5 ms·

I’ll take good faith bugs and missing features over the pathological psycho warfare in closed software any day of the week.

by swiley 5y ago

andrepd 5y ago
I think that the point here is that this is anything but a "good faith bug".
- gnomewascool 5y ago
  GNOME's attitude isn't caused by them seeking to monetise their software or invigilate their users (e.g. "we say that we're not adding/changing this feature because X, but _really_ we're not doing so because it would prevent us from displaying ads/addicting our users"), but because they have a certain vision that they're stubbornly sticking to, so yes, it is a "good faith bug".
- BrightGlow 5y ago
  How is that the point? GNOME is an understaffed and underfunded project.
  - _dain_ 5y ago
    Well why doesn't the GNOME project offer a way for people to pay for specific features and bugfixes? I would contribute money if I knew it would go towards paying someone to fix the file-chooser dialog. So would a lot of other people, if there was an announcement. I know for a fact I am not the only person who would do this: https://jayfax.neocities.org/mediocrity/gnome-has-no-thumbnails-in-the-file-picker.html https://jayfax.neocities.org/mediocrity/gnome-has-no-thumbna... > One may say, "quit complaining, the GNOME developers are doing for free!" Okay. Well, how much money should I pay for someone to fix this then? I’m legit offering a bounty here. Conditions are that this fix makes it into the master branch.
    - BrightGlow 5y ago
      In my opinion, that article is pretty insubstantial and is mostly just responding to the same 4chan trolling mentioned in this wiki. It's just not a productive line of discussion and doesn't make any sense in the actual context of how open source works. But I'll answer your question anyway. I think there are a few GNOME developers that have patreons or some other crowdfunding/bounty thing but it's not a major source of income for most. Getting $2 a month from a handful of people is not enough to fund a developer for any serious work. If you want to fund someone for real then you should probably pay a real developer salary which would be at least $75k-$100k a year in the US, and more if you want them to have competitive benefits. The price could be different in other countries. You might be able to hire one of the Linux consultancies to do it for the equivalent hourly rate. This is of course if you work for a company that can afford that. If you're a normal non-rich person then you're probably out of luck here, sorry. Software is expensive. I also would be wary of anyone who guarantees they can get something into the master branch. To me that's scammer talk. Getting patches merged is an ongoing conversation between the developers and maintainers, you don't want someone who's just pushing code through without any checks. And if they're saying they can get something through before any code is even written and before anyone even knows if the solution is viable or not, then I would view that with extreme skepticism. If it's a major feature then it may end up taking months or years for it to get reviewed and merged, or it may just sit around for years and not get merged at all because it causes issues in some other part of the code, or it could end up being obsoleted by something else before then, or it could just end up being low priority and nobody gets around to it... or any number of other things really. Hopefully that clears up some of those bizarre statements that are in that article.
      - _dain_ 5y ago
        >In my opinion, that article is pretty insubstantial and is mostly just responding to the same 4chan trolling mentioned in this wiki. It's just not a productive line of discussion and doesn't make any sense in the actual context of how open source works. How on Earth is it "trolling"? Seriously, I want you to explain to me how that article is bad-faith in any way. Yes, it's written in a absurd, ironic way -- that's because the situation it's describing is absurd. When such a massive, obvious usability flaw has gone unfixed for so long, people have the perfect right to joke about it and make fun of GNOME. Sorry if you think that's unfair trolling -- it isn't. And lol at the goalpost moving >gnome is underfunded >okay, how much money to fix the file chooser >oh well uhh that's now how it works and you couldn't afford it anyway
29athrowaway 5y ago
There is cool program for people like you, it is called Bonzibuddy. Proprietary software is guaranteed to be ethical and respectful of your privacy. In part, because the opaqueness creates an incentive for people to write better, more secure software. I would also much rather consume software made by people that spend 99% of their time waiting for the weekend, than from people that write software out of self-motivation and enjoyment.

I’ll take good faith bugs and missing features over the pathological psycho warfare in closed software any day of the week.

by swiley 5y ago

I’ll take good faith bugs and missing features over the pathological psycho warfare in closed software any day of the week.

andrepd 5y ago

I think that the point here is that this is anything but a "good faith bug".

gnomewascool 5y ago
GNOME's attitude isn't caused by them seeking to monetise their software or invigilate their users (e.g. "we say that we're not adding/changing this feature because X, but _really_ we're not doing so because it would prevent us from displaying ads/addicting our users"), but because they have a certain vision that they're stubbornly sticking to, so yes, it is a "good faith bug".
BrightGlow 5y ago
How is that the point? GNOME is an understaffed and underfunded project.
- _dain_ 5y ago
  Well why doesn't the GNOME project offer a way for people to pay for specific features and bugfixes? I would contribute money if I knew it would go towards paying someone to fix the file-chooser dialog. So would a lot of other people, if there was an announcement. I know for a fact I am not the only person who would do this: https://jayfax.neocities.org/mediocrity/gnome-has-no-thumbnails-in-the-file-picker.html https://jayfax.neocities.org/mediocrity/gnome-has-no-thumbna... > One may say, "quit complaining, the GNOME developers are doing for free!" Okay. Well, how much money should I pay for someone to fix this then? I’m legit offering a bounty here. Conditions are that this fix makes it into the master branch.
  - BrightGlow 5y ago
    In my opinion, that article is pretty insubstantial and is mostly just responding to the same 4chan trolling mentioned in this wiki. It's just not a productive line of discussion and doesn't make any sense in the actual context of how open source works. But I'll answer your question anyway. I think there are a few GNOME developers that have patreons or some other crowdfunding/bounty thing but it's not a major source of income for most. Getting $2 a month from a handful of people is not enough to fund a developer for any serious work. If you want to fund someone for real then you should probably pay a real developer salary which would be at least $75k-$100k a year in the US, and more if you want them to have competitive benefits. The price could be different in other countries. You might be able to hire one of the Linux consultancies to do it for the equivalent hourly rate. This is of course if you work for a company that can afford that. If you're a normal non-rich person then you're probably out of luck here, sorry. Software is expensive. I also would be wary of anyone who guarantees they can get something into the master branch. To me that's scammer talk. Getting patches merged is an ongoing conversation between the developers and maintainers, you don't want someone who's just pushing code through without any checks. And if they're saying they can get something through before any code is even written and before anyone even knows if the solution is viable or not, then I would view that with extreme skepticism. If it's a major feature then it may end up taking months or years for it to get reviewed and merged, or it may just sit around for years and not get merged at all because it causes issues in some other part of the code, or it could end up being obsoleted by something else before then, or it could just end up being low priority and nobody gets around to it... or any number of other things really. Hopefully that clears up some of those bizarre statements that are in that article.
    - _dain_ 5y ago
      >In my opinion, that article is pretty insubstantial and is mostly just responding to the same 4chan trolling mentioned in this wiki. It's just not a productive line of discussion and doesn't make any sense in the actual context of how open source works. How on Earth is it "trolling"? Seriously, I want you to explain to me how that article is bad-faith in any way. Yes, it's written in a absurd, ironic way -- that's because the situation it's describing is absurd. When such a massive, obvious usability flaw has gone unfixed for so long, people have the perfect right to joke about it and make fun of GNOME. Sorry if you think that's unfair trolling -- it isn't. And lol at the goalpost moving >gnome is underfunded >okay, how much money to fix the file chooser >oh well uhh that's now how it works and you couldn't afford it anyway

29athrowaway 5y ago

There is cool program for people like you, it is called Bonzibuddy. Proprietary software is guaranteed to be ethical and respectful of your privacy. In part, because the opaqueness creates an incentive for people to write better, more secure software. I would also much rather consume software made by people that spend 99% of their time waiting for the weekend, than from people that write software out of self-motivation and enjoyment.