6 ms·

I would advise holding off judgement on specific individuals unless you have worked with them closely and you have a deep understanding of why certain decisions

I would advise holding off judgement on specific individuals unless you have worked with them closely and you have a deep understanding of why certain decisions were made. Again, if you are a developer and you disagree with someone's choices, you are free to take it in your own direction. You do not have to work on anybody else's stuff if you don't want.

baybal2 6y ago
> if you are a developer and you disagree with someone's choices, you are free to take it in your own direction. That would be best said to persons named above. They were free to fork GNOME into their touchscreen based imaginary future, and experiment with it even more freely as a minority group, rather than trying to hijack the project, and getting stalled half-way because of popular pushback.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  >trying to hijack the project, and getting stalled half-way because of popular pushback Again, please do not spread these unfounded conspiracy theories. I can explain more what I mean by this, but it seems unlikely you are willing to hear what I have to say. I can tell you if you're trying to convince me to be hostile towards any specific developers for any specific project, I will have to decline to get involved with that. You don't have to resort to character assassination, if you have some ideas on a good technical direction for a project, just make the argument and write the code: people will listen if your arguments are sound and your code works.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    It's not a conspiracy theory. GNOME 2 was a project of 100+ developers. TOPAZ was a half-baked tablet UI tech demo from a dozen Red Hat employed devs, later dropping to 7-9 regularly active ones. Tell me what is more to explain about this?
    - cycloptic 6y ago
      I personally don't know the full history; you might consider looking for some old blog posts or politely contacting a GNOME developer for an explanation of the history. From what I understand, the run up to mobile was a major source of funding for GNOME 2 from several mobile companies, and that's where all the developers came from, but most of those companies were not able to keep up and failed to iOS/Android. So the funding dried up and Red Hat was one of the few companies that happened to survive because of their other business. That's what I've heard but you should talk to more people who were actually involved in the project back then if you want a more complete answer. (Please assume good faith and don't be hostile, we're all friends here, these are just developers trying to pay the bills like the rest of us)
    - sergeykish 6y ago
      There was a story recently, On the Graying of Gnome, comment by boudewijnrempt [1]: > The reason is simple: Nokia. Nokia (and to a much lesser extent, Intel) built up a lot for Maemo and Meego. Just for KOffice/Calligra, at least twenty people were paid to work on the documents application. For all of Maemo/Meego, the total number of people Nokia funded was enormous. > And then Elop, and the burning platform, and Windows, and well, that was 2012. > By 2014, my company was dead, amongst others, and, yeah, the peak had peaked, and the big chance for free software had gone. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25489580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25489580
      - cycloptic 6y ago
        Thank you, I figured there was a blog or comment somewhere with more info.
    - pantalaimon 6y ago
      GNOME 2 was forked as MATE, but there is no funding for 100+ developers working on it.
stretchcat 6y ago
> I would advise holding off judgement on specific individuals unless you have worked with them closely and you have a deep understanding of why certain decisions were made. Is this advice meant to be applied against all people, or just other developers? I certainly wouldn't apply this standard to RIAA lawyers suing kids. I judge them to be worms even though I never worked with them. And don't even get me started on politicians, I've never worked with one but I certainly feel entitled to have harsh opinions about some of them. If the advice is limited in scope to professional peers, then I have to disagree with it; having double standards for people like yourself isn't great advice.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  For me, it applies to everyone. I try hard to not hold a grudge. It's difficult but emotionally rewarding. If we are trying to be good open source citizens and avoid unnecessary fights, you can apply it just to that.
  - circularfoyers 6y ago
    I just want to say that what you said here and in your other comments in this thread resonated with me in how you approached dissecting issues like ones that have been discussed here. I wish there were more people like you and it's a characteristic I hope I can be more like as well. I respect that you are willing to admit you don't know the full history and implore others to understand why for example, certain decisions were made. It seems as if many people love to theorize about what these are, making correlations which are usually driven more by their feelings than reality. I feel like character assassination was a phrase that I feel aptly describes how I've seen a lot of people treat people like Lennart Poettering. I feel as if some people are unable to separate person from their opinions. Not considering that person like they are more likely to do so if they were in person. I sometimes feel like this attitude is more strongly felt by some people in a community where there is freedom to take a project in another direction if they desired (I know that not everyone has this option). I do think however that the article of this thread expresses their opinion on an issue in a way that it explains how it effects them without resorting to emotional attacks towards the project and it's something I really liked about reading it.
addicted 6y ago
This advice definitely applies to open source developers whose work is out completely in the open. You can literally take millions of lines of code that they may have written wholesale, and change a single word in it that you don’t like. In open source, they have nowhere to hide. If you disagree with a certain decision they have made, you are welcome to take the effort they have put in to implement the hundreds and thousands of other decisions they have made that you do agree with, with a simple “git clone”.

