Bug 14714

Summary: Please create a People project
Product: freedesktop.org Reporter: Ali Sabil <ali.sabil>
Component: Project Creation RequestsAssignee: Benjamin Close <benjsc>
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX QA Contact:
Severity: normal    
Priority: high CC: daniel, johann.prieur, nalimilan, wildfire
Version: unspecifiedKeywords: NEEDINFO
Hardware: Other   
OS: All   
URL: https://launchpad.net/people-project
Whiteboard:
i915 platform: i915 features:

Description Ali Sabil 2008-02-28 05:22:44 UTC
Description:
  The People Project is a Free Software project aiming to provide an unified address book manipulation framework for the freedesktop.

  People builds a desktop service using DBus to expose its interface to the various clients willing to access, manipulate and synchronize the address books. Objectives of People include providing a desktop neutral solution, and scalable performances for a better adaptation on embedded platforms.

Design constraints:
    * Desktop neutral
    * Designed with memory constrained devices in mind
    * Tries to use the network efficiently when needed (GPRS friendly)
    * Extensibility

See https://launchpad.net/people-project for more information. I have already an fdo account: asabil, and got commit access to Telepathy.

Many thanks.
Comment 1 Benjamin Close 2008-03-03 20:00:20 UTC
Howdy Ali,
  In order for a new project to be created, I need some indication of who will help support it. Can you get a few other fd.o members to help out? If so can you get them to ok this bug request.

Assuming you can, what are you after? git / wiki, etc...
Comment 2 Daniel Stone 2008-03-03 23:36:42 UTC
On Mon, Mar 03, 2008 at 08:00:21PM -0800, bugzilla-daemon@freedesktop.org wrote:
>   In order for a new project to be created, I need some indication of who will
> help support it. Can you get a few other fd.o members to help out? If so can
> you get them to ok this bug request.

Actually, I'd want to see some evidence of involvement with the existing
communities working to do this sort of thing (e.g. GNOME's Soylent)
before I'd be happy to approve this.
Comment 3 Johann Prieur 2008-03-04 00:03:07 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> On Mon, Mar 03, 2008 at 08:00:21PM -0800, bugzilla-daemon@freedesktop.org
> wrote:
> >   In order for a new project to be created, I need some indication of who will
> > help support it. Can you get a few other fd.o members to help out? If so can
> > you get them to ok this bug request.
> 
> Actually, I'd want to see some evidence of involvement with the existing
> communities working to do this sort of thing (e.g. GNOME's Soylent)
> before I'd be happy to approve this.
> 

What's the People Project aims to achieve can't be placed at the same level than Soylent. You can think of People as a replacement for the libebook powered part of evolution data server. Soylent could make use of People as a data source instead of eds and that's the kind of applications we plan to port as a showcase for our framework. However, there are plenty of other use cases that can be found for the freedesktops.

There's sort of a consensus that at some point evolution data server should be replaced and the People Project is part of that effort.

Comment 4 Daniel Stone 2008-03-04 00:42:09 UTC
On Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 12:03:08AM -0800, bugzilla-daemon@freedesktop.org wrote:
> What's the People Project aims to achieve can't be placed at the same level
> than Soylent. You can think of People as a replacement for the libebook powered
> part of evolution data server. Soylent could make use of People as a data
> source instead of eds and that's the kind of applications we plan to port as a
> showcase for our framework. However, there are plenty of other use cases that
> can be found for the freedesktops.

Okay, thanks for explaining that.

> There's sort of a consensus that at some point evolution data server should be
> replaced and the People Project is part of that effort.

Yes, EDS is a bit of a creeping horror. :) Do you have any references to
discussions or such where this has been proposed and supported?
Comment 5 Xavier Claessens 2008-03-04 01:07:42 UTC
Hi,

I'm the maintainer of Empathy, an IM client using telepathy, I discussed with Ali at FOSDEM about his project and it seemed very promising. If this project goes well I would be really interesting at using it in Empathy!

