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Godwin's Law Invoked in Linus/Gnome Spat
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Feb 17, 2007 02:21 AM
from the can't-the-nazis-stay-out-of-just-one-internet-argument dept.
from the can't-the-nazis-stay-out-of-just-one-internet-argument dept.
lisah writes "The flame wars between Linus Torvalds and the GNOME community continue to burn. Responding to Torvalds' recent claim that GNOME 'seems to be developed by interface Nazis' and that its developers believe their 'users are idiots,' a member of the Linux Foundation's Desktop Architects mailing list suggested that Torvalds use GNOME for a month before making such pronouncements. Torvalds, never one to back down from a challenge, simply turned around and submitted patches to GNOME and then told the list, '...let's see what happens to my patches. I guarantee you that they actually improve the code.' After lobbing that over the fence, Torvalds concluded his comments by saying, 'Now the question is, will people take the patches, or will they keep their heads up their arses and claim that configurability is bad, even when it makes things more logical, and code more readable.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
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Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Insightful)
But Linus does really seem to have a bit of an attitude problem at times. Which is many times good if you are a boss for employees, but the problem just is that is not what Linus is, he is the boss of volenteers, they can quit if they don't like their boss.
I can't help but get a little worried, had it been anyone else but Linus I wouldn't mind, let people have their strange ways as long as they do not bother me or anyone else to much.
I am just worried for Linus, I sure hope he does take care of himself and stay mentally fit, that flamewars like the one he appearently had with the Gnome people here does not bring him out of balance somehow.
If Linus somehow gets sick and overloaded then it will lead to a whole lot of mess with the development of the Linux Kernel which really would not be nice.
So please Gnome people start behaving, be humble, accept the patches and do not upset Linus, we really need him, even if he isn't always the nicest person around
Re:Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Attitude (Score:5, Interesting)
First off, nice touchy feely people get nothing done. All good OSS projects depend on focussed, and often heavy handed, leadership. Linus might piss and moan about Gnome, but then a lot of people do about Linus too. Linus is effective because he's not democratic. Try send patches that Linus does not like upstream in the kernel. They will get squashed. Sure, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but they should be aware of the cultures they are playing with.
I run an OSS project too, one that is pretty successful. I don't willy-nilly accept patches that I don't like either. I will often take patches and recode them to be the way that I want them to be.
Linus is good. Linus contributes a lot, but untimately that does not give him the right to be a fuckwit in someone elses project, any more than it gives anyone else the right to be a fuckwit in his project.
Roll over and be nice to Linus is a poor way to handle things.
Parent
Re:Attitude (Score:5, Interesting)
You can see it in there if you follow the list. It revolves around the idea that User are stupid so design for stupidity and stuff availible on other desktops simply not being there because users are stupid. Strangly, the gnome people are trying to convince linus that their way is the best way. Now this printer dialog post was made after the gnome project stopped submissions that would have nebaled it to work from being considered.
In all, outside the spanish email who thinks someone is stupid because they might not be able to read something writen in spanish, the entire attitude and conversations has been quite tame. Well, as far as i know. And I have been trying to follow this for a while. I used to use gnome and had to switch to KDE when stuff stopped being there. I don't see much of anything changing anytime soon. All that will happen is people will continue to reinforce their positions and beginers will eventualy grow out of gnome.
Parent
Re:Attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
So - let's see what happened here.
a) Linus bitches about something he doesn't like
b) Somebody says "Use it for a month and THEN see if you like it (which totally ignores the fact that what he's bitching about shows that he HAS, in fact, used it). Others tell him that if he's not using it, or doing something about it, he has no right to complain.
c) Linus turns around and does what he's told to - he submits patches to fix what he thinks is broken
I don't see anything wrong here. I don't see evidence of an ego. What *I* see is somebody with very strong opinions, and grounded with a basis in fact (even if you don't agree with his conclusions - which I don't), doing something about it instead of just whining.
I wish MORE people had this particular "ego problem" of Linus' - Open Source would be much further along.
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Re:Attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Interesting)
HOwever I do think that assuming he has some degree of autism isn't unlikely, I myself suffer from quite serios mental disorders and I seem to find that autism and other mental disorders (or what you like to call them, doesn't matter much) is much more common in "the geek community" than in the world surrounding us.
