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The Full Story Behind the Canonical vs. GNOME Drama
supersloshy writes this followup to our Thursday discussion of friction between Canonical and GNOME:
"I've seen a lot of GNOME bashing for various reasons here on Slashdot as well as several other websites. The problem with all of this is that you never hear GNOME's side of the situation, making a lot of disrespectful comments about GNOME (or the others involved) rather baseless and illogical. Dave Neary has an extremely thorough blog post which details problems on all sides that make the issue much more complicated than 'GNOME is being idiotic by not accepting our technology.' The points covered in the blog post include, among others, how Freedesktop.org is broken as a standards body, that Mark Shuttleworth doesn't understand how GNOME works, that GNOME is not easy to understand, and that open discussions from the very beginning are important for specification development and adoption. Another blog post by 'Sankar' also covers similar points while defending GNOME."
If people need to be in the same place to work how does telecommuting work?
all conversations are behind some door that is closed, that is called being inside.
Difficult people are behind every project it is called pride, get over it
Mistrust develops because one side does all the work while the other complains about it.
If GNOME isn't easy to understand then I suggest you fix your design issues. it is a GUI not a rocket ship.
if GNOME isn't easy to understand how can anyone including mark shuttle worth understand it?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
If people need to be in the same place to work how does telecommuting work?
Poorly in most cases. Telecommuting can work in some cases but only for cases where the need to communicate is either minimal or well defined. I've telecommuted (worked from home) and I'm nowhere near as productive. Most jobs involve a significant amount of communication and it is MUCH easier to communicate in person. Emails and phone calls are great but there is no substitute for face to face communication and close proximity when collaborating on a project. There are exceptions where telecommuting works great but they are and will remain exceptions for most of us.
Difficult people are behind every project it is called pride, get over it
There is pride and there is arrogance and they are not the same thing. Being proud of what you have done doesn't give you or anyone else the right to be a jerk.
Mistrust develops because one side does all the work while the other complains about it.
Mistrust is caused by many things. Every argument has two sides and in almost every case both sides have a least some (though rarely equal) legitimacy to their arguments. People are political animals by nature and if they aren't able to talk about what they are doing AND their motivations for doing so in an efficient manner, mistrust is the inevitable result.
It seems to me that Seigo could do with minding his own business in this situation. Instead his post reads like he is attempting to portray himself as more edible to Canonical than GNOME in an attempt to win them over to KDE instead. This is somewhat distasteful, although nevertheless completely legitimate. It would be a boon to KDE if Canonical decided to focus on it.
I'm personally very disappointed with Canonical recently. The mess with regards to the Banshee referral fees was bad enough. Developing Unity behind closed doors and then expecting everyone else to adopt it afterwards was worse. The worst, however, is the insistence on copyright assignment for contributing to Ubuntu, which I sincerely hope nobody is foolish enough to fall for. Assigning copyright to a company for your own voluntary contributions is a very bad idea and this alone should suffice to explain why libappindicator has received a lukewarm reaction from GNOME developers.
Dave Neary has an extremely thorough blog post which details problems on all sides that make the issue much more complicated than 'GNOME is being idiotic by not accepting our technology.'
Let's cut the chase: does GNOME provide an alternative notification area spec?
From all written, I can really comment only on the part about "fd.o is broken as a standards body". And all I can say is that pretty much all standard bodies work like that: they rely on cooperation. GNOME didn't take part in talk and later sent list of complaints - instead of drafting new (version of) spec. And GNOME has stopped there, at sending complaints. Standards and specs are not immovable targets, while apparently GNOME childishly refuses to take part in the process by only complaining and calling it "broken." Or I miss something?
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Leaving aside the question of whether it's good for an open source project to have macho leadership, I think the comparison with Linux (the kernel) isn't valid. Linux, as every slashgeek well knows, is ruled by benevolent dictator. What Linus wants, Linux gets. Or you fork the kernel, which is what most everybody does. I think the last Gnome BD was a guy named Miguel, who has since gone on to other interests.
But perhaps more substantively, Linux differs from Gnome in that Gnome tends to be modular, while Linux is modular only in the sense you can do "modprobe fu ; rmmod bar". So even if Linux didn't have Linus, people are forced by the monolithic nature of the kernel to be more careful with the bits they insert or remove from the kernel. Modifying the kernel is a more surgical operation when compared to the more Lego-like nature of Gnome.
Gnome's modular nature thus makes casual forking (as practiced by Canonical, et al) easier than it is in projects of a more monolithic nature like Linux and, to a lesser extent, KDE.
Am I the only one finding myself increasingly detached from caring about the desktop shell anyhow? It's like, can we just replace the whole desktop shell with a browser and be done with it (even if all the apps are still served from localhost)?
One of the many reasons why I would never consider using an OS other than Linux these days is that on Windows or MacOS there is no (realistic) choice as to which desktop you're going to run. I use fluxbox. My wife and daughter use Gnome. I've used xfce on low-end hardware sometimes. Some people like KDE.
If Gnome has problems, just don't use it. It's not a big deal. Apt-get install fluxbox, or apt-get install xfce4, or whatever desktop you like.
Find free books.
