Since people started blogging about this[1], I feel I have to respond in blog-fashion. I’m probably wrong about that, but oh well. It won’t hurt much. So far I never used my personal blog-space for this type of discussions so bear with me.
I’ll introduce myself first: Yes, I’m one of the people who are actively discussing the requirements and design of a possible generic desktop application configuration management system dubbed D-Conf. In fact, I’m the person who started collecting some of the requirements using this wiki. This doesn’t mean I’m the only person. I’m not.
So whats the status? So far have a few people added and/or corrected both views and real requirements to this wiki-page. Some xdg-list quotes from developers of important applications have been used to form some requirements. Other requirements listed on the wiki-page originate from the many many discussions and threads that popped up on the xdg-list about this subject. So you’d say the project has most of the requirements, why isn’t development starting? It’s a good question.
And it has a simple answer:
First does the wiki-page need some Guassian filtering on the collected requirements. And a project leader would need to select which requirements will become the features of the first releases.
And second so far nobody in the group of interested people is qualified to actually lead this project. Such a qualified person would have to carry a very heavy burden with this project and he (or she) would need the trust from most important desktop environment communities and desktop application developers. A bad project leader would condemn the project. Thats why I, personally, decided not to lead this project. I just started the wiki-page with requirements because Alexander Larsson suggested me to start collecting them. That doesn’t mean I want to lead the project. I bet thats a relief to a lot people. As a project leader I would probably get the implementation done. However, I wouldn’t manage to get acceptance from all desktop environment communities. I know that. Therefor I understand that I, as a project leader, would condemn the project long before it’s started.
I’m also confident that without a project leader, nor the implementation nor acceptance would happen successfully. I am, however, highly interested in helping with the implementation of a new such system. So my role would (or will) be a developer (a coder). Not really a decision-making or leading role.
I understand many people are thrilled about this and want to see it happen. I even got a few personal mails from people who’ve been following the discussions and who have read that I wasn’t interested in leading this project. They tried encouraging me to continue leading it (while I never played a leading-role, but .. okay). I guess these people will have to be patient. There’s still many things to discuss first. It’s not easy to convince certain developers and people. And its not easy to agree on which technologies to use and depend on. And IMHO does the project still need a project leader. We can’t start without. Or IMHO it would be a foolish attempt.
[1] I’ll list the blogs in chronological sequence
Stupidity of dconf by Aaron J. Seigo,
On the virtues of a common configuration system by Waldo Bastian,
It’s not the virtues, stupid ; or, more D-Conf fun by Aaron J. Seigo,
freedesktop.org by Havoc Pennington.