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>None of these projects owe anybody anything anyway Do I owe them anything? Do I owe them silence, or to not complain, or to not tarnish their name? Clearly a

>None of these projects owe anybody anything anyway Do I owe them anything? Do I owe them silence, or to not complain, or to not tarnish their name? Clearly as human beings we both owe each-other something, there is a social contract at play here. I'm sure you've seen the infamous "you have to decide if you're a gnome app or an everybody else app", and clearly that developer thought other projects owed them something. But if you're just going to say "well gnome is immune from criticism because they're (paid) open source volunteers", well then what's the point of even talking to anyone? It's an amazing example of a thought-terminating cliche. Somehow when I'm bad mouthing gnome I owe the gnome project my silent support though. It is a mystery.

QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
There's a difference between honest criticism and low-effort rage bait. Helpful critique is about settling differences and finding a common ground to move forward. It's not about getting mad at others and holding a grudge. Do your best to avoid being that kind of angry internet person with a chip on the shoulder. You also don't owe anyone anything but just remember what goes around comes around. If you spend your time amplifying mistrust and resentment, instead of trying to build and repair trust and appreciation for one another, then you'll always be in a miserable place where you can't trust anybody. And let me make it clear. I don't care if you honestly criticize GNOME or any other project. I'm pointing out that this style of angry, substance-free criticism is less than useless, it's actually damaging to you and everyone around you because it's the classic short-sighted us-vs-them mentality. It purposely discards the truth in favor of always looking for an "enemy" to blame for everything. Open source isn't a zero-sum game, acting that way is counterproductive towards getting what you want. >I'm sure you've seen the infamous "you have to decide if you're a gnome app or an everybody else app", and clearly that developer thought other projects owed them something. No, that's a bad faith misinterpretation of the statement. GNOME, Ubuntu and XFCE all have different APIs that conflict with each other. Acknowledging this fact isn't a demand that anyone owes anyone anything, it's simply a fact. If developers want to use these APIs they have to pick which ones they're going to use.
- traverseda 4y ago
  >I'm pointing out that this style of angry, substance-free criticism is less than useless There is a lot of substance in the various criticisms by people in this comment thread, now some of it is heated at this point and there's a lot of frustration involved, but there is a lot of legitimate criticism. If you don't believe me believe the SDL dev, or the LXQT devs (formally LXDE, but they had a falling out with gnome), or the many many other devs that do have legitimate criticism. There's a lot of legitimate criticism, it just keeps being dismissed as "well gnome can do whatever it wants". It can, but if it does then it should expect to lose social capital and good will. No one owes the Gnome project any good will, and it's rapidly burning through it's remaining supply. The good news is that it's a comparatively well connected and well funded open source project, so probably it doesn't need that much good will. on the topic of "finding a common ground to move forward", well that's almost exactly the advice I'd give the Gnome project in regards to rebuilding some of that social capital and good will. But I really do think the ball is in their court at this point, and the claims that they are un-interested in cooperation, or in any supporting the broader open source community, well I'd say that's fair. Most open source software has a certain amount of good will towards other open source software, SDL is a backbone of open source and if they ask you to please reconsider well then... you reconsider. They've helped the broader open source community out a lot so you help them out. But with gnome it's very clear that we're not all in this together. Gnome is one team, and the broader open source community is another team. They won't help us out, so why should we help them out. Even the basic appearance of compromise would help this out tremendously, something like "well this doesn't really help Gnome but we'll do it anyway" for a few relevant features. Make it a GSoC project or something. No one owes anybody anything but there is a social contract, and while gnome doesn't have to abide by it they do get to suffer the consequences of violating it. Mostly right now those consequences are people bitching on the internet and mostly not writing new stuff in GTK unless they're part of the gnome community.
  - QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
