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GNOME Ignoring its Own Users?
Jonathan writes "Some editorials were posted on the web the last few days about GNOME and its apparent lack of interest on user feedback, especially when GNOME pitches itself to follow a 'users first philosophy' in their press releases. OSNews started with an editorial about market research or lack thereof, Expert-Zone posted another one on how OSS must learn to take responsibility on its great success."
Apparently CowboyNeal still cares what Eugenia thinks, but why the hell should anyone else?
/. and it is ALWAYS Eugenia trolling, this time is no exception.
Lets not feed the trolls, ok? The only time I see OSNews is when it gets a mention on
Democrat delenda est
If you don't like it!
I mean, isn't that one of the selling points of OSS?
If Gnome wants to be that "closed" to its users, the users are free to fork the build, switch to KDE or build their own from scratch.
(Granted it's not very PRACTICAL, but what are you going to do? Sue them for breach of contract? It's FREE!!!!)
I love it when people gripe about free software.
Real, for-profit development succeeds mostly by doing something the customer wants. That's the real-world bar that's been set by "the rest of the user community". By failing to listen to and develop to their requests, OSS risks becoming perceived as elitist, which will hamper wide-spread adoption.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Now GNOME developers cannot implement features requested by all users. No one does that!. not even microsoft. If a feature is asked widely enough and it seems interesting i think the developers would implement them. I know somewhere in the mailing list someone said "a feature will be implemented only if the developers want to implement it" but i dont think they mean it that way . Probably what they mean the idea should be interesting enough to one of the developers too and should be worth it. Imagien a groups of people asking for clippy now would any dev want to implement it just because people asked for it ?
because the story so obviously belongs at -1, Troll
I am trolling
-1 flamebait
-0 true enough
+1 funny
Uh, what exactly has the project fixed? What exactly has the project released?
The Eclipse project actively encourages its users and clients to log bugs and change requests as well as vote and comment on them through their Bugzilla.
IIRC, this concept was encouraged by ERS in Cathedral... It would be nice to see other mainstream OSS projects such as GNOME actively embrace this model of community involvement.
That being said, I think GNOME has done some wonderful things in the past, and as far as I'm concerned the desktop improves with every release, keep up the good work!
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
These days its automatically assumed that if you're developing open source, its for the huge community of users out there that are NOW starting to come to your platform. Despite wanting more applications that fulfill needs for the majority of people out there, why does it seem like there is this attitude that these open source developers HAVE TO DO it. They are not blind fools out to serve the masses. I assume a large portion of them develop specific components to be noticed so that they can get a job in the industry. Sure they want to promote open source but they're not going to like it if people say develop these features , and he/she doesn't want to .
Now we're getting more people who just want clones of Windows and Windows applications and want those tools to be free.
Open source is not just about developing free stuff. Its its own self-fullfilling serving product life cycle where not only you but someone else can keep adding onto the product and its open for anyone to modify.
Open source does not mean things have to be FREE in the monetary sense. Not even in the FREE FREE sense if its developed with some other open license than the GPL.
Its also the choice of open source developers on whether they want to be business oriented always taking feedback from users or just doing what they want. However if you don't pay for it, you really have no right to complain about when Developer X doesn't do something.
... well, mostly because I am one, but I was perplexed why anyone would disagree with the following statement:
"A feature will be implemented if and only if there is a developer who wants to implement it"
Why should someone be compelled to develop software he doesn't want to develop? When you're forced to do something you don't want to do, that's called work, not a hobby. That isn't what open source is about.
If you want a feature put in an open source product, either do it yourself, wait for someone to do it, or pay someone to do it for you. But never ever ever expect someone to do it for you for free.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
A case in point was the whole debacle over what was hailed as a great, new achievement in usability for Nautilus: the spatial metaphor.
What a disaster. It was amazing to me that it took a whole month or two of users complaining and bitching left and right, before the developers decided to add the ability to easily disable spatial mode. Agreed, they finally added it, but it was like pulling teeth. The "we developers know better than the users" attitude was very stricking.
I don't care whether you prefer spatial or not, the merits of spatial are a separate argument. But so many people complained about it, so vehemently, that it's amazing it took more than say a few days before they patched a simple menu accessible toggle. Today you will still get people saying stupid things like "well you could always disable it in gconf". Sigh.
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
What is an open-source developer's responsibility to his users?
I mean, sure, there are instances where someone might through together a little tool for himself, and open-source it just in case someone else might have a use, in which case I'd say his responsibility is practically zero.
However, the matter seems different to me when you have these relatively large foundations running major projects that are used in a large percentage of available distributions. Imagine FOSS does take over the world someday, and the Linux/Gnome combination accounts for a large percentage of the desktop market-share, what then? Let's pretend 90% of desktop users are dependent on Gnome to get things done-- do we still say that Gnome developers have no responsibility to address the needs of Gnome users?
