

A love hate relationship with the Gnu/Linux desktop - goplexian
http://www.goplexian.com/2010/09/love-hate-relationship-with-gnulinux.html

======
jdub
A few thoughts from a former GNOME release manager...

FLOSS developers, _particularly_ those writing code in their spare time, hack
on whatever they feel like. Usually because they find it fun.

This is why we have jokes about the number of people writing IRC clients in
the 90s, which apply to the number of people writing Twitter clients this
decade. :-)

GNOME is a meritocratic collective of individuals (some of whom work for
companies with an interest in GNOME) with a degree of aligned vision and
values, and an _incredibly_ thin layer of artificial technical leadership
(mainly represented by the Release Team).

It's not a command-and-control culture. People work on things because they
want to, are paid to, or (in many cases) both.

One thing to keep in mind: There is a sense of GNOME being a "team" of like-
minded souls, so distinctions between vision and values between projects (such
as Firefox and Pidgin) may stand out to developers more than they are obvious
to users.

What one developer finds fun may be another hacker's dental surgery nightmare.
There are always new ideas to muck around with, new projects to contribute to,
and new people to work with. For these reasons, _directing FLOSS developer
energy is not a zero-sum game_.

When someone says "GNOME and KDE developers should combine their talents and
work together, then they'd all be better off (as will users)", my response is
this: Are you HIGH? These people may share _some_ common values, but in large
part, their vision and values are different enough that it would not make any
sense at all, let alone be fun.

Should all the NoSQL folk stop working on competing stacks, and work together
for the "betterment" of themselves and their users? Hell no.

Give it a few years and there'll be obvious frontrunners which have been
better maintained, supported, managed and better suit real requirements (cf.
MySQL and PostgreSQL in the FLOSS RDBMS world), but for now, get the fuck out
of the way of innovation!

There are long and interesting stories behind the specific projects the author
raises -- the Epiphany browser and the Empathy IM client -- but they're a bit
long for this post.

I'm suspect the author would be surprised to find out that the existence of
Epiphany and Empathy is much more to do with a sense of exceptionalism on the
part of Firefox and Pidgin than of GNOME. :-)

Reality check: Most GNOME users still use Firefox and Pidgin anyway (at least
until Ubuntu shipped Empathy in Lucid, and which will be much more convincing
in Maverick).

~~~
mycroftiv
A very nice reply, thank you. I believe though that there is a real problem of
code reuse vs. reinventing the wheel in the FOSS community. One of the main
rationales of open source is collaboration, but very often, developers choose
to begin new projects rather than attempting to collaborate on an existing
codebase. Instead of harmonious group effort, we end up with a "tower of
babel" of competing projects. Choice and variety are good, but they need to be
balanced against the principle of trying to produce the maximum amount of
value from an investment of time and energy. Sometimes duplication of effort
means that no new value is added by re-implementing the same functionality
present in other software.

~~~
jdub
"Choice and variety are good, but they need to be balanced against the
principle of trying to produce the maximum amount of value from an investment
of time and energy."

vs.

"I feel like writing a high performance, multi-node key value store, just to
prove that I can" OR "I enjoy coding with X, and I think I could make a really
cool browser with it" OR any other number of motivations.

Some of those motivations produce a Redis, a guiding principle, a community,
co-developers and a market. Some of the produce a SourceForget project that is
never heard from again, let alone improved beyond alpha quality.

But that's a lot of flowers blooming, and there's no shortage of developers
realising that FLOSS is where the action -- and practical education! -- is.

DVCS and social coding venues like GitHub make it all the more easy to start,
share, and improve.

You'll probably see all of that as messy and inefficient. Most experienced
FLOSS developers see it as a necessary by-product of open learning,
development and innovation -- our process.

~~~
mycroftiv
Actually, I believe we are in agreement, for the most part. In particular, I
think that DVCS are immensely helpful for encouraging "piggyback" development.
It may be that the obstacles to code re-use and cooperation are mostly
technical issues that can be resolved with the use of good tools. I am
completely committed to free software as both a user and developer - any
criticisms I have are motivated solely by a desire to improve the quality of
the software produced by the community and encourage its widespread adoption.

------
shantanubala
"I will never stop using the Gnu/Linux desktop, not because Gnome and KDE are
absolutely the best, but because Gnu/Linux offers me complete control over how
my desktop looks feels and works and the software it uses is open source and
free."

Then install another piece of software rather than the Gnome-branded software.

In Linux, I can eat my cake and have it too if I really want to -- I can run
Amarok but use Gnome if I want. If someone wants to spend their time
developing a browser suited _exactly_ to the philosophy of the Gnome desktop,
it's your decision whether or not you want to (un)install it. The only thing
that gets wasted is _their_ time.

Most non Gnome-branded apps work fine in Gnome. If GNOME wants to duplicate
existing software, it's Gnome's right to do so. It's also your right to
install what you want.

In other words, go to your favorite package manager, and pick what you desire.
Don't be upset that you have _more_ options. Options are the beauty of open
source.

~~~
macwarlock
It doesn't seem to me that the author is directly condemning the number of
options, of lack of personal choice, but is one of many people who have sought
more... pragmatism? unity? in some of the larger OSS environments.

If this was a conventional business, Microsoft for example, I would probably
agree that more cooperation and tech sharing between the Xbox and Live
divisions would be a good thing. Increase communication, reduce redundancies,
all that good business stuff.

For some open source projects, like Gnome, I get the feeling the shaman is
often strong than the salesman. Corporate help aside, the personal/emotional
attachment of OSS contributors drives involvement in ways a big number next to
market share percentage can't. But even steadfast contributors would like to
see the product used, so Gnome and others aren't off the hook completely.

Should Gnome be more cooperative with 3rd party apps? Maybe. Personally, I'm
thankful for the amount of quality OSS that let's a company, like Canonical,
build on the shoulders of giants and offer a system better tailored for end
users. That's where the request for cooperation is more realistic.

Still...

I haven't used Linux IM clients in a while but the Pidgin debacle made me
wince a little.

~~~
riffic
>Pidgin debacle

elaborate

~~~
sliverstorm
Basically, the users of Pidgin said "We want X" (I forget what X was).

The developers said, well we don't want X and we only really make Pidgin for
ourselves. It's just because we were feeling nice that we released it for you
guys to use in the first place, we don't owe you anything.

~~~
acabal
Do you mean when they decided to remove the 'send message' button and people
got so mad they forked the project? Or is there another Pidgin debacle that I
don't know about yet?

~~~
sliverstorm
I don't remember. The issue was relatively trivial IIRC, more a matter of
tastes- it was just one of those rally points. Like a MacGuffin.

------
iuguy
It's not the GNU/Linux desktop, it's GNOME. GNOME isn't restricted to
GNU/Linux, nor is it the only desktop environment for GNU/Linux.

I know the author makes the distinction once, but he continued to use this
incorrectly and he may as well have referred to a love hate relationship with
the Mac OS Desktop, Cygwin Desktop or FreeBSD Desktop. Heaven forbid should he
have used the term 'GNOME Desktop'.

------
m0nastic
Yeah, the problems the author has with Gnome are only problems as part of the
"regular people wanting to use Linux/Gnome" argument. Basically, a form of NIH
syndrome.

Why stop at the browser or IM client though? Technically, Gnome itself only
exists because of that same mindset (not being satisfied with KDE's initial
license).

Linux people tout the fact that you can install whichever application meets
your needs (or write your own, if one doesn't) as a main benefit to using
Linux. I'm not even one of those people (I really dislike Gnome, and I have no
love for Linux in general), and I don't see this as a bad thing.

I have a hate/hate relationship with the GNU/Linux desktop, but I would never
presume that people who are predominantly volunteering their time and efforts
to work on Gnome have a responsibility to rely on non-Gnome applications for
fundamental desktop functionality.

The only possible rationale I can see for the author's opinion is that if the
Gnome developers weren't spending their time having to create an official
Gnome application when an existing one would serve just fine, they would be
free to spend that time improving other aspects of Gnome.

I don't think that's necessarily a given.

~~~
goplexian
>Why stop at the browser or IM client though? Technically, Gnome itself only
exists because of that same mindset (not being satisfied with KDE's initial
license).

The trouble with "why stop there" arguments though is that they can make any
reasonable suggestion seem absurd.

There was a valid reason to create Gnome, but is there a valid reason for
Epiphany?

>I would never presume that people who are predominantly volunteering their
time and efforts to work on Gnome have a responsibility to rely on non-Gnome
applications for fundamental desktop functionality

The creators of Gnome have no responsibility to their users, but as users we
have the privilege of providing them with feedback.

If 99.999% of Gnome users are providing the development team with the feedback
that they will not use Epiphany no matter how much more polished it becomes
then what should Gnome do?

The way I say it there are three options.

1\. Do nothing, continue to develop and polish an application which no one
will ever use.

2\. Retire Epiphany and then have no "official" Gnome web browser.

3\. Retire Epiphany and chose one of the major browsers which most of their
user base are already happily using, and then try to make the experience of
that browser on their desktop as good as possible.

Maybe I am narrow minded, but are there really any other options?

~~~
m0nastic
I would argue that there is just as valid a reason for Epiphany as there was
for Gnome. Epiphany was created after Galeon (another Gnome web browser that
nobody used).

Gnome worked to create Human Interface Guidelines, and wanted a web browser
(which is a fairly fundamental part of a desktop environment in this day and
age) that used those guidelines to provide a cohesive experience.

Here was an announcement email which explains some of the reasons for it's
existence:

[http://mail.gnome.org/archives/epiphany-
list/2008-April/msg0...](http://mail.gnome.org/archives/epiphany-
list/2008-April/msg00000.html)

I would say that options 2 and 3 that you propose are nonstarters.

I feel weird that I've found myself in a position defending Epiphany. I don't
mean to be, it's a shitty browser.

I just don't find it puzzling that a desktop experience project would want to
be in control of their own web browser which uses their own underlying
technologies.

~~~
jdub
Note: That was the announcement of the shift from Gecko to WebKit, not the
launch of Epiphany itself (which was years earlier).

~~~
m0nastic
Correct. I had originally written a paragraph about the switch of rendering
engines, then figured it wasn't germane to the conversation.

I found the reasons they list for the switch still relevant as reasons for the
existence of the browser, however.

