McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Well, you have someone who, using their maintainer position, does this:
1. Removes an already implemented highly established feature also present in Windows Explorer and most other applications where it makes sense to have it
2. Replaces it with nothing or with a feature with an UI that is different from all other similar software and that cannot cover all use cases as well or better (as argued by users)
3. Doesn't provide a detailed rationale of the exceptional circumstance resulting in some great advantage in doing this that offsets all the disadavntages
4. Causes several users to complain about the above
5. Doesn't either reconsider, announce he's thinking about it or explain exactly why the decision is good despite the huge negatives

This applies to both type ahead find, sidebar tree view and the compact view he recently approved the removal of.

I think that's not what you want from a maintainer, ESPECIALLY when said project already has issues with having a sizeble fraction of its former GNOME 2 users no longer liking it and vocally criticizing it.

And no, McCann's post doesn't really explain at all why the changes are a good tradeoff: he incorrectly states that all use cases are preserved, fails to even consider how easily existing users and prospective users now using Windows will understand and cope with the changes and that "Sometimes is just not possible to add new functionality without first making some room" (which is just bullshit, as software can grow without limits).

Now, of course, if you can get him and other people acting similarly to change to more effective behavior, that's good, but otherwise replacing them seems advisable.

Especially if these people are paid to work full-time, since that means you can just hire a random good programmer instead and tell him to get up to speed on the project, and don't need to actually hope someone fills the spot on his own accord.