Developers responsibillity to Fedora Users

[Craig White]

On Wed, 2011-09-28 at 04:58 +0200, Kernel Guardian wrote:
> After nearly 25 years of life with Unices, almost 20 years with Linux,
> nowadays I'm pretty confused about future of Linux.
> Allow me to elaborate a bit.
> I'm convinced that the Kernel will survive and be better in the long
> term future. RedHat and IBM as biggest contributors within it and
> Linus as maintainer (leader, mogul ... ) give me faith in the future
> of Linux. GNU fits well on the top of kernel. That is a rock solid
> base for every Linux distribution.
> Last 7 years all of my desktops, laptops, servers are locked down on
> RHEL and derivatives and Fedora. I saw many changes, bad and good
> ones. But last one, with fairly unfinished, not even close to, so
> called Beta release, Gnome 3 DE is the worst what is happened.
> On the other hand, I like the new look, many promising features, ...etc.
> So, what is bad?
> The bad thing is attitude of Gnome (developers, promoters, project
> leaders) toward end users. They decide to abandon Gnome 2 and put
> distribution maintainers in awkward position. Maintainers must use
> (buggy, unfinished, untested) Gnome 3 if they want to use Gnome DE in
> their distribution. Breaking compatibility at API level with previous
> version put application developers in unenviable position. This is
> almost unacceptable! ( because of that I understand Ubuntu leaders )
> >From that point of view I wonder on whose payroll are these gentlemen?
> This is not good way to promote OpenSource way of life, I'm presume.
> I will agree with opinions that DE need some changes, fresh ideas.
> Frankly, I don't see anything new that does not exists in other OS/DE
> combination. It is good to have DE for mobile devices, tablets ....
> etc. But that could be a related project with main Gnome, isn't it? I
> use laptop only when I'm out of office. Desktop with 2 monitors is my
> main workplace. ( someone would say "he is old-fashioned guy" ). No
> one can convince me that all Gnome developers use only laptops. I
> would like to see their workplaces.
> I was shocked when I read the response of one of the Gnome developers
> in a discussion about maximise/minimise buttons. I paraphrase the
> answer: "we where not able to model use cases for them, because each
> user uses them in different ways" ????? (I'd rather not comment this)
----
GNOME developers have pretty much always developed in their own vacuum
so this is hardly new. Whether people agreed or disagreed with their
choices was never really important to them. 

That said, it's important to note that on the subject of UI, it's clear
that there really isn't just one way and it makes sense to me that the
project works within their own vision and delivers without getting
bogged down by the expectations of many people who will disagree among
themselves about how things should be done.

There is no one way, There are many choices for a DE and GNOME is but
only one of them. The future of Linux doesn't hinge on GNOME and at
best, GNOME's new direction can only help push the boundaries of
where/how Linux is used.
----
> At the end, using of Free Software is liberty/freedom of choice. There
> are many opportunities: KDE, XFCE, LXDE .... They have been created as
> response from people who thought differently. This is a waste of
> energy, time, resources, even money. As an old elephant, I could
> recall the story about end of XFree86 project.
----
I don't think the XFree86 is actually relevant here but the project is
still going.

KDE, XFCE and others have been around for quite some time and while you
might call it a waste of energy, time and resources, it's a clear
indication that UI is not monolithic and competing methods/concepts are
valid and quite useful and represent real choice to Linux users. They
type of choice that you don't get and will never get from one of the
proprietary OS vendors.

The one thing that could kill off Linux (or at least the Desktop
version) would be to have a single UI that in an attempt to be all
things to all people actually pleases no one at all.
----
> This is not the way how we can attract more young people who will
> use/make/change OpenSource software.
----
Monumental leap of a conclusion with no evidence to support it.
----
> Regardless of all these current events about Gnome, I will continue to
> teach my students about importance of OpenSource, FSF, and freedom of
> choice.
----
I think you are missing an important point about Open Source... The
freedom to innovate involves the freedom to develop as you see fit. The
reason much of the open source software exists is because someone has an
itch and he writes the software to scratch it. When he gets other people
to join in, they decide on their common goals for the project and
develop towards those goals. If others decide to take it in a new
direction, they 'fork' the software.

There's no great mystery and the GNOME project is working entirely as
open source software models should operate.
----
> P.S. I like to excuse myself about my English in front of linguistic purists :)
----
No problem with your English whatsoever.

The only problem that I have is with the logic that the fate of GNOME
represents the fate of Open Source or Linux - it doesn't.

Just look at the feedback on the new Macintosh OS X Lion or Windows 8
preview... there is a lot of griping about the changes to the UI. It's
certain that regardless of the OS, changes to the UI will always raise a
bunch of complaints and the more drastic the changes, the louder the
complaints. That's not really surprising.

People who appreciate open source should love the bold, fresh ideas that
GNOME 3 represents, even if they don't actually intend to use it. It
aspires to encompass the computer regardless of form factor. It dares to
innovate. It spreads the umbrella of implementation that protects it
from those who believe they can patent virtually everything by providing
evidence of prior art. It demonstrates that the innovation doesn't only
emanate from Cupertino (though some of us knew that) or Redmond
(puhlease).

But to get to your point that 'GNOME has abandoned GNOME 2 and put
distributions in an awkward position' - perhaps you are confused. Let's
just stay on topic, Fedora. Fedora is very clear on this... Fedora's
core value is to implement new versions as early as reasonable to help
drive the development and provide valuable feedback. GNOME 2 is done and
if a sufficient number of people want to maintain it for security
issues, it can continue on as it always has. But Fedora is giving us a
glimpse of the future by implementing the leading edge now... that is
and has always been the core value of Fedora. There's no awkwardness or
confusion there.

Craig


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