If I correctly understood, it's not a replacement for EDS but an abstract layer that provides a DBus interface to access all sources of contacts, including EDS.
Comment 6 Johann Prieur 2008-03-04 01:14:19 UTC
> > There's sort of a consensus that at some point evolution data server should be
> > replaced and the People Project is part of that effort.
> 
> Yes, EDS is a bit of a creeping horror. :) Do you have any references to
> discussions or such where this has been proposed and supported?

I have no particular discussion about People to point you to.

- I'm thinking about that project for almost a year now.

- We met during last GUADEC with several people from the community to discuss about EDS replacement (from memory, Philip Van Hoof, Jörgen Scheibengruber, Rob Taylor and some others were present, Ross Burton couldn't attend and expressed his thoughts earlier in an email). Tough interesting to emphasize the need for some change in the address book field, nothing precise came out of it.

- Time to time, threads about address book management in the desktop come up from the mailing lists (for instance [1] and [2]), nothing precise never came out of it.

We just decided it was time to act.

So we started to develop our project in an open way, tough not announcing it too loud to avoid endless flamewars and get actual work done. We're starting to talk about it around and I'm confident about the support that it'll get (and waiting for some replies here).

[1] http://www.nabble.com/Address-Book-to15136381.html#a15136381
[2] http://www.nabble.com/Standard-for-address-books---to14013852.html#a14013852 
Comment 7 Benjamin Close 2008-03-04 04:30:49 UTC
bugzilla-daemon@freedesktop.org wrote:
> http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14714
>
>
>
>
>
> --- Comment #6 from Johann Prieur <johann.prieur@gmail.com>  2008-03-04 01:14:19 PST ---
>   
>>> There's sort of a consensus that at some point evolution data server should be
>>> replaced and the People Project is part of that effort.
>>>       
>> Yes, EDS is a bit of a creeping horror. :) Do you have any references to
>> discussions or such where this has been proposed and supported?
>>     
>
> I have no particular discussion about People to point you to.
>
> - I'm thinking about that project for almost a year now.
>
> - We met during last GUADEC with several people from the community to discuss
> about EDS replacement (from memory, Philip Van Hoof, Jörgen Scheibengruber,
> Rob Taylor and some others were present, Ross Burton couldn't attend and
> expressed his thoughts earlier in an email). Tough interesting to emphasize the
> need for some change in the address book field, nothing precise came out of it.
>
> - Time to time, threads about address book management in the desktop come up
> from the mailing lists (for instance [1] and [2]), nothing precise never came
> out of it.
>
> We just decided it was time to act.
>
> So we started to develop our project in an open way, tough not announcing it
> too loud to avoid endless flamewars and get actual work done. We're starting to
> talk about it around and I'm confident about the support that it'll get (and
> waiting for some replies here).
>
> [1] http://www.nabble.com/Address-Book-to15136381.html#a15136381
> [2]
> http://www.nabble.com/Standard-for-address-books---to14013852.html#a14013852 
>
>   
It would be great if the Thunderbird crowd also were onboard. Imagine 
that an address book that works in Thunderbird, Evolution, kmail and was 
available across the network. That would really rock!
Comment 8 Philip Van Hoof 2008-03-04 07:24:47 UTC
In case this is necessary or meaningful, I hereby pledge that Johann, me, Rob Taylor, Jürg and a bunch of other guys have been discussing this at GUADEC last year.

The ideas that floated around where all of high quality (not the typical the sky  is air and the air is the limit and nothing will ever happen with those cute ideas).

It's of course no guarantee that Johann and his team will indeed finish a better EDS.

Nonetheless do I think that the necessity of such infrastructure makes it worth the risk of opening a FDO project about this.
Comment 9 Ali Sabil 2008-03-06 00:31:41 UTC
Hello,

Thank you for your interest, and sorry for the delayed response. As for the questions, I think Johann already answered all of them. You may also find more details in this small document we wrote to try to explain our goals: http://people.freedesktop.org/~asabil/people-project-design.pdf

Concerning what we want from freedesktop, we basically would need a Mailing list, a Wiki and a release hosting, as well as an account for Johann (who doesn't have an fdo account yet).

Thank you for all your help.
Comment 10 Johann Prieur 2008-03-29 05:19:11 UTC
Hi,

As we are advancing in the developpment, we really start to feel the lack of resources. Is there any additional information you might need in order to process this request?

