If you only believe their side of the story, sure, that's how it goes. I would like to hear the other devs' point of view before jumping to that conclusion, though.
1k upvotes. And yet, if you pointed GNOME devs to this simple reality you were either labeled as a 5 minute tester guy ("try it for a month, accept the new model of doing stuff and you'll be fine!" yeah, sure) or dismissed as a "hater" ("no point in discussing this with you, I'm picking up my marbles and going away" by all means!).
After I realized that no matter what the existing user base would say, the GNOME 3 developers weren't going to make Gnome Shell suitable for the good old desktop work flow (besides making it impossible to have GNOME 2 installed together with the new version...), I started looking elsewhere. I tried several desktop environments, and then sticked to Cinnamon, a "no nonsense, it just works" shell based on the Gnome libraries.
What I noticed almost immediately was that, in spite of the GNOME devs making fun of people jumping ship and waving them goodbye, Linux Mint received more donation money in a month than GNOME in 5-6.
So there you go guys, people have voted with their feet deserting you, and with their wallets funding other, more worthwile open source projects: I'm tempted to help, just because Cinnamon is based on Gnome libraries, but the conclusion is that you reap what you have sown. No sympathy from this ex-GNOME user.
Yep, I also found that incredibly convenient that you have two separate clipboards with Linux, without having to install any other software.
Moved to Cinnamon a long time ago and not looking back to Gnome Shell, I only hope that don't kill the entire GNOME project since that is (was?) the foundation of Cinnamon.
We do NOT want our software to be widely used by people who contribute nothing. What good does that do us? You are not a customer. (Unless of course you are a paying customer). You are the recipient of a gift. Freeloaders using our work, while refusing to donate $10, or edit the wiki, or translate something, or run a proper test suite are NOT beneficial to OSS programmers. Quite the opposite. You're just another oddball configuration I have to support, and another piece of idiot-proofing I have to add to the GUI, with no benefit to me. We don't want it to be widely used, we want a wide base of CONTRIBUTORS.
Funny that you mention contribution: I've contributed with loads of my time to GNOME 2.x, mainly doing translation and docs but also with the occasional bug report and developer feedback, and guess what happened when I, like scores of other people following GNOME development, expressed criticism of the direction Gnome Shell was going? To use an euphemism, we were ignored and/or told to use something else. So much for the "we want CONTRIBUTORS" theory! Needless to say, I'm not a GNOME user anymore, $DEITY forbid that I hinder their vision!
Not that I subscribe to your "we want contributors, don't give **** about other kind of users" theory: if I contributed nothing but express valid criticism, well THAT'S MY CONTRIBUTION and you'd be an idiot to ignore it; vice versa, if I pay you $$$ and my suggestions are utter garbage, you'd be an idiot to accept them. Considering your attitude, perhaps you should limit circulation of your software to your closest pals and relatives, and delight them with your programming skills. The rest of the world will carry on, believe me.
I hear that Cinnamon version 1.5.2 will be out in the Romeo (unstable) repository soon, with lots of improvements. After that 1.6 will follow as a stable release. Sure, Cinnamon is a bit rough on the edges at the moment, but the devs look quite dedicated and the new versions look good.
"I think the core of your question is about giving away Windows licenses for free."
In a short sentence he manages to sidestep the question and offend the person who made it: I must admit Microsoft software engineers really are smart guys!
But my favorite one is this one:
"The real goal here is interoperability - something that Microsoft product teams believe in"
I'm the Samba developers wholeheartedly agreen on this. All in all, much more typical MS market-speech than I expected.
No DRM system ever told an artist what notes to play or what lyrics were OK to sing. But the FSF seems intent on doing just that.
Really? And, pray tell, how are they going to do that? What's the relation between opposing DRM and content to be created by the artists? This is the most misleading sentence in the article, and it looks only too logical that it be mirrored in the title.
What people failed to understand, is that there's been almost a month before 9.2 went public, because MandrakeSoft wanted to have the boxed version at the same moment. So, there is *nothing* strange with a large number of updates for 9.2, because this is what usually pile up in that amount of time.
Of course this is just perfect for some FUDdish pseudo-journalism report, as you could see on osnews ("See? megs and megs of updates, plus the lg drives burning: they have MAJOR PROBLEMS!")
Did you even care to read the announcement? They would be profitable if it wasn't for gross mismanagement on the part of "experieneced" CEOs who wanted the company to move to e-learning.
I can see something true in what you're saying, but beware of generalisations. I can hardly code "Hello world", nonetheless I wouldn't ever dream of calling people names because I don't get a driver with my scanner; the same is true for all of my friends (I swear:).
Remember that new users = ex-windows users in most cases, they just can't imagine a device not supported by the OS they're using.
Slashdot Mirror
If you only believe their side of the story, sure, that's how it goes. I would like to hear the other devs' point of view before jumping to that conclusion, though.
"Why, because I have a personal preference for KDE, am I supposed to ignore GNOME's outstanding interface designs?"
