GNOME.org
 

Re: [Gimp-developer] [Gimp-web] Alexandre Prokoudine attacks on GIMP critics around the Web

Now when reading you people, I can understand why
is it that Guido stepped down from being the Python head.
And why the GIMP dev team really have an option of being more recluse -

I should tell you that I'd be in the same category of Prokoudine -
mention GIMP as "us", although my code contribution have
been negligible over the years. believe it or not, there is more
 work to be done on a project like this than writing
the lines of code. Acknowledging  the sheer amount of
work that it takes for refactoring
or adding some of the features on the project as it is now,
 based only on the work of very few volunteers is part
of what makes the project progress.

I have friends that poke me with the same insistence you
were taking on that reddit thread about new features,
release, or GIMP releases - and, believe it:
it does really piss one off, if one only knows what is involved.

In my case, the persons were calling me that I should
 "talk the GIMP team to get the 2.10 version on Ubuntu (18.04 version) ,
 and somehow implying it was GIMP teams fault that it
would not run out of the box there. Snap packages, or 3rd
 party repositories were not enough for them.
Explaining it is not GIMP volunteers
responsibility which version is included or not in Ubuntu
was as impossible to them as it seems to be to explain
you that there can't be date-mandated releases in
GIMP project.

If you can't see in how many levels saying
 "Ubuntu has been having scheduled releases for years,
 are you saying that GIMP is some complicated than a whole operating system?"
is incorrect, it is really hard to think of ways of explaining
 it you'd find polite. (I wrote on that comparison bellow -
 it is really so out of scale, I don't feel like I
could express 30% of the differences)

So humans are faulty in communicating in a way that makes
everyone happy, and I am sorry if the way Prokoudine
 put his statements made you feel as bad
as bringing this mail thread here. But really, there
is a reason why the answers
on "why is not feature X included already" or "why will
it take so long", "why there is no Windows/Mac/Linux
Distro Du Jour ready to install from the site" is answered
with some impatience by _us_.

The fact is that all these things demand work.
 Hard work. And all things in GIMP are made by
volunteers. Including not only development, but also
documenting, making the news posts to the web sites,
translating, _and_ talking to users that reach the
eam and managing their expectations.

Ultimately, when it is stated that the project can't
 make scheduled releases by one that _do_ _participate_
of the project core community, and there is
still insistence in the point, it is really complicated
 to go forward on the discussion
without crossing the line - and I myself often do cross it
 - and I excuse Alexandre if he did cross it, although
 my reading on that thread is that it was still ok - since
the posts he was replying too were in no means
reasonable.

It is true that adding new tools, or filters, or themes can make part
of intermediate, short releases, and that is what the team
has agreed upon: these are being made during the micro version
of the 2.10.x series, and there is a much shorter cicle for these releases
than for minor version, or, as is the case, major version changes.
The fact is that the changes that took place from 2.8 to 2.10, and the ones that
are getting in place from 2.10 to 3.0 simply CAN NOT be partial! You either
have the whole software ported to the new underlying technology, or you
have a mess that can barely function. One can't have GTK 2.x code in
one part of the 2000+ C source files, and GTK 3.x code on other part
of those.
Now, does the above paragraph sounds "impolite"? I'd guess so. Still,
it deals only with facts.

And finally, let's move to your very unreasonable statement trying to compare
GIMP with Ubuntu project above, and let's try to put in perspective
why these are not reasonable.

So, Ubuntu is a project that encompass 10.000+ software
 packages. As an outsider to the project, it is easy to
estimate they feature a couple hundred (had to google some -
and only could get some numbers for 2008, there seems to be 50 core
contributors, and 340 packagers  at the time)
More over, the work they do on the packages is made on top of the work
made on the Debian project - so, for a lot of those packages,
the work is mostly done - and I am quite sure it works the
other way around: Debian packages that are based on whatever
packaging job is done on Ubuntu, and more than a handful of
people who makes some packages for both systems)
Some of the authors of those 10000+ packages certainly contribute
downstream and do the packaging to Debian/Ubuntu.
But what they have to do to ensure new releases each 6 months of
Ubuntu, is mostly to ensure those packages work together, picking
a version as new as possible when the date is due. And that is already
a lot of work. Sure, there are projects that are ubuntu specific, and probably
with people with full time-jobs developing those. (I don't know if there is
such a large project remaining, but they did do Unit and Mir, for example),
And it the system release date was close and one of these would not have
a "new release"? Surprise: the release would be done with whatever
version _was_ _ready_ . So if you can't see the difference
of a software project and a project that distributes packaged software,
maybe you can see the difference in community and volunteers size?
and how much non-directly-technical work has to go in a
project the size of Ubuntu to keep that?
And then, you add that most enterprise Ubuntu users will
need an IT support contract, and they will hire canonical for that -
and whoever canonical pays to keep it running in their clients
_is_ _working_ _paid_ _for_ _fultime_ in the Ubuntu project.. which is a
Software collection. Ah, by the way, and those large development
projects they had inside Ubuntu? Mir and Unity? They had to drop it.
Even with full time people, and hundreds of active volunteers, keeping
big software projects evolving is another beast.

