GNOME Support Forums

[GNOME Armageddon]

Dear reader the GNOME armageddon has started,

First of all I want to clarify that this text was meant to be a source of information otherwise i wouldn't have spent so much time into writing it.
Belive me it took me a couple of days writing this text in a foreign language.
Even if you don't care at all for GNOME, you may find some interesting information within this text that you like to read. please try to understand my points even if it's hard sometimes, otherwise you wake up one day and feel the need to switch to a different operating system.

On the following lines i'm trying to give you a little insight of the GNOME community. the things that are going on in the back, the information that could be worth talking and thinking about.

Many of us like the GNOME desktop and some of us were following it since the beginning. GNOME is a promising project because it's mostly written in C, easy to use, configurable and therefore fits perfectly into the philosophy of *NIX, only to name some of its advantages.

Unfortunately these advantages changed with the recently new released version of GNOME. The core development team somehow got the idea of targeting GNOME to a complete different direction of users, the so called corporate desktop user.
In other words they're targeting people that aren't familiar or experienced with desktop environments. usually business oriented people who are willing to pay money for getting GNOME on their computers.

Having this new target in mind, the core development team mostly under contract by companies like RedHat,Ximian and Sun decided to simplify the desktop as much as even possible by removing all its flexibility in favor of an easy clean simple interface to not confuse their new possible customers. So far the idea of a clean easy to use desktop is honourable.

Some of the new ideas, features and implementations such asgconf, an evil Windows Registry-like system, new ordering of buttons and dialogs, the removal of 90%-95% of all visible preferences from the control center and applications, the new direction that GNOME leads and the attitude of the core development team made a lot of users really unhappy. These are only a couple of examples and the list can easily be expanded but for now this is enough. Now let me try to get deeper into these aspects.

You may imagine that users got really frustrated because their beloved GNOME desktop matured into something they didn't want. During the time, the frustration of a not less amount of people increased. more, more and more emails arrived on the GNOME mailinglists where users tried to explain their concerns, frustrations and the leading target of GNOME.

But the core development team of GNOME don't give a damn about what their users are thinking or wanting and most of the time they come up with their standard purl. The reply they give is mostly the same -- users should either go and 'file a bug' at BugZilla or the user mails are being turned so far that at the end they sound like being trolls or the user feedback is simply not wanted. whatever happens the answers aren't really satisfying for the user. even constructive feedback isn't appreciated.

If you gonna think about this for a minute then things gonna harden that they are directing into the commercial area. The core development team actually don't care for the complaining home user -- it's more important for them to reach the customers with the cash. It seems that this has been told to them by the company leaders -- everything about GNOME has been decided already, a way back or direct communication isn't possible. Don't get trapped by sentences like 'we listen to our users'. They listen to you -- yes, to make funny silly jokes about you afterwards.

I thought that everything was build up on friendship, build on programming for fun, build on understanding each other. But the reality looks like it's all for the big money. The cash is what matters everything else is a lie and a dream. Time for people to wake up.

Not long ago they threw one of the most important long year core developer Martin Baulig out of team -- a guy who worked really hard on getting GNOME into the right direction, a nice friendly person who put all his time into GNOME.

But narrow minded GNOME elites such as Havoc Pennington were responsible that he left the GNOME project -- the trouble and the pressure that was put on him was to much.

With the new GNOME desktop a lot of user interface changes happened such as button reordering -- needless to say that this confuse people who are used to the 'right' button ordering for ages. Even our fellow Linux guru Alan
Cox wasn't thrilled about this idea, but the GNOME elites such as Havoc Pennington, Seth Nickell, Calum Benson and Dave Bordoley knew it better. Why following the road of any other desktop that exists ? Why not doing something that don't confuse their users and still stay usable ? Well it seems to be too easy. GNOME needs to be different than anything else so they changed the button order which was one of the reasons that users became unhappy. They said that there was a hard fight about this and the decision was made to change the buttons. But I belive they simply copied the behaviour of Mac OS because most of the GNOME developers use a McIntosh as either laptop or desktop. Sad that they forgot to keep in mind that users tend to mix applications and that this will lead into weird button searching and clicking.

But as if this wasn't enough the same people decided that the new GNOME Human Interface
Guides were the ultima non plus ultra in human interface guides. The announcement contained informations that the KDE usability people got initiated into it. Unfortunately the KDE people heard about it the first
time when Seth Nickell went to the KDE mailing list which happened after the announcement. You can imagine that they got highly pissed off about this attitude. You can read more on this link. To summarize it, the KDE people clarified that GNOME should care for their own business.

