Updates next steps

William Jon McCann william.jon.mccann at gmail.com
Thu Apr 22 13:38:52 UTC 2010


Hi Christoph,

Your message is pretty offtopic for the fedora desktop list and has an
unnecessarily contentious tone.  I'm not sure why.  And it isn't cool.

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 5:27 AM, Christoph Wickert
<christoph.wickert at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, den 21.04.2010, 20:33 -0400 schrieb William Jon McCann:
>> Hi,
>>
>> So, that's cool.  I take it back - let's not limit pointless updates -
>> it is certainly a silly idea.  ;)
>
> IF they are pointless, they should be limited to 0. If they are just
> optional, there are still users who want the latest and the greatest
> versions. During the whole discussion about the update process we
> learned that this is one of the main reasons why many people prefer
> Fedora over other distributions. If this is pointless, I'm afraid we are
> a pointless distro. ;)

I'm sorry but I am not at all interested in rehashing that
fedora-devel discussion.  I am however interested in hearing thoughts
on how we can achieve the two things that I mentioned.

>> Jokes aside, this is what Jesse and ajax told me on IRC that we (the
>> project) had decided.  So I was just repeating it here.
>
> AFAIR "the project" has never decided anything like this. I am not
> saying that I'm against this idea, I'm just a little surprised.
>
>> Most of the time when I say "we" on this list I mean the people who
>> are interested in designing and defining the user experience of this
>> desktop thing.
>
> You mean this GNOME desktop thing, right? Please stop using the word
> "desktop" as a synonym for "GNOME".

Dude, please. You do realize you are sending a mail to the
desktop at lists.fedoraproject.org list?  So let's please not have this
level of conversation here.

> As this topic not only affects the (GNOME) desktop bug the whole
> distribution, I really think that it should not be discussed on the
> desktop list.

Ok, well, obviously I did.

>> Some of the time I refer to people who have some
>> expertise or opinions I respect in the area of experience design.
>> Other times I mean "I".  Which one I mean will depend on the
>> situation.  If that is too confusing then just assume I mean "I",
>> think carefully about the matter, and challenge me on it in a
>> constructive way.  (where constructive means "how you'd do it if you
>> had to and your reputation depended on it").
>>
>> We can continue to have discussions about having discussions about
>> making great things or we can just make great things.  Believe it or
>> not given the opportunity and the will - I know we can.  But dithering
>> is death.
>>
>> It is pretty clear that we want to make the user experience around
>> updates better for our users - now we need to do it.  There will be
>> people who don't agree (at least until we demonstrate it is better by
>> actually doing it) but we need to do it anyway.
>
> Sorry, but to me this attitude sounds arrogant. People "just doing
> something" - especially GNOME people - is not how community works and
> often is the source of a very unpleasant update experience.

Dude, I am pretty familiar with how this community works, thanks.
Design is a pretty arrogant thing - it is also a very difficult thing.
 And extraordinarily hard to do in the open.  But we do it.  And we
have to make very difficult and risky choices every day with everyone
in the world potentially a critic.  And we have discussions and
debates and we listen to everyone.  But at the end of the day we need
to make choices.  Those choices should get made by someone with
experience in the matter and willing to put their reputation on the
line for the choice.  And should be informed by and consistent with
the rest of the experience around the product.  That's that whole
meritocracy word we throw around.  And yes that is how our community
works.

> Think of the recent hal update that broke every desktop but GNOME in
> F13. It was not announced (at least not for F13) and it was pushed after
> the beta freeze only for the GNOME people to finish their hal removal
> feature. Is this your idea of just doing "great things"?

I am only talking about stable release updates here.  So, this isn't relevant.

> What is great for GNOME or for you as a maintainer is not necessarily
> great for others. This is why there needs to be a discussion instead of
> "just doing it".

One of the weighty responsibilities of a designer is to know a bit
about what makes things great for others.  That is really hard.  But
very important.  If that is done poorly repeatedly then the reputation
of the designer suffers.  So, there is a selfish motivation for this
kind of empathy.  It's sort of wonderful if you think about it.

There has been plenty of discussion.  Now, we just need to do it.  In
my opinion these issues are the number one (or two - maybe after the
installer) problem we have right now.  So, does my opinion matter more
than yours or Kevin's?  I don't know.  If we aren't able to solve the
problems that I'm trying to discuss here then probably not.

Jon


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