If the Gnome development community would say yes, I'd probably hope that someone fork the project ASAP, someone who is willing to take responsibility for being user-centric. That goes for any major project. As a bit of an open-source advocate, I hope developers of major projects are always keeping their users in mind. If not, I'll have to go back to advocating closed-source proprietary companies insofar as they recognize "users" to be an important part of the equation, and not just "that annoying whining sound".
Ignoring their users? That is completely inexcusable. If I was one of their paying customers I would certainly--oh, wait a minute... Maybe those users should just stop bitching when they get something for free? Fork up or shut up, that's just how free software works, you know. Do you want anything changed? I am sure that the developer whom you have hired to add your features will do it in no time. Oh, you don't want to pay any money? Tough luck then, because GNU is free as in freedom, not free as in cheap-ass-users-love-to-bitch-and-moan. Welcome to the Real World.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
The Gnome developers have slaved away for years to GIVE us a really nice desktop environment.
Yet, some people have decided that isn't good enough, and want the Gnome developers to become personal servants to fulfill their whims and fancies.
We should be thanking the Gnome developers, not whining that they don't cater to our personal brain-fart of the day. An easy alternative for them is to not provide Gnome at all.
So stop whining and STFU.
Oh, ya, I am not a software developer of any kind. But if I gave away some sort of widget I made, and people whined that this free widget should be pink not purple, I would tell them to FO.
in the free market, you choose the product that does best what you want. You might give suggestions to the maker and they might implement them depending on an effort/reward analysis for them (not you). If enough people stopped using their product to cause them concern, they'd make the changes most requested.
And open source is different how?
I've noticed a half frightening and half amusing tendency of people to consider the failure to satisfy their personal twitches as some world-ending event. These people typically whine that *they* will not use the product because it is not exactly what *they* want as if their boycott will bring all injustice crumbling down.
Get some perspective on your relative meaninglessness on this planet. Choose what works for you and offer suggestions on improvement with more thought than just *gimme gimme* or use something else.
Do you guys really think that FORK IT is the right answer to every FOSS problem?
This isn't about condeming Gnome or about forking Gnome, this is about discussing how to improve Gnome.
Not really. The point was that there's a whole mailing list dedicated to Gnome marketing, and that desktop-devel is not the appropriate place to discuss her idea.
Looking at the progress Gnome has made in the last few versions, its hard for me to even see where this is coming from. Yes, we're still missing a menu editor, and yes, that is a problem. Overall, though, each recent version of Gnome has been an improvement over the past, and the useability is only getting better.
If you look at the event that started this whole article, it was essentially Eugenia extrapolating "We'll do that if there's a developer who wants to" into "We don't care about what our users want". Hardly what I'd consider a logical step.
I read OS News daily because it provides a good roundup of news I like - much like Slashdot - but in the past few months, I've come to dread any article with Eugenia's name on it (much like many here dreaded Michael's name popping up). If things anywhere don't work like she expects them to, it's suddenly a huge overwhelming problem with Open Source in general - and usually, they aren't even problems at all - just spats where the developers of whatever she was using didn't agree with her suggestion/request.
I was a KDE user when I started using linux as my desktop three-four years ago, and it's still a good desktop. Nothing wrong with KDE, and I don't want to take this in that direction. But I switched to Gnome with 2.6 - it just felt better to me, and 2.8, 2.10 are continuing to improve. At least for this user, Gnome is doing exactly what I want it to.
is that everybody is free to change the software to his or her needs. When a desired feature isn't implemented, the right way to go is not to bitch that nobody implemented that feature *in their free time*, but to hire a developer to do it.
It's competition in a free market baby! Take it or leave it.
Now I was pretty content when I used GNOME (I fell for a Mac...).
First, open source developers are increasingly describing their projects as user-oriented, enterprise-ready, etc. Now, I have nothing against hobby development in which users are not a concern because it's purely for enjoyment. Heck, given the choice I'd ignore users' requests and just work on projects of interest to me in my job if I could. But if you're going to do that, be honest about it. Don't describe your software as user-oriented, because it's not. Make it explicit that it's a hobby project, and you have no real interest in the desires of your user base.
Second, while ignoring users may be a lot more pleasant than listening to their concerns and addressing them, it's *very* ultimately bad engineering practice (then again, job titles aside most software developers are NOT engineers!), and reinforces a selfishness and arrogance that can bleed over into one's professional work. I've seen this happen in others, I've seen it happen in myself a few times. If you're going to open your project up to the world, you're limiting your own experience and opportunities by maintaining it as a navel-gazing exercise.
