Hacker News Reader

Comment by barnabee | Hacker News Reader

Completely antithetical to free software. If I want to modify your code or the environment it runs in, I will.

Gnome is not an OS or a "platform", it is free (as in freedom!) software to be used and tied together however the users, distro authors, ansd whoever else feels like.

Writing and publishing open source software then trying to guilt trip people into interacting with it at arms length and subject to condiions like closed source, proprietary software is nuts.

I honestly couldn't care less if all these people quit writing software tomorrow, if the alternative is this nonsense.

View on HN

Did you actually read the article you're ranting about? They repeatedly and specifically say they have no problem with users applying theming to applications, as long as they report issues to the theme developer, and not to upstream. Their actual ask is for distros is to stop applying theming by default, which is entirely reasonable and sensible to me: you more or less guarantee that some apps will arrive out of the box in a broken state, and people will not realize that it's not the fault of the application developer.

The issue of distros breaking applications and giving upstream developers unnecessary headaches and noise because of it is one that goes way beyond themes. Recall jwz's ugly fights with Debian about the Xscreensaver warning. There's not a perfect solution, but distros can at least try and not make the problem worse for the sake of "brand identity", which is what this article is actually complaining about.

> There's not a perfect solution, but distros can at least try and not make the problem worse for the sake of "brand identity", which is what this article is actually complaining about.

Erm, the page literally argues in favour of "brand identity" (only for themselves, of course!)

> Their actual ask is for distros is to stop applying theming by default

Which is exactly what the person you are replying to is highlighting. See freedom 3 here[0].

> There's not a perfect solution, but distros can at least try and not make the problem worse for the sake of "brand identity"

This website is explicitly (!) about valuing the "brand identity" of applications over that of distributions. Both are equally unimportant. Write software. Distribute software. Change software. Distribute changed software. Do it all.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html

While I agree that users shouldn't be reporting breakage caused by distro maintainers, those maintainers have the right to modify and distribute changes in accordance to the license. There are also many instances where these changes will be better aligned with the desires of end users. It is not simply a matter of the distros brand identity.

> those maintainers have the right to modify and distribute changes in accordance to the license.

Sure, but this is a "just because you can, doesn't mean you should" situation. The authors of this blog post are asking distro maintainers to not do it, and IMO giving good reasons.

> While I agree that users shouldn't be reporting breakage caused by distro maintainers,

One of the reasons I brought up the jwz-vs-Debian Xscreensaver kerfuffle from a few years ago is because it was a great example of how it's not sufficient to just wave your hands and say "well, users should be filing bugs against the distro, not against upstream." Yes, they should, but empirically they don't and they probably never will.

We need to figure out a solution for the real world as it exists, where upstream maintainers have to waste time and energy on bug reports that have nothing to do with them. OSS maintenance is enough of a headache as it is with real bugs that are actually your fault. It feels both against the spirit of OSS, and just plain unsustainable, to pile onto volunteers the hassle of dealing with users who are angry at a change their distro made.

Yes, but there’s obviously more to the story: this whole problem exists because there’s no real theme support at all. So users and distros literally hack css up and it usually ends up looking okay for the popular apps and terrible for all the others. There’s got to be a middle ground where some window manager provides more structured guardrails for people to apply custom styles and themes to their system that don’t break app layouts and make them look like crap. That way users and developers can meet in “supported” territory. The inability to effectively style Linux is one of the reasons I lean back on macOS so much.

The brand complaint is BS though. Using an alternative app icon does not rob you of your brand. If you care about your brand so much then defend it in your license. And don’t come whining if that means some popular distro won’t package you.

The article isn't saying what you think it is saying. Despite the clickbaity opening, this isn't calling for users to stop adjusting the appearance of apps.

This is about distributors applying system wide default theming to apps without doing any QA and then users being confused when the app doesn't work and doesn't match support documentation. Then these users file bug reports with the app developer rather than with the theme creator.

The letter is asking for specific changes so that the app developers don't need to take away user's ability to theme apps by hard coding a stylesheet (since that is the only way to disable automatic distro themes.)

> If you like to tinker with your own system, that’s fine with us. However, if you change things like stylesheets and icons, you should be aware that you’re in unsupported territory. Any issues you encounter should be reported to the theme developer, not the app developer.

> If you are a distribution who changes the system stylesheet and icons, please reconsider this decision. Changing third-party apps without any QA is reckless, and would be unacceptable on any other platform. Your actions are hurting us app developers a great deal, and are damaging to the entire ecosystem beyond your distribution.

That's a fair point, but in terms of the right to use and modify free software there's no difference between an end user and a distro creator.

What if a user themes their apps a bit and publishes their configs?

What if that turns into a distro or a "spin" on another distro with a website?

What about things like Regolith [1]?

It's a scale not a yes/no question IMO, and these devs are showing hostility to some users, which comes across as an attitude of arrogance and hostility to all users.

