The team launches gnome announced what modules will be added to its next version 2.24. New products include Empathy, some "widgets" for instant messaging client included with the project Hamster, a small tracking tasks, and PolicyKit to increase security in the administration of user privileges. The new synchronization tool Conduit failed to be included in the next gnome, nor did it WebKit, anque are most likely present it in Gnome 2.26.

Short summary
=============

In:
empathy (desktop suite)
project hamster (desktop suite)
clutter (external dependency)
libcanberra (external dependency)
PolicyKit & PolicyKit-gnome (external dependency)

In, but not as expected:
conduit (external dependency)

Out:
libgda
WebKit/GTK+

Removed:
gtksourceview (replaced by gtksourceview2)
libgnomeprint & libgnomeprintui (replaced by API in gtk+)

Details
=======

+ clutter (external dependency):
- general consensus around it and people want to play with it
- there's not a lot of code depending on it right now (not sure
there'll be anything in the 2.24 timeframe) but it's a chicken &
egg problem and people have really shown interest in it
=> approved
It's important to not have clutter-only UIs for now (for
accessibility reasons), though.

+ libcanberra (external dependency):
- some +1 on the lists, and already used in some parts of GNOME
- would have been nice to see it come earlier in the cycle
=> approved

+ libgda (external dependency):
- applications using libgda are not ported to 4.0 yet
- no real support on the mailing list
=> rejected
For the anjuta plugin using it: we suggest to either make it
optional or ship it separetely of the main anjuta module.

+ PolicyKit & PolicyKit-gnome (external dependencies):
- the plan is to have PolicyKit-gnome in the desktop set for 2.26
- people are already using it and there's some good consensus around
it
- helps improve accessibility of security-related UIs
- this is a good first step towards inclusion in the desktop set
later
=> approved

+ WebKit/GTK+ (external dependency):
- lots of community support
- accessibility support might not be good enough (no reply from
WebKit/GTK+ people)
- epiphany will still use Gecko for 2.24
- yelp is still using Gecko at the moment (there's a WebKit branch)
- devhelp trunk is WebKit-only
- evolution people intend to use WebKit in 2.26
- we'd prefer to avoid depending on both Gecko and WebKit at the same
time
=> rejected for 2.24, but we'll propose a general switch for 2.26

+ conduit (desktop)
- amazing participation of the maintainer in the discussion
- the major problem still is the UI, though. We think it should be
mainly integrated in the applications that will use synchronization
instead of being a brand new UI.
- we really want what conduit offers
=> rejected, but we bless it as an external dependency so that
applications can start using it, and so that it gets ready for
integration in 2.26.

+ empathy (desktop)
- we only consider the application here and trust the telepathy plans
to offer LGPL libraries
- empathy is getting some support in the community
- we want to start telepathy integration
=> approved, but the licensing question is highly important to us and
we really urge the telepathy community to fix this

+ project hamster (desktop)
- well-maintained
- people like it
- the main objection is about whether we should accept all good
software in official GNOME or not. The release team thinks it's
something that the 3.0 proposal aims to fix, so that shouldn't be
considered at the moment.
=> approved if moved in GNOME SVN
SVN module should be created (bug #545049), releases should be
published on the GNOME FTP and the module should be added to
Damned Lies.
Also following the GNOME version numbers would be good.

+ gtksourceview 1 (removal from desktop set)
=> not an issue, so removed

+ libgnomeprint & libgnomeprintui (removal from desktop set)
- Mike Kestner will work on splitting the C# bindings out of
gnome-desktop-sharp
=> will be removed once this is done

Technorati Tags: Linux Desktop