Re: Awesome new Mozilla roadmap!

[Kjartan Maraas <kmaraas online no>]

s?, 06.04.2003 kl. 20.29 skrev Ali Akcaagac:
> On Sunday 06 April 2003 17:20, Thomas Vander Stichele wrote:
> > Not really sure what you mean by his attitute.
> 
> I'm not entirely sure if you get anything at all. But you should read your own 
> comment before pressing the 'send button'. I don't even know if I should take 
> your reply serious at all, specially the way it was written.
> 
I agree that the comments earlier in this thread were unproductive, but
IMO that goes for all of them. I think the main reason why this happens
is that people have a tendency of using very general terms when trying
to put the finger on what's "the problem" with
$insert_your_favourite_software_project_here

> > As far the 70%, that would be a good topic for a poll on gnomedesktop.org.
> 
> Maybe on a neutral place and unbiassed. But you should spent more time reading 
> comments of people on various places then you understand that this 'poll' is 
> not really necessary. But to start with:
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=1176218&forum_id=6200

This looks to me to be a "discussion" where two people agree that
something is wrong with the direction GNOME 2.x is going in. Namely you
and the Galeon maintainer.

I can tell you that I've tried Galeon a couple of times and I've always
fallen back to using Mozilla or Phoenix (though mainly whenever I use
Windows)

The goal of the GNOME project is to create a usable desktop where you
actually get to spend time doing real work, not flick a thousand
switches just for the fun of it.
 
> http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=7703#7703
> 

- rants about gconf being evil
- hiding a lot of preferences that most users never care about is bad
- a couple of links to posts by disgruntled users who didn't get it
their way

Let's try to dissect one of them:

- searching in the help browser

This would probably be added the second someone sat down and wrote the
code to do it. Like with all other software projects someone has to do
the work before the feature can be included. Why don't the people
whining about missing features etc just step up to the plate. After all
they are the "hackers" who miss all these wonderful features and
configurability that went AWOL.

- UI issues in nautilus

There has been a lot of work done in this area lately, maybe it's time
to review them and see if there's still stuff to be done. To me the most
valuable new feature in nautilus would be a tree view that actually
worked as well as the one in MS explorer.

- the famous button placement

This was a conscious decision, and I don't think it's worth spending
hours ranting about it instead of just getting used to what's been
decided on.

- instant apply for preferences

Same as above really

- can't remove or change the menu panel

This has already been fixed in the recent panel rewrite.

- visual glitches

The screenshots are gone so I couldn't check them out. :-/

Visual stuff is being worked on all over the place, but it's tedious
work and it's hard to get it integrated in the stable branch because of
the string/ui freeze. I bet a lot of this will be fixed during 2.3.x

> You are heavily ignoring these kind of comments as everyone else here is 
> ignoring them.
> 
Noone is ignoring comments that are of value. Just because it makes
sense to you doesn't mean it has to be someone elses top priority to fix
something that annoys *you*. Step up to the plate if it bothers you that
much. You are a coder after all.

> > > You may not belive this but I got quite "A LOT" private emails the last
> > > days from people exactly from this list or the places you mentioned who
> > > told me to be right with what I wrote.
> >
> > Feel free to forward these mails on or make them public somewhere (hiding
> > the email addresses of course).  I'm sure I can tell the difference
> > between real ones and faked ones on content.
> 
> Did you read the *private* in my previous writing. I don't want to lose 
> confidence of the people who wrote to me so sorry. But now while we are at 
> it, let me offer you something.
> 
> Let's open a new mailinglist named however you like and have it used as 
> serious place for such kind of feedback where your own people (not 
> necessarily the people outside) finally come up with their concerns and write 
> what they like and what they don't like. Not the normal 'yes' saying way as 
> it happens here for the past couple of years. Strangely is that whenever I 
> exchange lines with people they wholeheartly agree with me or I agree with 
> them. Read the 2 examples (Links) above but I'm quite sure you find excuses 
> for them too.

Yep :)

As I said this is what could be called statistically insignificant.
There's a lot of noise from a very little population and I don't think
we should get sidetracked to make *every* disgruntled poweruser/hacker
out there happy.

> > Seriously, to get your posts taken seriously, drop some of the common
> > slandering themes you keep recurring back to.  There *are* useful comments
> > in your posts, but your signal-to-noise-ratio is pretty low because of the
> > silly stuff you keep coming back to, like
> > - gconf is evil
> > - gnome is hijacking X
> > - gnome is overtaking all other projects known to mankind (I'm sure Bill
> >   is sleeping very badly since 2.2 got out)
> > - I'm calling you a dictator but don't take it personal because I said
> >   sorry at the end of my rant
> >
> > Stick to facts and personal opinion here and there without name-calling
> > and you'll get a much more receptive audience.
> 
> But these are my points. Why do you want me to change the objective of my main 
> concerns within GNOME ?
> 
- gconf is here to stay, not much use discussing anything other than a
backwards compatible replacement that is acceptable to you then.

> Know what and again a fair public reply to you, and my apologizes to those who 
> may find it insulting. That's a common mistake: a) ignoring feedback, b) 
> ignoring people, c) thinking to dominate the world with a poorly written 

a) ignoring feedback that goes against the projects main goal
b) ignoring some people
c) poorly written? and 1.2/1.4 was better? I'm not a great programmer,
but *I* almost puked from looking at some of the code in there while
maintaining GNOME 1.4.x for a year and a half on my own.

> desktop and still beliving that this poorly written desktop is exactly the 
> right one for business and customers and d) calling all sorts of people and 
> all sorts of places to be TROLL just because they have a different opinion 
> than you.
> 
Everyone has the right to an opinion, but it's the people who make the
code who get to decide how things play out in the end. This is how it
has always been in a free software project, and I think that is one of
it's biggest strengths. Of course it is of big importance for a project
of GNOME's size to have discussions about the future and reach consensus
on issues that affect large pieces of the software involved, but that's
exactly why we have the HIG, the release team, and all the other
documents that describe the process and the guidelines for software
within the project.
 
> I respect the work of everyone here and I have nothing personal against anyone 
> here, seriously, you all here are without doubt friendly nice people and we 
> can always sit down somewhere and drink the one or the other beer together 
> but please also accept 'critics' without critics you continue this monoton 
> way.
> 
No problem with that, but don't expect to get it your way just because
you are of a different opinion. The biggest problem is that people end
up making a lot of noise about small things and because of that nobody
listens to the few really important parts of critique. IMO of course.

> To leave heat out of this Mailinglist you can easily private email me and we 
> continue the conversation there.

No need for that as long as we can be civilized and keep focused on the
task at hand - improving the GNOME desktop.

Cheers
Kjartan