Finally, considering user requests can move development in an unexpected direction. Sometimes it's the wrong direction, and I think it's OK to answer a request with "that's a bad idea, and here's why". But sometimes after going in that direction, adding some features, maybe refactoring a bit, you look back and say "why didn't I think of that?" Any community of developers develops blind spots and biases, and sometimes these can be substantial enough for outside input to benefit everyone.
Now, of the above I think the first reason is the most compelling. You're under no obligation to do anything to improve your project or your skills or wisdom as a developer. However, I think you *are* obligated to describe your project honestly.
You're "fans".
That's the "dark underbelly" of OSS. The creators of Gnome didn't necessarily do it for money. They did it for love of implementing their vision and you're along for the ride.
It's a "good idea"(tm) to listen to your fans and adjust designs accordingly. You have to do this if this is your bread and butter for making your livelihood. (IE when you're getting paid for this) But if you feel strongly in your vision over fans complaints than that's your prerogative. As a fan, your choice is to switch to something else or change a fork to the way you like it or pay somebody to do it for you. The code is completely and utterly open for you to do this. (That's the bright side of OSS)
If Gnome pisses off enough people that they stop using Gnome then something better may come along. But they're not bound to community responsibility.
- Motivation - without this (or a contract binding you) the work inevitably languishes
- Ability - An idea may be great but if it's not already something I can do or think I can learn to do, it's not feasible for me to do it.
- Resources - Other things (health, family, paying jobs) have higher priority. Is it realistic of me to volunteer for this?
I frequently hear from users who want something but have no idea how it would be implemented. They throw out the idea (e.g. "a voice driven paint program!") and instantly expect the same fervor that struck them will strike me.What's worse is when they don't take "No" as an acceptable answer. There are so many times I've seen people be bullied in to saying "Yes" and then only get a half-implemented, half-assed, crappy result. Thus disappointing everyone involved, hurting their own reputation, and discouraging other developers who want to work on the same idea if they have to follow in your failed precedent.
I like development ideas. I really hate it when I have developed a new skill or mastered a new api and I have zero idea about how I could usefully work with it. But for working on someone else's idea, the motivation, ability, and resources have to be there or I'm just going to end up screwing yet another pooch. (so to speak)
But I seriously wonder why anyone uses Gnome. The "less is more" approach to interfaces somehow has resulted in a lot of bloat. Many of the developers truly are elitist pricks.
Be honest - does anyone reading this think Havoc is *not* a sociopath?
KDE is hellbent on cloning the look and feel of windows???? When people make arguements like this about kde I really wonder if they've ever used KDE at all. Have you ever heard of themes you can make kde look however the hell you want so your arguement holds no water.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
"GNOME developers ignore Eugenia Loli-Queru's crackpot ideas"
The author of that OSNews article is trying to push her own agenda. She seems to think that GNOME should be doing focus group research, and has fairly specific ideas of how that should be done. When some of the GNOME devs pointed out that her ideas weren't workable in their opinions, she took it personally and kept trying to push her ideas -- without making any significant effort to refute the devs' points, I might add. Finally, people got so fed up with this discussion (which is pretty off-topic for the mailing list where it took place to start with) that they told her to take it elsewhere.
Underlying it all is a sense of entitlement, a feeling that her ideas are so good and so important that the GNOME devs should implement them without further discussion. Since she's neither a paying customer nor able/willing to develop the features she wants herself, the GNOME devs chose to ignore her... and rightly so, in my book.
"My life's work has been to prompt others... and be forgotten." --Cyrano de Bergerac
She offered her opinion on a public, high-traffic website. It even got posted to Slashdot.
It's up to the devs if they want to pay attention to it or not.
Translation: "If you don't like it, unless you're a software developer with knowledge of the internal codebase of GNOME, fuck off! We don't cater to user requests, we only cater to developers who can fork source trees on a whim."
Assholes, indeed.
Open Source is no different from proprietary software. In the long run the features that people pay money to implement get implemented. Eugenia is just upset because the Gnome folks aren't particularly interested in courting existing Gnome users. Gnome doesn't want Eugenia's input, it wants your CIO's input, and then after that it wants your grandmother's input.
Gnome already went down the path of listening to hackers, and they ended up with a ridiculously configurable desktop with a Window manager (sawfish) that was scriptable in lisp. Now, I don't have anything against lisp. Heck, I spend the better part of my day in Emacs. The problem is that hackers want an entirely different kind of system than normal users (Emacs is an excellent example of this). As Gnome simplifies its desktop folks like Eugenia get all upset. They liked the Gnome with a hojillion options, and they wish they could force the project back in that direction (without writing code, of course).
