The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience [LWN.net]

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 17, 2011 13:10 UTC (Thu) by Tet (subscriber, #5433)
In reply to: The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience by nix
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

I note that you totally ignored the actual point I was making

Welcome to the wonderful world of GNOME. One of the reasons I still use fvwm, despite its faults, is that GNOME and other similar desktop projects have no desire to cater to my needs, and whenever I've asked how to do something I've been told that I'm wrong to want it. By all means provide defaults that you think will work for the majority of users. But it's my computer, and I want it to work the way I want it to work, not the way some desktop developer thinks I should want it to work. Fvwm lets me do that. People are not the same, no matter how much some might wish it so. The GNOME project in particular is unwilling to acknowledge that point. They're wrong. But they've made it clear they have no intention of changing their viewpoint.

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The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 17, 2011 15:59 UTC (Thu) by Frej (guest, #4165) [Link] (1 responses)

You are wrong to demand *your* needs from others. The 'developer' tries to cater to as many as possible, i doubt fvwm does that. Remember, you are not more important than anyone else, and free software is not about solving *your* needs.

But you are free to *create on your own* whatever extension you need.
With metacity there was devilspie, the shell should be much easier to extend.

The Grumpy Editor's GNOME 3 experience

Posted Mar 22, 2011 7:55 UTC (Tue) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]

> You are wrong to demand *your* needs from others. The 'developer' tries to cater to as many as possible, i doubt fvwm does that. Remember, you are not more important than anyone else, and free software is not about solving *your* needs.

You're wrong about GNOME developers: they are not trying to cater to as many as possible--this whole article is about that very point.

You're ignoring the fact that GNOME devs (and "designers") are claiming to be making software for other people to use--people besides said devs and "designers." They *want marketshare*, yet they stubbornly refuse to cater to the voiced needs of the market.

They aren't catering to as many as possible--they are catering to an imagined user, one who's nearly computer-illiterate, and is unable to learn or adapt, too. Self-proclaimed "designers" are "designing" based on "research" and ignoring in-their-face, real-world, practical problems brought to their attention by their *actual* audience.

They are being hypocrites: they claim to be making software for others, yet they're actually just pleasing themselves.

And that's fine: we're not paying them--they should scratch their own itches if that's what they want to do.

The problem is that they are either dishonest or delusional. They should just admit that they are going to do what *they* want to do, so that other people can stop wasting their time trying to convince them that GNOME 3 isn't what anyone besides GNOME devs and "designers" want.