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

Don't feed the troll

[jmorris42]

Apparently CowboyNeal still cares what Eugenia thinks, but why the hell should anyone else?

Lets not feed the trolls, ok? The only time I see OSNews is when it gets a mention on /. and it is ALWAYS Eugenia trolling, this time is no exception.

Re:Don't feed the troll

[jmorris42]

No, she was always a troll. She has delusions of relevance, understanding nothing about how and why OS/FS is created.

If she had a clue and wanted to do something useful she would quit her bitching and DO something. If she doesn't think the GNOME devels are going in the right direction and end user needs aren't being met, then DO something, talk is cheap in the Open Source world, show us a willingness to get your hands dirty and people will want to talk.

Devels aren't generally focus group types, they aren't normally 'people' people. So why doesn't she do what she claims to be good at and talk to these unwashed masses of end users she claims to speak for, find out specifically what they are crying out for and make concrete feature requests backed up by these user's problems? Because that would be hard WORK and wouldn't generate nearly as many pageviews on her website, which is what her job really is; stirring the pot and generating lots of traffic. Think Dvorak without the star power that comes from trolling for ZD for decades.

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"

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

Re:Don't feed the troll

[jmorris42]

> So if you are not writing code of OSS then you are not entitled to an opinion?

Talk about an inability to read.....

I said she should quit her vague bitching and DO something. Given that the typical devel is lacking in 'people' skills, whining that THEY aren't running polls and focus groups to discover what the mythical 'typical clueless end user' wants is pointless. She, on the other hand, claims to undertand these people so if she wants things to improve she should get off her butt and act as an interface between the end users and devels. Talk to these users, learn what they actually suffer from a lack of and make specific feature requests. But even then she shouldn't get too offended when an idea gets shot down. Not being a devel she has no way of really knowing when a suggestion would be a major PITA or not.

Those who aren't willing to CONTRIBUTE to an Open Source/Free Software project are not entitled to an opinion. But those who do not write code can still contribute. They can test and report bugs, write documentation, maintain infrastructure, help work the mailing lists and answer the easy questions to free up the devels time, contribute storage & bandwidth, cash, etc. Bitching without a willingness to enter the trenches first isn't a positive contribution, but it does appear to generate pageviews.

Re:Don't feed the troll

[Elwood P Dowd]

So why doesn't she do what she claims to be good at and talk to these unwashed masses of end users she claims to speak for, find out specifically what they are crying out for and make concrete feature requests backed up by these user's problems?

It's a little closer to that than you might think. But the GNOME devs thought the work that she wanted to do would not have been particularly helpful to GNOME, nor effective in addressing her concerns. They told her so, and she disagreed.

She seems to think a web-poll would be a helpful way of doing market research for GNOME, and they don't. I tend to believe them. Even though they're the spatial browser idiots, I'll take their opinion over Eugenia's.

Re:Don't feed the troll

[Saxerman]

From TFA:

I was not happy from the answer I got from the Gnome developers: "A feature will be implemented if and only if there is a developer who wants to implement it."

And then she goes on to rant how Open Source developers need to cater to their users if open source is to 'succeed.' So, apparently Eugenia doesn't really understand how Open Source software development works. It's not a Leia^H^H^H^Hcommittee. All work is voluntary, which means, as the Gnome devel team pointed out, the only work that gets done is work the devel team feels like working on.

The Freedom OSS provides is the freedom to add features you want either by writing them yourself or paying others to do it. You're also free to whine to the devel team about the features you want... and they're free to ignore you. Freedom is like that.

Re:Don't feed the troll

[ophix]

she accuses the gnome group of the VERY SAME THING she herself does with osnews.com, completely ignore user requests.

users of osnews.com have been requesting minor and major improvements in the site's comment system and it has fallen on deaf ears. she actually goes out of her way to moderate down any such requests sometimes and gets pissy if you point out her own hypocrisy(sp?) hiding behind the mantra of osnews being a free service blah blah blah.

Re:Don't feed the troll

[Pentavirate]

She actually did offer to work with the devs to identify the features most requested. She offered to write a php script to take the feature requests from bugzilla and allow people for a period of time to vote for their favorite 3 requests. When she offered to do this work for the devs is when they came back with their infamous statement that the only way a feature will get coded is if a dev wants to do it (ie has a need for it personally).

All of this information is in the second article.