Because there is no such thing as "GNOME's outstanding interface designs". But the rest of your argument makes sense :)
1k upvotes. And yet, if you pointed GNOME devs to this simple reality you were either labeled as a 5 minute tester guy ("try it for a month, accept the new model of doing stuff and you'll be fine!" yeah, sure) or dismissed as a "hater" ("no point in discussing this with you, I'm picking up my marbles and going away" by all means!).
You're not the only one, believe me!
After I realized that no matter what the existing user base would say, the GNOME 3 developers weren't going to make Gnome Shell suitable for the good old desktop work flow (besides making it impossible to have GNOME 2 installed together with the new version ...), I started looking elsewhere. I tried several desktop environments, and then sticked to Cinnamon, a "no nonsense, it just works" shell based on the Gnome libraries.
What I noticed almost immediately was that, in spite of the GNOME devs making fun of people jumping ship and waving them goodbye, Linux Mint received more donation money in a month than GNOME in 5-6.
So there you go guys, people have voted with their feet deserting you, and with their wallets funding other, more worthwile open source projects: I'm tempted to help, just because Cinnamon is based on Gnome libraries, but the conclusion is that you reap what you have sown. No sympathy from this ex-GNOME user.
Rehdon
Yep, I also found that incredibly convenient that you have two separate clipboards with Linux, without having to install any other software.
Moved to Cinnamon a long time ago and not looking back to Gnome Shell, I only hope that don't kill the entire GNOME project since that is (was?) the foundation of Cinnamon.
Rehdon
+1 for the excellent metaphor! XD
We do NOT want our software to be widely used by people who contribute nothing. What good does that do us? You are not a customer. (Unless of course you are a paying customer). You are the recipient of a gift. Freeloaders using our work, while refusing to donate $10, or edit the wiki, or translate something, or run a proper test suite are NOT beneficial to OSS programmers. Quite the opposite. You're just another oddball configuration I have to support, and another piece of idiot-proofing I have to add to the GUI, with no benefit to me. We don't want it to be widely used, we want a wide base of CONTRIBUTORS.
Funny that you mention contribution: I've contributed with loads of my time to GNOME 2.x, mainly doing translation and docs but also with the occasional bug report and developer feedback, and guess what happened when I, like scores of other people following GNOME development, expressed criticism of the direction Gnome Shell was going? To use an euphemism, we were ignored and/or told to use something else. So much for the "we want CONTRIBUTORS" theory! Needless to say, I'm not a GNOME user anymore, $DEITY forbid that I hinder their vision!
Not that I subscribe to your "we want contributors, don't give **** about other kind of users" theory: if I contributed nothing but express valid criticism, well THAT'S MY CONTRIBUTION and you'd be an idiot to ignore it; vice versa, if I pay you $$$ and my suggestions are utter garbage, you'd be an idiot to accept them. Considering your attitude, perhaps you should limit circulation of your software to your closest pals and relatives, and delight them with your programming skills. The rest of the world will carry on, believe me.
Rehdon
Subject says all XD
Rehdon
I hear that Cinnamon version 1.5.2 will be out in the Romeo (unstable) repository soon, with lots of improvements. After that 1.6 will follow as a stable release. Sure, Cinnamon is a bit rough on the edges at the moment, but the devs look quite dedicated and the new versions look good.
Rehdon
"I think the core of your question is about giving away Windows licenses for free."
In a short sentence he manages to sidestep the question and offend the person who made it: I must admit Microsoft software engineers really are smart guys!
But my favorite one is this one:
"The real goal here is interoperability - something that Microsoft product teams believe in"
I'm the Samba developers wholeheartedly agreen on this. All in all, much more typical MS market-speech than I expected.
rehdon
Linux users will shun Lenovo.
rehdon
No DRM system ever told an artist what notes to play or what lyrics were OK to sing. But the FSF seems intent on doing just that.
Really? And, pray tell, how are they going to do that? What's the relation between opposing DRM and content to be created by the artists? This is the most misleading sentence in the article, and it looks only too logical that it be mirrored in the title.
rehdon
What people failed to understand, is that there's been almost a month before 9.2 went public, because MandrakeSoft wanted to have the boxed version at the same moment. So, there is *nothing* strange with a large number of updates for 9.2, because this is what usually pile up in that amount of time.
Of course this is just perfect for some FUDdish pseudo-journalism report, as you could see on osnews ("See? megs and megs of updates, plus the lg drives burning: they have MAJOR PROBLEMS!")
rehdon
You sure have to be brave to stick around RMS ;)
rehdon
Did you even care to read the announcement? They would be profitable if it wasn't for gross mismanagement on the part of "experieneced" CEOs who wanted the company to move to e-learning.
I can see something true in what you're saying, but beware of generalisations. I can hardly code "Hello world", nonetheless I wouldn't ever dream of calling people names because I don't get a driver with my scanner; the same is true for all of my friends (I swear :).
Remember that new users = ex-windows users in most cases, they just can't imagine a device not supported by the OS they're using.