Probably has a lot to do with that the commputer is really a big help to people like me who have problems handling social situations.
But then again I do not know Linus at all, I just know that he is important to the Linux Kernel and I would like for the kernel to keep on developing, if I have to bow and jump around to please Linus I would do that as I know he is much better at doing what he does than I am and even if I were more skilled being humble and appreciating what Linus has done would let things run more smoothly.
Parent
Re:Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Insightful)
If you get the occasion, read The curious incident of the dog in the night time [amazon.com] by Mark Haddon. Its a very small and entertaining paperback, an avid reader could finish it off in one evening's sitting.
I also suffer from :
* Severe Anxiety In Social Situations
* Extreme difficulty making decisions when new options are in front of me
* Panic attacks when touched unexpectedly
* Panic attacks when people shout or demonstrate hostile / violent behavior
I'm not saying they / we ARE autistic, I'm only pointing out that reclusive geeks demonstrate very, very similar symptoms. From the research I've done, it seems that somewhere around Gen-X kids who are really smart were given an overdose of stimuli which grew their creativity and intellect but shot them in the foot emotionally. Right about the time of the Texas Instruments home computer, from what I can tell, and onward.
I had to wade through an enormous amount of kiddie-shrink finger pointing papers, and I'm still doing that
There's also a school of thought that empathy is the next evolutionary "tool" we're devloping, and the feedback we get from the heightened sense literally drives us crazy to the point where we seem autistic.
People who stay home and work, electing not to interact much with the outside world around them do so for very good reasons, and we really need to be tolerant of eachother's quirks. This doesn't mean that you put on a T shirt that says "Hey world, I have a hard time coping with you so plese be nice to me all the time", however.
If you (yourself) won't make an effort to get past yourself, you can't expect more from those around you.
The smarter we get, the less we're able to handle it. I don't think the world is going to slow down so we feel more comfortable being in it
Let us not forget, Linus is most directly responsible for this 'cool little safe haven' we found where not only can we interact at a level that also lets us feel safe, we can also have careers. When he talks, listen. If you don't like what he says, cope.
Parent
Re:Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Insightful)
I stand corrected (and your right) and I know better because I was there. The sentence should have said "Linus and Stallman", but Linus is the topic.
If any part of the 'big bang' had not happened just as it did, I'm quite sure the universe would still exist but I can't accurately say just how things would be within it.
Free software as we know it has more than one parent, you are 100% correct. Stallman laid the roads, no doubt about it
"Yes, hello, MCI? Yes about my bill, this call to California
I'm not at all negating or diminishing the work of everyone else involved, but lines of code aren't the only measure of how much someone contributed.
Parent
Re:Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please, if Torvalds is autistic, then I'm a borderline pyschopath. People sometimes lose it when typing. I do often. They don't see the other side of the conversation as an actual person. It happens. For example, right now, I want to hit you with a stick. If this were real life, I'd not want to, and I'd have you out for coffee.
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Re:Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Funny)
Speak for yourself and hand me the stick...
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Re:Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Funny)
Being made into coffee sounds less pleasant than being hit with a stick. Oy! The grinding and the scalding and the hot hot hot! Heuven glavin!
Parent
Re:Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Funny)
Sincerely,
Hans Reiser
Parent
Re:Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Insightful)
I work partly embedded in an academic CS environment, there are plenty of people there who aren't the most socially adept, but to suggest that these people all have Asperger's is nonsense.
There's a huge problem with people self-diagnosing autistic spectrum disorders, they read a paragraph or two on Asperger's and then they have the 'omg that's me!' moment. I can happily sit around all day picking bits out of DSM criteria that fit my personality.
Let me tell you something, these geeks don't have Asperger's. I have a girlfriend who is diagnosed with Asperger's and believe you me she is nothing like the people I know in the CS department.
Just because you're a bit shy, antisocial, have a thing for code and maths and aren't the most outgoing person in the world doesn't make you fucking Asperger's.
You don't want to be autistic, you don't even want to pretend to be autistic. Watching someone with Asperger's struggle with living day to day is not fun. You geeks don't struggle to live from day to day. Panic attacks are not the sole preserve of people with Asperger's, and when you see an AS suffer 'overloaded' with stimuli you don't want to be around because there's nothing you can do to calm them down and they're using one of their coping mechanisms to keep themselves from literally losing the plot.
