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Start with the name. That puts it in opposition immediately. They present a lot of that opposition to projects and people, rarely stated kindly. They could exp
by jdub 6y ago
Start with the name. That puts it in opposition immediately. They present a lot of that opposition to projects and people, rarely stated kindly.
They could express a positive enthusiasm for simplicity, but that's not the way they go about it.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago>Start with the name. That puts it in opposition immediately The name that immediately claims that their software sucks? I get where you are coming from, but you're just labeling the average software with a different term.
- Certhas 6y agoIt very very clearly implies that other software sucks and theirs sucks less. If there would be any ambiguity in this they explicitly bash genetic "other hackers" all throughout their philosophy page. It's not exactly subtle.
- boomboomsubban 6y agoAnd most other software implies their software is better than others. Why is calling it "less bad" somehow worse?
- baxrob 6y agoOh no, you said the secret words! https://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html https://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html
- allis10 6y agoAccusations of "elitism" being what they may, the name is in fact a slice of humility: they advertise that their software "sucks less", not that it is "without suck".
- jai_ 6y agoThis isn't an accusation. They explicitly mention this is as a design goal on their page. See the "Differences" section: https://dwm.suckless.org/ https://dwm.suckless.org/
- lloeki 6y agoI always found the elitist statement on that page strangely at odds with the rest of the philosophy (at least how I understand it). I mean, if everything is small and simple, doesn’t require you to learn a frameworkish configuration written in yet another language but can be configured with what amounts to a key/value file and can be installed in seconds with make + sudo make install, then it’s hardly elitist.
- lloeki 6y agoI guess the name comes from Mutt: > The Mutt E-Mail Client > "All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less." -me, circa 1995 The above is in essence a absurdly humorous, self-derogatory show of humility, summarizing the sysiphean task of trying to make any software bug free and useful in any way.
- MauranKilom 6y agoThat's not the way I understand the "-less" composition they use. "harmless" doesn't mean "poses less harm", it means "poses no harm". "colorless" doesn't mean "less color", it means "no color". And so on. So to me, "suckless" means "doesn't suck", no humility. Admittedly, it doesn't exactly follow the normal composition rules so the exact interpretation is more up in the air, but that won't change the fact that many people will read it the way I described above.