Nobody should be surprised anymore when GNOME pulls some shady and technically questionable crap to try to make their "product" look better by actively breaking other people's work.
That first link especially is hyperbolic disingenuous bad faith nonsense. It draws completely wild conclusions that simply don't follow from the GNOME dev quotes or GNOME's behavior it lists in its support. Trying to have a consistent coherent vision for their own project isn't the same as trying to lock users into their project, let alone trying to sabotage other people's projects, nor do they ever say that's what they want to do, or that they view users as "walking billboards", just that they want GNOME to have a consistent experience so they can have basic quality assurance. They're basically trying to avoid the "carrier customized Android" problem. I glanced briefly over the other articles and it seems like they're the same utter drivel, additionally repeating tiresome, worn out, utterly stupid and wrong claims like that GNOME is "a mobile-first" interface or "not suited to the desktop." I use nearly completely vanilla GNOME every day on my desktop, as a power user, and it's amazing --- far better, in fact, than KDE or any other DE I've tried. I've explained at length why, and why their UX choices were justified, before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39985533
I still prefer MacOS to GNOME. But KDE always just feels like a mess. And everyone's defence is that you can tidy it up any way you like?
There is value in that. GNOME and MacOS can sometimes feel like straight jackets. But you know, I would rather just not fiddle with the DE and actually get down to doing whatever it is I do. And KDE just doesn't give me that with the default experience.
GNOME works great 90% of the time as my DE. That's more than the 20% KDE has got for me.
> That first link especially is hyperbolic disingenuous bad faith nonsense. … I glanced briefly over the other articles and it seems like they're the same utter drivel… …I've explained at length why, and why their UX choices were justified, before…
Yep. There we go. Saying anything about GNOME that isn't adoring praise immediately draws out the victim-playing accusations of bad faith, and refusal to engage with the actual problems. How dare anybody scrutinize the way GNOME developers treat and conduct themselves around other people. Nobody can ask GNOME to listen to them, but everybody else must listen to GNOME. There's genuinely something strange going on with the mindset around the whole project; it's like they've actively weeded out anybody with any functioning empathy, self-awareness, or non-zero neuroplasticity…
It's not GNOME that's crazy; it's literally everybody else [1][2][3][4][5][6[][7][8][9][10] that's ever tried to work with GNOME! They must be out to get you.
> We want to send a strong signal upstream and towards other projects. We cannot and will not support applications which do not support our users and environments.
> …you talk with people and you get an exasperated sigh, like "Why are you bothering to like report this issue to me?," or like "Why are you asking this question, it's stupid." It's a bit caustic.
> They just skip "embrace" and "extend" and just go straight to "extinguish". …They don't just decline to implement standards, they actively work against the establishment of standards at all.
> It's not GNOME that's crazy; it's literally everybody else [1][2][3][4][5][6[][7][8][9][10] that's ever tried to work with GNOME! They must be out to get you.
You're just Gish galloping to make yourself feel better. A lot of people being angry with a project doesn't actually necessarily imply that that project is inherently the bad guy. That's bandwagon thinking: "if the majority of people agree with me, then I must be right."
It can also just indicate a set of expectations that have become culturally ingrained and common in the community — like the idea that open source projects have some kind of obligation to bend over backwards to satisfy every whim of downstream developers and users, even when it conflicts with the upstream developer's vision for their own project — that clash with the beliefs and values of the project "everyone" is getting frustrated with. It can also indicate a culture of groupthink and bandwagoning and mob mentality, where everyone decides they're going to hate on a project and it becomes a self reinforcing cycle. Or it can just mean that the project in question just isn't really meant to be taken and adapted by other projects, because it's its own product, not a tinker toy kit, and so everyone is mad at it because they're expecting it to be something it isn't and hasn't been for over a decade, just because people want to takw advantage of the free labor of the GNOME team in building their product while also having their every whim satisfied. (IMO Miny and System76 have the right idea — fork GNOME or build something totally else — maybe set up a consortium of distros to manage a common GNOME fork? — if you don't like GNOME being GNOME).