Re:Don't feed the troll

[trynis]

Those who aren't willing to CONTRIBUTE to an Open Source/Free Software project are not entitled to an opinion. But those who do not write code can still contribute. They can test and report bugs, write documentation, maintain infrastructure, help work the mailing lists and answer the easy questions to free up the devels time, contribute storage & bandwidth, cash, etc.

Or they can write a piece that brings the issue out, so other people get aware of the problem.

Bitching without a willingness to enter the trenches first isn't a positive contribution

I think it is, if it's bitching in a way that spurs discussion. Unfortunately, so far it's mostly been a meta discussion here on slashot.

Re:Don't feed the troll

[bonch]

So, apparently Eugenia doesn't really understand how Open Source software development works.

Uh, apparently she does, or else she wouldn't be complaining about it.

Essentially, what you're saying is it's okay if user requests get ignored becuase "that's how OSS works." Well, then don't bitch when someone writes up an article complaining that their requests aren't heard!

Developers want to appear as putting out products that focus on usability, but don't want to deal with the users who are working with their products. Sorry, if you don't want to hear any complaints about your product, keep it on your private network and never release it. Just because it's a volunteer effort doesn't mean squat. Everything is a volunteer effort--it's just that in the commercial world, you also get paid for your work so there's more incentive to stay working.

Re:Don't feed the troll

[ShieldW0lf]

with their infamous statement that the only way a feature will get coded is if a dev wants to do it (ie has a need for it personally).

If you offered me enough money, I'd want to do it. Even if I didn't need it personally. But then, once you'd paid me for it, it would be yours (and everyone elses) forever, not just until I've forced the version you paid me for into obsolescence.

I refuse to use that software, because I respect myself and my choices. I prefer to shed down the right money for the right commercial software (open or closed), than to use half-baked, half-implemented OSS software made by deaf developers.

Rather than throwing a temper tantrum like a 4 year old and buying commercial software just to spite those arrogant bastards that keep giving away what they want to give away instead of what she wants them to give away, perhaps she could show some inititive and set up a system where people could contribute to a "bounty" for features. I'd chuck $5 from my paypal account into a fund for features I want as long as I could pull my money back if they took too long. This woman has a website, she accepts paypal subscriptions, something like this should not be beyond her abilities.

But instead of doing something that will solve the problem, she just wants to bitch. Wow, they weren't interested in surrendering control of what they do in their free time to her and her little voting site. The temerity of the bastards not to jump on her generous offer.

Re:Don't feed the troll

[Saxerman]

But if they are user-oriented as they have publicly stated, they should be interested in some form of user participation you would think.

I accept that 'user-oriented' suggests some level of dedication towards the desires of their user base, but this doesn't mean they'll open up the direction of the project to a web poll of features. In OSS it's the wheel that the engineers feel like working on that gets the grease.

Perhaps one of them could have said "Fine, you implement THIS, Eugenia."

Certainly they could have said it, but why? The key here is that OSS projects don't move in any direction without someone pushing. The crowds chanting and jeering along for the ride only have as much effect as the programmers want. And we could argue that they should spend more time listening to the crowd... but why? It's their time, and they're free to do with it as they wish.

Re:Don't feed the troll

[Rahga]

As seen on OSNews

While you are at it Eugenia, your readers/users want

1). A better comment system for OSnews.

2). Registration based commenting.

3). Support for all XHTML tags (it's freaking 2005!)

4). A better moderation scheme.

5). A user friendly editor with spell checking and automatic tagging.

6). Ability to reply directly to comments with ugly @ in the reply field.

7). Ability to place certain trolls on an ignore list.

8). Ability to edit comments that have already been posted.

Oh and your users have been clamoring for these features for years. Why haven't you implemented them?

Re:Don't feed the troll

[eviltypeguy]

There's a difference between having your requests heard and getting your way.

They heard her request, and the declined it. It was heard, it was just rejected.

Re:Don't feed the troll

[Trifthen]

While there is definitely a "trollish" feel to all of this, I'm not so sure it's that simple. The thing is, if there really is a dearth of missing functionality, users will eventually get fed up with it, and fork the source. We all saw this happen with xF86 vs. xOrg.

If you ignore the ranting, it comes down to this: do the developers really want to encourage forking which may wrench the entire project out of their control, so far as relevance is concerned? Really, she's giving them a chance to cut this off before it reaches that point. While the level of loyalty seen here for the core developers is encouraging, reacting to the tone of her message ignores the issue.