End user input is pouring into Gnome at a fantastic pace. It just isn't coming in from bugzilla, or from the mailing lists, or some other "hacker" interface, but rather it is coming in from the marketing departments at Red Hat, Novell, and Sun. Those guys are talking to actual customers and finding out ways to sell them Free Software. Then they march back to their respective companies and they give the hackers their marching orders.
Do I miss some of the cool Gnome features that have been removed or hidden? Yeah, I do. I miss the easy access to readline completion in file open dialogs, I don't like having to hit "SHIFT" to turn snap to Window on, and piles of other little niggles. However, I would rather have Gnome listen to normal customers and succeed than listen exclusively to hackers and fail. Push comes to shove I will always have Emacs...
There's no question that Gnome 2 is easier for my wife to use, and that's what really matters.
Why is parent modded as funny? I find it to be spot on. I used Gnome since 0.x and all the way up to 2.6. Then I got so utterly fed up with the developers "knowing what I wanted" and removing every single nice feature, that I first tried KDE and then just went for Windows XP instead.
:)
I mean... seriously. Why would I use Gnome when it's just a bad imitation of Windows and OSX? The one thing I really, really loved was the tab completion in the file dialogs, but then they decided to remove it. Fine, don't have it as the default, but at least give me the choice to fscking enable it!
I haven't felt much Gnome Love since 1.4.
As for Windows XP... It feels like sleeping with the enemy and I really *hate* not having Linux underneath. But when I'm not allowed to have any tab completion no matter what (and don't give me that "You can just press CTRL-L crap), I might as well use the best desktop OS out there.
So what should they do?
Combine the flexibilty of KDE with the looks of Gnome. We need a desktop that's both good looking and has functionality for power users (as well as regular users). The easy fix: Jimmac should switch to KDE
eh, more than that.
GNOME sucks, KDE sucks, Windows sucks, OS X sucks.
I don't think a decent desktop evironment exists. Just like there is no decent OS, no decent programming language.
Meh, I've used just about everything that exists (including mainframe stuff and everything in between) we're all using crap. And I mean that seriously.
There are really great points in this discussion, and in the articles that brought us to this discussion. Something that has been left out, however, is *who* is the user?
The article by the editor of ZDnet has intelligent things to say about design process, mainly that devs should be designing for their users, and not themselves. This in and of itself is an absolutely true statement. Where the trouble comes in is that software development does not really follow the standard model of design. It *can't*. When I design something for my users, ideally I would be as detached as possible from this user group, and then do research to find out what they want. I would observe them, interview them, take pictures, and use all sorts of techniques to build a picture of how the interaction works. Then I would build and synthesize, etc etc etc.
This model is *inherently* flawed for most software developers. It's like asking someone who spends all day in a tractor to redesign his tractor, while driving it. Yes, the tractor driver knows a heck of a lot about tractor driving. The main purpose of focusing on your user group, instead of designing for yourself, is to design truly innovative things, and not just generalize your user group to death.
So, to ask these tractor drivers (the devs) to design for other people is like asking your tractor driving to forget the fact that he's been driving a tractor for 12 years, and knows it inside and out.
From a commercial product perspective, maybe this needs to happen. Maybe we need to find a whole bunch of designers who have never used a computer and ask them to study this user group, and then design an interface that is truly innovative. But, on the other hand, maybe having software that reflects what the hardware is like is inherently better. I don't know, I play both sides of this game. Either way, people should be more tolerant and respectful of both Eugenia's and the devs' perspectives on the issue, since they are both technically right.
The real problems are:
See the cartoon at the top of this page
GNOME got to a point where something had to be done to take it in a specific direction. The direction it took stands to benefit the most people in the most profound way. Personally I'm glad that they moved ahead the way they did. The KDE community is currently locked somewhat in stasis, because there are too many opinions, too much entropy, and no single consensus as to how to move forward. I'm not talking about making small changes, those are happening, and KDE is implementing some great features, I'm talking about the lack of major new directions for KDE such as what is happening in GNOME. That will change, a consensus will arise, and KDE will move forward in a major new direction at some point in the future.
Until then, try taking GNOME 1.0-GNOME 1.2 and extrapolate the situation that existed then to produce a hypothetical view of the way things would be now if a few core GNOME hackers hadn't done something. It would be a real mess of mismatching pieces. It might be a hacker-boy-cool mess, but it would be a mess. GNOME-2.10 is clean, lean, and most importantly consistent, and a better fit for how our subconscious processes understand information.
Besides, if they're the ones writing the code, I say they can do whatever they want with it.
For crying out loud moderators, please do your homework before modding idiots and the uninsightful drivel that they post up. Sheesh!