Living with Asperger's is not something you should aspire to. You can be logical, antisocial, good with computers and suffer panic attacks and still not be Asperger's or anywhere on the autistic spectrum.
Repeat after me - Wikiepdia is not a fucking doctor, it cannot diagnose you. If you think you all have Asperger's go get a referral to someone who can tell you. Watch as they boot you out of the surgery for wasting their time.
regards,
long suffering partner of a wonderful Asperger's gf.
Parent
Re:Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Informative)
I'm so fucking sick and tired of these geeks who think autism is some sort of neato cool thing to have which makes your life a magical fairyland of math and science genius while explaining away their aversion to dating and soap. That attitude alone tells me they have no fucking clue what they are talking about.
Autism is not a benefit and it's not fun and games. It's a fucking nightmare! I can't even begin to imagine what my son goes through when he "short circuits" on sensory overload. And he's old enough now to realize something is going wrong, but he can't do anything to stop it. How come none of the "autism wannabes" out there ever talk about that aspect? Maybe because they're not actually autistic? Trust me, if I could I'd take my son's autism away from him and give it to one of those "autism is so kewl!" geeks so their dream of being autistic can come true.
Parent
Re:Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Interesting)
Straight on. I had a girlfriend once who was manically depressive and who made life very difficult for herself by talking herself into thinking she was a borderliner when every medical professional told her she wasn't.
I think the best description of what happens when people diagnose themselves is in the first chapter of Jerome K Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat [authorama.com]":
"It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.
I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into some fearful, devastating scourge, I know and, before I had glanced half down the list of premonitory symptoms, it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever read the symptoms discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vituss Dance found, as I expected, that I had that too, began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Brights disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaids knee.
I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadnt I got housemaids knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaids knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.
I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a class! Students would have no need to walk the hospitals, if they had me. I was a hospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diploma.
Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to examine myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at first feel any pulse at all. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed to start off. I pulled out my watch and timed it. I made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my heart. I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I have since been induced to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the time, and must have been beating, but I cannot account for it. I patted mys
Parent
Re:Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is (as Linus has demonstrated), is that if you know what you're doing you can add this stuff, or at least drop to the command line or install Konq or Midnight Commander. Virtually every Linux dist has a vast library of tools to use. I do think that GNOME would benefit from some kind of power tools (think TweakUI on windows) or even an advanced mode which exposes more, but making the desktop simple, consistent and easy to use for mere mortals by default is the only way to go.
Anyway GNOME isn't as simple as OS X (for example), yet dare criticize OS X on slashdot and you invoke the wrath of Apple zealots everywhere.
Parent
Re:Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Please take care of Linus (Score:5, Insightful)
If you'll forgive my saying this, you sound like one of those people who responds to every criticism of Bush by bringing up something Clinton did. This isn't a binary thing. This isn't a "everyone who hates Gnome must love KDE" thing. It is perfectly possible and legitimate to criticise Gnome's decisions completely without reference to KDE. I for one think both environments are equally unpleasant to use; I use Gnome at the moment purely because I haven't got round to looking for something better.You see? You are totally missing the point. This is not about whether Gnome is better than KDE or vice versa! This is about whether someone for whom Gnome is 95% perfect is able to fix that remaining 5%, or whether they're going to be permanently frustrated by little niggles that they can't straighten out. This is about whether the decisions Gnome's powers-that-be make are allowing Gnome to fit the TASTE and PREFERENCE of people who want to choose Gnome, because Gnome is closer to what they want than any of the other choices.
I don't get it. Why do so many people like you seem to think that the existence of other desktop environments means it should somehow be off-limits to discuss the benefits and disadvantages of any individual environment? Why do you think that any attempt to improve a minor aspect of one environment must really be a conspiracy to replace it with a different environment? Why are so many people dedicated to stifling debate? We're talking about desktop environments here, not religion, for God's sake.
Parent
Re:Gnome developers aren't idiots (Score:5, Informative)
Do you even know what you're talking about? The GTK file dialog is almost exactly the same as the OS X file dialog. Compare these screenshots:
GTK save file dialog: http://clemens-and.nihongonauts.com/uploads/gtk2.