Just because someone is being an ass, doesn't mean they're wrong.

booo... not user unfreindly enough!!!!

[the_2nd_coming]

I can't feel like a geek if other people can use it!!!

they took the Linux instal away from me... now they are taking GNOME away as well!!!

Re:booo... not user unfreindly enough!!!!

[Dana P'Simer]

I give you the geeky linux install back: here

Re:booo... not user unfreindly enough!!!!

[B3ryllium]

I second that. :)

For those just joining the discussion

[Anonymous Coward]

For those just joining the discussion, you MUST read the whole thread, "roadmap status update/update request", Luis Villa, http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/ 2005-March/thread.html#00078

They didn't tell her to STFU or to F off & die. They gave her reasons why her idea for an official poll would not work. They gave her reasonable suggestions on how & why feature requests may go unfulfilled. She rallied & reiterated her points but they did not fall on dead ears. Read through the mailing list and see it for yourself. She is just one person and is guaranteed to have her own opinion. They are devels working on it & they have their own opinions.

See also a coincidental GNOME dev blog, March 10 Jakub Steiner's blog on how to request features: http://jimmac.musichall.cz/weblog.php

Re:For those just joining the discussion

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't tell her to STFU or to F off & die.

Sure ?

Re:For those just joining the discussion

[ajs]

Interesting thread. The basic concept is this: "we should have a page specially designed for tracking feature requests".

The answers varied, but seemed to center on "no, we have bugzilla" and "if you want to do that with bugzilla, create a special query page for devs to review feature requests."

This sounds like reasonable advice to me....

Re:For those just joining the discussion

[gmhowell]

They didn't tell her to STFU or to F off & die.

That's really a shame, because somebody really should say that to Eugenia.

Daily.

Re:For those just joining the discussion

[955301]

Yep. After all, those posts came after this one, and at some point, you have to blow the whistle and get the fans off the court so you can continue:


Jeff was certainly curt, and perhaps should have been gentler in making
the point, but he's probably right too. In his judgment (and mine too,
fwiw) that thread was doomed to produce very little impact, a lot of
noise.

Something GNOME enthusiasts on this list often seem to forget is that
its *not* just their time. When you send a message to a mailing list,
you are asking for everyone to spend some time on it. When you start a
thread that will draw lots of replies, you are, unwittingly or not,
asking for everyone on the list (including hackers) to spend lots of
time.

I define the GNOME enthusiast community as: those who are actively
involved with and interested in GNOME but have NOT contributed large
quantities of code, translation or documentation (there are several
exceptional cases, for example Jeff himself, but not a lot). We need
enthusiasts and should value them! It provides a source of excitement,
sociability, feedback on how we're doing in different areas, and
sometimes even new ideas.

But right now, the lists have become driven by the enthusiast community
to the extent that hackers have gone into hiding. A good thread on
desktop-devel-list *should* be predominantly (75% or more, say, as a
totally arbitrary number) posts by core GNOME hackers related to that
area. Look at a thread now.... probably 90% of the posts are by
enthusiasts. That's taking "being in touch with the community" a little
too far to the point that its hard to get work done ;-)

For example, most of the people actually writing code that will be in
the next GNOME release have probably been actively deleting every
message to this theme thread! Its not because they don't care, its
because they don't want to take the time away from working on gnome to
wade through all the noise. And they shouldn't have to.

Compared to its peak as a lively discourse among the hackers doing core
contributions to the gnome codebase, desktop-devel-list is almost a dead
list in terms of "useful things accomplished". Part of the problem is a
*very* high noise level, and also very annoying persistent threads of
the bike shed variety.

Something people only relatively recently involved in GNOME (last couple
years) wonder is about the relative silence / non-responsiveness of core
hackers. It seems like desktop-devel-list, despite all the traffic, has
very few people who are getting something done (see usability gnome org
for an even worse example of this that is even more my fault). That the
lists we (core hackers) used to haunt have become a tangle of weeds is
one of the major factors driving this.

As community leaders in GNOME, one of our jobs is to shepherd the lists
so they do not become exceedingly noisy (and scare away important hacker
to hacker traffic). But we have largely abdicated this responsibility in
the last couple years. markmc tried to fight the tide about a year ago,
but eventually gave up. Its hard *because* we're actually very nice
people, and thus none of us want to be the list nazi. But its also very
important to have this sort of pruning to be a healthy community.