    I'm not the author of this blog post. If I was, I would tell you. >If you don't believe me believe the SDL dev, or the LXQT devs (formally LXDE, but they had a falling out with gnome), or the many many other devs that do have legitimate criticism. That isn't valid criticism because the whole reason that situation came about is because those devs also wanted to do what they wanted, and it conflicted with what GNOME wanted. No one's at fault here, it's just a normal healthy disagreement. When you start saying "I'm angry, this disagreement means the side I disagree with is shitty bad people, now they owe me" then you're the one pulling the discussion into an unhealthy, toxic territory. So please check yourself and avoid that. >It can, but if it does then it should expect to lose social capital and good will. >The good news is that it's a comparatively well connected and well funded open source project Again, it's really funny that you think any of these open source projects are well-funded or that they ever had social capital to spare. I've seen near constant trolling and bad faith accusations leveled at these volunteers for years, at the same time I've seen nearly all of them struggle with money, and comparatively few people willing to raise a hand to help out. Your problem here is you're not focused on helping rebuild any of this social capital. You're trying to take more of it away and replace it with nothing. It's destructive instead of constructive. I don't know how you can expect anyone to make progress here to rebuild when you're actively taking more of it away with the trash talk. >on the topic of "finding a common ground to move forward", well that's almost exactly the advice I'd give the Gnome project in regards to rebuilding some of that social capital and good will. But I really do think the ball is in their court at this point, and the claims that they are un-interested in cooperation, or in any supporting the broader open source community, well I'd say that's fair. Most open source software has a certain amount of good will towards other open source software, SDL is a backbone of open source and if they ask you to please reconsider well then... you reconsider. They've helped the broader open source community out a lot so you help them out. This paragraph is more meaningless fluff. Avoid this. "The GNOME Project" isn't a person that can just decide to do something. It's a loose group of volunteers working on what they want to work on. If an individual (for example, you) wants to go and start cooperating then they just do it. Continuously asking other people to do it for you is an empty gesture. It's time for you to stop thinking like you're a cop or a lawyer throwing accusations around and trying to calculate just how much social capital others have that you can take away from them. Instead think like a diplomat, think how you can help others reconsider and patch things up. Think how you can give back social capital to everyone around you including those you disagree with. Think how you can inspire others to do the same. That's how we make good community members who aren't perpetually starting and continuing these pointless fights with one another. That's how we avoid the toxic obsession with attacking all the small decisions made by some project, and instead we focus on uplifting all projects. >But with gnome it's very clear that we're not all in this together. Gnome is one team, and the broader open source community is another team. They won't help us out, so why should we help them out. Please, stop with this nonsense. Again you're viewing this as "GNOME vs SDL" when pitting these projects against one another has never been a reasonable way to approach this. These are just free projects on the internet, they're not in competition for anything. Maybe you think they're in competition for developer time, but they actually aren't. Developer time isn't fungible, you can't take a KDE developer and tell them to work on GNOME, or vice versa. They just won't do that. >Even the basic appearance of compromise would help this out tremendously, something like "well this doesn't really help Gnome but we'll do it anyway" for a few relevant features. Make it a GSoC project or something. They do actually do that for GSOC projects, you probably just didn't notice because they didn't do it for the few small areas you apparently care about. With GSOC the intern has to select the project they want to work on, or make a proposal themselves. If no intern ever wanted to work on it then maybe you can understand it was probably a bad idea or not that important or interesting? I should stress that the areas you're talking about are like less than 0.1% of the project as a whole. They might be high priority for you but they aren't for most other people. >but there is a social contract No, there isn't. The entirety of these projects could disappear off the internet tomorrow and nobody would do a thing about it. It happens all the time, developers lose interest and open source projects just die. The users might complain but they can't force any developer to do something they don't want to do. If you honestly believe there's a social contract, you would do better to take the first step and start helping everyone, instead of demanding that some volunteer does everything for you.

QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago

There's a difference between honest criticism and low-effort rage bait. Helpful critique is about settling differences and finding a common ground to move forward. It's not about getting mad at others and holding a grudge. Do your best to avoid being that kind of angry internet person with a chip on the shoulder. You also don't owe anyone anything but just remember what goes around comes around. If you spend your time amplifying mistrust and resentment, instead of trying to build and repair trust and appreciation for one another, then you'll always be in a miserable place where you can't trust anybody. And let me make it clear. I don't care if you honestly criticize GNOME or any other project. I'm pointing out that this style of angry, substance-free criticism is less than useless, it's actually damaging to you and everyone around you because it's the classic short-sighted us-vs-them mentality. It purposely discards the truth in favor of always looking for an "enemy" to blame for everything. Open source isn't a zero-sum game, acting that way is counterproductive towards getting what you want. >I'm sure you've seen the infamous "you have to decide if you're a gnome app or an everybody else app", and clearly that developer thought other projects owed them something. No, that's a bad faith misinterpretation of the statement. GNOME, Ubuntu and XFCE all have different APIs that conflict with each other. Acknowledging this fact isn't a demand that anyone owes anyone anything, it's simply a fact. If developers want to use these APIs they have to pick which ones they're going to use.

traverseda 4y ago
>I'm pointing out that this style of angry, substance-free criticism is less than useless There is a lot of substance in the various criticisms by people in this comment thread, now some of it is heated at this point and there's a lot of frustration involved, but there is a lot of legitimate criticism. If you don't believe me believe the SDL dev, or the LXQT devs (formally LXDE, but they had a falling out with gnome), or the many many other devs that do have legitimate criticism. There's a lot of legitimate criticism, it just keeps being dismissed as "well gnome can do whatever it wants". It can, but if it does then it should expect to lose social capital and good will. No one owes the Gnome project any good will, and it's rapidly burning through it's remaining supply. The good news is that it's a comparatively well connected and well funded open source project, so probably it doesn't need that much good will. on the topic of "finding a common ground to move forward", well that's almost exactly the advice I'd give the Gnome project in regards to rebuilding some of that social capital and good will. But I really do think the ball is in their court at this point, and the claims that they are un-interested in cooperation, or in any supporting the broader open source community, well I'd say that's fair. Most open source software has a certain amount of good will towards other open source software, SDL is a backbone of open source and if they ask you to please reconsider well then... you reconsider. They've helped the broader open source community out a lot so you help them out. But with gnome it's very clear that we're not all in this together. Gnome is one team, and the broader open source community is another team. They won't help us out, so why should we help them out. Even the basic appearance of compromise would help this out tremendously, something like "well this doesn't really help Gnome but we'll do it anyway" for a few relevant features. Make it a GSoC project or something. No one owes anybody anything but there is a social contract, and while gnome doesn't have to abide by it they do get to suffer the consequences of violating it. Mostly right now those consequences are people bitching on the internet and mostly not writing new stuff in GTK unless they're part of the gnome community.
- QUrprUd1nCeicw 4y ago
  I'm not the author of this blog post. If I was, I would tell you. >If you don't believe me believe the SDL dev, or the LXQT devs (formally LXDE, but they had a falling out with gnome), or the many many other devs that do have legitimate criticism. That isn't valid criticism because the whole reason that situation came about is because those devs also wanted to do what they wanted, and it conflicted with what GNOME wanted. No one's at fault here, it's just a normal healthy disagreement. When you start saying "I'm angry, this disagreement means the side I disagree with is shitty bad people, now they owe me" then you're the one pulling the discussion into an unhealthy, toxic territory. So please check yourself and avoid that. >It can, but if it does then it should expect to lose social capital and good will. >The good news is that it's a comparatively well connected and well funded open source project Again, it's really funny that you think any of these open source projects are well-funded or that they ever had social capital to spare. I've seen near constant trolling and bad faith accusations leveled at these volunteers for years, at the same time I've seen nearly all of them struggle with money, and comparatively few people willing to raise a hand to help out. Your problem here is you're not focused on helping rebuild any of this social capital. You're trying to take more of it away and replace it with nothing. It's destructive instead of constructive. I don't know how you can expect anyone to make progress here to rebuild when you're actively taking more of it away with the trash talk. >on the topic of "finding a common ground to move forward", well that's almost exactly the advice I'd give the Gnome project in regards to rebuilding some of that social capital and good will. But I really do think the ball is in their court at this point, and the claims that they are un-interested in cooperation, or in any supporting the broader open source community, well I'd say that's fair. Most open source software has a certain amount of good will towards other open source software, SDL is a backbone of open source and if they ask you to please reconsider well then... you reconsider. They've helped the broader open source community out a lot so you help them out. This paragraph is more meaningless fluff. Avoid this. "The GNOME Project" isn't a person that can just decide to do something. It's a loose group of volunteers working on what they want to work on. If an individual (for example, you) wants to go and start cooperating then they just do it. Continuously asking other people to do it for you is an empty gesture. It's time for you to stop thinking like you're a cop or a lawyer throwing accusations around and trying to calculate just how much social capital others have that you can take away from them. Instead think like a diplomat, think how you can help others reconsider and patch things up. Think how you can give back social capital to everyone around you including those you disagree with. Think how you can inspire others to do the same. That's how we make good community members who aren't perpetually starting and continuing these pointless fights with one another. That's how we avoid the toxic obsession with attacking all the small decisions made by some project, and instead we focus on uplifting all projects. >But with gnome it's very clear that we're not all in this together. Gnome is one team, and the broader open source community is another team. They won't help us out, so why should we help them out. Please, stop with this nonsense. Again you're viewing this as "GNOME vs SDL" when pitting these projects against one another has never been a reasonable way to approach this. These are just free projects on the internet, they're not in competition for anything. Maybe you think they're in competition for developer time, but they actually aren't. Developer time isn't fungible, you can't take a KDE developer and tell them to work on GNOME, or vice versa. They just won't do that. >Even the basic appearance of compromise would help this out tremendously, something like "well this doesn't really help Gnome but we'll do it anyway" for a few relevant features. Make it a GSoC project or something. They do actually do that for GSOC projects, you probably just didn't notice because they didn't do it for the few small areas you apparently care about. With GSOC the intern has to select the project they want to work on, or make a proposal themselves. If no intern ever wanted to work on it then maybe you can understand it was probably a bad idea or not that important or interesting? I should stress that the areas you're talking about are like less than 0.1% of the project as a whole. They might be high priority for you but they aren't for most other people. >but there is a social contract No, there isn't. The entirety of these projects could disappear off the internet tomorrow and nobody would do a thing about it. It happens all the time, developers lose interest and open source projects just die. The users might complain but they can't force any developer to do something they don't want to do. If you honestly believe there's a social contract, you would do better to take the first step and start helping everyone, instead of demanding that some volunteer does everything for you.