I read through, in their entirety, every source you cite up to and including source 5, which I think is more than fair of me considering the Gish Gallop you're trying to put over on me, and all I see are meaningless petty grievances over minor design disagreements due to the entitlement of downstream developers, mostly about meaningless things like app indicators and themes, where everyone wants GNOME to conform to their vision of the next desktop and not their own just for their convenience. None of it seems like a smoking gun to justify hyperbolic claims of GNOME trying to sabotage other project's products out of a desire for market gain or something, or being "just like Microsoft" or anything else, unless you think the very idea of a DE or other project wanting to have its own vision and stick to it is illegitimate, in which case you should be railing against Void Linux for not using systemd, Alpine for not using glibc by default, DWM for not having themes and extensions, etc etc etc. But you don't.
And it's very interesting to me that when System76 displays similar behavior to the GNONE team, like when The GNOME team offered to make some of their extensions part of upstream so they'd get maintained by upstream by default, but pointed out that TypeScript didn't really work with GJS (I've read S76's source code, to get it to work it requires an ad hoc see script), and asked System 76 to consider rewriting the extension, and System 76 refused, or System 76 refusing to work with and accept the firmware standard that everyone was unifying on, you consider this evidence of the vilification of systems of the six, and not evidence of bad behavior on their part.
Or the transparent double standard you display between distro developers and upstream gnome developers, where the distro developers flatly refusing to align with and integrate with the vision of the Upstream project whose work they are picking backing off of is viewed as totally fine it accepted, but gnome refusing to align themselves with the vision of the people downstream from then is somehow evil, when it seems just about equal to me.
And honestly I genuinely do not see the problem with gnome being able to make design decisions about their own fucking desktop however they want, and asking distros to please stop doing the shit Android oems do to Android to gnome and randomly see me and slapping on all kinds of cruft and extensions from the "factory". Also, the idea that the police stop theming post was meant to be a directed targeted dig at System 76 is just utterly nonsensical and overly sensitive, and the fact that you can't see that I think demonstrates what's going on here. There are far many more, much larger, downstream projects that theme. Also, before you raise it, seeming isn't really any better supported on KDE than it is under GNOME, it can break things just as easily, the KDE devs just don't care (which is fine).
> There's genuinely something strange going on with the mindset around the whole project; it's like they've actively weeded out anybody with any functioning empathy, self-awareness, or non-zero neuroplasticity…
But I see you opened with needless insults and generalizations, so I don't think this conversation is going to go anywhere productive. I recommend you go touch grass.
Tell me more how GNOME are the real victims, and calling out the way y'all treat people is "Gish Galloping" "needless insults and generalizations" and "meaningless petty grievances". Words mean things, you know, and other people exist.
You hit 4 kilobytes in this defensive rant. And not a single word of empathy for anything you apparently don't personally identify with, not a single thought reflecting on the impact your conduct has on other people. Not a single spot of introspection wondering "Are we really right"?
I think I'm done being a footstool for you to grandstand about what a great person you are from. You can find a different dance partner to virtue signal with.
Perhaps you should do some introspection yourself into whether you are demonstrating empathy for people you don't personally identify with, neuroplacticity in defending your arguments, or the capacity to think about whether you might be wrong, by actually engaging with other people's reasons for not finding your evidence convincing, instead of merely assuming that all Right Thinking People would automatically agree with you. And then immediately resorting to abuse as soon as someone doesn't find your evidence as convincing as you apparently find it. Because that's what you did. Instead of explaining why the evidence you gave me was actually good, you just resorted to immediately abusing me and assuming I must be a terrible person for disagreeing with you. How dare I challenge your interpretation and valuation of the behavior and quotes given in your sources, right? Perhaps you should consider how your abusive[1] behavior impacts others.
> actually engaging with other people's reasons for not finding your evidence convincing
> immediately resorting to abuse
Lmao:
> hyperbolic disingenuous bad faith nonsense.
