Hi Alberto :)

> Simon: out of respect I'm sending this email to you and not the list.
> 
> Enlightenment has always been about freedom. (from a certain 
> perspective) The question about a common HIG has been brought up many 
> times and _always_ been neglected, and for a good cause.  
The problem with freedom is that if you don't set any rules, it
becomes anarchy. And even if anarchy may sound like a nice concept in
theory, it has never worked in practice yet...


> The way I see, if Rasterman pushes his own control and agenda at
> every opportunity and changes what seems to be the _main_ scope of
> the project, why should the developer community have to conform to
> the changes? Two words: you don't.  
Ok, we don't have to conform but actually we are a part of this project
too. So what are you proposing? If we don't agree with a change, what
do we do? I see only 3 possibilities: we revert the code, we create a
fork of the project, or we leave the project.. If the changes had been
discussed first, before being applied, there would have been no
problem. But in this project, changes are never discussed...


> Has Rasterman ever _dictated_ what you can or cannot do? Did he not
> give you or Hisham the go-ahead to put ETK in cvs? Considering all
> the effort that Nathan and many like him put into EWL?
> 
> Having two EFL based toolkits (etk and ewl) is nothing short but
> effort wasted. It hurts the project, it hurts it's image (as vain as
> it may sound). It makes it seems like there is no direction.  
I agree with you, having two toolkits (and actually 3 if you
consider the internal toolkit of e17) hurts the project a lot. But, if
we go back when I started Etk, two years ago, what was I supposed to do?
First, I tried to work on Ewl to improve it, I studied its code, I've
even written a patch for the table container (which was never applied
btw), but all it did was to convince me even more that Ewl should have
been rewritten from scratch. I proposed that idea to Nathan and Dan, and
they refused (which I can understand, I wasn't even an Ewl dev, I had
no right to make them take such a decision). But I could not spend
time on a project in which I saw no future, and I really needed a
toolkit for eclair.
So I've sent an email to raster, asking him if he saw a problem in
me starting a new toolkit while there was already Ewl, and he told me it
was ok. Actually, I'm pretty sure he agreed with me about Ewl needing a
rewrite. And even now, I still think I did the right thing by creating
Etk. Just look at the apps on CVS, most of them use Etk and almost none
use Ewl (except ephoto). And yet, Ewl is twice older than Etk.
I don't want to put the blame on raster for this, I totally assume
being responsible in part of the current situation between the toolkits.


> "....It's not a threat or blackmail (anyway, I'm pretty sure most of
> the devs working on e17 don't even care about Etk...), I just don't
> see why I would share a CVS with a project that I can't even define
> and that I can't even tell where it is heading toward.."
> 
> Why the sudden revolt? Are you not contradicting yourself? Did you
> not chose your own path and create your own EFL based toolkit? (when
> there was already a semi-official one) Besides all the confusion that
> it adds (having two totally distinct toolkits), do you not agree that
> it _actually_ hurts the project.  
Actually, if I'm revolting now, it's because someone raised this
issue in private, and it has revealed that many of the devs have been
really hurt by this. Before, I tought I was the only one to feel this
way, nobody was complaining so I thought it was my fault. But I'm now
convinced the way the project works is wrong and will probably lead to
nothing (while I'm sure there is a lot of potential in the EFL).

> Believe me, it is not my intention to bash ETK. If you were in
> Chicago we might have discussed this over a couple of beers. The big
> problem is that Rasterman has demonstrated to be a lousy leader. And
> Nathan suffers the same dilemma. Either from lack of time, or simple
> because of timezone differences.
> 
> I felt like there are boundaries people are not willing to walk or 
> break, talk, speak freely, and for the past couple of weeks these are 
> the sort of questions I've had in mind.  

Actually, I'm not sure I understand what you want to tell me with this
email? Do you agree with me on this problem, or do you just reproach me
to be one of the causes of this because of Etk (which is not
entirely wrong..). Do you like the way things currently work (i.e no
rules, no roadmap, no direction, "freedom"), or would you like to see
the project be a bit more "dictated" and better-defined?

Regards, :)
Simon