OS X save file dialog: http://www.uwec.edu/help/MacOSX/Images/dialog/fil
GTK open file dialog: http://www.flamerobin.org/images/screenshots/0.6.
OS X open file dialog: http://www.guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/interfac
Which part of the GTK file dialog is "much worse" than the OS X one? There's almost no difference.
How naive you are. Things don't work like that for 90% of the users, sorry.
Parent
Re:Gnome developers aren't idiots (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:different desktops for different people (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now, people who find Gnome 95% perfect are suffering, because it won't let them fix the last 5% and get their dream environment. And you are not doing these people any favours by telling them they should use some other environment instead, because if Gnome is 95% perfect then KDE, Xfce, Blackbox, etc. will all be worse for them.
Parent
huh? (Score:5, Funny)
What exactly is an "interface Nazi"? Is that someone that develops a GUI that encourages concentration?
not that extreme, really (Score:5, Funny)
They just try to replace Save As... with SEIG FILE! whenever they see it in source strings.
Parent
Re:not that extreme, really (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
a person who is fanatically dedicated to or seeks to control a specified activity, practice, etc.
The Anti-Defamation League was not happy [adl.org] about this.
Parent
Re:huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:huh? (Score:5, Informative)
Who modded that up?
Did you even read the links you provided, or do you just like to defame an organization as you whine about about defaming others?
And as to your misleading comments implying they only care when Jews are harassed, here's one of many examples of ADL condemning anti-Arab and anti-Muslim violence after 9/11 [adl.org].
Parent
You know something? (Score:5, Informative)
Here are the highlights for those who didn't RTFA:
Lopez: "Linus, you don't know how to read Spanish, so are you an idiot too?"
[snip]
Schaller: "Could maybe be a good way to start a constructive dialog instead of this useless mudslinging?"
[snip]
Torvalds: "What I find unconstructive is how the GNOME people always make *excuses*. It took me a few hours to actually do the patches. It wasn't that hard. So why didn't I do it years ago?
I'll tell you why: because GNOME apologists don't say "please send us patches". No. They basically make it clear that they aren't even *interested* in fixing things, because their dear old Mum isn't interested in the feature.
[snip]
But why, oh, why, have GNOME people not just said "please fix it then"?
Instead, I _still_ (now after I sent out the patch) hear more of your kvetching about how you actually do everything right, and it's somehow *my* fault that I find things limiting.
Here's a damn big clue: the reason I find GNOME limiting is BECAUSE IT IS."
Re:You know something? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Cleaner and more capable?? (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, if someone submitted patches to the linux kernel to grab the local weather report and print it out on boot, that would be adding capability that Linus would never accept in a million years because it is outside of the scope of the kernel. If Linus's patches are similarly outside the scope of the official design goals of Gnome, then any expectation that they would be accepted is just a red herring.
Here's the link (Score:5, Insightful)
http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/deskt
Basically, Linus wants to have fine grained control over what the mouse buttons do.
Sounds like a simple request, but he doesn't reveal it until *after* he submits a patch and in that same email goes on to rant about how no-one listens to him and how GNOME developers make excuses instead of just doing whatever he wants. In a later email he comments that he sent the patches to a developer's only email address (that he admits may or may not have been able to see his patches) because he doesn't like bugzilla and says that the patches must be accepted or GNOME developers are a bunch of hypocrites even though an API freeze is in effect for about a month ( http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointSeventeen [gnome.org] ).
Personally, I find it a bit interesting that Linus has repeatedly flamed (or sidelined) people on the Linux kernel mailing list for acting like he is now, not following the kernel submission procedure, assuming that freezes don't count, and assuming that if the core architects of the Linux kernel think that a feature (done in a certain way) is a bad idea then they must be a bunch of hypocrites.
I personally don't know if the patches are any good or in keeping with GNOME's design or need changes or
It's not unreasonable to expect this. GNOME core developers don't go on the Linux kernel thread and whine and submit attitude patches to Linus, 'tho if they did, they would (and should) be flamed. Linus has said repeatedly on the kernel mailing lists that submitters must either follow the kernel rules, or fork (e.g. if you don't like the license), or pass on your patches to someone who is willing to do things that kernel developer's way (none of Reiser's patches would have gone if it weren't for this later option).
