Why is xscreensaver removed in favor of gnome-screensaver

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 2/16/06, David D. Hagood <wowbagger at sktc.net> wrote:
> Nor did I ever say you were a member of the Gnome devel team -
> rather, I pointed out the attitude that has become prevalent in the
> Gnome  universe, as quoted in several commentaries online

Please stop dragging general misconceptions about how the gnome
development team responses into this discussion. I am not a member of
the gnome development team and how i response to people has no bearing
on the attitudes of the gnome developmers. I am a user who regularly
uses fluxbox,xfce,gnome,fvwm and infrequently uses kde and cde
depending on the system defaults in question.  Will you ascribe my
personal failings to represent the attitudes of  developers of xfce as
easily.. i hope not.  I fully admit I'm a rude, insensitive, uncaring
know-it-all bastard and what desktop I use has little to know
influence on that fact.

> And again, you start from the assumption that the Gnome way is right,
> and if I don't agree I must be the one who is wrong. Perhaps these
> "long-term benefits" are NOT benefits?

Why has this discussion become a black and white discussion of right
versus wrong?  Having the ability to switch users from the unlock
dialog isn't a benefit? Being able to implement "lockdown" per-user
configurations at the system level as the system admin on a multuser
network easily isn't a benefit? I'd appeciate knowing your reasons for
seeing these things as non-benefits. I promise not to feel stupid when
you point out a downside that is obvious once I'm told about it.

>
> Mind you, I think there ARE good ideas there. However, I am just
> pointing out why I responded to your response as I did - you started off
> with an assumption that you were not questioning. In my 20 years of
> designing software, one thing I've learned is to ALWAYS question
> your
> assumptions.

Indeed, I also assumed that participating in this discussion might be
worthwhile. I was clearly mistaken.

> Perhaps not such a long name, but yes, one that is more neutral than
> GnomeScreensaver. How about xscreensaver-ng?

I don't think reusing the name "xscreensaver" is appropriate, and will
lead to confusion that this is a closely related fork of the original
codebase when it is not.

--jef"a rose by any other name will not only smells as sweet, but will
also appearently lead to less reactionary behavior by people who have
a deep seated bias against roses"spaleta