Re: swallowed apps

[John Fleck <jfleck inkstain net>]

On Thu, Mar 28, 2002 at 09:51:59PM -0800, Ben Ford wrote:
> 
> He is right.  Gnome is becoming stupidified.
> 

You need to be a bit more specific for your comment to be useful
rather than empty flamage.

At the risk of repeating and poorly paraphrasing Havoc's more
thoughtful response:

There is a range of possibilities for preferences and configurability
that spans zero and zillions. Zero is obviously bad. We want
configurability. But zillions also is bad, for reasons Havoc
already explained (more articulately than I could - see
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2002-March/msg00772.html).
In the middle is a lot of hard work and thought about each and every
preference and option - should it be there or not? As Havoc argued,
each one has a cost. What's the corresponding benefit?

As Havoc put it:

  The only useful question to ask is: how will you choose which
  options to include? 

  Metaphysics about "options bad" or "options good" are always silly,
  given that. Having zero options is nonsense, having all options is
  nonsense, choosing some options makes sense. How will you choose the
  options?

  The only productive conversation is to answer that question.

A vague "GNOME is becoming stupidified" adds zero to the discussion.

Cheers,
-- 
John Fleck
jfleck inkstain net (h) jfleck abqjournal com (w)
http://www.inkstain.net http://www.abqjournal.com

"You don't want to die with the music still in you."
 - John Gardner