Debian FYI

[Thomas Bushnell BSG]

The Debian gnome maintainers are increasingly antsy about gnome-1
maintenance.  I am being forced to maintain more and more of gnome-1
since gnucash is the last or near last important gnome-1 application
left.  I'm fighting the good fight, but it's possible I could lose.

The consequence would be that gnucash would have to get dropped from
Debian until the gnome-2 branch can be built for Debian.

There are some things that I have been asked; they are mean questions,
and I don't repeat them because I imply they are fair, but only
because if there are good answers to give, it would help me fight the
fight.

1. People want to know why gnucash is still transitioning, three years
after gnome 2 started out.  That's the big one.

2. People are worried that lots of unrelated development is being done in
the gnome-2 branch; that is, that it is delayed not because of the
work of adapting to the new gnome libraries, but because a whole bunch
of other stuff was attempted at the same time.

3. People want assurance that gnome-1 won't need to be maintained forever
in Debian.  They would feel a lot better if there could be some
plausible statement like "transition is expected to finish by
such-and-such a date".  I know such things are impossible, but if
there is *something* that can be said, it would ease a lot of people.

Some people link questions 1 and 3; figuring that if three years isn't
enough time, then ten years won't be.

Again, these aren't my questions; they are those that the Debian gnome
people are raising, because they urgently want to drop gnome 1 from
Debian.  I agree that this is an important goal, and keeping gnucash
running in Debian is requiring me to do more and more of the gnome-1
maintenance load to keep up.

Thomas