7 ms·

If that's such an important feature, feel free to add it.

benj111 3y ago
Well yes. But that isn't an option for most people. I suppose it goes to the heart of what you want open source/free software to be. If you're happy for it to be a niche thing only for 'geeks' that pov is legitimate. If you want the wider world using it then such answers aren't reasonable.
- memefrog 3y ago
  I don't want it to be anything. Free software is what it is. People work on what they want to work on. Some people make software for others to use. Most, I think, make software for themselves to use. Then you have people making commercial software that they can sell support contracts for. And there are people making free software so they can write academic papers.
  - benj111 3y ago
    >I don't want it to be anything Your comment implicitly indicates a certain world view. Like saying, you don't mind people not working, ignoring the fact there aren't any jobs or unemployment benefits. Ie it's for those that have the ability to write their own code. Or people that have the ability to pay for the specific feature they want. If you're happy with that, fair enough, but that is the implication.
    - memefrog 3y ago
      No, your framing is incorrect. Free software is, by its very nature, open for anyone to use or contribute to. If you don't know how to program, then you can learn. You can pay someone to do it, or convince someone to do it some other way. This is how all human relations operate. It is not specific to free software.
      - benj111 3y ago
        And as with my job example, the labour market is free for anyone to join. But stopping at that and taking a laissez-faire attitude is a position with implications. Just like failing to switch the junction and allowing the train to run over X people. You can't say "I didn't do anything" you didn't, and X people are now dead.
        memefrog 3y ago
        The labour market is not a free market, but a highly regulated one in most places. There is a strong argument that government intervention is much more a cause of than a solution to unemployment. That's a separate political debate of course, but it isn't as simple as "laissez-faire attitude bad". Every position you take has implications of one kind or another. It's a trade-off, and not an easy answer. >Just like failing to switch the junction and allowing the train to run over X people. You can't say "I didn't do anything" you didn't, and X people are now dead. Our law has an established distinction between acts and omissions. You are responsible for your acts. If you act in a way that harms another, you are (prima facie) responsible. If you omit to do an act, and that act may have saved another person from harm, you are (prima facie) not responsible. So actually yes, if you fail to switch a junction and a train runs over 1000 people you are (prima facie) not responsible. Of course if your job is to supervise the junction, it would be. Or if you took responsibility for doing so, or if you make a representation that you would do it and others reasonably relied upon it. Lawyers and judges didn't just pull the act/omission distinction out of thin air. It's the way that the law has evolved because it actually handles situations that arise in practice in a just and workable way. All that is to say, I disagree that you are necessarily responsible for someone's death if they are tied to a railway track and they're run over by a train, and you stood by and didn't save them. You may be in some circumstances, but in reality nobody is going to actually just stand there for no reason. They will omit to do so for some other reason: they might be paralysed by fear, they might have some other conflicting responsibility, etc. The responsible party is the guy that tied them to the train tracks in the first place. Let's focus our attention on that. The reason this came up is that you seem to think that someone is doing something wrong if they don't use their programming talents to add features that non-programmers have expressed a desire to have added to free software. Maybe that isn't actually your position and I have misunderstood it. But if it is, I disagree strongly. If someone is capable of adding CMYK support to GIMP but doesn't do so despite the clamouring of the masses, I do not think they're doing anything wrong. There are always other things they could be doing with their time, whether it's lying in a hammock listening to Pink Floyd, or sitting on a beach reading a novel, or sitting on a couch eating fried food and watching daytime TV, or, of course, contributing in some other way to some sort of free software project that they're more interested in and which is more useful to them. I don't think any person has a responsibility to write free software just because some other random people would benefit from him or her doing so. That's why I don't like the framing of (paraphrasing) "if you want it to just be for geeks, that's fine, but that's what you're saying". It's not that I want free software to just be for geeks. I don't have any preference over who should or shouldn't use free software. It's not my place to say who should or shouldn't use it, because that's up to them. But I don't think that anyone has any kind of obligation, be it moral or legal or otherwise, to do so. I think people that choose to write software they won't enjoy themselves but which will benefit others are probably doing a good thing. It's like planting a tree that will take so long to grow that you will never enjoy its shade, to absolutely butcher that famous phrase. But I think ... I was about to say 'there are plenty of legitimate reasons not to do so'. But it's not even that. I don't think there is such thing as an illegitimate reason not to do so. People should do what they want, in accordance with their obligations to the people around them, not based on what I or you or some other internet person thinks they should do.
criddell 3y ago
The opportunity cost is too high.
adhesive_wombat 3y ago
This is a extremely reasonable attitude to have, as a FOSS maintainer. For someone who doesn't write C at a "GIMP maintainer" standard (maybe I'm not even a programmer and just want to make pictures) it will be far more cost effective to chuck a few hundred dollars at Adobe than spend person-years learning and working enough to get that kind of feature in, or funding the development. And then while doing that learn C++ to a standard to get your topological naming rework into FreeCAD via OpenCASCADE. And so on. Amortised over the everyone, it's a tiny cost relative to what Adobe costs each person, but that's the open source curse: you can't easily scrape up 10,000 $10 donations to fund development work worth millions in the end (to other people). I don't really have a solution other then grind onwards.
- memefrog 3y ago
  A large number of C programmers can write code at that level. But over the many, many years that this supposed problem has existed, not one has stepped up to do it. Many other problems have been solved with open source software, many of them much harder than this. So maybe the fact it hasn't been done indicates it's not really that important.
  - adhesive_wombat 3y ago
    The problem is the intersection between C programmers competent and tenacious enough to drive it though, and those who really care about CMYK image editing. Maybe both large populations, but the overlap? And also the population of people who make that their number one priority and not, say, working on LibreOffice.
    - memefrog 3y ago
      The overlap is large enough for GIMP and Krita and Inkscape and dozens of other free software tools to exist. There's overlap between competent C programmers and accountants (GNUCash, ledger, hledger), and between competent C programmers and lawyers, and between competent C programmers and typesetters, and between competent C programmers and desktop publishers, and between competent C programmers and the target audience for every other open source tool. It seems easier to assume that it just isn't a big deal. I don't really understand the issue myself, but it seems like the simplest explanation. It would be strange for this to be the one random area where 'competent C or C++ programmer' and 'domain expert' doesn't have an overlap. I mean maybe there's a pattern here with some other areas that lack good free software? I don't know. People complain about other 'creative' software lacking good free software tools but I think that's usually due to a lack of familiarity rather than a lack of quality in the software itself. Creatives seem to be more bothered by UI they're not used to than others are.

Well yes. But that isn't an option for most people. I suppose it goes to the heart of what you want open source/free software to be. If you're happy for it to be a niche thing only for 'geeks' that pov is legitimate. If you want the wider world using it then such answers aren't reasonable.

memefrog 3y ago
I don't want it to be anything. Free software is what it is. People work on what they want to work on. Some people make software for others to use. Most, I think, make software for themselves to use. Then you have people making commercial software that they can sell support contracts for. And there are people making free software so they can write academic papers.
- benj111 3y ago
  >I don't want it to be anything Your comment implicitly indicates a certain world view. Like saying, you don't mind people not working, ignoring the fact there aren't any jobs or unemployment benefits. Ie it's for those that have the ability to write their own code. Or people that have the ability to pay for the specific feature they want. If you're happy with that, fair enough, but that is the implication.
  - memefrog 3y ago
    No, your framing is incorrect. Free software is, by its very nature, open for anyone to use or contribute to. If you don't know how to program, then you can learn. You can pay someone to do it, or convince someone to do it some other way. This is how all human relations operate. It is not specific to free software.
    - benj111 3y ago
      And as with my job example, the labour market is free for anyone to join. But stopping at that and taking a laissez-faire attitude is a position with implications. Just like failing to switch the junction and allowing the train to run over X people. You can't say "I didn't do anything" you didn't, and X people are now dead.
      - memefrog 3y ago
        The labour market is not a free market, but a highly regulated one in most places. There is a strong argument that government intervention is much more a cause of than a solution to unemployment. That's a separate political debate of course, but it isn't as simple as "laissez-faire attitude bad". Every position you take has implications of one kind or another. It's a trade-off, and not an easy answer. >Just like failing to switch the junction and allowing the train to run over X people. You can't say "I didn't do anything" you didn't, and X people are now dead. Our law has an established distinction between acts and omissions. You are responsible for your acts. If you act in a way that harms another, you are (prima facie) responsible. If you omit to do an act, and that act may have saved another person from harm, you are (prima facie) not responsible. So actually yes, if you fail to switch a junction and a train runs over 1000 people you are (prima facie) not responsible. Of course if your job is to supervise the junction, it would be. Or if you took responsibility for doing so, or if you make a representation that you would do it and others reasonably relied upon it. Lawyers and judges didn't just pull the act/omission distinction out of thin air. It's the way that the law has evolved because it actually handles situations that arise in practice in a just and workable way. All that is to say, I disagree that you are necessarily responsible for someone's death if they are tied to a railway track and they're run over by a train, and you stood by and didn't save them. You may be in some circumstances, but in reality nobody is going to actually just stand there for no reason. They will omit to do so for some other reason: they might be paralysed by fear, they might have some other conflicting responsibility, etc. The responsible party is the guy that tied them to the train tracks in the first place. Let's focus our attention on that. The reason this came up is that you seem to think that someone is doing something wrong if they don't use their programming talents to add features that non-programmers have expressed a desire to have added to free software. Maybe that isn't actually your position and I have misunderstood it. But if it is, I disagree strongly. If someone is capable of adding CMYK support to GIMP but doesn't do so despite the clamouring of the masses, I do not think they're doing anything wrong. There are always other things they could be doing with their time, whether it's lying in a hammock listening to Pink Floyd, or sitting on a beach reading a novel, or sitting on a couch eating fried food and watching daytime TV, or, of course, contributing in some other way to some sort of free software project that they're more interested in and which is more useful to them. I don't think any person has a responsibility to write free software just because some other random people would benefit from him or her doing so. That's why I don't like the framing of (paraphrasing) "if you want it to just be for geeks, that's fine, but that's what you're saying". It's not that I want free software to just be for geeks. I don't have any preference over who should or shouldn't use free software. It's not my place to say who should or shouldn't use it, because that's up to them. But I don't think that anyone has any kind of obligation, be it moral or legal or otherwise, to do so. I think people that choose to write software they won't enjoy themselves but which will benefit others are probably doing a good thing. It's like planting a tree that will take so long to grow that you will never enjoy its shade, to absolutely butcher that famous phrase. But I think ... I was about to say 'there are plenty of legitimate reasons not to do so'. But it's not even that. I don't think there is such thing as an illegitimate reason not to do so. People should do what they want, in accordance with their obligations to the people around them, not based on what I or you or some other internet person thinks they should do.

criddell 3y ago

The opportunity cost is too high.

adhesive_wombat 3y ago

This is a extremely reasonable attitude to have, as a FOSS maintainer. For someone who doesn't write C at a "GIMP maintainer" standard (maybe I'm not even a programmer and just want to make pictures) it will be far more cost effective to chuck a few hundred dollars at Adobe than spend person-years learning and working enough to get that kind of feature in, or funding the development. And then while doing that learn C++ to a standard to get your topological naming rework into FreeCAD via OpenCASCADE. And so on. Amortised over the everyone, it's a tiny cost relative to what Adobe costs each person, but that's the open source curse: you can't easily scrape up 10,000 $10 donations to fund development work worth millions in the end (to other people). I don't really have a solution other then grind onwards.

memefrog 3y ago
A large number of C programmers can write code at that level. But over the many, many years that this supposed problem has existed, not one has stepped up to do it. Many other problems have been solved with open source software, many of them much harder than this. So maybe the fact it hasn't been done indicates it's not really that important.
- adhesive_wombat 3y ago
  The problem is the intersection between C programmers competent and tenacious enough to drive it though, and those who really care about CMYK image editing. Maybe both large populations, but the overlap? And also the population of people who make that their number one priority and not, say, working on LibreOffice.
  - memefrog 3y ago
    The overlap is large enough for GIMP and Krita and Inkscape and dozens of other free software tools to exist. There's overlap between competent C programmers and accountants (GNUCash, ledger, hledger), and between competent C programmers and lawyers, and between competent C programmers and typesetters, and between competent C programmers and desktop publishers, and between competent C programmers and the target audience for every other open source tool. It seems easier to assume that it just isn't a big deal. I don't really understand the issue myself, but it seems like the simplest explanation. It would be strange for this to be the one random area where 'competent C or C++ programmer' and 'domain expert' doesn't have an overlap. I mean maybe there's a pattern here with some other areas that lack good free software? I don't know. People complain about other 'creative' software lacking good free software tools but I think that's usually due to a lack of familiarity rather than a lack of quality in the software itself. Creatives seem to be more bothered by UI they're not used to than others are.