Drop Gwibber from default install

[Benjamin Kerensa]

On 03/11/2012 07:14 PM, Evan Huus wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 7:13 PM, Ken VanDine <ken.vandine at ubuntu.com 
> <mailto:ken.vandine at ubuntu.com>> wrote:
>
>     First thing is to remember the reasoning behind including gwibber in
>     Ubuntu wasn't to provide a twitter client, it was for social
>     networking
>     integration in the desktop.  Provide an easy way to share information
>     with your friends and see what your friends are up to.  This doesn't
>     mean the gwibber client user interface providing you a stream of your
>     friends activity, but real application integration.  Like a simple way
>     to post to all your accounts from the former MeMenu or to share user
>     reviews in software center.  Software Center is a great example of why
>     Gwibber was included, after you write a review you can choose to share
>     your review from right there inside the software center interface.
>      Sure
>     applications can implement the functionality themselves, but that
>     would
>     require quite a bit of effort.  To use libgwibber to post, it really
>     only takes a few lines of code.  And this type of desktop integration
>     really can't be done with the browser.
>
>
> That's cool, and I didn't know you could do that. If we want to go in 
> that direction though (which I think we do), then we need to do much 
> more to make Gwibber discoverable. Right now it's hidden either in the 
> messaging menu (under the not-necessarily-friendly name 'broadcast') 
> or in the dash where the user has to explicitly search for it.
>
> One possible way to do this would be to add something to ubufox that 
> would prompt whenever a user logs in to facebook, twitter etc (with 
> the same style prompt as the 'remember this password'). Someone 
> sitting down in front of Ubuntu who wants to access facebook will just 
> go to facebook in firefox and log in. If we then let them know they 
> can use Gwibber for that and get all sorts of cool integration, I 
> expect usage (and thus, slowly, contributions) would go way up.
>
>     I would really like to see Gwibber get "fixed" as opposed to dropping
>     it.  Not because I am now the maintainer, but to continue with the
>     original spirit of why it was included.  If nobody cared to fix
>     Gwibber
>     I would have no problem spending my time working on other projects, I
>     took on Gwibber because the previous maintainer stepped down and I
>     had a
>     vested interest because of Ubuntu.
>
>     The real problem we have with Gwibber is lack of contributors, we only
>     have a few regular contributors all with other responsibilities.
>     Fortunately I get to do some work on Gwibber as part of my day job
>     working for Canonical, which is awesome.  However, most of the work I
>     put into gwibber is in my spare time.  None of the complaints I've
>     seen
>     from people are unsolvable, but we need to have a plan and people to
>     work on it.
>
>
> To get people interested in fixing it, we need to get people 
> interested in using it. I haven't historically used it, but only 
> because I thought it wasn't useful - I had no idea it had all this 
> potential for integration into other parts of the desktop.
>
> 1. More Discoverable
> 2. More Users
> 3. More Contributers
> 4. Profit!
>
>     My proposed solution:  Put together a plan of what needs to be
>     done and
>     do a call for volunteers to help work on it.  I do think we can find
>     some people with enough interest to do their part.  This is much more
>     constructive than just saying we need to drop it.
>
>     For those that haven't tried the latest version, I really suggest
>     getting 3.3.91 and taking that for a spin.  Most of the effort
>     we've put
>     into it recently have been quality, so no stunning changes but more
>     reliability.  Duplicate detection and handling of the content.
>     Scrolling and keyboard navigation has improved quite a bit, but we
>     really need smooth scrolling.  I would say that would be at the top of
>     the todo list.
>
>
> I know I'm interested. I have coding experience, but I don't have a 
> lot of spare time. Still, I'll branch the bzr repo and poke around. A 
> to-do list (especially with some bitesize bugs for new contributors) 
> would be awesome.
>
> Cheers,
> Evan
>
>

I think some of the things I personally would like to see in order for 
it to be a client I would use is:

* Performance Improvements (Gwibber seems very laggy)
* GUI Improvements (I would love the ability to have columns much like 
TweetDeck/Hootsuite and other popular social clients)
* Bit.ly Integration and TwitPic capability?

I could like contribute to bitesizes and will start keeping a closer eye 
on bugs related to Gwibber but I'm not sure that I would be able to 
contribute any major improvements. Perhaps we could discuss the "State 
of Gwibber" at UDS-Q and find some ways to get more contributors engaged 
in its development?

-- 
Benjamin Kerensa                          "I am what I am because
Team Lead, Ubuntu Oregon                  of who we all are." - Ubuntu
bkerensa at ubuntu.com
http://ubuntu-oregon.org

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