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Godwin's Law Invoked in Linus/Gnome Spat
lisah writes "The flame wars between Linus Torvalds and the GNOME community continue to burn. Responding to Torvalds' recent claim that GNOME 'seems to be developed by interface Nazis' and that its developers believe their 'users are idiots,' a member of the Linux Foundation's Desktop Architects mailing list suggested that Torvalds use GNOME for a month before making such pronouncements. Torvalds, never one to back down from a challenge, simply turned around and submitted patches to GNOME and then told the list, '...let's see what happens to my patches. I guarantee you that they actually improve the code.' After lobbing that over the fence, Torvalds concluded his comments by saying, 'Now the question is, will people take the patches, or will they keep their heads up their arses and claim that configurability is bad, even when it makes things more logical, and code more readable.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
I really think that Linus is a cool guy no doubt about that, sending in those patches to the Gnome community sure was the way to prove who is the over-geek here and how to get something done instead of wasting valuable time arguing over something as unimportant as Gnome (pun intented), if Linus is right.
;)
But Linus does really seem to have a bit of an attitude problem at times. Which is many times good if you are a boss for employees, but the problem just is that is not what Linus is, he is the boss of volenteers, they can quit if they don't like their boss.
I can't help but get a little worried, had it been anyone else but Linus I wouldn't mind, let people have their strange ways as long as they do not bother me or anyone else to much.
I am just worried for Linus, I sure hope he does take care of himself and stay mentally fit, that flamewars like the one he appearently had with the Gnome people here does not bring him out of balance somehow.
If Linus somehow gets sick and overloaded then it will lead to a whole lot of mess with the development of the Linux Kernel which really would not be nice.
So please Gnome people start behaving, be humble, accept the patches and do not upset Linus, we really need him, even if he isn't always the nicest person around
Responding to Torvalds' recent claim that GNOME 'seems to be developed by interface Nazis' and that its developers believe their 'users are idiots,'
What exactly is an "interface Nazi"? Is that someone that develops a GUI that encourages concentration?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
And there is a good reason why distros like Ubuntu default to GNOME and not KDE, in my experience it's a lot easier to break something in KDE, and it's harder for an end user to figure out how to get it to do things like, I don't know, not opening file downloads in a text editor. The other problem is that KDE is slow, REAL slow, I know that GNOME isn't exactly a speed demon, but KDE is suffering from code bloat and so many features being tacked on, and in the end performance takes a hit. I understand that Torvalds is frustrated with GNOME, and he can use KDE all he wants, but why does he have to criticize GNOME so much? The whole reason there are multiple window managers is because none of them do everything right, and so you put many of them out there and let people CHOOSE, he could have jsut as easily criticized KDE for bloat, and Fluxbox for missing features.
They all come off as squabbling children. This is FOSS' finest?
Here are the highlights for those who didn't RTFA:
Lopez: "Linus, you don't know how to read Spanish, so are you an idiot too?"
[snip]
Schaller: "Could maybe be a good way to start a constructive dialog instead of this useless mudslinging?"
[snip]
Torvalds: "What I find unconstructive is how the GNOME people always make *excuses*. It took me a few hours to actually do the patches. It wasn't that hard. So why didn't I do it years ago?
I'll tell you why: because GNOME apologists don't say "please send us patches". No. They basically make it clear that they aren't even *interested* in fixing things, because their dear old Mum isn't interested in the feature.
[snip]
But why, oh, why, have GNOME people not just said "please fix it then"?
Instead, I _still_ (now after I sent out the patch) hear more of your kvetching about how you actually do everything right, and it's somehow *my* fault that I find things limiting.
Here's a damn big clue: the reason I find GNOME limiting is BECAUSE IT IS."
Sorry kneejerkers, but its going to require a much more detailed description of those patches than simply "cleaner and more capable" before we can make a good evaluation of whether Linus's patches should be accepted.
After all, if someone submitted patches to the linux kernel to grab the local weather report and print it out on boot, that would be adding capability that Linus would never accept in a million years because it is outside of the scope of the kernel. If Linus's patches are similarly outside the scope of the official design goals of Gnome, then any expectation that they would be accepted is just a red herring.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Linus, that is.