Now skip to GIMP, you ave a loose community of about 50-100 names
who over the years have chosen to refer to GIMP as "we". That is
over more than 20 years. At any given moment the number of
_active_ contributors is quite less than that, and of active
_code_ contributors smaller yet. In fact, pick any 2 month
window over the last 15 years or so (the time
 I've been around, and Prokoudine was already part of this
 community when I joined), you won't find more than 10 people
committing code to GIMP tree. That is: at most 10 people -
 and that is maximum check the logs, you will see most commits
come from 4-5 people, sometimes 1 or 2. some of which have been
dedicating themselves to this project for the better
part of 20 years. Not one of those people earn anything for that. But for
sparse GSoC or similar projects does one gets paid for working on
GIMP - that is: one have to work for a living, _and_ contribute to
this project.

Now, participation is free. Just do "git clone " and send in some patches.
With 10-12 hours a week dedication it won't be long before one can
really help to speed up GIMP 3.0 release. You or any of your friends
who felt harmed by answers in the tone of "we can't do anything to
speed it up" is certainly welcome to join us.

Or you can go back to reddit, and start over. Try Debian -
they also don't have release dates.

On Fri, 16 Nov 2018 at 22:12, Massimo Fidanza via gimp-developer-list
<gimp-developer-list gnome org> wrote:


It is very sad that this exchange of opinions ended up this way. GIMP is an
open source software and is developed by volunteers, so time is better
spent in developing than fighting. I like timebox releases as Ubuntu, but
as said by Alexander after 2.10 release they found a new development model
that give a good compromises. This decision was taken by developers
community and was open to everyone, but I think that developers community that
constantly dedicates its time to the project has more say in relation to
the others. If someone wants to make his contribution in terms of
decisions, perhaps he should first devote his time to development and to
the activities needed to carry out the project.
This is just my opinion and I do not seek approval or dissent.

Il giorno ven 16 nov 2018 alle ore 23:28 Niccolo Brogi via
gimp-developer-list <gimp-developer-list gnome org> ha scritto:


I think this sums up my (and many other people's) sentiment perfectly:


To me it seems, that if a user, who doesn't contribute to GIMP, and uses

the slightest words of critisism of GIMP will easily run into a situation
where he gets told between the lines, that he’s a dumb user, who doesn’t
know anything about coding and therefor has no right to complain and either
has to use GIMP as it is, submit a patch, simply should „downgrade“ to a
well known commercial product or shut up.

This seems to be the culture of he GIMP project--despite a clear
unwillingness to admit that.

Personally, I felt like telling you that that is wrong, because GIMP is
such an amazing piece of software that it would deserve better--and I did.
Many people won't do that, so don't think a lot of people don't share my
sentiment.

I will acknowledge that what we've been talking about is not only how
Alexandre sees fit to treat both newbies and critics, but how the whole
GIMP team does. That's fine with me. Hopefully this will not drive too many
people--including those who would contribute greatly like Simone did--away
from the project.

This discussion will not change anything, so you guys take this feedback as
you see fit, over and out.

 Have a good one, ciao.

Niccolo

On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 9:19 PM Simone Karin Lehmann <simone lisanet de>
wrote:


hhmm, well, just reading this whole thread here on the gimp-devel mailing
list and on reddit, I really have to admit that Niccolo is right.

The very first posting of Niccolo on reddit, that I can find is an answer
to another user about a new version for Arch Linux, in which he simply

says


"No GTK 3..?“

and getting an answer from that user, that Version 3.0 will bring it. He
than wrote

"Ah, I see.
Is there a release date? I've heard that it already works well…“

With all respect to anybody on this list and to Alexandre in special, I
really can’t see any sign of ranting about GIMP or complaining in an
inappropriate way.

After Alex joins in with his remark that…

"We don't do "release dates" :) We release when it's ready.“

Niccolo still answers, IMO, very politely and explains why, in his
opinion, he thinks planned release dates are better than solely saying

"we

don't do release dates“ and explains how a smiley at the end of this
sentence sounds to him and finally admitting that he might be wrong,

though.


