7 ms·

I don't understand this reasoning. Sure, not everyone is a design genius. But, if you're not (and how do you know?), what are you supposed to do? It just seem

I don't understand this reasoning. Sure, not everyone is a design genius. But, if you're not (and how do you know?), what are you supposed to do? It just seem like you're arguing that everyone (except Jobs) should not try to have any control over the project they're working on at all, but just implement whatever any user requests. However, that is not gonna produce anything useful, nor will it help you when what different users want conflict, and its most definitely not a good way to allocate the sparse resources there is.

acabal 14y ago
Well, you can tell if your users start complaining--Gnome 3--or your products aren't successful. Users of Gnome 3 are being very vocal with genuine (and some not-so-genuine) complaints about how the design process is going and what the final product is like. Since the Gnome guys are now in the cult of design dictatorship, they are always right no matter what--even at the expense of their own users--and their users are wrong to complain. The result will be an ultimately failed product. (I would bet money that at some point in the next 2-5 years Ubuntu will fork significant parts, if not the entirety, of Gnome--and when the 500lb gorilla picks up his toys and leaves, the game's over.) Yes, a product must have some kind of vision, and at the end of the day someone's got to implement it, regardless of their talent. But humble designers recognize complaints and the needs of their users. Design dictators ignore them, because the dictators are by definition always right. That's a bad attitude to have, because most designers aren't perfect--but the human ego loves having control and loves being right. When people are told that success means being opinionated, it's a very easy thing to agree with, because everyone thinks their own opinions are the best.
- krakensden 14y ago
  The gorilla is Red Hat, not Canonical- they do far, far more development work, all up and down the stack. Canonical doesn't even make money yet...
  - keithpeter 14y ago
    Certainly so. RHEL 7 is based on Fedora 18, and will ship with Gnome 3.6 including the shell as default. It will be interesting to see how many corporate clients start using fallback on their desktop clients... and I saw a note somewhere that XFCE may be made available in the RHEL 7 repositories. I say this as one currently using Gnome Ubuntu Remix on a couple of machines to see what 3.6 is like - its actually quite nice in my opinion.
  - acabal 14y ago
    They are, in server-side stuff--but not in desktop stuff, which is what Gnome 3 is specifically targeting. Ubuntu is far and away the largest desktop distro, so losing their support would be a pretty big blow to the adoption of the Gnome project as a whole--regardless of who's funding it. This is becoming even more true as Steam will probably only support Ubuntu. Games are where the desktop users are. Gnome can spin its wheels and bask in its own self-righteous awesomeness but if the users aren't there, then it's all for nothing.
    - krakensden 14y ago
      Canonical has the larger userbase, but their development work is pretty limited- basically, they do the Unity shell and their app-store. Most desktop related development (hardware support, DBus, core desktop libraries like PolicyKit, GTK+) happens inside Red Hat. If they want to offer better binary compatibility between releases... well they can't, because they don't employ those guys. If they want to support a new OpenGL release... well they can't, they don't employ those guys. Ubuntu is crazy popular, but people really underestimate the extent to which they are an epiphenomenon.
      - dfrey 14y ago
        Ubuntu conveniently distributes and packages desktop Linux. The software that they distribute may be written by a person employed by Red Hat, but I don't care. I just want to run a version of Linux that is easy to use, configure and upgrade.
    - 14y ago
- kaolinite 14y ago
  I would bet money that at some point in the next 2-5 years Ubuntu will fork significant parts, if not the entirety, of Gnome... The replacing of Gnome has already begun. They replaced Gnome Shell with Unity and GDM with LightDM. They're using Qt more often now as well (I believe Ubuntu One is Qt and I know that Unity2D is too), so it seems that perhaps GTK+ will be next.
  - steevdave 14y ago
    The parts that aren't already replaced are heavily patched and can't really be used by a default install.
  - crowleysimon 14y ago
    I wouldn't say GTK+ is next, unity2D is discontinued and Ubuntu One is only made in QT because they use the same client for windows and mac.
tspiteri 14y ago
My gripe is not with Gnome removing features that are useless, but with Gnome removing features that are useful just to influence user behaviour. The case I have in mind is the lack of an option to leave the screen on even when inactive for a long time, because the developers want to discourage that power usage pattern (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647828 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647828). Typically users do not need to leave a screen always on, so the default behaviour should not be to leave the screen always on, but if a user needs to leave a screen always on for whatever reason, why should they have to install an extension? It is the Gnome designers' job to design the system to their taste, but it is not their job to try to influence the users.
- curiousdannii 14y ago
  What's going on? Do the GNOME devs think they have a mandate to reduce the world's electricity consumption?
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    It does appear to be the case. What amazes me is with all their infrastructure and libraries was that they never made a word processor from their own framework.
    - jsight 14y ago
      AbiWord was fairly close to this, and I believe it was part of Gnome Office at one point (along with Gnumeric, which was a pretty good spreadsheet app for a while).
      - ISL 14y ago
        Amen. Gnumeric was my open-source spreadsheet of choice for a few years.
chris_wot 14y ago
Those "sparse resources" were busy removing functional code such as the location toggle button. Ironically, this caused many hours of discussion, time in which those "resources" could have been doing something else. Often the functionality removed was very useful. Want to keep your screen on all the time? Can't - you have only got an hour. Write an extension or patch the program to get around the issue (VLC). Want beautiful screensavers? it was removed, and needs to be reimplemented. What was that about not taking up the time of scarce resources again?
- thwarted 14y ago
  The projects have attracted people who want to debate and be heard, who want to communicate with words rather than with works. Remember when code was king?

