GNOME Designers Share Long-Term Plans for GNOME Shell

GNOME project contributor Tobias Bernard has published a note in which the design team gathered its long-term ideas for the evolution of GNOME Shell — the desktop's graphical shell.

According to the author, the ideas vary considerably in maturity. For some of them relatively detailed plans already exist, while others remain vague sketches that have yet to go through a phase of research and prototyping. Bernard emphasizes that each of the ideas still needs to be discussed, prototyped and tested.

A condition familiar from the free-software world is spelled out separately: bringing such designs to life depends on the availability of developers, on their interest and, at times, on funding. In other words, the publication is not a road map with commitments, but rather a statement of intent.

The team explains the point of the publication itself plainly: to gather scattered proposals in one place, in order to share its long-range vision for GNOME Shell and give each of the ideas greater visibility. This format makes it possible to bring out for general discussion what usually lives within the designers' internal debates, and to gauge the community's reaction in advance.

For GNOME users and developers this is above all a reason to consult the primary source: it is there that the concrete directions the team considers worthy of attention over the next several years are laid out.

Source: LWN.net