Are there problems with the GNOME way of doing things? Sure. Linus brought up a good point about the ease of submitting patches. But all projects have issues. There was a time, not too long ago, when the submission process for the Linux kernel was "send Linus your patches and if he doesn't respond then keep resending them because the patches might have gotten lost". But the issues won't get better if you complain to the wrong people.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Parent
He's completely wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole point of the open source movement is to allow alternative approaches to flourish and be chosen (or not) on their merits. It's what OSS does to raise quality. The biggest problem KDE and Gnome always had was that they continually trod on each others' toes. So, let them go their separate ways - let KDE be configurable and Gnome be "designed for idiots". See who wins. Either which way the variety is good for OSS itself.
Dave
Re:He's completely wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, long after the licensing issues with Qt have gone, and while Gnome continues to be the least functional GUI available for any modern desktop OS (a badge the Gnome community appears to wear with pride), no one has switched.
I'm as frustrated as Torvalds is with it, because it's not enough to just use KDE when given the chance. Look at the utter disregard the Ubuntu project has for Kubuntu; the system configuration dialogs last time I used it (Breezy Badger) were utterly broken and unusable -- and I've heard from some Edgy Eft users that it still sucks. There's a post right above here yapping about how awful slow Kubuntu is compared with Debian.
KDE's the only desktop that does things right. Konqueror is gorgeous, and easily rivals my Mac for usability and power.
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Alternative approaches (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
gconf = regedit (Score:5, Insightful)
There are tons of things that can be configured/fixed in Windows just like Gnome.
With some configuration tool that's only suitable for an elite bunch to use.
So, I don't see Gnome as an improvement over Windows in terms of usability.
Maybe Linus should try beryl (Score:5, Interesting)
I am 100% with Linus on this one. A few years back Gnome was using the sawfish window manager. Not only could this be configured to your hearts content, you could even write your own extensions for it. With sawfish windows could do some real magic.
Gnome saw sawfish and its configurability and decided it was bad -- and to some extent it was, there were a plethora of options. The right solution to this is to find a good set of default options and provide a configuration tool that presents just the options that people are most likely to configure + an advanced configuration dialogue for those that want to play with the more interesting options.
Gnome threw the baby out with the bath water when they went to metacity.
For a while I stopped using Gnome and used ratpoison as my window manager. Ratpoison shows the power of being able to do all your window manipulation from the keyboard (this is quite important for me, I have a neuromuscular disorder and so avoiding the mouse can make me much more productive -- metacity does not give me that option).
More recently I kept hearing about 3-D window managers and decided to give beryl a try. Now beryl comes with a plethora of options and has reasonably good support for keyboard navigation. Fingers crossed some gnome based linux distributions will go for beryl as their window manager.
Going from ratpoison to beryl is maybe going from the sublime to the ridiculous, but what the two have in common is configurability.
Linus is right, one size fits all sucks.
Misconception about Sawfish (Score:5, Informative)
where people who felt Sawfish went a bit overboard in that regard, but that was not the reason it got
ditched as the default GNOME window manager. The reason for that was simply that after Eazel went backrupt and Sawfish maintainer John Harper
had to find a new job, he ended up at Apple. And thus he couldn't maintain Sawfish anymore. The really special thing about Sawfish was that it
was written in its own Lisp dialect so as part of Sawfish you got both an extra lisp interpreter and GTK+ bindings for it.
All of these three went unmaintained as John went away and nobody where interested in taking over. Thus the GNOME developers had to look elsewhere
for a maintained window manager, it was decided that one should aim for one written in C like the rest of the desktop libraries to lessen the chance
of future maintenance prolems. To answer this call Havoc Pennington stepped up with Metacity and it was quickly adopted by a lot of GNOME developers and
users and subsequently chosen as the standard. Havoc was very strict about what he let into Metacity, due to a policy that requests for config options was usually a result of broken behaviour in the window manager and thus feeling the behaviour should be fixed instead of a config option added to work around the problem.