> draws completely wild conclusions
> the same utter drivel
> tiresome, worn out, utterly stupid and wrong
> all I see are meaningless petty grievances over minor design disagreements
Nice "reasons".
And no, your 4KB rant about how System76 may or may not also do bad things, how much you hate people who want "meaningless things like app indicators and themes", how much you hate "the shit Android oems do", how GNOME may dictate "their own fucking desktop" but neither downstream distros nor upstream apps deserve the same autonomy, how KDE supposedly "just don't care" about themes (blatantly false, especially under TFA)— ad infinitum— None of that is is actually relevant to how GNOME treats people.
I have no desire to let you "infinitely increase the granularity of the discussion, so that the rhetorical burden on me just expands indefinitely and you can always bring up a new thing and say I haven't dealt with it". The point is how GNOME treats people, and (after your aggressive replies) how you treat people— not whether you can technically personally "explained at length why" it's "far better, in fact, than KDE or any other DE".
> Perhaps you should do some introspection yourself into whether you are demonstrating empathy for people you don't personally identify with
What exactly do you think I am doing, by hearing and listening to the concerns of groups as diverse as Budgie, Mint, Transmission, System76, Inkscape, Ubuntu, Wayland, Kernel, and Subsurface? I barely use like two of those projects Ftr; I sympathized with them only because they exist in the community and I feel for them as persons.
Yeah, if you ignore the reasoning I place right next to my evaluations and just quote the evaluations, it certainly looks like I don't have reasons. Very clever of you. Also, I don't think it's wrong or abusive for me to call something that is clearly hyperbolic, disingenuous, or bad faith hyperbolic, disingenuous, or bad faith. That's precisely what you've done to me, except better: because instead of actually arguing why I'm wrong about any of the things I'm saying, or trying to argue your case at all, you've just vaguely gestured at the data, falsely assuming that all reasonable people must agree on interpretations of the data, and then when I disagreed you labeled me with various things you thought applied to me, although while I described the sources themselves, you directed it at me.
> And no, your 4KB rant about how System76 may or may not also do bad things, how much you hate people who want "meaningless things like app indicators and themes", how much you hate "the shit Android oems do",
I don't hate those people simply for wanting those things at all, I just think that the way they are treating The Gnome developers is abusive and unacceptable, and that they are being entitled and disingenuous in their demands to have those things in someone else's project. That's pretty different. Like, in actuality, I recommend system 76 to all my friends and I'm huge fans of most of their work, I ran PopOS asked for quite some time, I just think they are being unfair in this case.
> but neither downstream distros nor upstream apps deserve the same autonomy,
Because downstream distros are not making their own desktop environment, they are using GNOME's desktop environment. You have to ignore that fact to believe I'm being inconsistent here.
> how KDE supposedly "just don't care" about themes (blatantly false, especially under TFA)
If you actually read my words instead of scanning them to look for things you could be angry about, in which case you would have actually noticed my reasons standing right beside the words that apparently made you just immediately see red, you would have also noticed that I didn't say KDE doesn't care about themes. TDE obviously does care about making it seeming possible and easy for people. Katie just doesn't care that themes, by their inherent nature, can break things occasionally. That was my point.
> None of that is is actually relevant to how GNOME treats people.
It is actually, because what I'm trying to show is that the demands and arguments of the people in the sources are fundamentally misguided, and that therefore their argument that the way gnome is treating them is unfair is unfounded. Also, I read through in detail all of your sources yesterday, from top to bottom, including all of the bug tracker exchanges and all of that, as well as several more posts on ignorant gurus website, and I never once saw an instance of The Gnome people responding with undo aggression or verbal abuse towards him even when he was continually trolling their bug tracker, meanwhile his entire block is filled with aggressive conspiratorial writing.
> I have no desire to let you "infinitely increase the granularity of the discussion, so that the rhetorical burden on me just expands indefinitely and you can always bring up a new thing and say I haven't dealt with it".