We've been talking about this a lot lately in s33kret cabal discussions.
That we feel the need to have these private circles is part of the
problem! Nobody, even those of us involved in the cabal (and especially
not Jeff who is an outspoken supporter of openness and inclusion), want
this sort of private exclusionary construct.

So what's the point?

1) Desktop-devel-list, #gnome-hackers, etc have been drowned by a deluge
of well meaning (and healthy, when found in moderation) enthusiast
involvement.
2) The loss of effective communication channels has had a major negative
impact on the amount and p

Hmmmm...

[ectotherm]

I thought it was supposed to be PEOPLE that thought GNOMES didn't exist, not the other way around... ;)

Re:Obligatory comment

[Taladar]

Yeah, they are both crap.

(as in too big, too slow, too much like Windows, too inefficient to work in,...)

Heh

[Neil Blender]

I love it when people gripe about free software.

This is on the mark

[winkydink]

If most OSS is developed by developers based on what they choose to implement, then OSS will be limited mostly to developers.

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.

Re:This is on the mark

[ajs]

"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.

Weird...

[GillBates0]

GNOME and its apparent lack of interest on user feedback

GNOME seems to respond to my mouse gestures and keypresses pretty effectively.

Granted, I haven't been able to train it yet to respond to my thought signals and verbal commands, but I would hardly attribute it to GNOME's lack of interest to obey me.

Re:Fork Gnome!

[winkydink]

Did you RTFA? Most end-users are not sw developers.

Hot Button Topic

[excyl]

It seems that /. is on a binge of Mozilla and GNOME rants. From all the different stories, I'm almost suprised that the mods haven't forked both projects themselves. With the amount of coverage given to the defects in the projects, the casual reader might think that the FOSS movement is dying. I hear that somebody doesn't like the KDE development model, so let's see if that a news item in the next day or so.

If only this was K5...

[m50d]

because the story so obviously belongs at -1, Troll

mnb Re:This has been happening for a while

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been going on for quite some time.

-1 flamebait

...people who are fed up started their own Gnome branch, GoneMe...

-0 true enough

...that fixes the things they think are wrong with Gnome.

+1 funny

Uh, what exactly has the project fixed? What exactly has the project released?

Use Eclipse as a Model

[H0p313ss]

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!

Re:Use Eclipse as a Model

[Rahga]

"The Eclipse [eclipse.org] project actively encourages its users and clients to log bugs and change requests as well as vote and comment on them through their Bugzilla. [eclipse.org]"

Perhaps you didn't read Eugenia's original post to desktop-devel-list... no shame in that. She neglected to link to it in her own article, which suggests at least a modicum of shame (though not enough to stop her from posting the article). It says, and I quote:

I currently have 20 feature requests for Gnome 2.1. Where should I place them? The Bugzilla is not where I want to place them because:
a. no one will pay attention ultimately (gazillion of feature requests never go anywhere there, let along bug reports)
b. I don't want to spend half an hour placing 20 features requests on the bugzilla one by one.

Her first point is bogus... I'm with many other volunteers in traiging GNOME Bugzilla regularly, and have worked on many enhancements myself.

Her second point... She is too lazy to file enhancements at bugzilla. However, she's got plenty of energy to send e-mail using Microsoft Outlook to a GNOME developer's mailing list, then write the article at OSNews.

Yes, GNOME encourages people to file enhancements at Bugzilla. Eugenia, however, rejects this, then says GNOME Developers doesn't listen to users.

Re:Environments vs. Simple WIndow managers

[Lisandro]

There's options, you know. XFCE 4 is a "Gnome-lite" desktop enviroment, but i find it more confortable to use than Gnome itself, never mind much, much, MUCH more bloatless. It's been my desktop of choice for a year now, and i don't see myself going back.

Gnome is nice, but (atleast in this particular topic), Eugenia has a point. We keep hearing how Gnome focuses on usability and user-friendliness and then they come up with stuff like those awful file dialogs, or the damn bloat, which makes the system crawl running a few apps.

I haven't tried Gnome for a couple of version revisions now, but XFCE gives me what i want and does the job fine.

Re:Fork Gnome!

[winkydink]

Not a thing if you're content with Microsoft's current market share.

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.

Call me an idiot...

[Anita Coney]

... 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.

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.

Inexcusable

[Pan T. Hose]

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.

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?

If you need a feature, buy the feature.

[analog_line]

There are a lot of unemployed or underemployed coders out there. If there are a significant amount of people who need/want a feature that the Gnome dev team refuses to implement, pool your resources and hire a developer to write an extension to Gnome. You can submit the patch, your group and the less underemployed coder get the credit, and you get the feature you want. Even if the Gnome team doesn't accept it, nothing stops you from using it and distributing it.

Developers that are getting paid to work on GNOME are beholden to those that pay them. Yeah, they're working on an Open Source project, but by taking money for their time, the people paying them get to direct their coding. Unpaid developers are beholden to themselves and themselves alone. That's the way it should be. If you don't like it, you need to literally put your money where your mouth is. As has been said many times before, free software only costs nothing if the time spent developing it is worth nothing.

Re:I don't know...

[TheWanderingHermit]

I agree -- that they should listen to their user base, but there's more to it than that. It's not like they're selling Gnome or making profit off it, so there is really no reason to please users or to do anything other than program the kind of DE that Gnome developers want.

That being said, I dropped Gnome years ago because I felt it was focused more on programmers doing what they wanted and giving other programmers cool programming stuff, and KDE was much more focused on an easy to use experience.

And before I get the usual flames from someone with no life that thinks anyone who doesn't use a console is a a loser, I have a small business I run that is based on software I wrote. I was using command lines back in the late 1970s when I was lucky to get time on a paper terminal and excited when I could use a VDT.

I spent years in between teaching special ed and learned that people actually think in different styles, so many people will always do better with a GUI. My experience is that KDE has always been focused on creating a good GUI for the end user, wereas Gnome was more focused on a GUI with great APIs and everything programmers want, without a reall awareness of what helps end users.

Not really a problem.

[kerrle]

While I'll completely agree that there are portions of Gnome that could be better, Eugenia's peice is way off.

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.

Well, not so much an idiot

[shostiru]

as just mistaken. Why? Threee reasons.

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.

Re:Well, not so much an idiot

[nine-times]

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.

I think both of these point (my reading of them is that they're similar) indicate what I view to be the most unfortunate aspect of when developers decide that they don't care what their users think: it often makes for a worse product.

Now, I'm not someone who believes in the "inherent intelligence of everyday people". I think people can be really stupid. However, the way in which they're stupid usually is that they're bad about understanding their problems and finding solutions to their problems, but they're usually pretty good at knowing that they have a problem.

As an example, think of when a person goes to the doctor/ER because they think something is wrong. Now, of course, there are hypochondriacs who go to the doctor all the time over stupid things, but mostly, when someone goes to the doctor because they believe something is wrong, for the most part, something *is* wrong. I might go in because I have a terrible sore throat. I might insist to the doctor that I have strep. It might turn out that I have throat cancer. I might insist that I need antibiotics, and he might insist that I need radiation.

Similarly, in software development, if a whole lot of users are complaining, there probably *is* a problem. They might not really understand the problem, and their proposed solutions might be wrong, but if you're getting loads of similar complaints, there is a problem somewhere. Why? Because software is all about the users. When software isn't being used by users, it's just a series of bits.

Maybe it's just a perception problem (users aren't understanding things), but a perception problem *is* a problem. Maybe you just need better documentation or need to explain something better. Maybe it's something tiny, like you label a button differently and people understand what's going on at that point. Maybe something is designed badly.

Beyond fixing problems, anyone trying to solve problems should be really open to input, because you never know what will give you some amazing inspiration. Contrary to popular belief, great thinkers don't come up with great ideas in a vacuum.

I guess my point is, the only way to know is to listen to the users. Either way, I think developers (all developers) should remember two things:

1. Satisfaction among target users is a good measure of the quality of software. If your target user is a developer, and developers are happy with it, that's an _indication_ that you've done a good job.
2. And that's because satisfaction among target users is an inherent quality of good sofware. What I mean here is, software is a tool. If users of that tool aren't finding it useful, it is, by definition, a bad tool.

Re:Well, not so much an idiot

[Jason Earl]

The Gnome hackers are listening to their customers, they just aren't listening to Eugenia. Instead they are listening to the marketing departments at places like Red Hat, Novell, or Sun. The marketing departments talk to customers and find out what it would take to sell Gnome desktops. Then the developers are then given marching orders.

Once upon a time the Gnome developers were given free reign to design whatever the heck that they wanted and they designed a hyper-configurable desktop scriptable in a variant of Lisp. Now the Gnome developers are listening to actual customers, and the bottom line is that they are ripping out as much configuration as possible. This loss of functionality makes some former Gnome users (like Eugenia) upset, but that's what happens when you try and design software that is approachable by normal folks.

