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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 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!!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
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
I thought it was supposed to be PEOPLE that thought GNOMES didn't exist, not the other way around... ;)
"Nature bats last..."
Yeah, they are both crap.
(as in too big, too slow, too much like Windows, too inefficient to work in,...)
Linux is not Windows
I love it when people gripe about free software.
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.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
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.
--Excyl
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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*.
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.
May the Maths Be with you!
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...
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
"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
nonsensicle
Mmmm... sweet, frozen nonsense on a stick.
- didn't post the judging criteria
- didn't use any judges other than those that run the footnotes site
- didn't listen to the feedback they received regarding the winning choice
- 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.nature loves variety::society hates it get your variety at http://www.monkeypantz.net
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.
They took my original quote verbatim but changed "received" from the correct spelling to an incorrect one!