Perhaps most the most telling thing about your summary is that you don't understand that "freedesktop.org is not a standards body," which is clearly stated on the FD.o website. It helps with inter-desktop collaborations through specifications and their hosting. The process is very open and devs are welcome to contribute, fork, and modify specifications. You said "Mark Shuttleworth doesn’t understand how GNOME works," but apparently, GNOME doesn't understand how FD.o works. "The log in your own eye ..." and all that.
Put identity in the browser.
GNOME has a long history of "NIH"
That was all started back when Miguel was creating the project. Don't get me wrong, I prefer Gnome to KDE but Miguel really screwed things up with one exceptionally poor decision after another - almost all of which is firmly rooted in the NIH-mantra. Its a tradition many were seemingly happy to carry on. Sadly, NIH is almost always a sign of significant personality flaws. This is turn easily feeds back into the lack of leadership, lack of formalization, lack of documentation, and lack of communication. All are traits of people who are actively trying to hide their work from peers until, hopefully, it can be forced down their throat within minimal review and criticism. Though admittedly, there are other factors which can justify this type of behavior too; especially if you're trying to jam it down the throats of completely unreasonable NIH personalities. Doesn't make it right, but it doesn't make it understandable.
Again, I use Gnome daily but it doesn't change the fact that Miguel created a really bad architecture, creating poor implementations of various technologies because of NIH, then created a collection of like-minded yes men, who then proceeded to create one kludge after another trying to fix the cluster fuck of bad ideas and implementations originally created by Miguel. Literally, the project has been primed for this cluster fuck since its inception. And you note, both editorials clearly say, "NIH" and that the GNOME project is structurally broken. I've been literally saying this for years now. I've not followed Gnome for several years now and none of this is the least bit surprising to me. Not one bit.
While the telecommute comments are pretty dumb, he is correct in that communication for any large project is required - though physical presence absolutely is not., contrary to his assertions. Regardless, they desperately need to adopt some formalized process if they hope to salvage the project. Looking at projects like Python's PEPs would be an excellent start. But then again, for them to move in that directly likely isn't possible with the current mix of personalities because it means being reviewed and criticisms early and often, which all too often is in stark contrast with the personalities involved.
I seriously hope they get things resolved. But if they don't, KDE is looking pretty strong these days. I just don't want to have to have both sets of widgets and frameworks loaded to maintain my preferred applications.
Dear Windows user,
If all of the above is hopelessly confusing, please try to imagine this reality. When you buy your next Dell, you can choose a UI layout for MS Windows that goes anywhere from DOS to Windows 7 to Bob. While underneath it is the latest OS. Now, you might PICK your UI layout but not all programs you wish to run support it. So you might suddenly get a Windows 3.1 window mixed with your Aero display. Google says fuck you and does its own thing whatever you picked for its browser.
Now while there are a LOT of choices, two stand out. Gnome which looks a bit like OSX but not a lot and KDE which looks like Fisher Price did a Windows 95 skin. Both can... or could be heavily modified. That is, KDE becomes ever more modible. Gnome becomes less so.
If you have a strong stomach http://ultimateedition.info/Ultimate_Edition_2.8/8.png this blueness is a version of Ubuntu. It is actually a good attempt but the default skin is .... well... you know.
The silly bit is that what people often like to mod is the login screen. GDM was moddible and then it was removed. LESS functionality as a feature. That is Gnome.
The problem is that both Gnome and KDE are suffering from "what to do next". As a desktop both achieved their goal long ago, so they wanted more and more. Is it the task of a desktop package to supply a video player? Especially video player with far less capabilities then easily available packages installed along side but not made the default? Ubuntu is NOT Microsoft after all. MS just can't go including closed sources payed for products for other companies in its offerings less the true cost of running MS and closed source becomes readily apparent (you did pay for Winzip didn't you Windows user)
Ubuntu CAN and does included countless 3rd party apps. It doesn't have to bother with its own meager zip only archive utility, it can use any of the superior opensource apps out there (Windows user, have you not replaced MS internal Zip support with anything more capable).
KDE especially seems to want to create a complete set of utilities... and fails... it is not that these utils are bad by itself, its notepad is far superior to MS Notepad but still hopelessly inferior to other offerings. MS can't offer those others, Ubuntu and other Disro's can. That is why it seems pointless for KDE to spend its efforts on countless apps that will be replaced instantly while its core desktop is lacking behind. Its network manager is not as smooth as that of Gnome. Its multipe windows settings is neither. Yes, they are in theory more configurable (you can set different wallpapers for each screen, you can select which soundcard should be preffered).
But all of it shows that neither Gnome or KDE are focussed enough anymore on what the end user wants. Gnome in its drive to be simple keeps removing the capability to tune Gnome to your liking. KDE remains horribly unfocussed and keeps giving me a messy early Windows experience. BOTH can be tuned to something smoother but geez gods, not everyone wants to.
Other desktop/windows managers? Enlightenment stuck still in some alpha state. The others focusing on low resource usage when you can't even buy a single core netbook anymore. Fully tricked out Ubuntu barely makes my computer tick over, any lower consumption of resources and my computer will shutdown.
That is the state of Linux. Is it bad? No, I still use it daily as my main and preffered desktop but only after heavy tuning. Tuning I have done for years now. I don't mind that much but having to fight Gnome everytime because they removed yet another feature seems such a waste and I just never liked KDE.
Do I really have to do what Vista buyers did at some point and install an older OS to keep working?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.