LinuxPlanet: Slouching Toward Galeon 1.0

“In addition to the GNOME project booth, Ximian and Eazel had
their own spaces on the floor. Walking between each and talking to
the developers and executives behind these companies, the real
value of the GNOME Foundation became apparent: GNOME is bigger than
a single group or company now, and this will reach fruition with
the projected March 27 release of GNOME 1.4, which will draw in
work from the mainline GNOME project, Ximian’s Evolution, and
Eazel’s Nautilus (which just had its third and final preview
release).”

“Nautilus, according to Eazel’s Director of Client Engineering
Don Melton (formerly of Netscape and the Mozilla Project), will be
the first major component of the new GNOME release to be completed,
reaching version 1.0 on March 5th. Melton played up the values
Eazel has brough to bear on Nautilus, asserting that disciplined
production schedules “don’t kill creativity”, and noting that Eazel
has focused a lot of resources on quality control.

“Though Ximian and the GNOME Project at large have clear and
close ties, if the three entities can pull off a successful 1.4
release it will be a real testimony to the cohesiveness they’ve
achieved, especially in light of the fact Evolution and Nautilus
have at times been unable to coexist on the same machine during
their development cycles (without some tweaking, anyhow) thanks to
differing dependencies on key libraries like bonobo.”

“The proof will be in the 1.4 pudding, obviously, which makes
too much gushing about the GNOME Foundation’s triumph as a
coordinating body premature. It was clear, though, after talking to
nearly a dozen people involved in the assorted projects that
everybody’s communicating and aware of each others’ status to the
point that they’re ready to help each other out across projects to
ensure smooth integration.”

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