Bryan Clark has put out his reaction on the candidate’s GNOME Online Desktop positions. He writes
John has a clear understanding that the Board is not setting technical direction, however he’s a little vague on whether they can help when GNOME developers may require hardware infrastructure.
Let me be absolutely clear that this is exactly what I believe the Board is for. The Foundation gets resources and the Board manages those resources, allocating them where needed. Those resources could be money, hardware, people’s time or almost anything that needs managing. The Board’s job as an elected body is to judge how the Foundations members wish to spend those resources.
I whole heartedly believe that the majority of Foundation members want to see us spending resources on pushing forward the Online Desktop. From my own answer to the questions I have said
From the beginning I have been excited about the prospects of moving GNOME beyond the desktop. … I see the GNOME Online push as pulling us into the Wild West of the Web platform where everyone is staking their claims and there is yet to be monopolies to stifle innovation … we have the chance to bring in integrated Open Source web applications to the mix and even define a new era of Open Services.
So I am totally for the Foundation helping out in pushing the GNOME Online Desktop initiative. I believe it is the future of GNOME. What I failed to state is that the developers need to meet us half way. I’m not going to set technical direction and assume what resources the project needs. I am going to listen to the developers and fully back them when they come to the board to let us know what they need to get things done. I’m going to encourage and engage those developers even if it means harassing Bryan to attend some board meetings and taking up action items 
There is already a really awesome online desktop in Sugar. There are so many possibilities there – why aren’t they being explored?
Comment by Chris — November 29, 2007 @ 8:20 pm
You are getting your terminology sort of mixed. Sugar has great collaborative features which are, at the infrastructure level, integrated into GNOME today. It could be viewed as a piece of the Online Desktop but the Online Desktop goes a bit further that would not make sense in a children’s learning device. Some of it will though and since Sugar is based on GNOME it will eventually get some of what is currently being developed.
As for the specific integration of Sugar getting into GNOME beyond just the infrastructure that is a bit less relevant since Sugar is pretty tied to this particular usecase. Perhaps if you were clearer on what you would like to see from sugar get into GNOME I can be clearer in my answer.
Comment by J5 — November 29, 2007 @ 8:35 pm
Playing with Sugar, I was pretty amazed by the ability to see other people in the local vicinity and share applications with them. The whole Sugar desktop seems very geared towards collaboration.
Comment by Chris — November 30, 2007 @ 12:10 pm