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This is an example of a much bigger issue in the FOSS world. In theory, FOSS puts the user in control - don't like one of the software author's choices? Just c
by red_admiral 4y ago
This is an example of a much bigger issue in the FOSS world.
In theory, FOSS puts the user in control - don't like one of the software author's choices? Just change it yourself!
In practice, this is another example for the long list of cases where it took someone with coding skills several hours to fix what's simply a style choice (what colour should the font be). Worse still, that effort was needed simply to get back to how it used to work by default, and it might need further effort to maintain every time the relevant code in the application is updated.
(It's not that this doesn't happen outside the FOSS world as well - see trying to get the title bar of the active window ONLY to take the theme color in Win11, for example - but to the extent that FOSS people claim one of their advantages over commercial software is end-user customizability, I hold them to a higher standard here.)
- j1elo 4y agoNo, FOSS is not about putting the user in literal _control_, and that concept is misused a lot to look down on the idea. FOSS is about ensuring the user has the right to be in control whenever/however they want. Most users won't, ever, but the right is there, if they wanted and knew how to, and that is what FOSS accomplishes. Comment [1] happens to reply a similar thing. In short, this whole issue with qBittorrent cannot be summarized better than this other comment [2]: developers who have no idea about design should not change design. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34244160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34244160 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34244201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34244201
- pessimizer 4y agoNo part of FOSS involves non-programmers being able to fix the code.
- ric2b 4y agoIt does, even Richard Stallman says that FOSS also benefits non-technical users because they can hire someone to make a change/fix to the program. Crowdfunding would probably be the most realistic way of that happening.