acabal 14y ago

Well, you can tell if your users start complaining--Gnome 3--or your products aren't successful. Users of Gnome 3 are being very vocal with genuine (and some not-so-genuine) complaints about how the design process is going and what the final product is like. Since the Gnome guys are now in the cult of design dictatorship, they are always right no matter what--even at the expense of their own users--and their users are wrong to complain. The result will be an ultimately failed product. (I would bet money that at some point in the next 2-5 years Ubuntu will fork significant parts, if not the entirety, of Gnome--and when the 500lb gorilla picks up his toys and leaves, the game's over.) Yes, a product must have some kind of vision, and at the end of the day someone's got to implement it, regardless of their talent. But humble designers recognize complaints and the needs of their users. Design dictators ignore them, because the dictators are by definition always right. That's a bad attitude to have, because most designers aren't perfect--but the human ego loves having control and loves being right. When people are told that success means being opinionated, it's a very easy thing to agree with, because everyone thinks their own opinions are the best.

krakensden 14y ago
The gorilla is Red Hat, not Canonical- they do far, far more development work, all up and down the stack. Canonical doesn't even make money yet...
- keithpeter 14y ago
  Certainly so. RHEL 7 is based on Fedora 18, and will ship with Gnome 3.6 including the shell as default. It will be interesting to see how many corporate clients start using fallback on their desktop clients... and I saw a note somewhere that XFCE may be made available in the RHEL 7 repositories. I say this as one currently using Gnome Ubuntu Remix on a couple of machines to see what 3.6 is like - its actually quite nice in my opinion.
- acabal 14y ago
  They are, in server-side stuff--but not in desktop stuff, which is what Gnome 3 is specifically targeting. Ubuntu is far and away the largest desktop distro, so losing their support would be a pretty big blow to the adoption of the Gnome project as a whole--regardless of who's funding it. This is becoming even more true as Steam will probably only support Ubuntu. Games are where the desktop users are. Gnome can spin its wheels and bask in its own self-righteous awesomeness but if the users aren't there, then it's all for nothing.
  - krakensden 14y ago
    Canonical has the larger userbase, but their development work is pretty limited- basically, they do the Unity shell and their app-store. Most desktop related development (hardware support, DBus, core desktop libraries like PolicyKit, GTK+) happens inside Red Hat. If they want to offer better binary compatibility between releases... well they can't, because they don't employ those guys. If they want to support a new OpenGL release... well they can't, they don't employ those guys. Ubuntu is crazy popular, but people really underestimate the extent to which they are an epiphenomenon.
    - dfrey 14y ago
      Ubuntu conveniently distributes and packages desktop Linux. The software that they distribute may be written by a person employed by Red Hat, but I don't care. I just want to run a version of Linux that is easy to use, configure and upgrade.
  - 14y ago
kaolinite 14y ago
I would bet money that at some point in the next 2-5 years Ubuntu will fork significant parts, if not the entirety, of Gnome... The replacing of Gnome has already begun. They replaced Gnome Shell with Unity and GDM with LightDM. They're using Qt more often now as well (I believe Ubuntu One is Qt and I know that Unity2D is too), so it seems that perhaps GTK+ will be next.
- steevdave 14y ago
  The parts that aren't already replaced are heavily patched and can't really be used by a default install.
- crowleysimon 14y ago
  I wouldn't say GTK+ is next, unity2D is discontinued and Ubuntu One is only made in QT because they use the same client for windows and mac.

tspiteri 14y ago

My gripe is not with Gnome removing features that are useless, but with Gnome removing features that are useful just to influence user behaviour. The case I have in mind is the lack of an option to leave the screen on even when inactive for a long time, because the developers want to discourage that power usage pattern (https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647828 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647828). Typically users do not need to leave a screen always on, so the default behaviour should not be to leave the screen always on, but if a user needs to leave a screen always on for whatever reason, why should they have to install an extension? It is the Gnome designers' job to design the system to their taste, but it is not their job to try to influence the users.

curiousdannii 14y ago
What's going on? Do the GNOME devs think they have a mandate to reduce the world's electricity consumption?
- chris_wot 14y ago
  It does appear to be the case. What amazes me is with all their infrastructure and libraries was that they never made a word processor from their own framework.
  - jsight 14y ago
    AbiWord was fairly close to this, and I believe it was part of Gnome Office at one point (along with Gnumeric, which was a pretty good spreadsheet app for a while).
    - ISL 14y ago
      Amen. Gnumeric was my open-source spreadsheet of choice for a few years.

chris_wot 14y ago

Those "sparse resources" were busy removing functional code such as the location toggle button. Ironically, this caused many hours of discussion, time in which those "resources" could have been doing something else. Often the functionality removed was very useful. Want to keep your screen on all the time? Can't - you have only got an hour. Write an extension or patch the program to get around the issue (VLC). Want beautiful screensavers? it was removed, and needs to be reimplemented. What was that about not taking up the time of scarce resources again?

thwarted 14y ago
The projects have attracted people who want to debate and be heard, who want to communicate with words rather than with works. Remember when code was king?