I think that there is a lot of potential for Backbone. For instance,
GWorkspace wants to do some volume management. However, What if
instead we had frameworks for:
DBUS
HAL (as was mentioned earlier)
and something similar to the gnome-volume-manager (
http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/ProjectUtopiaBuildDebian )
in Backbone. Now, Enrico does not really need to have to worry about
it as much and GWorkspace stays cleaner. Also, there is a nice
foundation of software for everyone to use for all kinds of other
stuff as well.
Backbone has a lot of potential. So, Nicholas and the other members
of the backbone project. I applaud you for your foresight. I would
like to join your project and work on things like the above.