Pidgin Controversy Triggers Fork 1104
paleshadows writes "Pidgin, the premier multi-protocol
instant messaging client, has been forked. This is the result of a heated, emotional, and
very interesting debate over a controversial new feature: As of
version 2.4, the ability to manually resize the text input area has
been removed; instead, it automatically resizes depending on how much
is typed. It turns out that this feature, along with the uncompromising
unwillingness of the developers to provide an option to turn it off,
annoys the bejesus of very many users.
One
comment made by a Professor that teaches "Collaboration in an Open
Source World" argued that 'It's easy to see why open source developers could develop dogmas. [...]
The most dangerous dogma is the one exhibited
here: the God feature. "One technological solution can meet
every possible user-desired variation of a feature." [...]
You [the developers] are ignoring the fan base with a dedication to your convictions
that is alarmingly evident to even the most unobservant of followers,
and as such, you are demonstrating that you no longer deserve to be in
the position of servicing the needs of your user base.'" Does anyone besides me find this utterly ridiculous?
Rediculous. (Score:1, Interesting)
Am I the only person who judges programs by their available options, not just feature set?
Re:That's why Open-Source fails on the desktop (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:That's why Open-Source fails on the desktop (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is there a technical reason not to allow both w (Score:3, Interesting)
Tcha. Then make it a compile time option and let the people who feel that strongly about the issue enable or disable it at build time. The can stick the instructions in the FAQ.
I really can't see the point of refusing to budge over such a trivial issue.
Pidgin guys are probably right. (Score:3, Interesting)
Options suck.
Every option means doubling the number of possible configurations - which makes proper testing of the application twice as hard. It also provides twice as many weird ways that the developers can have their apps configured that will prevent them from noticing issues as they personally develop.
There are some applications and configuration options where this isn't true - for example, a text editor for programmers would be less useful if you couldn't configure how many spaces are in a tab - but for simple end-user facing applications like Pidgin and the mechanism for resizing the text input box making a choice arbitrarily (or optimizing for UI simplicity) among the usable possibilities is probably the correct design decision.
There is always going to be a vocal minority who really wants to be able to configure every last little thing about their software. For free software, they can simply be pointed to the source code and told to have fun. As a usability compromise, features like Mozilla's "about:config" are good - as long as the user is told that weird configurations won't be supported. But in this particular case the best solution really seems to be for the Pidgin guys to just tell the forkers to "have fun" and then proceed to ignore them because the feature they're offering is silly and pointless.
Re:That's why Open-Source fails on the desktop (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is there a technical reason not to allow both w (Score:3, Interesting)
However there's also a class of users that finds the whole thing stupid and annoying and inconsistent. For one, UI elements aren't expected to change their shape without an explicit request, and for the whole screen to jump while you're typing is pretty jarring. For another, thanks to the "options are evil" thing, there's no way to configure the minimum or maximum size of the input area, which leads to a UI that's just generally ugly when the app is used in a different way from how the developers are expecting. That's not friendly either.
So this is a case where configurability really would be simple, and worthwhile, and make everybody happy. But the pidgin developers have instead chosen to say "fuck you". And not for the first time either. They aren't the least bit interested in communicating with their users, and they haven't really been for years. In a sense, that's their right -- but it doesn't mean the users are required to put up with it. They say that they work on pidgin as a hobby activity, for their own satisfaction -- well let's see how much satisfaction they get from "owning" a project with no users.
Nate M. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Rediculous. (Score:3, Interesting)
We are talking about an instant messaging program here right? Something that is used for communication with others? Just like cell phones, or email clients. I judge them on how well they work for communication and how many other features I want/need.
For some people, the more options the better. I really prefer to have one device to carry around, not 3-4. Phone, email, mp3 player, mild web surfing, all in one, but just hacking together something that does all of this "quickly" isn't most important, as ease of use, size, cost, and extra options make all the difference.
I haven't followed this whole story, but this seems like a rather stupid argument to get into in the first place. Mandating some annoying resizing text box for all users? No thanks, I would stop using a program that mandated something that ridiculous. A feature? Sure, maybe some people will like it. But I also wouldn't use an IM client that didn't let me resize the chat input box either.
I had this same argument with Mac vs. Windows. Especially with that stupid one button, UNBELIEVABLY retarded ROUND mouse POS they came out with (sometimes you actually had to look at the damn mouse to figure out which way was up, so you could orient it correctly. One of the dumbest ideas ever for a computer mouse.)
