Please take a deep breath before posting. [LWN.net]

Please take a deep breath before posting.

Posted May 23, 2012 7:35 UTC (Wed) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640)
In reply to: Please take a deep breath before posting. by martinfick
Parent article: Announcing printerd

Fair points. The authors are not out there to get anyone sure, but I think it would be better if they would improve the plumbing of existing solutions instead of starting something out of scratch.

Creating a competitor for a existing system disrupts Linux ecosystem while the transition is going on, and fragments Linux further if it fails to be clearly superior than the historic alternative. Yes sometimes that has to happen, but it is not a decision to be taken lightly.

I think people take too easily the route of having fun of creating their project from scratch using their favourite technologies (like gobject and d-bus) than to joining the existing project and working with their preferred methods to make existing project work better for everyone.

I guess it is a bit of fame issue as well. Nobody will get famous plumbing an existing free software project, while someone who creates a new project will be known as the author of the new project...

Let me bow to the unsung heroes of free software development: plumbers of existing projects.

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Please take a deep breath before posting.

Posted May 23, 2012 9:07 UTC (Wed) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

You're putting the blame on the wrong people.

It's absolutely right -even critical- to create alternatives to existing projects. It ensures there's no single point of failure at any level, and that we don't get stuck too long because of evolutionary dead-ends.

The _problem_ starts when bigger projects (desktops and distros) push an immature alternative, sometimes for shady reasons. Sometimes is because of someone's agenda, but often is just a combination of stupidity and stubborness (we are all humans after all).

So, I salute and thank the developers for the effort they are putting into this, but distros and desktops better stay clear from it, at least until they can demonstrate that it brings something valuable to the table _and_ can take over the functions of whatever is being replaced.