The thing to remember is that the Gnome folks aren't targetting the kind of people that write to development mailing lists or know anything about bugzilla, and that's a good thing. The less the Gnome hackers listen to Eugenia the more likely they are to create something that is useable by my grandma.

The grand secret of spatial nautilus

[ultrabot]

I hereby share the great secret of making the most of spatial Nautilus.

1. Create a "places" folder weher you drag shortcuts to your favourite folders (you know, the usual: mp3, pr0n, work, school). ctrl+shift+drag = create shortcut (symlink). Put the "places" folder on desktop & toolbar.

2. Press ctrl+q to "kill all windows" when you've done whatever you were trying to do w/ file manager.

Yeah, it still doesn't approach the glory that is Konqueror but it's not worse than "browse" mode of Nautilus either.

Re:The grand secret of spatial nautilus

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Your right. Your right.
We SHOULD all change our habits to fit the GNOME paradigm, rather than the other way around.

I guess I should stop bitching about how, horrible, nonsensicle, slow, clunky, awkward, unintuative, difficult and inferior spatial browsing is and just brainwash myself into liking, no, adoring the 50+ open windows peppered across all my desktops.

Re:The grand secret of spatial nautilus

[A coward on a mouse]

lowly user: What is this pus?

gnome dev/fanboy: It's spatial Nautilus! It's easier to use; 9 out of 10 eggheaded usability experts say it's miles better than the old way.

lowly user: I hate it. Take it away. Put it back the way it was before.

gnome dev/fanboy: But you haven't given it a chance! See, re-organize everything on your hard drive and change the way you perform your everyday tasks, and spatial Nautilus will save you 0.5 milliseconds on some operations.

lowly user: I just want it to work the way I'm used to.

gnome dev/fanboy: Well, you're wrong for wanting that.

lowly user: Put it back right now! I'm going insane from all the extra windows!

gnome dev/fanboy: Well, just learn this new shortcut key to close them all when you're done.

lowly user: I don't want them to open in the first place. This sucks. I hate it. Put it back.

gnome dev/fanboy: Man, you are just like the other 10,000 lowly users I've talked to this week. What is wrong with you people? I can't imagine how you Luddites will react to the next version, when we make Dvorak (which is 2% more efficient than QWERTY) the default keyboard layout and force you to crawl over broken glass to change it back!

lowly user: Guess I need to look into purchasing that Windows license after all...

Re:The grand secret of spatial nautilus

[Lendrick]

nonsensicle

Mmmm... sweet, frozen nonsense on a stick.

Re:The grand secret of spatial nautilus

[Anonymous Coward]

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 :)

Re:Fork Gnome!

[thm76]

> Gnome needs to cater to users who don't know the first thing about what's under the hood.

Gnome doesn't have to do anything. If users don't like Gnome they can use something else.
If they want features they can try to convince the developers that the requested feature is desireable, implement it themselves or at least make it easier for the developers to understand what they want and how they want it by creating a functional spec.

> It needs to just work.

Well, for me, it does.

Re:Obligatory comment

[jmorris42]

> (as in too big, too slow, too much like Windows, too inefficient to work in,...

I hear ya. GNOME is hellbent on cloning Windows internals while 'innovating' the look & feel (ignoring the whole spatial nautilus fiasco) while KDE is hellbent on cloning the look & feel of Windows while pushing new innovative internals, even if tied to C++ a little too tightly for my taste.

Why can't we get them to swap their bad halves with each other and have a desktop pushing innovative internals AND new ideas in appearance while the other effort focuses on cloning Windows inside and out atop a *NIX base.... Call it OS W. (ducking)

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.

Exactly backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Eugenia says:

In our article yesterday about "The Ten Worst Engineering Pitfalls" by Keith F. Kelly, on the No2 spot you will find this: "2. Basing the design on your own motives rather than on users' needs."

She uses this to argue that programmers should be user-driven -- but as Alan Cooper points out, this is exactly backwards. When a company is user-driven, they add a lot of little features and tweaks that each of their users asks for. Then they end up with a program that's intricate and complex and hard to use for *everybody*. (If it's a company, this is where their customers start leaving them for companies who take design seriously.)

No program (or system) can be perfect for all people. The successful ones are the ones that have a consistent design -- often this means doing one thing and doing it well. If you try to be all things to all people, you guarantee that you won't be much use to anybody. Attaching a shell to the bottom of every window is the ultimate in flexibility, but nobody would claim that it's the ultimate in usability.

