Developers responsibillity to Fedora Users

[Craig White]

On Tue, 2011-09-27 at 13:01 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On 09/27/2011 11:59 AM, Andrew Haley wrote:
> >
> > GNOME 3 is, to say the least, controversial. Ubuntu Unity hasn't had a
> > uniformly great reception either.
> Agreed. As I see it, both Ubuntu and Fedora's managements seem to be 
> addicted to the same "GUI/DE cult".
> 
>   They both seem to be missing that both "Gnome 3" and "Unity" are 
> aiming at a user-base, which is entirely different from the 
> corresponding distributions' user-bases.
> 
>   This new new-user-base likely is (mostly) satisfied, but many of these 
> distros' "old long term supporters and users" simply feel their so far 
> choosen distro's DE doesn't suite their needs anymore.
----
Ignoring that this thread originated from a irrelevant sentiment...

Being the default user interface for Fedora, GNOME is in the face of
most users and thus it's hardly surprising that when GNOME made vast
changes to their UI, there was a reaction.

Those who are familiar with the open source development process are no
doubt familiar with the 'Cathedral and the Bazaar' [1] and recognize the
importance to bring in many users into the development process as early
as practically possible.

Those who are familiar with the Fedora Project's stated 'Core
Values' [2] understand that Fedora 'first' is all about the Cathedral
and the Bazaar process. 

This discussion of 'user base' {new, old} - while it might somehow
satisfy your need to delineate the reactions really misses the point
that in order to advance the software, it needs more people using it and
reporting back in a useful, responsible way. These 'old' users as you
classify them should understand that if GNOME decides to do a vast
re-write of their project, that Fedora is going to include it.

[1] http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/
[2] http://fedoraproject.org/en/about-fedora



-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.