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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
I love it when people gripe about free software.
because the story so obviously belongs at -1, Troll
I am trolling
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
If you're in the "OSS will rule the world" crowd, you need to understand that in order to succeed, you will need to adapt to what users want, not the other way around.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
... 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.
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.
"Real, for-profit development succeeds mostly by doing something the customer wants."
And so Gnome, being the combined effort of real, for-profit companies like Novell, Sun, IBM, Red Hat and many others is... I'm sorry, what was your point there again?
"By failing to listen to and develop to their requests"
No, you see that's just the problem. Tools and systems like Gnome (which is a far-reaching set of specs, libraries and applications, which few of its users appreciate the value of, nor take advantage of beyond creating cute menus), are desgined for the needs of a huge and diverse community of users and user needs. Gnome satisfies the needs of its users....
AND THAT IS WHAT THE SLASHDOT CROWD HATES. We, here at Slashdot, are a microcosm of developers and geeks of various flavors. We have specialized needs, and we hate seeing out tools "watered down" by the needs of the average user.
That's fair, and I'm not saying that we should not push for our needs too, but face it: Gnome and KDE have both reached a level of popularity where your average Slashdotter is no longer the primary target-user. Cope.
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.
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.
"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