The problem is that Eugenia seems to think "user-driven" is a good thing, whereas Cooper (who seems to have much more experience and success and believeable examples to back up his position) states quite emphatically that "user-driven" is a bad thing: you want to be *design-driven*.

Re:Fork Gnome!

[lewp]

Are you really that stupid?

Companies can (and, believe it or not, do) offer open source code, too. Show up with a check, watch your feature get implemented. Even better, you're not fucked if a vendor isn't cooperative.

You want a feature added to a Microsoft product? Go see Microsoft with a checkbook. If they don't want to do it, or they want too much money, you can either suck it up or pay someone to reimplement whatever piece of software you need (with the feature you want) from scratch.

You want a feature added to GNOME or any other open source product? Take that same checkbook and go see Red Hat. If they're unresponsive, go see SuSE, Mandrake, or one of the lead developers for the product in question. In fact, take bids on the feature you want from all interested parties and get an even lower price. No matter who does it they won't have to reinvent the wheel. If all else fails, and everyone in the world decides they don't like money anymore, you can still implement the feature yourself without having to start from scratch.

Why can't you see how much more intelligent this is? You're not a middle manager, are you?

Re:I don't know...

[Slack3r78]

You know, I actually laughed out loud when I read this comment, because I switched from KDE to Gnome for the exact reasons you did the opposite. Guess it goes to show how tastes vary. :-)

IMO, Gnome is very focused on making things easy for the user, and very usability-test centric. The developers seem to want to stick to usability testing and the Sun-funded HIG almost to a fault at times. To the point that they *do* listen to usability tests more so than the users. There are times where this is bad, but at the same time, there are times that it's the only way to actually get a feature implemented.

Has KDE developed a comprehensive HIG and/or UI guidelines for its DE? I honestly don't know. I'd always assumed not because K apps tend to do things their own way and I've never been able to find much consistency between them.

Again, I don't think KDE is a bad enviro, I think it's largely a matter of taste. Gnome leans toward a very simple, sparse environment, whereas KDE these days leans towards a complex, but highly customizable enivornement. I personally find the former easier to use, but there are certainly arguments for the latter.

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.

Two schools of thought...

[Lendrick]

It's always interesting to see the two schools of thought on this:

1. STFU and Fork It - While I disagree with this (for reasons I will outline below), I agree that this is a valid point. For the most part, the people working on these projects are working entirely for free. As such, they have no real "customers" per se, because no one is paying them any money. Hence, they have no real obligation to care or even notice when someone suggests a new feature. The users, who are using software (for free) which was written on donated time, have no right to complain if it doesn't do exactly what they want.

2. Listen to your Users - Forking a project is fundamentally hard. You need, at bare minimum, a ton of extra time, skill in the language(s) the project was written in, and a working knowledge of the project's code base. Additionally, when a project is as widespread as GNOME, it's next to impossible to get any notable linux distributions to include your fork instead of the trunk. X.Org managed to pull this off, but only with the help of a large number of developers. When you tell someone to "STFU and Fork It", you're telling them to do the following:

1. Quit their day job.
   
2. Learn C/C++ along with whatever other libraries the project is based on
   
3. Become familiar with the project itself
   
4. Gather a bunch of other developers who are prominent enough that the community at large will notice
   
5. Work through the politics of getting your fork included in some Linux distros
   

That's a lot harder than just opening up a text editor, magically finding the right place to add your little snippit of code, and recompiling.

The spatial browsing controversy was what finally convinced me to give up GNOME for KDE. The straw that broke the camel's back was a very condescending article in favor of it that essentially claimed that anyone who didn't like the spatial file manager was using their computer wrong; however, since version 2.0, GNOME has had a history of removing configurability in favor of what the developers believed was simplicity, despite the vehement objections of their user base. The spatial file manager ordeal was just a stark example of a larger pattern.

For those of us who are trying to advocate Open Source, it would be really nice if certain developers were more willing to listen to their users. As a matter of policy, it would be a good idea to set apart a portion of the dev team whose specific duty it is to to proactively study and implement (with a how-can-we-make-your-experience-better attitude, as opposed to stfu-and-do-it-your-goddamn-self) feature requests. Why? Not because you necessarily owe people anything, but because people use your product, and it would be nice if you cared about them.

