IMHO FreeDesktop.org is a weak organization and it’s specification are not taken seriously enough. Gnome and KDE are suggesting developers follow those specs, as opposed to strongly demanding they do. The end result of that is worse interoperativity between Gtk+/Gnome and KDE applications, therefore users get frustrated.
IMHO KDE and Gtk+/Gnome should define an “acceptflow” to follow in order for an application/library to be included. Briefly: if you are not using fd.o’s specs, you need to really convince us there is a good reason for that.
Expanding it, this is my proposed workflow:
- Developer John Doe writes an application/library
- Developer John Doe submits an application or library to KDE or Gnome/Gtk+
- Is the application good?
- No => Not accepted, needs improvement
- Yes. Next step
- Does the application or library follow FreeDesktop.org specs?
- Yes => Accepted
- No. Why not?
- There is no FreeDesktop.org spec => Propose one, when there’s agreement in the fd.o community about the spec, go back to step 1 if you want your app/library in the official repository or keep it in your own repository (it will not be part of the official Gtk+/Gnome or KDE)
- The FreeDesktop.org spec is good but John Doe is smarter than anyone in the world and does not want to use a “bad” spec => Sorry but go back to 1 if you want it to be included in the official repository, or keep your own repository. Fix your ego, too.
- The FreeDesktop.org spec is not good enough, it’s to up to reality
- Go to FreeDesktop.org and propose improvement of the spec. When the spec is good enough => Go back to 1 if you want it to be included in the official repository or keep your own repository.
- Go to Freedesktop.org. Other people working on applications/libraries using that spec do not want to update the spec to be up to reality, for any or no reason => Go to next step
- So, there is a FreeDeskop.org spec but it’s not good enough and there’s no way the other people using that fd.o spec will update it. Is John Doe’s application/library really good? I mean, is it true that what he wants to change in fd.o spec should changed?
- No. Sorry John Doe, you are not the smartest guy in the world => Go back to step 1 if you want your app/library in the official repository or keep it in your own repository. It will not be part of the official Gtk+/Gnome or KDE.
- Yes => Accept John Doe’s app/library in the official repository and keep trying to update fd.o’s spec.