Gnome: The ethics of saying just "no"

[Morbius1]

That's Gnome development team for you. I still wonder what's happened to them. It's like if they were replaced with doppelgangers at some point. They just can't be the same people who created Gnome classic because nothing they've done since 2010 makes any sense.

I may have an answer to that

Everyone who knew how everything works started looking at iOS and came to the realization that Objective-C really isn't all that different from what they have been using and now work for companies requiring mobile apps for their services / products. They can now make a decent living and pay for things like food and shelter.

There was even an article about those old Jedi masters ( old is relative here - they're talking about > 37 ) and how they seem to outperform their younger counterparts on mobile development: http://developers.slashdot.org/story...arn-new-tricks

[Linuxratty]

Are they aiming for a blank window?

Yes. The less they have to do, they better they like it. I wonder why they even bother.

[cflow]

What is the technical support question? There are no questions, just observations, and this is the place for 'comprehensive debate'. Good luck.

I guess the Ubuntu/Linux/OS chat area is for technical support questions then. But I'm fine with my thread here anyway.

---

Back on topic, I wonder what Gnome shells user here would say about this. I don't mean merely to bash Gnome shell itself in this post - in fact, the blogger did try this desktop environment and liked using it over KDE. The issue here was this bug report situation that I thought was intriguing.

[mips]

Linus ranted and raved about feature removals a long time ago wrt Gnome

[Roasted]

I do find it interesting how at one point in time Ubuntu was criticized for branching off from Gnome and creating their own interface. Now that some time has passed and ultimately some background-workings from then floated to the surface, it's the best decision they could have made. I really can't imagine the frustration behind running a company with one goal and vision in mind and having a road block such as that. Open source can really go one of two extremes in terms of success or failure, and it's largely dependent upon the mindset and work ethic of those individuals involved to carry it one way or another.

[|{urse]

Gnome is a freaking mess. Installing it is like opening up a mystery box anymore.

[arsenic23]

The people running Gnome now are self important and arrogant to the point of comedy. I gave up on the lot of them during Gnome3's design phase, and after trying the release I quickly switched to xfce. You know something is wrong when the light GTK environment is more customizable and feature rich then the heavy. Also after using it for a while I fell in love with the xfce panels, those things are wonderful.

---------------
EDIT: I more then likely should have began with 'The people ruining Gnome' instead of 'running'.

[buzzingrobot]

Very disturbing:

http://spiralinear.org/forum/discuss...y-on-bugzilla-

I mean, every action like this, placed towards users, should show some reason as to why. A developer saying "no" - and nothing else - sounds rather condesending to the end users to me. It also shuts down any comprehensive debate - and creates this struggle that the blog article describes...

I don't agree that removing a feature is a bug. Filing what amounts to a complaint as a bug is not appropriate.

The one-word response was also not appropriate. The bug should have been rejected and closed with a simple explanation that the feature was deliberately removed.

Many people argue that the Gnome team has somehow violated an obligation to pay attention to "people", with "people" defined as whoever is complaining at the moment. That's invalid, but the "No" response is strikingly bad PR that just provides more fuel for that kind of ranting.

FOSS developers are under no obligation to let random online posts and complaints serve as design guideposts for their software. Yet, I see many, repeated, complaints that developers in the XYZ project are failing to abide by a perceived obligation to modify their designs and their code on the basis of anecdotal online chatter.

That kind of obligation does not exist. Even if it did, how are developers and designers supposed to determine what specific opinion is held by an actual majority of their users? FOSS offers no such method. Online chatter is, by definition, created by self-selected people with particular agendas to advance.

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

i have noticed little features disappearing from gnome applications since i started ubuntu back in 9.04, at this point i try to avoid gnome applications as in next release i probably want be able to use the application anymore due to missing features, i cant even get the firmware version in the gnome disk utility anymore, the firmware version is important with SSDs becoming more popular. (NRV, this was restored in ubuntu 13.04, it is not in 12.10)

All i ask from a media player is minimize to tray, start minimized, play on start, shuffle, reshuffle on start, and allow me to control it via the command line using keyboard shortcuts

[cflow]

I don't agree that removing a feature is a bug. Filing what amounts to a complaint as a bug is not appropriate.

I don't consider feature removals bugs either, but there should be ethics in doing them: The developer should also mention the feature removal in the release notes for users to understand. In this case, the terminal developer didn't even mention it, and I couldn't find the documentation of it in the gnome webpage. Looking at the git summaries of gnome-terminal didn't clearly mention the removal either...