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."

Comments

Heh

[Neil Blender]

I love it when people gripe about free software.

Case in point: Spatial Nautilus

[Raul Acevedo]

Note: I've been using GNOME since 0.30, so I have a certain sense of loyalty to it.

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.

Let us thank, not criticize, Gnome Developers

[deacon]

I mean, really, WTF is wrong with some people?

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.

Re:Let us thank, not criticize, Gnome Developers

[nine-times]

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.

Yeah, that reasoning might have worked if their front page had been a disclaimer like: This is just my hobby. Don't rely on it.

However, the Gnome foundation has partnered up with other OSS products and developers, and the developers have been pushing to be taken seriously as a real DE fit for general use. They've encouraged other developers to use their DE as a platform, and generally acted as though they they don't intend their project to be some hobby software for their own use, but that they want people to use it. They've even marketed themselves as being the most user-friendly and user-centric DE for unix-like systems.

So, OSS foundations, don't promote your project that way unless you want users to expect you to pay attention to them. Developers, don't participate in projects of that sort if you can't handle users wanting the project to be useful. In the most general terms I can think of, don't publish your work on the internet if you can't handle criticism.

I mean, what if, in response to the impending flames this post will receive, I wrote, "I just wrote this for free! How dare you publicly disagree when I spent my own free time slaving away typing up clever little articles of writing, and GAVE them to you!" Wouldn't that be a little silly? I mean, I posted it for you to read of my own free will, in a forum that allows for responses. What should I expect?

Re:Don't feed the troll

[JPriest]

So if you are not writing code of OSS then you are not entitled to an opinion? Also, she does contribute to things like look/feel/UI design etc.
There is more to creating applications than filling in code but your attitude does explain why things are the way they are Eg. "If you want it, write it, if you won't write it, STFU"

You're not "customers"

[the_skywise]

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.

Re:Don't feed the troll

[networkBoy]

I think the GP posters thought was not so much writing code as contributing in some way. If she took the time to do a comprehensive user survey and analyze the data, presenting the most relavent topics to the Devs in such a way that substantiates what the users need and why, then she'd not be trolling.

Feel free to correct me if I totally missed the point on this though.
-nB

A more accurate title would be...

[Troy Baer]

"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.