Sad attitude [LWN.net]

Sad attitude

Posted Dec 22, 2011 11:17 UTC (Thu) by sebas (subscriber, #51660)
Parent article: Quotes of the week

Lennart seems to assume that Free software projects should compete with each other, also on non-technical grounds and in the political arena. That's sad to hear, and I think not a good thing for Free software overall. It does explain difficulties in collaboration on Free desktop issues.

Of course Lennart speaks for himself here, but if this was a more wide-spread opinion, it would explain the miserable situation and lack of progress on shared, freedesktop technologies. That's just sad for those who want to use or advance Free software, and not just play political games.

I personally think that Free software is better served by projects collaborating with each other, as we share the same goals. I also know a lot of people in the GNOME camp who think the same way, so luckily it's not a universal meme (but unfortunately it is not only Lennart who think this narrow-minded and have no problem spreading it). :-(

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Sad attitude

Posted Dec 22, 2011 14:23 UTC (Thu) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]

Competing on a technical level is fine, I do honestly think it leads to better results in the end.

Competing in the political arena is just annoying, creates artificial barriers, hampers development of both alternatives (and combinations thereof, which is what most actual people are using) and serves no purpose but someone's own mistaken ego.

Sad attitude

Posted Dec 22, 2011 19:13 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Running a conference focused on some specific desktop environment with good technical content and caring more about vertical integration is a technical choice.

Sad attitude

Posted Dec 22, 2011 21:29 UTC (Thu) by jrn (subscriber, #64214) [Link]

Looking at [1], I get the impression that most KDE authors would be happy to find their work used in some useful place within a GNOME or XFCE branded desktop. Which seems sensible --- there are many benefits to building a uniform software stack, but I don't think limiting the chance for experimentation in how to implement each component is one of them.

[1] http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/softwarecompilatio...

Sad attitude

Posted Dec 28, 2011 17:14 UTC (Wed) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]

Projects should compete based on quality, not based on "vertical integration" or lock-in.

Sad attitude

Posted Dec 22, 2011 20:06 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

If you read through the whole message though what Lennart was complaining about was specifically about the conference schedule and that the topics had become politicized, they felt the need to schedule "equal time" between KDE and GNOME talks regardless of the demand or supply of appropriate talks. I disagree that the conference should be restricted to only GNOME but the talks should be picked based on their quality and usefulness, not some political need for "equality", if that means that there are a bunch of Enlightenment or XFCE talks because that is interesting then so be it, if that means that there is a preponderance of GNOME talks then that is fine too.

Sad attitude

Posted Dec 27, 2011 15:59 UTC (Tue) by steffen780 (guest, #68142) [Link]

Actually, that is only part of what he wrote. He also seems to have a big problem with choice of desktops. He says that he doesn't want to spare a single thought for the other desktops, using the term of "vertical integration" (which is fine, except that he describes "vertical exclusion") - and in the past he attempted to restrict Gnome to Linux. So in short, he wants to force everyone who wants to run free software to use Gnome on Linux. Surely after this posting it should be obvious why so many people have such a strong dislike of his personality. And he should be glad that people like Linus are more enlightened than he is because else his beloved Gnome3 wouldn't even run on Linux, given that Linus doesn't like Gnome3.

He should restrict himself to coding and leave decision-making and communication to people who can see beyond their own desk. All he's achieving with his rants is to offend and allienate people, further splintering the overall effort to produce free desktops and giving the Gnome community a bad name.

Sad attitude

Posted Dec 29, 2011 17:18 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

[FX: looks at the list of installable window managers, GUI widget libraries, and X display managers in Debian.]

Frankly, I don't see how the effort to produce free desktops could get noticeably more splintered than it already is. (I'm also not entirely convinced that GNOME managing to alienate everyone else is of itself a bad thing.)

Sad attitude

Posted Jan 5, 2012 9:31 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

I don't see his post as a rant. He does like to troll (or stirr things up), but not in this message.

I find it curious where the logic is in giving your opinion that he shouldn't give his opinion.

Sad attitude

Posted Jan 6, 2012 0:05 UTC (Fri) by steffen780 (guest, #68142) [Link]

Difference is that I'm not advocating to give up on cooperation - Lennard is. Or at least I don't see how his words could be interpreted any other way, but if I misunderstood him I'm sorry (should've said that in my previous post ofc). If anything there needs to be a lot more cooperation, and not less, to reduce the insane amount of duplication.

As for logic, well, I fully support his right to say what he wants. I also fully support taking some care in what one says, especially when it's on the record and on an extremely touchy subject. I don't see what's illogical about that.