The whole point of the open source movement is to allow alternative approaches to flourish and be chosen (or not) on their merits. It's what OSS does to raise quality. The biggest problem KDE and Gnome always had was that they continually trod on each others' toes. So, let them go their separate ways - let KDE be configurable and Gnome be "designed for idiots". See who wins. Either which way the variety is good for OSS itself.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
They just try to replace Save As... with SEIG FILE! whenever they see it in source strings.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
This argument has nothing to do with the background or what gnome looks like morons, it has to do with the way it responds to actions, the way it presents options to the user.
The fact that linus had to take time to submit patches means the gnome developers are doing something incredibly stupid, this isn't a turf war, it means linus is concerned that the kernel he spends shitloads of time on is being trivialized by idiot programmers refusing to accept what the rest of the world wants in the systems they use.
KDE does the same shit, its annoying. I use linux daily but i have to say this is classic linux bullshit, KDE has too much, gnome has too little and no one wants to talk to each other or solve shit because everyone is in their own little camp.
Prefixes are gay as well, kstfu, ggbye
Even just bump for the response
o p_architects/2007-February/001129.html
http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/deskt
First off, nice touchy feely people get nothing done. All good OSS projects depend on focussed, and often heavy handed, leadership. Linus might piss and moan about Gnome, but then a lot of people do about Linus too. Linus is effective because he's not democratic. Try send patches that Linus does not like upstream in the kernel. They will get squashed. Sure, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but they should be aware of the cultures they are playing with.
I run an OSS project too, one that is pretty successful. I don't willy-nilly accept patches that I don't like either. I will often take patches and recode them to be the way that I want them to be.
Linus is good. Linus contributes a lot, but untimately that does not give him the right to be a fuckwit in someone elses project, any more than it gives anyone else the right to be a fuckwit in his project.
Roll over and be nice to Linus is a poor way to handle things.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
To all those Gnome fans:
There are tons of things that can be configured/fixed in Windows just like Gnome.
With some configuration tool that's only suitable for an elite bunch to use.
So, I don't see Gnome as an improvement over Windows in terms of usability.
"there will be hell to pay for ignoring it"
I can't believe Linus, who has probably dropped more patches than anyone else alive, would think that sending in unwanted patches along with a *fuck you too* for good measure would think that somehow the GNOME people would suddenly change their minds.
Furthermore, projects should avoid contributors that are unable to get along even if they would make a valuable contribution. Having the additional useful developer doesn't balance out loosing the contribution of others who are offended and the loss of community around your project. I'm not making this up, just ask any HR department whether they would hire an all around offensive individual regardless of how good he is.
Honestly, I have a lot of respect for Linus, and respect someone who cares so much about the right solution. However in this case he has gone way over the line from being passionate about technology and perhaps a little quirky, into being embarrassingly out of touch with the norms of human interaction in a public forum.
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
How do you expect a desktop environment to "discover" how quickly someone wants their panel to auto-hide or when the battery meter should change from green to yellow? Do you even know what this discussion is about, or did you just throw a generic Windows vs. Linux user-friendliness reply at it? The difference between Windows and Linux that you've mentioned is wether or not manual configuration of things like hardware is required; the issue here is developers arbitrarily removing the ability to configure software.
Everyone is born right-handed; only the greatest overcome it
Interesting opinion; have you ever met Linus? I have. He's not the type of person I'd call a jerk.
Richard Stallman? Maybe; he certainly can be a jerk in certain situations. Eric Raymond (the obscurity he so richly deserves seems to have finally caught up to him, so that reference may no longer be relevant) is definitely a jerk. Meeting both those guys was an eye-opener.
Torvalds? He's a nice guy, actually. He's also a very smart guy who holds his opinions because he's spent a lot of time thinking about them. Despite what people tend to assume, he doesn't insist you agree with his opinion; he does, however, tend to insist that your opinion is well thought out if you wish him to take it seriously. Unfortunately, the Gnome troop seems to have stopped at "simple is good" and not realized that it, like anything, can be taken too far.
Personally I tend to think Gnome's "users are idiots" attitude is not so much due to thinking that users are idiots; I think it's more due to the fact that a few large corporations pay for most of Gnome's development, and they want their users to be treated as idiots. Someone has to have control of the computer, and as is true with Microsoft, the last thing they want is for that control to rest with the person using it.
It is true, and it will always be true, that some people who use computers will never understand them at any level, and they will find a way to hurt themselves with any options you give them. It is also true that most people do not fall into this group, and despite what all the 14 year old fanbois who frequent Slashdot believe, they are not the only ones who can make sense of of a computer; most people who use them become quite adept at making them do what they want.
