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"Nothing obliges the GNOME team to accede to the wishes of people who contribute nothing to the project" Nothing, until users flee and they stop receiving bug

"Nothing obliges the GNOME team to accede to the wishes of people who contribute nothing to the project" Nothing, until users flee and they stop receiving bug reports, patches, donations, and so forth. Moreover, because of what Gnome is, if they drive users away it will also negatively impact other projects, because for a lot of those users leaving Gnome means ditching open source software entirely and switching to e.g. OS X.

growse 6y ago
If the users aren't willing to fork, then having them run away to osx (where, by the way, everything is also imposed on you) doesn't seem that great of a loss. Part of the joy of open source are the freedoms it gives you, including the freedom to fork a project that doesn't meet your needs and make it so that it does. This works as it should pretty often - look at the gnome2 forks, the systemd-less distros etc. There's plenty of choice out there, and plenty of opportunity to get involved. If you're unwilling to exercise those freedoms, then you're just whining about the stuff you're getting for free.
- betterunix2 6y ago
  You are right that with OS X you have no particular say over the features. On the other hand, you do not have to deal with poorly supported hardware, and if something goes wrong there are people whose job is to help you. Most users find those things to be advantages, but many will choose open source software because of the various other freedoms they can get. There are also people who choose open source software because they have unusual requirements that proprietary systems either cannot meet or are too difficult/expensive/onerous to deal with. Losing users is always a bad thing for the open source ecosystem. Lost users means fewer bug reports, fewer patches, fewer donations, and less support from paid developers working for various corporations (easy to forget but there are people whose job is to maintain open source projects like the Linux kernel). Fewer users means less incentive for hardware companies to provide any support, even just minimal technical documentation, needed for open source developers to write drivers (let alone contribute to that). Forks require a significant commitment of time and effort, and really should be considered a last resort. The time commitment is much greater for prominent projects that receive a lot of activity like Gnome or Linux. Most users, even those with the necessary technical skills, do not have enough spare time to maintain a fork when things break. Your dismissive attitude is fine for a obscure hobbyist project with a dozen users. It makes no sense for desktop Linux distros that now have many millions of users.

growse 6y ago

If the users aren't willing to fork, then having them run away to osx (where, by the way, everything is also imposed on you) doesn't seem that great of a loss. Part of the joy of open source are the freedoms it gives you, including the freedom to fork a project that doesn't meet your needs and make it so that it does. This works as it should pretty often - look at the gnome2 forks, the systemd-less distros etc. There's plenty of choice out there, and plenty of opportunity to get involved. If you're unwilling to exercise those freedoms, then you're just whining about the stuff you're getting for free.

betterunix2 6y ago
You are right that with OS X you have no particular say over the features. On the other hand, you do not have to deal with poorly supported hardware, and if something goes wrong there are people whose job is to help you. Most users find those things to be advantages, but many will choose open source software because of the various other freedoms they can get. There are also people who choose open source software because they have unusual requirements that proprietary systems either cannot meet or are too difficult/expensive/onerous to deal with. Losing users is always a bad thing for the open source ecosystem. Lost users means fewer bug reports, fewer patches, fewer donations, and less support from paid developers working for various corporations (easy to forget but there are people whose job is to maintain open source projects like the Linux kernel). Fewer users means less incentive for hardware companies to provide any support, even just minimal technical documentation, needed for open source developers to write drivers (let alone contribute to that). Forks require a significant commitment of time and effort, and really should be considered a last resort. The time commitment is much greater for prominent projects that receive a lot of activity like Gnome or Linux. Most users, even those with the necessary technical skills, do not have enough spare time to maintain a fork when things break. Your dismissive attitude is fine for a obscure hobbyist project with a dozen users. It makes no sense for desktop Linux distros that now have many millions of users.