite easy, isn't it?

            No, because that requires me to know the WHOLE PATH AND FILENAME.

            I cannot say "Look, I know it is in /foo/var/baz, but I do not know the name. Give me a damn file selector, then let ME type in /foo/var/baz, and then SHOW ME WHAT IS IN THAT DIRECTORY."

            Again, your post is a great example of what is WRONG with the current GNOME developer's mindset - "Gosh I am so smart that I know how you want to use your computer, and I don't even NEED to ask

            • Have you even used the fileselector? After You hit Ctrl+L it has tab completion and even shows you the directory tree to pick a dir/file from (with your mouse if you wish). It's pretty much like bash only better.

              I know they improve it with every version of GTK+ so maybe you haven't used the latest one?

            • No, because that requires me to know the WHOLE PATH AND FILENAME.

              While I can see how that impression could be made, it is more flexible than that, allowing you to type in a directory, open it, and THEN be presented with the file chooser window in that directory. Still not ideal, but not as bad as you made it sound.

              "Gosh I am so smart that I know how you want to use your computer, and I don't even NEED to ask you your opinion, because we all know it's wrong anyway."

              Unfortunately I have to agree with

      • Re:No More Spatial Browsing Please (Score:4, Interesting)

        by grumbel ( 592662 ) <grumbel+slashdot@gmail.com> on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @04:09PM (#11036088) Homepage
        Complain a lot, write bugreports, cross your fingers and wait a release or two and they might add back a useable textinput/typeahead support. In the past Gnome developers have frustrated me quite a lot, especially in the switch from Gnome1.4 to Gnome2.0 where a lot of usefull features have gone missing, however most of the needed features have found there way back again sooner or later. So I have good hopes that they will fix the filedialog too in the future, just give it a bit time. Gnome developers tend to overshoot their goal of simplicity, it just takes some time to find the right balance between 'crowded', 'simply good' and 'too simple'.

        ### I can't understand why they won't even offer the old one as an option, except that it would mean admitting that they might be wrong.

        They follow more or less the principal of doing it right, instead of flooding the screen with options. And as basically everybody will agree the old dialog was just plain awfull (beside the tab-completion, which was really good), so I think they prefered to dump it completly to have it finally dead, instead of dragging it around for another few releases. Until they get proper typeahead implemented, it will be of course a bit painfull, since 'Ctrl-L' is really a rather ugly hack, however it gets the job done and the dialog is already much more pleasent to use with the mouse, so the damage isn't that big and time will most likly fix the rest.

    • I haven't used spatial browsing in an other environment than the original Macintosh Finder, pre-OS X. However, the Mac OS 9 Finder is an example of spatial browsing at its best. For a /very/ thourough read on the subject of spatiality, see John Siracusas excellent and by now well-known article over at Ars Technica [arstechnica.com]. John Gruber over at Daring Fireball has a very good take on the subject, as well [daringfireball.net]. Gruber:

      In the classic Finder, there is no abstraction between the actual file system and the view of the file

      • In the classic Finder, there is no abstraction between the actual file system and the view of the file system presented on screen. A folder is either open or closed. If it is open, it is represented on screen in its own window. The size, position, and viewing options for an open folder's window are always remembered, and are unrelated to the size, position, and viewing options of parent, sibling, or child folders. There is a clear, cohesive paradigm at work. An open folder is a window; a window is an open

        • It's not nonsense.

          You ask the filesystem what's in a folder and it tells you

          Yes, that's what happens, on an arcitectual level, but the average user isn't on that level. The thing about spatial browsing is that a single folder goes together with a single window. [The folder] and [its window with its contents and metadata] is one and the same thing. This is very logical to the user -- when he opens a physical folder, he can see the documents within the folder. He cannot open two folders and find the same d

          • You ask the filesystem what's in a folder and it tells you

            Yes, that's what happens, on an arcitectual level, but the average user isn't on that level.

            So, let's go back to the statement we are arguing about:

            In the classic Finder, there is no abstraction between the actual file system and the view of the file system presented on screen.

            Let me get this straight: The Finder shows the user something differently from what happens at the file-system level, so it's not an abstraction of the file system? I

    • ### I'll take this oppertunity to complain about GNOME's current love affair with spatial browsing, in the hope that it will get noticed.

      In Gnome2.8.1 there is a easy to reach option to switch back to the normal non-spatial browsing behaviour, so no more gconf searching for the right option. About making it default, its of course questionable, however spatial has its benefits when your directory structures are flat, which it most likly will be for most new users, rest of the users shouldn't have much throu
    • DISCLAIMER: I'm a KDE-user, but it is not my intention to bash Gnome (and, IMO, I'm not). I'm merely stating my observations on this matter.

      The whole affair with spatial Nautilus is quite interesting. And I do not mean simply the way how it affects the users, but what it tells about the developement-policy. I mean, Gnome radically changed the way the user interacts with his files. And they did that in a minor (2.x ==> 2.y) release. And it seems that many users hate the change.