For Gnome to persist in preventing them from using the computer as they see fit is a shame (interestingly certain folks in the Mozilla project also seem to be infected with this disease, although in that case more pragmatic viewpoints usually prevail). Despite what so many seem to believe, an easy to use UI is not mutually exclusive to a flexible and capable UI; that so many developers assume it to be true is much more a function of their own lack of vision and ability than a reflection on the reality of the situation.
they're only egomaniacs sitting alone in cheap condo in a mid-income neighborhood, "chatting" with others on a Saturday night, likely inside an online game. as you take them to a social setting with women, you see clearly they are just shut-in losers and dorks, and not worth time, conversation, or even recognition of them being alive. let's kill them all. kill them all by throwing the duck sauce packets filling up your fridge from the leftover chineese takeout. throw those packets hard, my friends. they'll break and cover those losers with sweet yellow duck sauce. then the ducks will come to eat that sweet duck sauce. they will try to fly away, but their feet will be stuck in the sauce. they'll lift up the dorks and take them to that island with all the fat ugly people. once we have enough, it'll sink into the ocean and that'll be that. rock the vote!!!
Here's the link: (it was posted a bit earlier)o p_architects/2007-February/thread.html
.... But I do think that Linus needs to chill and let the GNOME core developers run the way they want to and accept or postpone (if there's a freeze) or reject his patches as they deem appropriate. If Linus want to contribute to GNOME (I hope he does), he has to do it by GNOME's rules or fork, or pass it on to someone who *is* willing to play by GNOME's rules (I'd be surprised if there weren't are more than a few developers and distros who would be willing to work as intermediary between Linus and GNOME). That's the way open source works.
http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/deskt
Basically, Linus wants to have fine grained control over what the mouse buttons do.
Sounds like a simple request, but he doesn't reveal it until *after* he submits a patch and in that same email goes on to rant about how no-one listens to him and how GNOME developers make excuses instead of just doing whatever he wants. In a later email he comments that he sent the patches to a developer's only email address (that he admits may or may not have been able to see his patches) because he doesn't like bugzilla and says that the patches must be accepted or GNOME developers are a bunch of hypocrites even though an API freeze is in effect for about a month ( http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointSeventeen ).
Personally, I find it a bit interesting that Linus has repeatedly flamed (or sidelined) people on the Linux kernel mailing list for acting like he is now, not following the kernel submission procedure, assuming that freezes don't count, and assuming that if the core architects of the Linux kernel think that a feature (done in a certain way) is a bad idea then they must be a bunch of hypocrites.
I personally don't know if the patches are any good or in keeping with GNOME's design or need changes or
It's not unreasonable to expect this. GNOME core developers don't go on the Linux kernel thread and whine and submit attitude patches to Linus, 'tho if they did, they would (and should) be flamed. Linus has said repeatedly on the kernel mailing lists that submitters must either follow the kernel rules, or fork (e.g. if you don't like the license), or pass on your patches to someone who is willing to do things that kernel developer's way (none of Reiser's patches would have gone if it weren't for this later option).
Are there problems with the GNOME way of doing things? Sure. Linus brought up a good point about the ease of submitting patches. But all projects have issues. There was a time, not too long ago, when the submission process for the Linux kernel was "send Linus your patches and if he doesn't respond then keep resending them because the patches might have gotten lost". But the issues won't get better if you complain to the wrong people.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Ironic, we're advocating choice and alternatives in the big picture by supporting an option (Gnome) that does neither.
Both of these are actually obscenely easy to deal with. If I let other people use my machine, I give them their own account and put them on GNOME. (I run straight Beryl with elements of Fluxbox.) And if you're reading an introductory book, you'll be dealing with defaults anyway.
Sane defaults, but configurability, is the way to go. And by the way, this is true of more than just Linux. I've tried to use someone else's Mac, and couldn't find the program I wanted easily because his desktop was absolutely fucking PILED with documents, something like 10 deep on top of the "hard drive" icon, making it kind of difficult to get to "Applications". Someone else's Windows, and you find they've got the status bar auto-hiding at the top of the screen. And for that matter, I use the dvorak layout, so...
I mean, I understand the point of that. That is why, for instance, game consoles are designed the way they are -- you can toss a controller to anyone and have them join the party.
But configurability can be done in such a way that it doesn't hurt usability. And, in fact, it has to be done that way, because if you nix configurability, you kill usability.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Looking at the patches Linus has provided they mostly relate to the window manager metacity.