The problem that came with the new interface guides was, that every little GNOME hacker started to become an user interface expert over night. A lot of GNOME programs that we like to use matured into a disaster over night. Hackers that never programmed correctly for their life started to blindly follow the hype of simplification. For an example look what happened to Galeon's interface (pay attention for the last paragraph). Even Philip Langdale a long year galeon hacker got highly indignant by the target that GNOME leads and wrote this email to the Galeon mailinglist.

Here another reason why users became angry. The elite assumes, that the user knows nothing about their system. you find a couple of heavily insulting mails on their mailing lists containing sentences like the quoted ones.

"the user don't know what a window manager is",

"the user don't know what themes are",

"the user don't know what a homedir is",

"the user can't compile a kernel",

"the user don't want to customize their desktop",

"the user shouldn't see preferences which purpose they don't know"

You may imagine that a lot of people are being offended by such lines because it's exactly these GNOME users who are meant by these phrases. To read more such lines on the GNOME mailinglists, simply click on this link and grep in their archives. Be said that most of these sentences are coming from Havoc Pennington.

Such evil practices shouldn't be tolerated by the users and need to be fighted. *NIX users aren't stupid people. Who actually gave Havoc Pennington the rights to decide what the user wants and what not ? Various users told him that people who use a *NIX like system are well aware of their capabilities dealing with such a complex system. There's a reason why people are switching from alternative operating systems. They want to learn, they want to use the full power of the system, they want to change everything they like.

To top all this, look at the future plans of Nautilus. The current maintainers got the idea of changing the whole Nautilus concepts into an object oriented user interface design. You may be highly interested in reading the exact words of Alex Larsson's vision for Nautilus' future direction by clicking on this link.

To summarize it, it's assumed that the user don't need to deal with his homedir or his whole filesystem because it may confuse him or because he don't understand it. The new concepts of Nautilus should be that the user deal with symbols in the Nautilus view. E.G. you get a cdrom symbol and by clicking on it you see the directory of your cdrom, you get a photo symbol and by clicking on it you get a list of all your pr0n pictures, you get a music symbol and by clicking on it you get a list of all your mp3's. You don't know where all these files are located because you don't deal with the bottom layer of your homedir or filesystem anymore as mentioned earlier.

The question is why are people that know nothing about their users, that know nothing about correct user interface design destroying GNOME ? The users don't deserve all this specially those that backed GNOME for all the years. Even sun threw a bunch of so called user interface experts together and have them work on GNOME. don't forget that sun are the creators of the Common Desktop Environment. We don't need another CDE clone named GNOME. Even Havoc Pennington author of the good user interfaces text isn't able to get his own written software following his rules.

Not long ago there was an report about the 'two captains of Nautilus' where the reporter (Uraeus a GNOME contributor himself) reported Alexander Larsson and David camp. You may imagine that such a report can't be taken serious because it's done by their own people. We here have a saying that sounds like this 'one crow doesn't hack the eye of another crow out'. Now you can click on this
link and read more. It may be interesting to read the replies from various users all over the globe of what they think about GNOME and Nautilus in general (please pay attention to the listed ip's there). Another nice and informative reading can be found by clicking on this link.

The fileselector problem was a long discussed issue in the GNOME community. Finally they came to an solution for this and have decided to go for this ugly fileselector instead going for this one which was developed by a free volunteer for a long time and in general looks and behaves better.

most users have no problems with the idea of keeping things simple and clean. Removing some not needed preferences was indeed a good idea but it doesn't stop. People started to remove everything from their apps. You're forced to use dubious programs like GConf-editor which basically works like the Windows Registry editor, to tweak uncommented preferences. I don't think that this is an advantage. Even the possibility to tweak preferences with an editor was taken away with that ugly implementation of GConf. All your preferences are stored in a directory tree with an unknown amount of *.xml files. Even if you delete programs their keys are still remaining orphaned in these trees and finding them is like playing trivia. At the end it's worth a discussion if a system driven by a single home user needs such a registry like system. We didn't need such a system for over 30 years but the GNOME development team got the idea copying one of the most retarded systems from Windows to *NIX. Not to mention that the copy is more retarded than the original.

It's a shame to see how such a nice desktop got thrown into the trash by such people. But there is a lot more behind the scenes that i don't know about. Everything around GNOME is a big marketing strategy. Poor people are working the hell out of GNOME for nothing and companies such as those mentioned above are getting the big cash. for sure you could say - go and fork GNOME - but seriously how can you go and fork GNOME ? such a big project which needs a bunch of people to keep the code alive and compatible. Well you know it's all about open source the code is signed under the GNU/GPL or GNU/LGPL, you can't own it. Even the companies are aware of this. But if you can't own the code - go and hire their developers. You can direct them like puppets in any direction that you - as company - like. Exactly this is happening with GNOME.

well you could easily come up and tell me to simply not use GNOME and let them do whatever they like. Well, you are right with that but things are more complicated nowadays. GNOME is influencing a lot of third party projects such as XFree86 which recently added a lot of GNOME components into their CVS repository. Please know that with the next coming XFree86 version you get a lot of GNOME components without even knowing it. code like, GNOME-XML, pkgconfig, fontconfig, xcursor and xft2 were mainly written by people who're heavily involved into GNOME development. Also the GIMP is maturing more and more into getting the look and feel of a native GNOME application. The CVS version of the GIMP has a lot of GNOME pixmaps inside and they are heavily working on integrate the GIMP into GNOME. If not today but the direction is sure and i fear the day this gonna happen.

It's ok that these things exist and it's ok to see XFree86 and the GIMP are beeing hacked on. But please think about the people that don't like or use GNOME. What about them ? Why force them to have GNOME components installed on their systems ? Why can't GNOME go the same way that KDE went e.g. doing their own stuff without infecting other projects like AIDS. Seeing more and more libraries and applications that were in no way related to GNOME jumping on the pkgconfig boat which's really not needed. Look what will happen to Solaris, the world famous operating system on *NIX used by big companies and long years
experts. They really plan to replace cde with GNOME. I know that cde wasn't the best invention of desktops but it rarely crashed and it fits far better into the philosophy of XFree86 with their configuration system than GNOME. You know the good old way having your settings defined with .xdefaults and all nice default configurations are going into /etc/x11/app-defaults/ and so on. Understandable that the good old way may be blocking the future of applications for multiusersystems - but why must it have to be a Windows Registry like system that replaces future configuration ?

Well to come to an end I personally don't like many of this stuff. I can't stand the button reordering, I don't like the GConf system and even more I don't like the commercial outsourcing of GNOME and the bad influence that GNOME has on other applications. The bad attitude of some GNOME developers is another story since we are all different reacting humans. Luckily there are people sharing some of my thoughts otherwise I wouldn't be able to proof my text with so many links. Even amongst the GNOME developers there are silent voices of people that hate many of these decisions and silently use something else.
Right now if you checkout the GNOME CVS repository every day you find out that the whole GNOME development seemed to came to an halt. The contributions to their CVS are poor. While projects such as KDE are reaching easily 10-20K commits per month - GNOME is getting around 1-2K per month on it's best times.

It really looks like the situation of GNOME is unclear so it would be better to have it not influence so much other programs or at the end we deal with an disaster.

Now I hope this text was informative for you. I hope that you start to think about the situation and the global direction. The situation of GNOME is unclear, their target is groggy too since I can't belive that the users that they are targeting ever heard of *NIX or Linux. They plan to get out of the 0.05% desktop niche but this will for sure not happen if they continue their current direction and their bad ugly attitude.

[Qball]

When I just made the switch 1.4->2.0 I would agreed with most parts.

but working with gnome 2 for a while. I realy started to like it. (no I dont like gconf and the gconf-editor. agree fully on that).

But I do like the more simplistic interface. (and I find the HIG very usefull, (I am horrible with making UI's, and this realy helps me))

also I know "ALOT" off nix users starting to use gnome2. and follow the HIG in there program. (and it IS an improvenment).


Also I am NOT impressed by youre link's. People are alway's complaining, that's in there nature.


btw. if those line's are said by Havoc. he could have thought twice and said it better, I agree. but being offended by it, is totally pointless. (again it's human nature to take everything personally)
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Qball's Blog

[dbrody]

Gonna have to agree with QBall here.
Not very impressed by the links. I see people referencing bugs and fixes to a new desktop enviorment...Its 2.0!!! it obvioussly had a bunch of features missing!!! The developers of gnome worked hard and long to get the version released when it did and not delayed even more that if a few features are missing, or are unusable i wouldnt be suprised. You cant compare version 1.4 that has gone through a lot of revisions since the 1.0 to the 2.0 which is brand new and hasnt been revised.
A great example will be this:
http://developer.gnome.org/news/summary/2002_October20-October26.html#7

and how about giving links the other way?
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2002-October/msg00055.html
which i took by actually reading a few of the replies...

Out of your whole big 'text' i have only seen the following points:
1) GConf - Frankly, i have not seen a 'specification' for how this should be used, and i will have to take a middle road here. Yet you have given only 2 real reasons that it is bad:
a. it is simmilar to the windows registry
gives no info on the problem, the windows registry has its pluses too, and just because it has the windows name on it, dosnt mean that anything that looks like it is the devil. After all WINDOW managers arnt that bad are they
Also, from the code i saw that deals with GConf, it makes getting and taking info a walk in the park...unlike the windows registry, which (from experience) usually requires a decent amount of helper functions to save info in any intellegent way.

b. it seems to you that changing some of the advanced options through gconf is a bad idea rather than including it in code.
A very interesting topic, but lets start from scratch. Every application has to save some options, like custom fonts, colors, and so forth. Currently the situation is that all application save these settings in thier own files. Now suddenly some programs save thier data in xml format, it is easier to deal with for advanced options. Some applications continue to use text files because the info there isnt complex enough for them to write a xmlparser function to deal with the whole xml thing. Now if you have a program that crashs because of a bad option, you will have to run around the files and find the application and the go though whatever wierd way the developers wanted to save the info anf change it.
Gconf offers a better solution. It allows users to use the more flexible xml format to save info. It dosnt force the developer to write and debug and maintain his own xmlparser code. It allows the 'experienced' users to change the options easily without having to read wierd text tags, having built in help file support, all the info is in one place, and a nice gui design. (if you dont think programs should save info in xml format thats a different issue, but fact is computers have advanced in the past 30 years, and saving program data in xml isnt that uncommon...)
Now about the fact that these options arnt in the gui is a different problem...

2) Some advanced functionality from gnome1.4 has been removed from gnome2.0 - i have said most of what i had to say earlier in this post, but fact is that options are being readded, and if an option is in gconf because there isnt a gui for it yet (like it wasnt decided where this option should sit) , then why dont you wait for gnome2.2 and if its not there, then file a nice friendly feature request to add it, and then you can come here and post the link in your 'apocolypse' showing how your feature request wasnt accepted, after a nice discussion with both sides you might find a few specific cases where you will not get the feature you want unjustified. But blaming that on cooporations is a bit ridiculous.

3) Some interfaces have been simplified (like galeon2) - you have given a nice link to a website saying how galeon 2 is devoting more time to actually making sure the design is more intuitive, makes more sense, and dosnt have some unneeded flexability. Can you give me somthing that they are planning to or have took out that you disagree with? have you talked with them about the importance of that issue? A complaint with no examples or proof is not a valid one.

4) button reordering - does it really matter THAT much?? so there was a decision to make galeon look like the rest of the world did? I mean agree or disagree what is right, you are saying how you were confused, but what about all the people who use gnome and another os/desktop envioerment with it? what about them getting confused?? and im sure that after a week or two of usage youll get used to it. No harm done except maybe a little annoying. Yet meanwhile this is your only real valid point.

5)file selector-first, that demo had no code behind it, but it is a design that still needs to be worked on before it is made public. Second, i have not seen the 'official' new file selector (the link is broken) so i cant really say. Once again, i will wait for gnome 2.2 and try out whatever file selector it has, and we can talk then

I mean common, even your KDE links about thier "pissed attitude" all i see is just them stating that the document is gnome centric so it wouldnt really be applicable, whereas they also said it would be a good idea. So i dont see anyone pissed, except for one post that has just factually stated that the gnome's HIG just isnt practical for kde.

So im sorry I dont see sufficient reason for this 'Apocalypse', and see better ways to solve these slove problems....

[Richard]

Many people are unhappy with the latest changes that make everything more simple, that's totally true.
But please do not forget that there's a VERY large group of people that DO like these changes.
It even makes/made many users of other DE/WM's switch to Gnome2 (I'm one of them).

Secondly, Fontconfig and XCursor have nothing to do with Gnome and were written by someone who's using anything but Gnome and KDE: Keith Packard.
pkgconfig is just a handy piece of software to make things more easy in the build progress.
It doesn't make your software Gnome-dependant.

Third, what's wrong with GIMP becoming a Gnome program?
Visuals (the new pixmaps you're talking about) are only skindeep, and GIMP really needed some new graphics so I don't see what's wrong with that.

Fourth, your comparison of Gnome with AIDS sounds to me like you're the new Steve Ballmer, congratulations.
Sentences like that won't make you popular.

Fifth, the number of CVS commits doesn't tell anything about the activity of a software project.
You can go commit every tiny change, but you can also commit large batches of changes (which is more productive because you're not using a CVS tool and doing merges all day).


Now lets put it this way: Can you imagine that you're becoming that elite person yourself?
(please note that I'm note saying you are.. I can't tell you if your are or not)

Also, to me it sounds like you're an user of another DE (doesn't matter which one) that doesn't like the new direction of Gnome2 because it is 'incompatible' with the DE of your choice (hence the complaints about button ordering, etc).
If that's true, I can perfectly understand that, but that's no reason to attack people.

Software, and especially the development of software, is all about making compromises.
And what you are talking about, is just that: many compromises.

Not everyone will like them, many will, many won't.
People have different opinions, people like different things, that's life.

Now here's a very important question to you: Have you actually tried Gnome2 for at least a week?


DISCLAIMER: The opinions, flames, trolls, cookies, aliens and other things contained in this message are all coming from me, Richard, and are not in any way related to this website, my moderatorshippyness, or whatever.
I am not, I repeat: NOT responsible for any bad things happening because you have been reading this message, I'm neither responsible for any alien abductions and neither if your guinnypig bites your finger off.
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[Qball]

[Iain]

A simple simple solution....

You don't like it?
Then don't use it.

simple.

Seems this isn't Ali...
Some italian looking at the dns records.
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Don't give speed to fighter pilots

[Guest]

I can't believe I'm taking time from exams to reply...

Ummm....I don't see anything wrong with using libxml. Why reinvent the wheel when you have a fully functional, tested and actively hacked xml parser?

If something is good quality - use it. And just so you know - if you had actually bothered to read the libXML FAQ you'd realize that libxml does not depend on any GNOME libs.... Also, as Richard pointed out - you do have your facts wrong on fontconfig. I'll be clear right now - I *love* fontconfig. I hated having to play around with my X* files to get my fonts to be recognized. I think its high time that X finally has a _standard_ font system. And you know, the more projects use it - the better the *nix desktop will be. Whether GNOME or whatever other DE.

I have many other arguments with what you've said, but in the interests of time I cannot explore them all. What I can say though is this:

a) "Gnome armageddon". I mean what the heck? What is that supposed to mean?

b) If you do not like GNOME, by all means use another DE. As you are using Linux - you are very obviously free to do so.

c) The ultimate goal of DEs like GNOME, KDE, ROX etc etc is not to just cater to the ~x% of users who know exactly what is going on in their computer. It is to cater to the _masses_ of users who don't. Those users will determine a lot of the future and viability of the Linux DE. Also, if you actually sat down and thought about it - you don't need a ton of stuff in your way to get your work done. A simple DE that helps you do your work is waay more useful than a complex one that you spend hours trying to work *just right*.

d) "without infecting other projects like AIDS". Take a Ritalin. You obviously needed it when you chose this phrasing.

e) "Well to come to an end I personally don't like many of this stuff". Excellent - so you know GNOME is not right for you. What you can do, is use something else that fits your tastes. That's your perogative.

f) "Right now if you checkout the GNOME CVS repository every day you find out that the whole GNOME development seemed to came to an halt. The contributions to their CVS are poor. While projects such as KDE are reaching easily 10-20K commits per month - GNOME is getting around 1-2K per month on it's best times." I can't comment on that really.

--georgeal

PS. You do make a good point about undocumented keys in gconf. File a bug with the maker of the app. It should be fixed!

[dululu]

Someone (I assume this guy) has been posting the exact same article on a number of forums (more than once on slashdot iirc). Got modded down and chewed out by Euginia over at osnews.com.

Some of what he says seems to make sense the first time you read it through, but you soon realise that it is plain trolling.

(When I have time I'll look up the links to the other articles where this has been posted)

[MArk]

Yeah, I've read this one before. whoever wrote this has stuck it all over the web instead of doing just posting it to a news website.

plus - i just have no respect for people who post things anonymously without leaving an e-mail address. It just shows that they are ashamed of their post.
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"UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity."

[mikegtn]

This article is absolute sophistry. An attempt with a few well chosen and out-of-context links to attack the reputation of several people who he/she/it doesn't agree with. It's posts like this which tax my belief in free speech and unmoderated forums.

I implore anyone who follows the links above to dig a little deeper, and read a few posts either side of the one pointed out. There they will find (in general) reasoned discussion, communication and sensible decision making taking place.

[MArk]

GNOME ROCKS

Yeah, Baby Yeah

And if you hang around the mailing lists for long enough you will realise that everyone actually gets on really well.
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"UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity."

[herzi]

1.
I don't like useless posts like »gnome rocks«. they're completely OT and are annying for those who want a good discussion.

2.
I also disagree to a lot of so-called »IMPROVEMENTS«, as they were really inproductive if they were used in a company as a lot of neccessary tasks (like navigating through the filesystem) would become too much to do (to simply »switch« from one folder into another doesn't make me feel like opening thousand-and-one window and then having to close every but one window:( ).

The idea of object-oriented navigation (to give an example) seems to be totally trashy as the »experienced« user will miss a lot of features (e.g. going from one folder to another which is 7 levels deeper made me to open SEVEN new windows, which is not really effective). Having oo-navigation would also mean that we wouldn't have »nautilus views«, which are IMO really nice tools. And the biggest thing is that a standard Linux-System (as an example) is no filesystem that can be really used for effective oo-navigation (or how should an admin access the /etc-dir?).

I don't think that it's useful to target at the »0.05%« of the users (if the number is really that large) who want to have a desktop computer based upon a UNIX system without knowing what a filesystem is and how a »standard« unix filesystem is designed.

So, coming to another »improvement«, so-called »file system abstraction«. This means that we imagine a user who doesn't know what a home-dir is. If we had a regular folder as a desktop (as KDE has), user's would easily understand the difference between desktop and home-dir (and they may realize very fastly what kinds of advantages he has by having this separation).

Targeting on »Desktop users« on UNIX systems (as GNOME is made for unices) gives another problem. The user HAS to learn what a unix is and how to use and configure it to be able to have an »end user desktop« (which can IMHO be defined as a multimedia computer with internet access, but don't reply just because of this statement). The end user desktop can be only achieved by knowing what kinds of hardware your computer has (this is even more than just being able to fiddle around with a unix system).

Talking about the HIG i cannot completely agree to what the initiator of this thread said. The HIG is nice for having a consistent-looking desktop with all the components, but this shouldn't go as far as the current HIG goes. I (as a developer) don't want to care about things like »the space between a label an the corresponding GtkEntry has to be 6 pixels in a dialog«. It would be more useful, if the base (so talking about Gtk, GnomeUI, BonoboUI, ...) would make things like that (e.g. have a complete preferencies dialog, that just has to be filled -- i like the druid from gnomeui as it almost does exactly this).

Another thing about consistency is the current wideness of libraries that are there. Why are we currently having a duscussion about a toolbar review in gtk? Because the people who made the GnomeApp were not able (or not motivated enough, or not allowed to or ...) to integrade a useful dock-like widget in gtk. If these thingies were not that wide-spread, the developer who simply wants to write a nice tool that does its job and that's it. The developers don't want to care about »which library may hold the best implementation for my toolbar«.

Something that I really dislike is that FreeDesktop is abused to define so-called »standards«, where it shouldn't be a zone for that (quote: while freedesktop.org is just a "collaboration zone" where ideas and code can be tossed around, and de facto specifications encouraged). I'm not wondering that mister havoc pennington himself (sorry to name you here, but you can't deny the fact that your the »responsible« person for freedesktop.org) uses »his« site where no standards should be defined (as aboves quote shows) to define standards where he (or other gnome developers) wants some standards to make living ore easy.

3.
Okay, now something about me: I am the maintainer of GNOME Germany's Website. So i like the gnome desktop, but i also hate (yes, hate is the right word) a lot of »improvements« being copied from the mac-world. GNOME is unique, it should have a unique look and behave unique, but just copying what you guys have will definitely not be the right way to achieve uniqueness.

4.
This is just my opinion, you may from now on ban me from irc.gnome.org (nickname is herzi) if you like, but i think that people that »lead« a community should at least really listen to criticism (this is intended to be a piece useful information as some of the »leaders« don't seem to know how a user feels).

--
Sven (herzi@abi02.de)

[Iain]

[Richard]

[MArk]

excuse my enthuiasm but I love gnome.

And I do not take well to people flaming the people who work hard to make it what it is.

You talk about constructive critizism, taking dozens of links out of context is not constructive.

Coupling that with flaming people like havoc who has done massive amounts of work to get the linux desktop world working together.

Progress leaves orphans I'm affraid. There will always be people who love gnome as it was, but gnome will always change. In 5 years I forsee a lot of gnome hackers being Java college students using c# to program applications for gnome as fast as or kde counterparts do with c++.
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"UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity."