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> Yes, it's neat that you can still compile and run ancient Win32 programs on modern Windows, but maintaining all of that compatibility is a burden Microsoft wa

by acdha 2y ago

> Yes, it's neat that you can still compile and run ancient Win32 programs on modern Windows, but maintaining all of that compatibility is a burden Microsoft was able to bear. The open source community is still struggling to try to provide a compelling desktop experience without this burden. I always find it interesting how people talk about this as if Microsoft is just flipping a button rather than spending many millions of dollars on engineers to maintain compatibility. I’m reminded of the systemd arguments where the number of people who are vehement about the old ways being better just never seem to have time to show up to support them. This kind of stuff is expensive and the way to influence the decisions is to show up and chip in.

0x457 2y ago
Well, that's because deep enterpise users have closed sourced software that cannot be updated (pick any reason, it doesn't matter which one) and they need that compatibility. MS needs to keep them vendor-locked to keep making money off them. That's not something that happens in Open Source Software world.
- acdha 2y ago
  Yes. My point was just that it’s not free but it’s weird that done people expect the same level of support from open source projects which don’t receive anything like that much money.
akira2501 2y ago
> just never seem to have time to show up to support them. They're supported just fine. The authors feel no need to bend over backwards to fulfill oddball distribution requirements. > This kind of stuff is expensive Yet it all came into existence from open source developers who were paid nothing. Then a bunch of commercial distributions appeared. That's why it's expensive. They're twisting the community for their own profits rather than for broad improvement of the system as a whole. > to influence the decisions is to show up and chip in. I don't want to influence things or be required to. I would prefer if people who had "influence" just weren't part of the community. They're exceptionally disruptive and often not focused on users but on their own stature.
- jchw 2y ago
  > The authors feel no need to bend over backwards to fulfill oddball distribution requirements. This is close to the truth in my opinion, but slightly off in two ways: - It's not just distributions, it's also other software, especially desktop environments. - The "oddball requirements" are not so odd and mainly based on real world problems users run into. There are problems that SysVinit will never try to solve, yet that there is no other obvious place to solve except for pid 1, so systems that continue to run SysVinit will just never have solutions for those problems. And I get it: You don't care. However, the people who actually work on free software often do. You don't have to love systemd, D-Bus, Polkit, UPower, UDisks, Pipewire, Wayland or any other number of pieces of software, protocols, or specifications, but you have to be in pretty strong denial to not see what lead to them. The entire Linux desktop can't be built on janky shell scripts that parse CLI tool output forever. Eventually, people want to move on and build more complete solutions to problems. Distributions exert pressure on the ecosystem because they're the ingress for all of the user pain. A vast amount of issues reported go through them first, and then it's up to them to figure out what to do about it. So if you have a problem with anyone, it's probably not actually the distributions themselves, but the kinds of things the users of those distributions are complaining about.
- acdha 2y ago
  > Yet it all came into existence from open source developers who were paid nothing. Then a bunch of commercial distributions appeared. That's why it's expensive. They're twisting the community for their own profits rather than for broad improvement of the system as a whole. This is bizarrely counter-factual. There are community contributors but an awful lot of open source is contributed by people who are paid to work on it (which, to be clear, is awesome!), even in the case of Debian. It’s also odd in the context of Qt which has been commercially supported since the beginning when Trolltech first released it in 1995. There’s always been the idea that if you want long-term support for old versions you should pay for it rather than expecting the open source community to spend time on old code. > I don't want to influence things or be required to. I would prefer if people who had "influence" just weren't part of the community. They're exceptionally disruptive and often not focused on users but on their own stature. You’re welcome to disrespect them but they have influence because they show up: in open source your voice carries weight in proportion to your contributions. It’s also inaccurate to say they’re not focused on users: you might not think you need a given feature but you’re not the only user out there. Alternatives are there but most people aren’t using them because they don’t feel the need to switch as strongly as you might.

by acdha 2y ago

0x457 2y ago

Well, that's because deep enterpise users have closed sourced software that cannot be updated (pick any reason, it doesn't matter which one) and they need that compatibility. MS needs to keep them vendor-locked to keep making money off them. That's not something that happens in Open Source Software world.

acdha 2y ago
Yes. My point was just that it’s not free but it’s weird that done people expect the same level of support from open source projects which don’t receive anything like that much money.

akira2501 2y ago

> just never seem to have time to show up to support them. They're supported just fine. The authors feel no need to bend over backwards to fulfill oddball distribution requirements. > This kind of stuff is expensive Yet it all came into existence from open source developers who were paid nothing. Then a bunch of commercial distributions appeared. That's why it's expensive. They're twisting the community for their own profits rather than for broad improvement of the system as a whole. > to influence the decisions is to show up and chip in. I don't want to influence things or be required to. I would prefer if people who had "influence" just weren't part of the community. They're exceptionally disruptive and often not focused on users but on their own stature.

jchw 2y ago
> The authors feel no need to bend over backwards to fulfill oddball distribution requirements. This is close to the truth in my opinion, but slightly off in two ways: - It's not just distributions, it's also other software, especially desktop environments. - The "oddball requirements" are not so odd and mainly based on real world problems users run into. There are problems that SysVinit will never try to solve, yet that there is no other obvious place to solve except for pid 1, so systems that continue to run SysVinit will just never have solutions for those problems. And I get it: You don't care. However, the people who actually work on free software often do. You don't have to love systemd, D-Bus, Polkit, UPower, UDisks, Pipewire, Wayland or any other number of pieces of software, protocols, or specifications, but you have to be in pretty strong denial to not see what lead to them. The entire Linux desktop can't be built on janky shell scripts that parse CLI tool output forever. Eventually, people want to move on and build more complete solutions to problems. Distributions exert pressure on the ecosystem because they're the ingress for all of the user pain. A vast amount of issues reported go through them first, and then it's up to them to figure out what to do about it. So if you have a problem with anyone, it's probably not actually the distributions themselves, but the kinds of things the users of those distributions are complaining about.
acdha 2y ago
> Yet it all came into existence from open source developers who were paid nothing. Then a bunch of commercial distributions appeared. That's why it's expensive. They're twisting the community for their own profits rather than for broad improvement of the system as a whole. This is bizarrely counter-factual. There are community contributors but an awful lot of open source is contributed by people who are paid to work on it (which, to be clear, is awesome!), even in the case of Debian. It’s also odd in the context of Qt which has been commercially supported since the beginning when Trolltech first released it in 1995. There’s always been the idea that if you want long-term support for old versions you should pay for it rather than expecting the open source community to spend time on old code. > I don't want to influence things or be required to. I would prefer if people who had "influence" just weren't part of the community. They're exceptionally disruptive and often not focused on users but on their own stature. You’re welcome to disrespect them but they have influence because they show up: in open source your voice carries weight in proportion to your contributions. It’s also inaccurate to say they’re not focused on users: you might not think you need a given feature but you’re not the only user out there. Alternatives are there but most people aren’t using them because they don’t feel the need to switch as strongly as you might.