FYI, you can find a wider description of People there:
http://jprieur.wordpress.com/2008/03/28/people-a-contact-management-framework/

Thanks!
Johann
Comment 11 Benjamin Close 2008-04-01 05:41:29 UTC
Daniels Ping - I need your OK on this.
Comment 12 Daniel Stone 2008-04-01 06:35:17 UTC
On Tue, Apr 01, 2008 at 05:41:30AM -0700, bugzilla-daemon@freedesktop.org wrote:
> Daniels Ping - I need your OK on this.

Not quite yet.  I'll get back to you ASAP.
Comment 13 Johann Prieur 2008-07-16 06:20:42 UTC
Hi,

After presenting it at GUADEC, we got good feedbacks on the project. We met with people from the GNOME Online Desktop, Telepathy and GNOME's Soylent to figure out how People could be integrated with that whole ecosystem and came up with a very promising and exciting possibility (integration draft available there: http://asabil.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/people-blackboard.jpg).

The structural basis of the People framework are now here and we basically really need the resources requested here (mailing list, wiki and release hosting) to allow a better collaboration with the projects willing to use People in the near future.

Therefore, could we please move forward on that request?

Thanks!
Johann
Comment 14 Benjamin Close 2008-08-17 18:46:20 UTC
Ok folks, sorry for the delay on this. The project certainly looks like it's getting traction. However we'd prefer a better name than 'people' for this. It's just too generic. 

Also what would you like setup? 

o Git repo?
o Wiki?
o Mailing list?
o etc...

Let me know
Comment 15 Ali Sabil 2008-08-20 11:09:01 UTC
Hi,

Sorry, for the late reply, and thank you for your help. Concerning the project name, personally I prefer the name "The People framework", but I understand that it may seem to generic, so I will try to come up with a better name, and get back to you, and of course suggestions are very welcome :)

Otherwise, we would like the following:
 o a wiki
 o a mailing list
 o Some space for putting the release tarballs

I am not sure we will need a bugzilla product yet, so we will request it when needed :)

Thank you again.
Comment 16 Johann Prieur 2008-09-02 05:14:58 UTC
Hi,

Certainly "People" is too generic but I'm not able to come up with any better name, and thus would like to keep it. I guess we could use "People framework" on fd.o in order to work this out. Would that be OK?

Thanks!
Comment 17 Johann Prieur 2009-01-15 17:09:50 UTC
Hi,

Anything I can do to make things go forward on this?

Cheers,
Johann
Comment 18 Ali Sabil 2009-01-28 15:29:06 UTC
Pasting some notes about a short discussion with Benjamin:

<jprieur> benjsc: hey, how are you doing? I pinged you concerning http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14714 , I was wondering if you could update me on the status of it
<benjsc> jprieur: k, need to confirm something with daniels.. stay tuned
 benjsc benh
<asabil> benjsc: maybe it is not really clear in the bug report, but the People project is about making people 1st class citizen in the desktop people use 
<-- ssp has quit ("glorious summer")
<asabil> it is not just a library/daemon, but rather a set of technologies to integrate people's information into the desktop
<jprieur> benjsc: OK, thanks
<benjsc> asabil: you might want to add it to the bug - daniels will have to reread it to remember what it's about. 
<asabil> ok thanks, I will just paste this into the bug report
Comment 19 Anand Kumria 2009-05-10 18:53:05 UTC
Adding myself to CC: so I know when this has moved forward. Having just come to the same conclusion that a 'person' concept is sorely needed -- I looked around and discovered this project. This might be 'a go-er'.

Comment 20 Daniel Stone 2009-05-29 02:40:36 UTC
WONTFIX for the time being.

the gnome developers i've talked to haven't expressed wild enthusiasm for the people project, and there appears to be no actual code for gnome <-> people bindings.  given that kde is going its own way with akonadi, this seems to leave people somewhat out in the cold.

i've no doubt it's got huge potential to be a valuable project, but we definitely want to see more interest and adoption before we host something like this (especially with such an insanely generic name).

so for the moment, i'm going to close this, but please feel free to come back if you start getting more desktop support.  sorry.

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