I'm not trying to infinitely increase the granularity of the discussion, I'm actually trying to have a discussion where reasons are exchanged and critiques, but all you seem to do is grandstand about morality without ever making an argument or anything of the sort.
> The point is how GNOME treats people, and (after your aggressive replies) how you treat people
Aggression is not a mark of being a bad or abusive person when it is in response to conspiratorial nonsense like ignorant Guru likes to spout. I wasn't the one who initiated this tone of the conversation, that was your first source and your own conspiratorial and aggressive lines about gnome. And I mean clearly you agree with me on that, since you responded with aggression to what you perceived as bullshit, as well, so I don't understand why we have this double standard where I can't do the same.
> only you are real to you
No, I can safely say I understand the frustration of the people that wrote the sources you're talking about, I just think the frustration is misdirected and based on unfair expectations. This is why I have a lot of Hope for Cosmic de , because it's actually designed for the sorts of things people want, so hopefully everyone can just move to it and leave gnome behind. Or just switch to kde, honestly, which seems to be what a lot of distros are doing now that there are starting to notice that gnome isn't actually a good basis for a distro branded and customized experience. I don't think failing to immediately agree with someone simply because they are frustrated or upset and say that they were ill served by someone is a failure of empathy if I think their assessment of the situation is wrong. Everybody has to use their own mind to evaluate the situation and decide for themselves what's happening, instead of taking the fact that some people are angry as evidence that they must be angry in the same direction too.
> Say "Hi" to Tom Emmeness for me. The only ungrowing are the unliving.
Well, one of us was trying to have a discussion about the sources and wanted to hear answers to their rationale for not finding them precisely convincing, and one of us is just assuming that everyone who is a right thinking good person will automatically agree with them and no more argumentation or discussion is necessary at all, so I think it's pretty clear who is the growing and who is the not growing among the two of us.
I don't think five examples is a gish gallop: the point was to demonstrate a trend in GNOME behavior, you need multiple examples to have a believeable case at all.
Five isn't but fifteen begins to feel like one, because the only practical way to respond is to read the sources and give your own high level conclusions, the same way the person who gave them is doing, but then you'll be accused of not dealing with specifics, and then if you deal with some specifics but not all of them, you'll be accused of not dealing with all of the facts, and so on.
I.E.: The more evidence and examples I bring, the more you feel the need to accuse me of speaking in bad faith.
> but then you'll be accused of not dealing with specifics, and then if you deal with some specifics but not all of them, you'll be accused of not dealing with all of the facts, and so on.
Frankly, I think that's a description of what you were apparently attempting to do. For me, it was about the pattern, the damage to communities, and the immediate aggression with which you yourself responded.
You already know you must be right. You just need everybody else to also agree that you are right. How dare I bring pesky reality into the fold.
> immediate aggression... You already know you must be right. You just need everybody else to also agree that you are right. How dare I bring pesky reality into the fold.
How nice of you to describe yourself :)
Dude, I looked at the evidence you gave me precisely because I thought I might be wrong, and didn't find your description or evaluation of it at all accurate or convincing, and I explained why, and instead of dealing with my reasons you immediately began to abuse me because you assumed that all right thinking empathetic people must agree with you. Like, I absolutely did deal with your facts, I read through many of your sources and gave you a description of why I don't find them convincing, what more do you want me to do, go through them quote by quote? That's precisely what I mean by a Gish gallop. The problem isn't the sheer number of sources, it's the way you're using them to infinitely increase the granularity of the discussion, so that the rhetorical burden on me just expands indefinitely and you can always bring up a new thing and say I haven't dealt with it.
2012 — https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/gnome-et-al-rotti...
2021 — https://joshuastrobl.com/2021/09/14/building-an-alternative-...
2023 — https://felipec.wordpress.com/2023/03/04/one-decade-later-gn...
2023 — https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-mess-is-not-an-accident-4e...
Nobody should be surprised anymore when GNOME pulls some shady and technically questionable crap to try to make their "product" look better by actively breaking other people's work.