baybal2 6y ago

> if you are a developer and you disagree with someone's choices, you are free to take it in your own direction. That would be best said to persons named above. They were free to fork GNOME into their touchscreen based imaginary future, and experiment with it even more freely as a minority group, rather than trying to hijack the project, and getting stalled half-way because of popular pushback.

cycloptic 6y ago
>trying to hijack the project, and getting stalled half-way because of popular pushback Again, please do not spread these unfounded conspiracy theories. I can explain more what I mean by this, but it seems unlikely you are willing to hear what I have to say. I can tell you if you're trying to convince me to be hostile towards any specific developers for any specific project, I will have to decline to get involved with that. You don't have to resort to character assassination, if you have some ideas on a good technical direction for a project, just make the argument and write the code: people will listen if your arguments are sound and your code works.
- baybal2 6y ago
  It's not a conspiracy theory. GNOME 2 was a project of 100+ developers. TOPAZ was a half-baked tablet UI tech demo from a dozen Red Hat employed devs, later dropping to 7-9 regularly active ones. Tell me what is more to explain about this?
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    I personally don't know the full history; you might consider looking for some old blog posts or politely contacting a GNOME developer for an explanation of the history. From what I understand, the run up to mobile was a major source of funding for GNOME 2 from several mobile companies, and that's where all the developers came from, but most of those companies were not able to keep up and failed to iOS/Android. So the funding dried up and Red Hat was one of the few companies that happened to survive because of their other business. That's what I've heard but you should talk to more people who were actually involved in the project back then if you want a more complete answer. (Please assume good faith and don't be hostile, we're all friends here, these are just developers trying to pay the bills like the rest of us)
  - sergeykish 6y ago
    There was a story recently, On the Graying of Gnome, comment by boudewijnrempt [1]: > The reason is simple: Nokia. Nokia (and to a much lesser extent, Intel) built up a lot for Maemo and Meego. Just for KOffice/Calligra, at least twenty people were paid to work on the documents application. For all of Maemo/Meego, the total number of people Nokia funded was enormous. > And then Elop, and the burning platform, and Windows, and well, that was 2012. > By 2014, my company was dead, amongst others, and, yeah, the peak had peaked, and the big chance for free software had gone. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25489580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25489580
    - cycloptic 6y ago
      Thank you, I figured there was a blog or comment somewhere with more info.
  - pantalaimon 6y ago
    GNOME 2 was forked as MATE, but there is no funding for 100+ developers working on it.

stretchcat 6y ago

> I would advise holding off judgement on specific individuals unless you have worked with them closely and you have a deep understanding of why certain decisions were made. Is this advice meant to be applied against all people, or just other developers? I certainly wouldn't apply this standard to RIAA lawyers suing kids. I judge them to be worms even though I never worked with them. And don't even get me started on politicians, I've never worked with one but I certainly feel entitled to have harsh opinions about some of them. If the advice is limited in scope to professional peers, then I have to disagree with it; having double standards for people like yourself isn't great advice.

cycloptic 6y ago
For me, it applies to everyone. I try hard to not hold a grudge. It's difficult but emotionally rewarding. If we are trying to be good open source citizens and avoid unnecessary fights, you can apply it just to that.
- circularfoyers 6y ago
  I just want to say that what you said here and in your other comments in this thread resonated with me in how you approached dissecting issues like ones that have been discussed here. I wish there were more people like you and it's a characteristic I hope I can be more like as well. I respect that you are willing to admit you don't know the full history and implore others to understand why for example, certain decisions were made. It seems as if many people love to theorize about what these are, making correlations which are usually driven more by their feelings than reality. I feel like character assassination was a phrase that I feel aptly describes how I've seen a lot of people treat people like Lennart Poettering. I feel as if some people are unable to separate person from their opinions. Not considering that person like they are more likely to do so if they were in person. I sometimes feel like this attitude is more strongly felt by some people in a community where there is freedom to take a project in another direction if they desired (I know that not everyone has this option). I do think however that the article of this thread expresses their opinion on an issue in a way that it explains how it effects them without resorting to emotional attacks towards the project and it's something I really liked about reading it.

addicted 6y ago

This advice definitely applies to open source developers whose work is out completely in the open. You can literally take millions of lines of code that they may have written wholesale, and change a single word in it that you don’t like. In open source, they have nowhere to hide. If you disagree with a certain decision they have made, you are welcome to take the effort they have put in to implement the hundreds and thousands of other decisions they have made that you do agree with, with a simple “git clone”.