[Desktop_architects] new draft of public and community messages

[Aaron J. Seigo]

hello, it's me again =)

bryce sent a long and highly useful set of thoughts by email to me this 
morning. i've incorporated his thoughts and done some more refinement. in 
particular there are now "do this now" ideas at the end of the community 
message and less verbage in general.

the FD.o page wasn't touched, so i'm not including it in this email.

as a side note, i'd like to release these under a creative commons license 
once all is said and done. perhaps:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.5/

--------------------
COMMUNITY

The Open Source Desktop: A Commitment To Commonalities

A Recognition of our Successes

When we started working on what would eventually come to be popularly referred 
to as “the open source desktop", most regarded it as an amazingly ambitious 
concept. Over the years thousands of volunteers and passionately creative 
people proved that it was possible. In the process of creating this software 
we formed a thousand projects with nearly as many unique perspectives, 
technology answers and identities.

These successes have expanded our horizons: more developers, more users, more 
ambitious goals. To meet the new challenges that are emerging, we must evolve 
how we work as a community without breaking the traditions that have brought 
us this far.

A Recognition of our Challenges

We have greater expectations for our software than ever before. Some wish to 
set new records in terms of usability, stability, beauty and performance 
while others wish to bring the notions of software freedom and openness to 
the world at large. In the process we are pushing the envelope of what is 
possible given our current methods at nearly every turn.

ISVs producing both open and closed source software are looking for greater 
clarity and direction. Users are looking for better hardware support and 
advanced graphics capabilities. System integrators are looking for easier 
means to roll out and support open source desktops. We want to do things 
we've only yet dreamed of.

To reach these goals it is increasingly neccessary that we work together as a 
stronger team. We need a unified approach to the hardware driver challenge. 
We need to pool our relatively scarce graphics expertise to extend the 
relevant systems we share to the next level. We also need to agree on which 
common, non-differentiating technologies to share to increase consistency 
without diminishing our individual projects' identities and goals.

This will better equip us to meet the global appetite for technology that 
makes up our audience. There are a huge number of potential teammates for us 
in this world, many of whom have yet to make even their initial technology 
choices.

A Proposal and a Commitment

Therefore as a community we propose to engage each other and reach beyond our 
own borders to address our common challenges by creating more cooperative 
endevours that reflect the values and mechanisms of the community we 
collectively hail from: the open source desktop.

Specifically ... we are committing to creating a healthy and productive 
technology incubator in the form of FreeDesktop.org by augmenting its past 
successes with a set of light-weight processes that work the way we do within 
our own projects. We aim at address issues of implementation standardization 
to increase software interoperability; provide standard access mechanisms to 
desktop data and services for ISVs; improve our graphics software 
architecture; pool our HCI efforts and more.

Specifically ... we will be making greater use of public communications 
commons such as OSDL and encourage our individual marketing organs to 
collaborate. As individual projects, our public messaging should reflect not 
only the source project, but also harmonize with common themes that work to 
support the open source desktop as a whole.

Specifically ... we pledge our support to these and other efforts that improve 
the open source desktop by utilizing the multiplicity of strengths that are 
to be found throughout the community. We believe that efforts that respect 
our diversity while encouraging cooperation are key to fulfilling our 
aspirations of making the open source desktop the best computing platform 
availalable.


Things You Can Do Now

As a member of an open source desktop project, consider showing your support 
by engaging in one or more of these suggested activities:

    * Go to FreeDesktop.org and get involved with one or more of the proposed
       technologies. Bring new proposals that you feel are appropriate to the 
table.

    * Look through your program's codebase for one fix you can pass back
      upstream to your dependent libraries, desktop environment,
      etc. and work to get it accepted and incorporated upstream.

    * Round up key contributors from your project and visit another
      project that is related in some way.  Engage them in a discussion
      of how you can make your two projects better collaborators.

    * Add your project's name to this document and publish it on your website.


----------------------

PUBLIC

The Open Source Desktop: A Common Stance

Plurality and Current Success

There are a large number of successful open source software groups working on 
various desktop technologies. These groups often have specific goals, 
different perspectives and unique identities. Our technologies are not shared 
at every level. This plurality of approaches and projects has given us an 
astounding variety of software which in combination stands on its own merits 
as evidenced by the millions of people who use it daily around the world.

However as each of our islands of technology have grown from being separate 
shores of achievement, their borders have begun to meld and form a continent 
of software that is widely regarded and referred to as "the open source 
desktop". This is a momentous achievement that few outside of our community 
believed possible when we began.

Commonalities and Future Success

Beyond our shared appreciation for Free and Open Source software, we have a 
number of common goals and needs and which can be best, and in some cases 
only, solved when we work together.

We recognize that users as well as 3rd party developers require a consistent 
experience. We recognize the daunting tasks that remain before us, such as 
hardware driver availability and in improving the graphics technology layers 
we all share.

It is therefore our resolve to address our common needs by pooling resources 
and avoiding  technological collisions that benefit no one. We believe that 
by combining our talents and efforts we can accomplish more in less time, 
produce better results and increase the level of enjoyment derived from 
participation.

The Path Proposed

To achieve this loosely stated yet grand vision we commit to:

 - going beyond our own borders while respecting our unique identities and 
needs
 - participating in organizations that reflect the communities we hail from
 - harmonizing our public messages in support of the open source desktop as a 
whole

Specifically ... we are committing resources to a healthy and productive 
technology incubator in the form of FreeDesktop.org by augmenting its past 
successes with community feedback and stakeholder driven policies. We are 
taking aim at issues such as common mimetype activation, standard access 
mechanisms to desktop data and services and more.

Specifically ... we will be making greater use of common public communications 
entities such as OSDL and encouraging our marketing arms to collaborate more 
than ever.

Specifically .... we will support what works for us all, laying aside our 
differences in the process to achieve the most ambitious goal we've ever 
dared tackle: to make the open source desktop a mainstream phenomenon.


-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)
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