In the meantime, I've switched to KDE, which has shown itself to be far more responsive to the needs of its users. As things are going right now, GNOME will either adapt to the market or become obsolete, much like X did.

like the splash screen contest

[maryjanecapri]

this contest was pretty much a joke. instead of getting the opinions of the people that actually use GNOME the splash screen contest:

1. didn't post the judging criteria
2. didn't use any judges other than those that run the footnotes site
3. didn't listen to the feedback they received regarding the winning choice
4. shunned a good amount of popular opinion

i could go on but i won't. i was a proud GNOME user for years until it seemed the GNOME developers stopped hearing our cries. for example - the gpilotd project failed and when the users cried out - no one seemed to listen. all the while the KDE developers were busy taking in all the feedback from their user base and, when their next version was released, it was obvious they took that feedback to heart. i honestly don't know what the issue is. GNOME used to be (from my point of view) the desktop of the "common man" for the Linux community. not so any more. now it's become about as user-unfriendly as possible (i.e. spatial file managers and hard-to-create desktop icons). when is this going to change? or is it? is KDE going to become the defacto standard for more and more users while GNOME finds itself being used only by those the develop it? it seems to me that GNOME is now what Linux was nearly a decade ago - a project for the elitist/hobbiest/hacker and not the masses.

Re:Fork Gnome!

[joshsnow]

have this feeling that the "OSS will rule the world" crowd are not the ones actually developing the software.In fact, I am not sure where they came from...

Linus Torvalds has repeated stated "World Domination" as a goal of Linux based systems. There's a start for you.

Re:Obligatory comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a minute--taskbars and start menus SUCK as an interface to begin with...

Why do you say that? I think they work good for what they do.

I've been using computers since before there was a GUI and the taskbar/start menu is a good thing.

Yes, I use OS X every day, and I still think it sucks because it doesn't have a real taskbar or start menu.

A bit overblown

[readams]

Since I'm the developer directly quoted in both articles (I guess I had the best sound bite), I should probably offer a clarification. Stating that a feature will be implemented if and only if there is a developer who wants to implement it is merely a statement of reality.

However, to claim that this means that I personally or other GNOME devs don't care about users is an exaggeration. Users requesting a feature quite often is a way to get a developer to want to implement the feature, especially since free software developers want their projects to be good and widely used.

All we were saying in that thread is we already know what features are widely requested. Adding voting merely creates an illusion that the votes will, in the end, count for something meaningful. In reality the best the votes could provide is a biased sample of oft-requestedness, which we can already discern by comments on bugzilla bugs and duplicates. We do care about users and we do care about their concerns.

The worst part of all this...

[readams]

They took my original quote verbatim but changed "received" from the correct spelling to an incorrect one!

It's a different problem

[thisisauniqueid]

The real problems are:

1. Most users do not actually know what they want, despite the fact that they think they do. If you were to implement what they asked for, they would probably come back and say, "That's not what I asked for!" And you'd say, "Yes it is." And they'd say, "Well, that's not what I meant." Pick any of a number of huge, high-profile software projects that have been canceled due to budget and time overruns, feature creep, bug pandemics, etc., and you will find that one of the major problems is that the customer's requirements changed constantly, because the customer did not know what they really wanted from the beginning to the end, or because their requirements or understanding changed as they saw things implemented.
   
   See the cartoon at the top of this page
   
   
2. Users may not understand what they want because so much of what they do in using the system is subconscious, and we humans are *not* aware of our subconscious processes. Some of it is even "hardware" rather than "software", e.g. in our visual system, and we absolutely cannot reverse-engineer our hardware by introspection. Try to figure out how you read handwritten words sometime. No, really try and figure it out. Then try to write a program to do handwriting recognition the same way humans do it. I know what this entails, because I've spent a few years actually trying to understand how humans work and build such a system. We humans just don't get our own thought processes. This is why usability studies are more important than implementing whatever feature you *think* will be cool.
   
   
3. Even if the user knew exactly what they wanted, it may be completely impractical to implement, due to programming contstraints.
   
   
4. Even if the user knew exactly what they wanted, they probably don't know how to succinctly describe it to the programmer. It's a language problem and a communication problem. It's also a point-of-view problem (relativism).
   
   
5. Humans are all very, very different. Ask 100 people to give you a list of the music that they think the rest of the world should listen to. You will *not* find a consensus. But there are songs that almost everybody likes. And there are multiple radio stations if you don't like a certain genre, but you like another instead (think KDE vs. GNOME).
   

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.