Renaming of Xfce components

[Jannis Pohlmann]

On Thu, 2 Apr 2009 09:47:51 +0200
Nick Schermer <nickschermer at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/4/2 Yves-Alexis Perez <corsac at debian.org>:
> > On jeu, 2009-04-02 at 08:13 +0200, Nick Schermer wrote:
> >> renaming other components that are core parts of
> >> the Xfce desktop sound like a stupid idea resulting in a lot of
> >> work for absolutely nothing.
> >
> > Naaah, that's just fnu!
> 
> Yea read that, after scrolling down (didn't expect any jokes this
> morning after reading my mail last night, I admit). But I do know
> people want such renaming, same as gdesktopmenu, which i still find a
> bit sad. Crossdesktop is how stuff is written, not the name. Sounds a
> bit like we're not proud of Xfce anymore. 

I think that psychology plays an important role in the adaption of
libraries in the *nix world. I mean, why do we not depend on any
important libraries with 'gnome' in the name? And why does GNOME not
depend on any Xfce libraries? And why do we all use D-Bus, GTK+ and
HAL?  Of course it's not all about the name but it can make it harder
to get a library acknowledged cross-desktop. 

It's not about being proud of Xfce or anything. There is a reason why
DeviceKit, PolicyKit, HAL, D-Bus, DConf and tons of other libraries
have more generic names rather than carrying the name of their origins
with them. You could as well approach the "problem" from another angle:
Why would you want to name a library after one desktop if you want it
to be used cross-desktop? 

The "g" has been sort of established in the GLib/GTK+ sector and I
fail see how that is a bad thing.

> Personally i think if we
> show the Xfce libraries/applications are crossdesktop and they are
> used by more people, it will result in Xfce being more popular and
> that's why we write software, make Xfce better but help open-source
> (more global) too.

Yes, it would be nice if Xfce libraries were used on other desktops.
But this is not the case for most of the GNOME libraries either, at
least not the ones that have 'gnome' in their name.

(And yes, of course the mail which started this thread was an April
fools joke.)

  - Jannis
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