      OTOH, in KDE they faced so
    • "Spatial browsing"? There is no such thing: the spatial and the browsing mode are the opposites that are discussed all the time.

      Who likes it? I'm a Linux user since 1996, and I like spatial

  • Executive Summary (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In China, gnome is banned.
    In Netcraft, KDE is dying. (Confirmed).
    In Korea, only old people elect gnomes.
    In Japan, talking robot gnomes are elected.
    In Soviet Russia, gnome elects YOU!

    Any questions?

  • chuckle (Score:4, Funny)

    by viva_fourier ( 232973 ) on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @02:27PM (#11035010) Journal
    > 5. What unique aspect will you bring to the job?

    I think it is safe to say I am closer to legally blind than anyone on
    the board, or running for it. That's unique, right? :)     -- Luis Villa

    My question for Slashdot customer service: Can I find this mildly funny, or does that make me some sort of Gnome Foundation fanboy...
    • Nobody's going to stop you from laughing. After all, he did. And it wouldn't make you a fanboy.

      However, you would be a fanboy if GWB ran for the Gnome Foundation Board, and won, and you were still pleased with the results.

  • Voting irregularities (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @02:28PM (#11035016)
    I hear there were some GNOME precincts that had more KDE votes than the total number of registered voters. Something smells fishy.
    • It wouldn't surprise me at all if KDE and GNOME were to one day have evolved into warring political parties.

      Look at the eerie similarities:

      # inexplicable, irrational, vitriolic loathing of each other
      # the end user can't really tell any difference between them

      Yup, sounds like two dominant political parties to me. All we need now is a winner-takes-all voting system and game theory ensures they'll be entrenched forever.

  • Elections? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by HexaByte ( 817350 )
    They're having elections? Why not _selections_?

    The person who contributes the most stable code get to be CTO, the one who got the most companies to pony up $$$ is CFO, and the one who can listen to the most complaints without going crazy becomes CEO!

    Just my vote!

    • And the one who doesn't contribute anything, whines the most, and is generally the most clueless can be selected as chief legal council!

      Yes, I have a thing against lawyers...

      • Re:Elections? (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I'm a lawyer, and I want to say this: keep your thing away from me! Pervert.
    • Because it's more efficient to have 1 person elected to be in charge than run a competition and have everyone spread themselves out (ie slicing time betweem coding and fundraising) vying for a position.

      Besides, as long as everyone's votes are made in a thoughtful manner, then, theoretically, the talents of the individuals who are best at the above tasks will be elected to the positions on their merits.
    • That's a great idea: take our best hacker and put him in a management role where he has less time to hack.

  • Approval voting with multiple winners (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It appears that the election system used is approval voting, but with multiple winners. This does not result in proportional representation, but instead elects almost only "centrist" candidates. This may or may not have been the intent.

  • The best part is we still win . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grahamkracker ( 73254 ) on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @02:49PM (#11035216)
    With each year's election, it just keeps getting better & better . . .

    All of the traffic simply brings more review, attention and organization to the GNOME Foundation & GNOME Development.

    It's not a negative, it's a positive, either way they both push us forward towards our goals //kracker

    sage francis - sick of waging war - 01 - radio commercial intro

  • In related news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipakNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Wednesday December 08, 2004 @02:50PM (#11035222) Homepage Journal
    Ukraine offered to send observers to the GNOME elections, to ensure fairness. Meanwhile, the Eric Conspiracy has already declared victory. Bin Laden has issued a statement saying that it doesn't matter who wins, he will continue to use Emacs until American troops are withdrawn from Microsoft Windows.
  • I don't know if we can really learn anything from this, but it's interesting to compare the GNOME election to the recent Java Community Process election [jcpelection2004.org]:

    GNOME: 324 registered voters, 183 votes cast, dominated by Red Hat and Novell. Sun almost got a seat.
    JCP: 755 registered voters, 221 votes cast, Google, JBoss, and Intel edge out Novell. Sun has a permanent seat and Red Hat didn't run, despite their interest in Java.
  • Luis Villa: [snip] ...we need to send out gnoppix/ubuntu livecds to media with late 2.9 releases and a nice little 'here is what is so cool about gnome' pamphlets. If we can do that for 2.10 we'll go a long way towards recapturing some of the buzz we had.

    Doesn't he mean Gnome 3.0? Or 2.9.2 or something?
    Someone help me out on how version numbers go.
    • He said "2.10" not 2.1.0
    • The major version isn't incremented until the binary API is broken. So, going up in two, you can have 2.0, 2.2, 2.4, 2.6, 2.8, 2.10, 2.12 etc - don't think in terms of decimal numbers, just treat the second number as an integer on its own.

  • With Novell guys all the rage through the list, i wonder if mono [project-mono.com] will finally get into Linux desktops?

    As you may well know, it's an open-source implementation of publicly available and ECMA-standardized Microsoft's .Net API + plus a few more.

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