At least in Windows, there are several intuitive ways to do the same action, so you don't need to learn the one or two ways the developer thought you should do it. You could right-click, use keyboard shortcuts, go to a menu, drag and drop, etc. For me, almost nothing in MacOS was intuitive, while I could always just figure out some way of doing what I needed to in Windows.
Basically, it comes down to: Any part of the GUI that is Non-Standard should be an option that could be turned on/off depending on the user's preference.
"Auto-Resizing text input box? This is the coolest thing ever, everybody must use this and know what a God I am for thinking of it and developing it, therefore it must be mandatory." -- Get over yourself.
Re:Pigeons (Score:3, Interesting)
I work nearby where the bus-garage is located, and there is an absolutely huge amount of seagulls that flock to the parking lot because it is shiny smooth blacktop and they apparently are so stupid that they think it is water...
Anyway, they used to employ someone to scatter the birds so that the buses could leave and enter without the seagulls being crushed. The poor guy had to come out in a bee-keeper suit, because the little bastards would fly into his face--not to mention he was shat on quite a lot.
But then they found out that local laws preventing the killing of native birds do not explicitly apply to seagulls (or any maritime bird other than Pelicans, strangely) and they just started crushing them left and right when they buses needed to leave.
That's right: They just roll over them and create a path 'o death between the bus-barn and the exit gate. Then someone comes by with a bobcat and scrapes them up and dumps them into a dumpster. Then washes off the blood and guts with a pressure washer.
I was utterly shocked--SHOCKED!--when this first started happening. But after a few months, and the size of the flock never dwindled... It's almost scary. Where are they coming from? At least 100 or so are killed every day... they can't be laying eggs that quickly. can they?
Oh well. The local hippies are taking care of it now. They come in early and shoo the birds out of the way of the buses, so that there is minimal seagull carnage.
It was just interesting to see exactly how stupid these creatures are: They would AAWWWRRRK! at the oncoming bus which must have been going 2MPH before the rather loud SQUELCH of the bird being smooshed under the tires.
Re:Is there a technical reason not to allow both w (Score:3, Interesting)
That's an issue with maintainability though, not usability. The program can be just as usable with a compile time option in there. More so, since it doesn't annoy all those people who find the feature doesn't suit their work patterns.
And really, there's no reason it has to even be a maintenance issue with proper software design. The IM code is already isolated in libpurple, They could (if they wished) have a separate interface with no more side-effect issues than there are already between finch and pidgin. It would require that someone to commit to maintain the option, but then, given that there seem to be enough devs to support a fork, that probably wouldn't have been a problem.
Me neither, I must admit, and for the same reason. Still, I have to say that over the past five years I've gone from being an argent fan of Gaim to using Kopete and Amsn almost exclusively. So I'm not entirely surprised that their userbase is up in arms.
Re:Find *what* utterly ridiculous? (Score:3, Interesting)
- Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Opera
- Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, or Skype
- Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird, or Eudora
- Windows Media Player, Quicktime Player, or RealPlayer
Man, no wonder Windows has such a tiny market share, with all that consumer-unfriendly choice!Re:I welcome the fork!! (Score:5, Interesting)
in fact, why don't I post some of it:
Re:Pigeons (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously though. Pidgin and its predecessor Gaim are forked every 6 months or so. It's what happens when developers enforce their petty "HIG guidelines" over common sense. Someone please tell me why it is necessary to forbid the user from resizing a window or widget that was previously resizeable. The preferences window is another one. There's no reason at all that they had to set it as nonresizeable, and occasionally it pisses me off enough to port my patch (which comments one line of code) to the latest version so that I can resize it again. It breaks nothing by doing it.
It's things like this [curtman.mine.nu] (Nautilus shot) that really should never ever ever be done in the name of "usability".
Re:Pidgin guys are probably right. (Score:3, Interesting)
However, given the number of people that commented on the pidgin buglist, the number of people who started threads in various linux forums complaining about the new behavior, and the number of people criticizing the move here on slashdot, I'd say it's disingenuous to say it is "a small handful of people" who don't approve of the auto-resizing input field.
Probably the best way to measure the size of the opposition is to compare this negative reaction with the reactions received previously for other UI changes. Were there as many complaints? Was there a fork made? Was there a slashdot article about the controversy? Taking all these factors into consideration, I'd be pretty confident in assuming that there is a very sizable number of users who are extremely displeased with this feature change.