This was in line with the policy that do govern GNOME, in the sense that there is a consensus to not allow 'random' patches
add config options to the GUI without a very good reason. For instance one shouldn't add config options as a way to work around bugs or
missing features in lower parts of the stack, instead one should try to fix them. In the case of Metacity this was applied in a much sterner/hardcore
fashion that for most other modules, but due to Havoc's high profile I think the policy he kept for metacity colored how people outside the project perceived
the project as a whole.
Parent
Re:Links to the patches? (Score:5, Informative)
http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/deskt
Parent
Re:Users *are* usually idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
Incidentally, spatial file management is one of the worst things ever to come out of the "if it agrees with common sense it can't possibly be right" school of interface design.
Parent
Re:Users *are* usually idiots. (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I prefer my desktop environment to leave as much of the screen usable as possible, without cluttering it up with silly icons and toolbars. I like to be able to fit several xterms on the screen at once so I can monitor them all without alt-tab'ing or some other such nonsense. I used to use TWM, but these days I use Enlightenment because it maintains the functionality I loved with TWM, only it's prettier.
The fact that modern distributions try to shoehorn everyone into either "Gnome people" or "KDE people" sucks rocks.
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Re:Users *are* usually idiots. (Score:5, Interesting)
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You and the moderators are out of your minds (Score:5, Insightful)
"there will be hell to pay for ignoring it"
I can't believe Linus, who has probably dropped more patches than anyone else alive, would think that sending in unwanted patches along with a *fuck you too* for good measure would think that somehow the GNOME people would suddenly change their minds.
Furthermore, projects should avoid contributors that are unable to get along even if they would make a valuable contribution. Having the additional useful developer doesn't balance out loosing the contribution of others who are offended and the loss of community around your project. I'm not making this up, just ask any HR department whether they would hire an all around offensive individual regardless of how good he is.
Honestly, I have a lot of respect for Linus, and respect someone who cares so much about the right solution. However in this case he has gone way over the line from being passionate about technology and perhaps a little quirky, into being embarrassingly out of touch with the norms of human interaction in a public forum.
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Re:Not about look (Score:5, Informative)
People should read the thread where all this happened: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/deskt
After someone asked about where the patches were, Linus said the following:
Parent
Re:Must be... (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting opinion; have you ever met Linus? I have. He's not the type of person I'd call a jerk.
Richard Stallman? Maybe; he certainly can be a jerk in certain situations. Eric Raymond (the obscurity he so richly deserves seems to have finally caught up to him, so that reference may no longer be relevant) is definitely a jerk. Meeting both those guys was an eye-opener.
Torvalds? He's a nice guy, actually. He's also a very smart guy who holds his opinions because he's spent a lot of time thinking about them. Despite what people tend to assume, he doesn't insist you agree with his opinion; he does, however, tend to insist that your opinion is well thought out if you wish him to take it seriously. Unfortunately, the Gnome troop seems to have stopped at "simple is good" and not realized that it, like anything, can be taken too far.
Personally I tend to think Gnome's "users are idiots" attitude is not so much due to thinking that users are idiots; I think it's more due to the fact that a few large corporations pay for most of Gnome's development, and they want their users to be treated as idiots. Someone has to have control of the computer, and as is true with Microsoft, the last thing they want is for that control to rest with the person using it.
It is true, and it will always be true, that some people who use computers will never understand them at any level, and they will find a way to hurt themselves with any options you give them. It is also true that most people do not fall into this group, and despite what all the 14 year old fanbois who frequent Slashdot believe, they are not the only ones who can make sense of of a computer; most people who use them become quite adept at making them do what they want.
For Gnome to persist in preventing them from using the computer as they see fit is a shame (interestingly certain folks in the Mozilla project also seem to be infected with this disease, although in that case more pragmatic viewpoints usually prevail). Despite what so many seem to believe, an easy to use UI is not mutually exclusive to a flexible and capable UI; that so many developers assume it to be true is much more a function of their own lack of vision and ability than a reflection on the reality of the situation.
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Re:Interface Nazis. (Score:5, Insightful)
And GNOME was developed on the UI toolkit originally developed for which famous piece of software?
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Re:Interface Nazis. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Interface Nazis. (Score:5, Funny)
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