This, IMO, must have something triggered in Alex’s mind, because after
quoting only a few words out of context, he confronted Nicollo with a
totally new topic Nicollo never mentioned, just to compare this topic to
his quote, only to force him to justify his opinion and laying the ground
for further hitting on Niccolo.

Well, and so it came …

To me it seems, that if a user, who doesn't contribute to GIMP, and uses
the slightest words of critisism of GIMP will easily run into a situation
where he gets told between the lines, that he’s a dumb user, who doesn’t
know anything about coding and therefor has no right to complain and

either

has to use GIMP as it is, submit a patch, simply should „downgrade“ to a
well known commercial product or shut up.

And sorry to say so, it's not only Alex...

Although I know, that my posting here won’t change the situation, I
couldn’t stand it not to write it.

BTW, this attitude was one of the reasons I’ve taken my site
gimp.lisanet.de offline.

Simone Karin



Am 16.11.2018 um 12:40 schrieb C R via gimp-developer-list <
gimp-developer-list gnome org>:

Happy you've found that support group you were looking for. :)

Wishing you a speedy trauma recovery,
-C

On Fri, 16 Nov 2018, 11:04 Niccolo Brogi <nkkollaw gmail com wrote:

...in the meantime, I'm getting emails from people that see the whole
thing exactly like me, and I assume fear harassment and won't say it out
loud.

How sad is this culture you've created.

On Fri, Nov 16, 2018 at 9:50 AM C R <cajhne gmail com> wrote:

As someone who has worked many years alongside (at the desk next to)
customer service reps, I can verify that no amount of organisation or
pleasantries can quell the entitlement of anyone who thinks you owe them
something. Be that x feature in GIMP, or x release date for the next

GIMP.

People are very much the same in that regard, and it's crushing to have

to

deal with it all the time.

People can be banned from the mailing list if they make too much of a
fuss, but I have to say Alexander's way of handling things is a nearly
flawless mix of not taking any shit (which, after all, why should GIMP
contribs suffer this after donating time to provide free software for the
world?) and being concise and helpful to those who approach with a
constructive attitude (as part of the community).

We have not always seen eye to eye on things, but I'm always learning
stuff about handing trollish behaviour from this mailing list, thanks
primarily to Alex, also recognising the behaviour in myself and doing my
best to avoid making the same mistakes as people who can only complain
rather than be helpful (Alex PMs me if I go to far to the ranty side,

even

in his defence). So that definitely isn't broken.

Alex saves us on a regular basis from having to deal with trolls on all
our media platforms while keeping all ports of communication open for our
users.

Every project should have one, but he's ours! ;)

Just my thoughts.
-C
On Fri, 16 Nov 2018, 08:17 Alexandre Prokoudine via gimp-developer-list <
gimp-developer-list gnome org wrote:

пт, 16 нояб. 2018 г., 6:40 Trevor Rose tarose trevor gmail com:


3 — the solution to the problem is to tighten up your communications
channels, and to use some other technology rather than just an email

group,

and in which alternative system a person must be logged in, and each

post,

thread and comment/reply is not only better organised, but can be
identified as per user ID, GROUP, and ROLE ... PLUS AND MOST

IMPORTANTLY

you can constrain each unit of communication by using mandatory fields

and

filters, in order to force clearer communication and remove some

amount of

abuse, while also being able to ban anyone who takes their passion

beyond

an accepted threshold/limit.


Hi Trevor,

I'm afraid I'm not a big believer in technical constraints as means to
manage a community. We have a history of making it difficult for people
to
contribute to GIMP in any way. I would hesitate to make it even harder.

Your suggestion boils down to making initial communication more
complicated
while, indeed, more structured. It also seems to suggest some sort of
pre-moderation which puts a heavier burden on those of us involved with
moderation.

So mailing lists are a tool that keeps communication open enough and
takes
just about the right amount of time to keep our sanity at the cost of
rare
outbursts like this one.

Having said all that, I would still appreciate examples of what you
consider superior communication channels.

Alex

_______________________________________________

gimp-developer-list mailing list
List address:    gimp-developer-list gnome org
List membership:
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer-list
List archives:   https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gimp-developer-list

--

Niccolo.

_______________________________________________
gimp-developer-list mailing list
List address:    gimp-developer-list gnome org
List membership:
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer-list
List archives:   https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gimp-developer-list


--

Niccolo.
_______________________________________________
gimp-developer-list mailing list
List address:    gimp-developer-list gnome org
List membership:
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer-list
List archives:   https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gimp-developer-list


_______________________________________________
gimp-developer-list mailing list
List address:    gimp-developer-list gnome org
List membership: https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer-list
List archives:   https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gimp-developer-list
[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Thread Index] [Date Index] [Author Index]