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Comment by jrm4 | Hacker News Reader

Nope. I'm still going to go at them.

The problem is simple:

They used the open-source style goodwill generated by the old thing called GNOME, as it existed with Linux, to bootstrap their current popularity, and this is to me, dishonest.

They used a different style and direction. Had they changed the name and/or been clear and upfront about the fact that "this new my-way-or-the-highway thing isn't the Gnome you're used to," then I could defend them.

Call it something new and let MATE have the old name.

But they're not interested in doing or even acknowledging that. Let the mud slinging continue.

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Honestly, they had jumped the shark back in GNOME 2 era, when the giant rewrite started being used as excuse to not bring back functionality from 1.x series.

My Canary in the coal mine was, IIRC, discussion about presenting certain printer options to end user around 2.2 to 2.4 switch, and some options getting discarded from GUI and into regedit-style tinkering, because GNOME team considered them superfluous. From what I recall, the options were ones that I would occasionally use on Windows (and not just I, but also people who wouldn't be considered techies).

In hindsight, it was impulsive of me - but I left Linux as a whole because of what GNOME did. They broke everything, and disrupted my way of doing things. I /could/ have switched DE or WM, but out of frustration, I switched to macOS (Mac OSX at the time) and didn't look back for over a decade.

I've only recently returned a few months ago and found KDE to be sufficient and stable enough for my uses (despite the few bugs I keep running into, but nothing breaking my usability too much).

My canary was similar: the removal of the screensaver settings.

Not using GNOME myself - so now cannot tune Screensaver there or?

For me it was the flashing terminal cursor.

I would understand the frustration I hear from some users if this were a paid product...but it isn't.

The GNOME project is a massive undertaking and completely free. It's written by volunteers, sponsored developers, and commercial developers who derive their revenue from elsewhere. They own the trademark, so of course they're going to use it.

The bottom line is that thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people happily use GNOME every day (yes, I'm currently one of them). I did _not_ care for legacy GNOME, and back then I chose something else (usually dwm and xmonad).

I really don't see what this fuss is about. There is a vast selection of alternative desktop environments and window managers to choose from. Get over it.

There are countless open source projects that don't charge a dime and don't have the "Gnome attitude".

There's such a thing as too opinionated (and it's coming from someone that likes opinionated).

Then maybe you should use one of those projects instead of GNOME? What's the problem here?

I did exactly that: I use KDE.

There are plenty of OSS projects that aren’t DEs.

Then maybe some of those project maintainers should start a DE, and see first-hand how it's really difficult and requires making a lot of tough decisions that don't apply to other projects?

Funny how the KDE guys never seem to get quite this level of flammage.

I extensively use Gnome but I think it might be time for me to consider switching.

"Not a paid product" is a gross oversimplification. In many ways it is a "paid product," or at least part of one.

This ain't just hobby stuff anymore. Businesses are catching on and using it, and so they're entrenching an older, stinky, take-it-or-leave-it way to do software, and what's worse, they're doing it on the back of a free-software-spirited labor.

It doesn't violate the letter of the GPL, but it sure as hell violates the spirit.

>It doesn't violate the letter of the GPL, but it sure as hell violates the spirit.

No it doesn't. The spirit of the GPL is essentially "do whatever you want with this as long as you keep distributing the source code." That's it. It says nothing about paid products or development style or keeping a certain style or direction or anything like that. The GNOME developers decided to change direction themselves, as the GPL says anyone can. It would no sense for them to give up their trademark to MATE when that was just a random offshoot that no one had any idea of whether it was serious or how long it would last. It's not even that active now, can you honestly say they would have benefited any more from having the GNOME name?

Like, come on my guy, you're flogging a horse that died more than a decade ago. You can continue this substance-free criticism of open source projects for as long as you want, just be aware that you get out what you put in.

I get people want the ghost of Stallman dead for whatever reason, but no, you don't get to just wave that away.

You seem to grossly misunderstand what "spirit" means here, because you described the letter.

No. The preamble to the GPL describes the spirit. Here's some direct quotes from the GPL v2.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html

>the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users

>When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish)

>Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software.

And all of those parts are still the same. The "no warranty" here generally (and legally) means you don't get to complain if it doesn't work for you, unless you believe Stallman didn't understand what he meant when he wrote that.

The GNU project disagrees with your assessment:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

> written by [...] sponsored developers, and commercial developers who derive their revenue from elsewhere.

I believe this is the likely root of the problem. Commercial developers who don't personally use GNOME at home and only only work on it because it's their job. The incentive of these developers is to keep GNOME minimal from their own perspective as developers, to make their jobs easier. They don't really care about GNOME users (despite their contrary rhetoric) and neither does their employer (Red Hat, etc). Their employer funds this GNOME development because they still sell workstation licenses or support contracts to big corps and workstations need a GUI environment that's viable from the point of view of salesmen, CTOs, and contract lawyers (none of whom will be using it.) GNOMES's style of user-hostile minimalism satisfies all these corporate interests.

>Commercial developers who don't personally use GNOME at home and only only work on it because it's their job.

You're acting like this is a bad thing but that's how open source is supposed to work. Every contributor works on their area of interest. For companies, they work on what helps their customers. There's a practical limit to how many users any contributor can support because developer time is a finite resource. With many contributors it's supposed to average out over time into something more general use. However the Linux desktop has historically been very bad at attracting a lot of corporate contributors. That's not specific to GNOME and it has nothing to do with corporate interests, plenty of other desktops are even more minimalistic and hostile to design changes.

Then why is it continues to be the most popular desktop environment? Maybe they do in fact do something well.

Because it is the default desktop for at least the three biggest Linux distributions.

Why is it the default? Because GNOME was GPL when KDE depended on the non-free Qt, a long time ago. That is no longer relevant but it was the basis for it being blessed as default.

I too use GNOME, not because I particularly like it, but because Linux lets me be productive right out of the box with a minimum of fuss and therefore I want to stay close to default. But I dread every major update where I have google some obscure configuration options just to leave my productivity alone.

By that logic, Windows is the best operating system. After all, there are millions of PCs out there running Windows, and the vast majority of those people don't switch.

Yep. In fact, less developers are using GTK (and migrating their projects to Qt[0]), and less users are using GNOME, over time due to its self-imposed limitations. KDE usage, in what metrics I've seen, is somewhere at parity with GNOME for DE market share and growing while GNOME is declining, which is telling given that KDE is not the default DE in major distros.

Synthetic "popularity by default" vs. authentic popularity at work.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK#Criticism

See my earlier point. Momentum.

They used to do something well and they're riding the momentum, deceptively, and they happen to be doing it during a time where less-techy folk and business are beginning to more see the value.

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