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It seems like a lot of those projects just aren't interested in accepting pull-requests from outsiders. If they were more willing to compromise and cooperate I

It seems like a lot of those projects just aren't interested in accepting pull-requests from outsiders. If they were more willing to compromise and cooperate I don't think they'd catch nearly this much flac.

nextos 7y ago
Exactly. And for much smaller organizations and individuals, it is much harder to organize an alternative effort to this set of projects backed up by a big corporation (Red Hat). I only expect this to happen if Systemd and related efforts become really bothersome. Right now it is a big of a mixed situation. A better init system, and some modern basic userland infrastructure was needed. Systemd has brought some good things, but overall changes are concerning for the reasons outlined in my parent comment.
- danieldk 7y ago
  Exactly. And for much smaller organizations and individuals, it is much harder to organize an alternative effort to this set of projects backed up by a big corporation (Red Hat). There are exceptions. Drew Devault and the rest of the Sway team did write wlroots, an alternative compositor for Wayland, so Wayland is less of a monoculture. But it is true that it requires a lot of manpower, money, and will to develop an alternative to e.g. Wayland. However, I see the current situation more as the glass being half full. Imagine that we did not have Red Hat, and others pulling the weight of Wayland (and other technologies, such as Flatpak), the Linux desktop ecosystem would in many ways be hopelessly behind macOS, iOS, and Windows. I think this is a better outcome than being stuck with 80ies/90ies graphics technology forever, even if it is not perfect.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
izacus 7y ago
> It seems like a lot of those projects just aren't interested in accepting pull-requests from outsiders. What kind of pull requests though? Minor fixes or big architectural decisions like ssh forwarding and security features? Because there's a difference between just accepting PRs and public ownership of future project direction. The second usually doesn't result in a successful project.
- traverseda 7y ago
  >PRs and public ownership of future project direction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar That's kind of the point of open-source, public ownership. Sure, you need someone to be in charge and reject outright bad ideas, but when you're refusing to add options that support other people's personal preferences that's when it's starting to become a problem. It's all these authoritarians that think they need to own the direction of the project that are causing these issues. I'm sure dirty info-hippies who believe in communal project ownership have their own problems too, and that there's a balance, but it seems like we've over-swung.
  - acdha 7y ago
    Do you have examples of working pull-requests which were rejected for what you consider bad reasons? I’m sympathetic to maintainers choosing not to take on additional technical debt so I’d especially be looking for things like willingness to shoulder long-term support costs and other constraints imposed by accepting a PR.
    - traverseda 7y ago
      One thing that comes to mind is gnome's refusal to implement type-ahead in nautilus and the gtk3 file picker. It's a very popular and visible issue that I won't get into here, but suffice to say that there are a lot of people who would really like a more traditional type-ahead. There aren't any specific pull requests I'm aware of although there are forked versions available. When asked about it the developers involved just say "no", and any attempt to work on a compromise or discuss what would be necessary to include a flag somewhere deep in gcnonf to revert the behavior is met with a resounding "we're not interested in that feature". Which is fine, but don't keep other people from implementing a feature that they like just because it doesn't fit in with your vision. That attitude seems pretty endemic to open-source projects involving a lot of (ex) redhat engineers. It's not that the PR is being refused, it's that it's impossible to even have the discussion.
  - 0815test 7y ago
quotemstr 7y ago
And their being unwilling to accept contributions from outsiders would be less of a problem if the system weren't so tightly coupled.

nextos 7y ago

Exactly. And for much smaller organizations and individuals, it is much harder to organize an alternative effort to this set of projects backed up by a big corporation (Red Hat). I only expect this to happen if Systemd and related efforts become really bothersome. Right now it is a big of a mixed situation. A better init system, and some modern basic userland infrastructure was needed. Systemd has brought some good things, but overall changes are concerning for the reasons outlined in my parent comment.

danieldk 7y ago
Exactly. And for much smaller organizations and individuals, it is much harder to organize an alternative effort to this set of projects backed up by a big corporation (Red Hat). There are exceptions. Drew Devault and the rest of the Sway team did write wlroots, an alternative compositor for Wayland, so Wayland is less of a monoculture. But it is true that it requires a lot of manpower, money, and will to develop an alternative to e.g. Wayland. However, I see the current situation more as the glass being half full. Imagine that we did not have Red Hat, and others pulling the weight of Wayland (and other technologies, such as Flatpak), the Linux desktop ecosystem would in many ways be hopelessly behind macOS, iOS, and Windows. I think this is a better outcome than being stuck with 80ies/90ies graphics technology forever, even if it is not perfect.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

izacus 7y ago

> It seems like a lot of those projects just aren't interested in accepting pull-requests from outsiders. What kind of pull requests though? Minor fixes or big architectural decisions like ssh forwarding and security features? Because there's a difference between just accepting PRs and public ownership of future project direction. The second usually doesn't result in a successful project.

traverseda 7y ago
>PRs and public ownership of future project direction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar That's kind of the point of open-source, public ownership. Sure, you need someone to be in charge and reject outright bad ideas, but when you're refusing to add options that support other people's personal preferences that's when it's starting to become a problem. It's all these authoritarians that think they need to own the direction of the project that are causing these issues. I'm sure dirty info-hippies who believe in communal project ownership have their own problems too, and that there's a balance, but it seems like we've over-swung.
- acdha 7y ago
  Do you have examples of working pull-requests which were rejected for what you consider bad reasons? I’m sympathetic to maintainers choosing not to take on additional technical debt so I’d especially be looking for things like willingness to shoulder long-term support costs and other constraints imposed by accepting a PR.
  - traverseda 7y ago
    One thing that comes to mind is gnome's refusal to implement type-ahead in nautilus and the gtk3 file picker. It's a very popular and visible issue that I won't get into here, but suffice to say that there are a lot of people who would really like a more traditional type-ahead. There aren't any specific pull requests I'm aware of although there are forked versions available. When asked about it the developers involved just say "no", and any attempt to work on a compromise or discuss what would be necessary to include a flag somewhere deep in gcnonf to revert the behavior is met with a resounding "we're not interested in that feature". Which is fine, but don't keep other people from implementing a feature that they like just because it doesn't fit in with your vision. That attitude seems pretty endemic to open-source projects involving a lot of (ex) redhat engineers. It's not that the PR is being refused, it's that it's impossible to even have the discussion.
- 0815test 7y ago

quotemstr 7y ago

And their being unwilling to accept contributions from outsiders would be less of a problem if the system weren't so tightly coupled.