I am 100% with Linus on this one. A few years back Gnome was using the sawfish window manager. Not only could this be configured to your hearts content, you could even write your own extensions for it. With sawfish windows could do some real magic.
Gnome saw sawfish and its configurability and decided it was bad -- and to some extent it was, there were a plethora of options. The right solution to this is to find a good set of default options and provide a configuration tool that presents just the options that people are most likely to configure + an advanced configuration dialogue for those that want to play with the more interesting options.
Gnome threw the baby out with the bath water when they went to metacity.
For a while I stopped using Gnome and used ratpoison as my window manager. Ratpoison shows the power of being able to do all your window manipulation from the keyboard (this is quite important for me, I have a neuromuscular disorder and so avoiding the mouse can make me much more productive -- metacity does not give me that option).
More recently I kept hearing about 3-D window managers and decided to give beryl a try. Now beryl comes with a plethora of options and has reasonably good support for keyboard navigation. Fingers crossed some gnome based linux distributions will go for beryl as their window manager.
Going from ratpoison to beryl is maybe going from the sublime to the ridiculous, but what the two have in common is configurability.
Linus is right, one size fits all sucks.
I'll tell you who are Interface Nazis. The developers for software that ends with an 'imp' and starts with a 'G'.
And GNOME was developed on the UI toolkit originally developed for which famous piece of software?
Unlike you, the Gnome developers don't actually decide things based on their opinions alone, they apply widely used principles of UI design and they test their interfaces on "real people".
Gnome is doing a good job at what they're doing. If people like Linus and you want to help, learn something about UI design first. Then, you can either contribute suggestions for specific improvements justified based on accepted UI design criteria, or you can participate in user testing. Your and Linus's opinions, on the other hand, are pretty much worthless.
Right now, people who find Gnome 95% perfect are suffering, because it won't let them fix the last 5% and get their dream environment. And you are not doing these people any favours by telling them they should use some other environment instead, because if Gnome is 95% perfect then KDE, Xfce, Blackbox, etc. will all be worse for them.
That was some epic shit. I want whatever you're drinking.
I completely agree with the parent post. Self-diagnosis is fraught with problems, and will generally lead to false positive diagnoses.
It turns out that this is also a common problem with first and second year medical students, as I found out from two separate friends who went through it.
Medical students spend most of their long waking hours reading about new (to them) diseases, syndromes, collections of symptoms. Naturally, their brains, being good at pattern-matching, find patterns in the quirks of their own experience, leading them to conclude that they have lived with some previously undiagnosed disease. Of course, this is not the case, but that doesn't stop it from happening to every new class of med students.
I even fell prey to the same thing when all the articles on Asperger's started flying around about 5 years ago, thinking: "OMG, I have this, and this, and this, and I score very highly on this survey, blah, blah, blah". Then, I think and observe some more, remember my med school friends, and read accounts like the parent, and realize that I'm just confused. Nevermind.
It is not correct to say that Sawfish got replaced by Metacity due to it being deciding its configurability was bad, far from it. Sure there
where people who felt Sawfish went a bit overboard in that regard, but that was not the reason it got
ditched as the default GNOME window manager. The reason for that was simply that after Eazel went backrupt and Sawfish maintainer John Harper
had to find a new job, he ended up at Apple. And thus he couldn't maintain Sawfish anymore. The really special thing about Sawfish was that it
was written in its own Lisp dialect so as part of Sawfish you got both an extra lisp interpreter and GTK+ bindings for it.
All of these three went unmaintained as John went away and nobody where interested in taking over. Thus the GNOME developers had to look elsewhere
for a maintained window manager, it was decided that one should aim for one written in C like the rest of the desktop libraries to lessen the chance
of future maintenance prolems. To answer this call Havoc Pennington stepped up with Metacity and it was quickly adopted by a lot of GNOME developers and
users and subsequently chosen as the standard. Havoc was very strict about what he let into Metacity, due to a policy that requests for config options was usually a result of broken behaviour in the window manager and thus feeling the behaviour should be fixed instead of a config option added to work around the problem.
This was in line with the policy that do govern GNOME, in the sense that there is a consensus to not allow 'random' patches
add config options to the GUI without a very good reason. For instance one shouldn't add config options as a way to work around bugs or
missing features in lower parts of the stack, instead one should try to fix them. In the case of Metacity this was applied in a much sterner/hardcore
fashion that for most other modules, but due to Havoc's high profile I think the policy he kept for metacity colored how people outside the project perceived
the project as a whole.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven