5 ms·

I just don't get these comments. It's perfectly reasonable to prefer KDE because you like Plasma or it has the functionality you need. It's a nice desktop envi

I just don't get these comments. It's perfectly reasonable to prefer KDE because you like Plasma or it has the functionality you need. It's a nice desktop environment with a lot of functionality so I can see why it appeals to many people. What I don't get is why so many people feel the need to diminish open source projects they don't even use. What is your end goal with a comment like this? Are you just expressing your opinion so that no one forgets that many people do not like Gnome 3? Are you hoping to better understand why the Gnome community has a different development philosophy than the KDE community? Are you trying to convince someone of something?

traverseda 4y ago
Gnome has pissed a lot of people off, and this is the end result. I mean I think it's pretty reasonable for people to have ill will towards the project and I think that politely interjecting with the occasional "we don't like gnome" is reasonable. If only to encourage new projects to use a toolkit that isn't so closely tied to the gnome experience. That being said I do have to give them some respect for XDG-desktop-portal, which has made my main complaint (gnome's filepicker being bad and non-optional for even basic software like firefox) no longer an issue.
- asoneth 4y ago
  I get that their design direction wasn't everyone's cup of tea, and I get why many abandoned Gnome 3. > politely interjecting with the occasional "we don't like gnome" From my perspective these comments seem neither polite nor occasional, and they result in Gnome threads devolving into partisan arguments rather than technical discussions. Of course Gnome isn't the only lightning rod -- posts that mention Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, US national politics, systemd, etc also seem to inspire an inordinate number of posts that are argumentative and off-topic. It's mostly just disappointing. I was honestly hoping for a discussion about what kind of people contribute to a large open source project instead of rehashing the endless circular debate about whether the Gnome Community is user hostile or not.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - traverseda 4y ago
    I mean I could also argue that they're contributor hostile, but that would just be another rehash.
    - asoneth 4y ago
      I'm not sure I agree that would be another rehash. A comment that draws from the data in the original blog post to make the case that Gnome is driving away new contributors seems like it would be interesting and on-topic, and could lead to a discussion about ways to attract and retain open source contributors. As it is, most of the points made in this thread could have been made in any prior thread with "Gnome" in the title. And they will probably be made again in subsequent Gnome threads, like some kind of Sisyphusian performance art.
- Crysstalis 4y ago
  >Gnome has pissed a lot of people off, and this is the end result. I mean I think it's pretty reasonable for people to have ill will towards the project and I think that politely interjecting with the occasional "we don't like gnome" is reasonable. I would say that it is not reasonable. I have been seeing these type of "we don't like this" comments for around 20 years ever since GNOME 2. They have done nothing but incite more flame wars, making the developers even less likely to want to engage with any constructive comments that might be underneath. Please find a more productive way to contribute, either by volunteering to pick up some of the development load yourself, by forking the project, or by contributing to something completely different. That is how you get things done in open source. Making the same drive-by complaints repeatedly is not a way to change anyone's mind. >If only to encourage new projects to use a toolkit that isn't so closely tied to the gnome experience. This is exactly the opposite of what you want to do. If the desire is to improve the toolkit, then you want to encourage more outside contributors to join and bring it in a direction they like, not push them away.
  - bcrl 4y ago
    Users don't have time to continually advocate for features they use in their desktop environment. If I'm a developer using a Linux based desktop, I have a whole bunch of work of my own to do. I don't have time to spend hours arguing in favour of retaining a feature inside Gnome. The particularly awful disease the Gnome project has is the "rewrite everything" disease. No software project can retain features if they do large rewrites from scratch every major release. There simply aren't enough hours in the day to keep rewriting the toolkit every few years. The end result is that features the developers personally don't care for don't get implemented in the new release. That is why so many of us that once used Gnome are pissed off and have had to write off the project.
    - Crysstalis 4y ago
      >I don't have time to spend hours arguing in favour of retaining a feature inside Gnome. Then perhaps you can see how developers of a desktop also do not have time to listen to every person arguing for every feature, or to maintain every possible feature that ever gets suggested, or even to maintain the current feature set indefinitely without removing something at some point. >The particularly awful disease the Gnome project has is the "rewrite everything" disease. No software project can retain features if they do large rewrites from scratch every major release. You are confusing refactoring with rewriting. Very few parts of it have been rewritten from scratch. Refactoring things isn't a "disease". Refactors are actually necessary to keep the project in working order and to pay off technical debt so you can actually have a chance to implement new features while retaining older ones. >The end result is that features the developers personally don't care for don't get implemented in the new release. This is the same as any project. If there are no developers to maintain the feature then it stagnates and eventually gets cut. It makes no sense to be pissed off at this one particular project about this, every project is bound to do it eventually. If your company ever went through layoffs then you can probably name some times you have had to do this at work.

traverseda 4y ago

Gnome has pissed a lot of people off, and this is the end result. I mean I think it's pretty reasonable for people to have ill will towards the project and I think that politely interjecting with the occasional "we don't like gnome" is reasonable. If only to encourage new projects to use a toolkit that isn't so closely tied to the gnome experience. That being said I do have to give them some respect for XDG-desktop-portal, which has made my main complaint (gnome's filepicker being bad and non-optional for even basic software like firefox) no longer an issue.

asoneth 4y ago
I get that their design direction wasn't everyone's cup of tea, and I get why many abandoned Gnome 3. > politely interjecting with the occasional "we don't like gnome" From my perspective these comments seem neither polite nor occasional, and they result in Gnome threads devolving into partisan arguments rather than technical discussions. Of course Gnome isn't the only lightning rod -- posts that mention Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, US national politics, systemd, etc also seem to inspire an inordinate number of posts that are argumentative and off-topic. It's mostly just disappointing. I was honestly hoping for a discussion about what kind of people contribute to a large open source project instead of rehashing the endless circular debate about whether the Gnome Community is user hostile or not.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- traverseda 4y ago
  I mean I could also argue that they're contributor hostile, but that would just be another rehash.
  - asoneth 4y ago
    I'm not sure I agree that would be another rehash. A comment that draws from the data in the original blog post to make the case that Gnome is driving away new contributors seems like it would be interesting and on-topic, and could lead to a discussion about ways to attract and retain open source contributors. As it is, most of the points made in this thread could have been made in any prior thread with "Gnome" in the title. And they will probably be made again in subsequent Gnome threads, like some kind of Sisyphusian performance art.
Crysstalis 4y ago
>Gnome has pissed a lot of people off, and this is the end result. I mean I think it's pretty reasonable for people to have ill will towards the project and I think that politely interjecting with the occasional "we don't like gnome" is reasonable. I would say that it is not reasonable. I have been seeing these type of "we don't like this" comments for around 20 years ever since GNOME 2. They have done nothing but incite more flame wars, making the developers even less likely to want to engage with any constructive comments that might be underneath. Please find a more productive way to contribute, either by volunteering to pick up some of the development load yourself, by forking the project, or by contributing to something completely different. That is how you get things done in open source. Making the same drive-by complaints repeatedly is not a way to change anyone's mind. >If only to encourage new projects to use a toolkit that isn't so closely tied to the gnome experience. This is exactly the opposite of what you want to do. If the desire is to improve the toolkit, then you want to encourage more outside contributors to join and bring it in a direction they like, not push them away.
- bcrl 4y ago
  Users don't have time to continually advocate for features they use in their desktop environment. If I'm a developer using a Linux based desktop, I have a whole bunch of work of my own to do. I don't have time to spend hours arguing in favour of retaining a feature inside Gnome. The particularly awful disease the Gnome project has is the "rewrite everything" disease. No software project can retain features if they do large rewrites from scratch every major release. There simply aren't enough hours in the day to keep rewriting the toolkit every few years. The end result is that features the developers personally don't care for don't get implemented in the new release. That is why so many of us that once used Gnome are pissed off and have had to write off the project.
  - Crysstalis 4y ago
    >I don't have time to spend hours arguing in favour of retaining a feature inside Gnome. Then perhaps you can see how developers of a desktop also do not have time to listen to every person arguing for every feature, or to maintain every possible feature that ever gets suggested, or even to maintain the current feature set indefinitely without removing something at some point. >The particularly awful disease the Gnome project has is the "rewrite everything" disease. No software project can retain features if they do large rewrites from scratch every major release. You are confusing refactoring with rewriting. Very few parts of it have been rewritten from scratch. Refactoring things isn't a "disease". Refactors are actually necessary to keep the project in working order and to pay off technical debt so you can actually have a chance to implement new features while retaining older ones. >The end result is that features the developers personally don't care for don't get implemented in the new release. This is the same as any project. If there are no developers to maintain the feature then it stagnates and eventually gets cut. It makes no sense to be pissed off at this one particular project about this, every project is bound to do it eventually. If your company ever went through layoffs then you can probably name some times you have had to do this at work.