Ooops, we made Linus leave : (choices and punishment)

[Arthur Pemberton]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Eli Wapniarski
<eli at orbsky.homelinux.org> wrote:
> On Tuesday 27 January 2009 21:57:09 Arthur Pemberton wrote:
>
>> That's the problem, people want stuff that they can't provide
>> themselves and goes against what the ones doing the work decide to do.
>
> Forgive me Arthur but that's just plain rude. Software is meant to be used by
> users.

I think you forget the developers are users too. Isn't it a bit
selfish to expect them to do things how you want it?

> If I'm misunderstanding what you're implying by the your post then
> please forgive me. But even the most intelligent and best informed group of
> people can make mistakes in judgment. The most famous examples is the Bay of
> Pigs fiasco.

Mistakes sure. But I'm referring to times like with the 3.6 v. 4.0
decision. There was not enough manpower to do both. Those doing the
work decided to go with 4.0. That has to be respected.

> User's can't provide the stuff that developers can provide because they aren't
> developers.

It's kinda like going about second guessing your doctor the way I see
it. Feel free to disagree with him and go somewhere else, but verbally
abusing the doctor and their decisions is at best rude. The KDE-SIG
team doesn't deserve any of that.

> And developers should expect some negative feedback when they
> don't meet users expectations, or go off in directions that proves to be in
> error regarding the user experience. This is not a slight regarding the hard
> work and skill that goes into development.

And users, not being developers, need to give the developers some
leeway while they attempt do to what they do best. The KDE team said
that the big changes were necessary for the future of KDE. Being just
a user, and having no evidence to the contrary, I have to believe
them.

> And no... you can't please all the people all the time. But us users are the
> ones that actually use that which is developed

There you go again... forgetting that the developers use the software
as well. These guys haven't been handed requirement docs by customers
that they are duty bound to fullfill. Most of these guys are doing it
for the love and passion of it.

> and we should be respected.
> That we didn't provide more feedback is our error. But on the other hand, we
> really didn't have that much experience on which to base an opinion other than
> the quality and skill that went into KDE 3.x.

As a user, I am suggesting that is a backwards way to look at it : I
use the software you provide to me (for free no less), so I should
have first say as to how you must do your work.

> More than likely because of the great programming that went into KDE 3.x and
> the hype surrounding 4.x we all were expecting the first release to on par.

Then you have misled by first parties. I stayed in tune with what was
coming out of KDE and Fedora-KDE, and I never expected such.

> And a lot of us were disappointed that it wasn't. And in many ways still
> isn't. But it is definitely getting there.

Fine.

> To paraphrase Rex in a previous post. There really isn't any point to crying
> over spilled milk.
>
> Eli

I look at it this way : some people attitudes may cost KDE developers,
and that will hurt me as a user one way or the other. Because if was a
FOSS developer, there is only so much public abuse that I would be
willing to take. Most of the criticisms leveled thus far were not
nearly constructive.

-- 
Fedora 9 : sulphur is good for the skin
( www.pembo13.com )