The language debate – Don’t forget Python has gotten the nod

One thing that people seem to be missing, and I had to some degree put into the forgotten drawer myself until Murray reminded me, is that there was a decision reached that Python is valid language to use for all GNOME development. This means that if you want to write something to go into the official GNOME you can write it in Python as long as the owner of the module you want to check it into is ok with it. This means that if you write something which is supposed to go into gnome-media or gnome-games or Nautilus for intance you CAN write that it Python as long as the gnome-media, gnome-games or Nautilus maintainer(s) are ok with it.

Java continued

Ok, got some responses to my Java rant which deserves some replies. First of all I guess there are two discussions going on. The first is where should something new be added to GNOME, and the answer to this have consequences for which discussion we are actually having. One of my reasons for prefering Mono (and be aware that I say Mono and not C# on purpose) apart from the lack of mindshare for Java is that it seems a more natural replacement/evolvement of C as a language neutral core. Because I think that a logical step after allowing core applications to be written/extended with a non-c language would be to allow non-c code also in the platform at some point (but maybe limited to some specific languages due to maintainability concerns). This might be a question where I disagree a bit with Mikael.

Time to stop kidding ourselves about Java?
Warning: rant mode

GStreamer 0.9
Seems we have managed to kick of 0.9 GStreamer hacking now. Getting the build system cleaned up and Wim and I sending out mails with some information in addition to a little IRC pimping and kicked of some good effort. Ronald is working on porting playbin now, Zaheer is working on lame and the libshout2 plugins, Zeshan ported the libcaca color asci art plugin, Wingo implemented the new query system and gcc4 cleaned the modules, Tim cleaned up some of the core docs, David Schleef cleaned up the videotestsrc plugin and updated plugins-base to use latest version of liboil. Arwed have started looking into oss and nas plugins porting. And Stefan is continuing hos work on getting dparams improved for 0.10.x All in all good stuff happening now, if we manage to keep up progress for the coming weeks I think 0.9.0 will be a very good preview.

More GStreamer 0.9 fixing and porting work done today. Now the three 0.9 modules (gstreamer head, gst-plugins head, gst-plugins-base) all build, install only stuff that is supposed to work and lets you build rpms. All steps also do not interfere with your 0.8 using stuff so anyone can try this out now without touching the 0.8 using parts of their desktop.

Ronald and Zaheer have joined in the 0.9 hacking fun already and hopefully even more will soon. Still lots of plugins to be ported before 0.9 is suitable as a replacement for most of our applications, but I am getting very postitive we can have some nice demo’s ready for GUADEC.

GStreamer 0.9 – Spent quite some time today making sure the 0.9 branch of GStreamer and gstreamer-plugins-base dists and builds correctly. Currently have 0.9 installed on my machine now as RPMS (in parallel with the 0.8 packages). Hope this cleanup will encourage other people to check out and build the 0.9 branch too as getting the basics up and running is much simpler now.

Germany sucks

Just for the Fun of it

As far as being fun I think GNOME have managed to keep things fun better than most. If you look at the list of people involved in GNOME that have been here since the early days I see few other projects who can compare.

CRM Discovered the LUGradio planet today. Was quite fun to see that Jono is not looking into CRM like I was a while ago. His greatest frustration with Sugar was the same one I had, that it was lacking in existing client support, which caused me to start looking into opengroupware and Noodle, which in the end lead to my effort stranding a bit.

Office cleanup After buying a truckload of new hardware Thomas ended up cleaning up the office today in terms of getting cabling more sane. I ended up going out to buy more power extension cables which means that Edward and me can stop fighting over power sockets as a scarce resource. Between 3 laptops, 2 cell phones, my usb mouse dock, firewire cameras and a printer, 5 sockets was simply to little. We also got a new 64 bit server which enabled us to merge a 64 bit fix from Zaheer into Flumotion and verify it worked. Yay Zaheer!

GUADEC flight in order Edited, seems we got screwed over by Lufthansa on the tickets. Withouth warning they cancelled our tickets, forcing us to rebook at a much higher price. So we got the GUADEC rebate, but not only for some expesive tickets. Anyway thanks to Tim for quickly sending us the needed document so we could prove to Lufthansa we where going to GUADEC (which they demanded to give us the rebate in the first place.

Patent madness There have been some hope that the patent review process that the US senate is starting will fix some of the worst deficiencies in the system. Unfortunatly it seems things might instead just get worse, according to this article California Senator Dianne Feinstein considers wanting to make patents last beyond 20 years. I urge all Californians who voted Democratic to contact Dianne and clue her up.