Please take a deep breath before posting.

Posted May 23, 2012 5:45 UTC (Wed) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455)
In reply to: Architecture astronauts take over by nhippi
Parent article: Announcing printerd

I would like to ask you (and others) to reconsider posting a comment like this in the future. I don't believe that the authors of this project are out to get anyone. You may have had frustrations with software before, we all have, but I doubt that this particular project is the cause of any of them so it seems missplaced to attack them. They just started a project to write some software they thought might be useful and they ask nothing of you. No one is asking you to appreciate what they are doing. If you don't like their ideas or software don't use them, but it just seems hurtful and disrespectful to put them down so quickly, those are people whom you likely know nothing about and have little to judge them by. We have little to judge you by too, do you want it to be a message like this?

This message isn't just aimed at you (so forgive me if it feels too strong of a response to your post). I just felt upset reading the many replies above which had somewhat angry tones and yours was the last one in the series. It has become more and more common here to direct such anger or contempt towards free software creators. These are people who are hopefully just sharing with you and others. As long as they are just sharing freely without trying to extort you in some way, or maliciously convince you to use their malware it feels wrong to attack them (even if their code or designs are flawed). I know that I would feel upset reading the reception that these authors are getting here if I were them, and I don't think they were even asking for a reception.

Please take a deep breath before posting.

Posted May 23, 2012 7:35 UTC (Wed) by nhippi (subscriber, #34640) [Link] (1 responses)

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.

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.

Please take a deep breath before posting.

Posted May 23, 2012 11:09 UTC (Wed) by intgr (subscriber, #39733) [Link] (1 responses)

Erm, as far as I can tell, the purpose of a project announcement is to introduce the project to other people. This blog article is incomplete on that front. My takeaway from that article is exactly the same as the grantparent poster's: they don't have a problem, but they're trying to solve it anyway. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a project announcement to state what problems the project aims to solve.

Look at the announcement of systemd for example: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html -- when reading it, I immediately recognized a few of my pet peeves listed and understood the value of the project.

> If you don't like their ideas or software don't use them

It's not as simple as that. The author of this project is also a Fedora developer. I think that users have the right to complain when they see a distro going in a direction that they don't like.

Please take a deep breath before posting.

Posted May 23, 2012 12:44 UTC (Wed) by kmike (guest, #5260) [Link]

>> If you don't like their ideas or software don't use them

> It's not as simple as that. The author of this project is also a Fedora developer. I think that users have the right to complain when they see a distro going in a direction that they don't like.

Exactly. I wouldn't be surprised to see printerd as the default in Fedora 19.