*IMPORTANT* to Linus Torvalds

Mr. Torvalds,

I believe you'll be able to understand me. This is a copy of a message that should be changed to convince Gnome, KDE, XFCE or / and LXDE.

I reported many bugs to Ubuntu. To make the Ubuntu team patch them, I need to convince them that the bug is so important that they need to work on it, so it's hard. To make me patch them, I need to convince Ubuntu team that the bug is important, otherwise the patch won't be approved, which is hard, then I need to patch the bug, which is hard, then I need Ubuntu team to approve the code, which is hard, so it's triple hard. To develop an app, I need to code my work, others will see my name, rate it high, install it lots, congratulate me by e-mail and recognize my work, so it's fun, then I need approval from the Ubuntu team to have my app in the Ubuntu Software Store, the Ubuntu team put a huge effort in the Ubuntu Software Store and the Ubuntu team wants more apps in the Ubuntu Software Store, so it's easy, then I show the Ubuntu team that since the app's popular, the bug is important and according to xkcd, I'm correcting a person on the internet and that's an important task, so it's important.

Firefox has add-ons that change the Firefox interface. Firefox has XML DOM with getElementById, insertBefore, createElement, setAttribute, removeChild etc and that's how you position. add, edit and remove anything in Firefox. A Firefox add-on is easy to create and powerful to use. Tim Berners-Lee, an England sir, created the web and leads W3C. W3C adopted Javascript from NETSCAPE and created XML and DOM. Think twice about whether Javascript, XML and DOM are a good combination, because that's genial stuff, so you will have to be sure.

Ubuntu needs an API like Firefox's XML DOM, but in C, not Javascript.

Imagine the experimentation that would happen. It would be awesome, like Firefox is. Features that you weren't expecting would be added to Ubuntu by the others, if you're a programmer, you would be able to create features and if you're a user, you would be able to tell programmers what features you want and others want too. Maybe, Windows or Apple would copy the easy platform customization from Ubuntu which copied from Firefox and everybody would be happy.

Best regards, Pedro Bessa

On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 11:16 PM, Pedro Bessa <pedbessa@gmail.com> wrote:

Is this the root idea of the mail?  I think you should have told about

1. Why ubuntu needs an API like Firefox's XML DOM ?
2. Why C?
3. Why not Javascript?

and not about *how hard it is to get patches accepted* in the *ubuntu mailing list*.

Am I missing some background story? What happened recently that you are provoked you to send a mail like this? Can you provide with some link to read more?

What exactly do you want Mr Torvalds to do on this regard? I think more importantly, you should have mentioned *why* he should be doing what you are asking him to do.

FYI, there are other OS like webOS which tried UI like that of browsers with DOM and scripting APIs. Most of them failed due to random reasons. Ubuntu community is having their own reasons for doing particular things. If you have a revolutionary idea, I think you will be able to convince them to do that.

Personally I think this is the wrong place to convey this idea.

V,r

Jaseem Abid http://jaseemabid.github.com

Summary:

request:
  Dear Mr Torvalds, help me please to make Ubuntu team
  create or approve such a patch which would implement this:
  > Ubuntu needs an API like Firefox's XML DOM, but in C, not Javascript.

  I failed at understanding more valuable information.

my reply: ========== git kernel list is unlikely to be the appropriate forum. Try #ubuntu channel on freenode irc or http://ubuntuforums.org/

Also refine your request. Its not understandable (yet). Talk to other linux users and make them understand what you're idea is.

I personally can't imagine what you're asking for because there are so many things which could be mapped to DOM including filesystem, linux configuration (/proc, /sys), ...

You may want to look at "plan 9", they try to make everything be a filesystem => http://cs-exhibitions.uni-klu.ac.at/index.php?id=214 "Ken and Rob thought up the idea of building everything around a single file system protocol" ... So all you have to do is map the filesystem to DOM and you're done?

You should find an appropriate forum for discussing and maturing your idea. Those forums will also help you make it complete enough such that average linux users / developers have a chance to understand what you really have in mind.

I feel its unlikely that Torvalds understands what you are talking about either without providing samples etc.

If you don't understand what I'm writing about contact me off list and and I'll help you find the appropriate forum and rephrase your idea making your description good enough to make others understand how you want ubuntu (linux in general?) to look like instead.

If we're done with that we can write another mail to this thread telling where future discussion will take place. To speed everything up I've started a titanpad document:

http://titanpad.com/pVtrCuSOr5 and put some questions / comments there.

You can also add additional references to discussions at the appropriate places to that public document.

Marc Weber