[1] https://regolith-linux.org/

> terms of the right to use and modify free software there's no difference between an end user and a distro creator.

Yes, but completely irrelevant as this is not asking for the right to be taken away.

> What if a user themes their apps a bit and publishes their configs?

Totally fine. Publishing those configs allows users to have a choice and opt in to a config that they know was not QA'd by the developer.

> What if that turns into a distro or a "spin" on another distro with a website?

If the distro takes on the role of providing QA, documentation and support then there is no issue. The distro could also clearly communicate about the theming so users know why stuff might break. The issue arises when they do none of these things and make the resulting breakage someone else's problem.

> It's a scale not a yes/no question IMO, and these devs are showing hostility to some users, which comes across as an attitude of arrogance and hostility to all users.

I don't see any hostility. I see a very politely worded request that explains the negative impacts certain behaviors have in certain context.

I don't know anything about regolith but if you are a distro that does theming, then you should do the QA yourself. Yes, that means you have to check every single package every single time it gets updated.

When I think about the scale of the problem I get the impression that only a commercial company that earns money would have the resources to do this. There is no way in hell you can get enough volunteers to do this in a reliable way.

> This is about distributors applying system wide default theming to apps without doing any QA and then users being confused when the app doesn't work and doesn't match support documentation. Then these users file bug reports with the app developer rather than with the theme creator.

If the support documentation only applies for certain themes, then that sure sounds like a bug in the application (or at least its docs)!

Likewise, if such requests are a consistent drain on resources (e.g. white text on white background for some custom widget, or whatever) then that also sounds like a noteworthy bug: either in the application (what's it doing wrong compared to unaffected applications that the theme developer tested against?); or the toolkit (why is GTK3+ so fragile in the first place?).

Looking at the list of signatories, it seems many of them are applications which embed a giant WebKit frame and cross their fingers (e.g. I use Geary on my Pinephone, which spawns a WebKit process with 100GB virtual RAM; even though I've set the plaintext-only preference!). That could also be the cause of such issues. Or indeed the fault might rest with GTK, for not providing the required functionality, which drove those devs to embed a browser engine instead.

That's a false dichotomy. This is the old, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." It's possible to both believe people should have the right to do something annoying, and simultaneously wish they wouldn't.

The function of the operating system is to create an environment in which other applications can be run. Themeing running over-top of an application's UI and breaking it is not acceptable IMO. As someone who uses computers, if I discovered my operating system was rendering software unusable in an attempt to make it look a certain way, I'd be furious.

Clarification here: they are asking you to not, and warning that you're getting into "unsupported territory".

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

I think you were already in unsupported territory.

Yes, but asking you to not submit issues about your one-off theme working with an app seems reasonable.

A lack a warranty is very different from a lack of QA and documentation.

Unless both parties signed a contract, there is no "supported territory".

The GPL clearly states that there needs not even be a particular purpose.

And yet, open source software lives and dies on support. Projects that are perceived as having unresponsive upstreams that don't support the project are often in a death spiral.

Fair.

I think what they mean by supported though is (in a very simple example) if you complain about a missing button but it's because your DE theme washes it out then they aren't going to help, otherwise they'd look at the issue and try to resolve it. I think this is reasonable. Sure there's no awareness, consideration, capacity and all that but a reasonable attempt at support.

I think "unsupported" here clearly does not mean a legal obligation to support, but rather "support" in the sense that in the free software community, it is convention for developers to provide help to (nonpaying) users, and that convention should not apply if users make certain changes to the software.

It's a distinction without a difference. If they are unwilling to support the platform then why use the platform.

At that point they are the ones abusing the OS environment to gain benefits without contributing back to the community. And it becomes hypocritical to say "you can't do what im doing"

Sure, and if they just said "we'll close tickets for anything to do with theming" or similar, it'd be fine, but instead we get:

> We understand the need for distributions to stand out. However, we urge you to find ways to do this without taking away our agency. We are tired of having to do extra work for setups we never intended to support, just to have that used against us when people tell us the breakage from theming is “not that bad”. You are not doing this to Blender, Atom, Telegram, or other third party apps. Just because our apps use GTK that does not mean we’re ok with them being changed from under us.

> Since you are shipping the GNOME platform, we assume you want this ecosystem to be healthy. If you do, we ask that you please stop theming our apps.

I'm sorry but just becuase you make some software that works together you don't get to designate it a platform and decide you should control it. Not in the free software world, at least.

Debian et al. aren't "shipping the Gnome platform", they're shipping package managers that can install many things including a bunch of Gnome software (and vastly more non-Gnome software). A very large proporrion of it can be themed or customised in some way.

Some people use Gnome "stock" but don't install or use any of the Gnome apps, others use aspects of the Gnome WM but without the default panels and interfaces, others install the whole lot, some run Gnome software but with a totally different WM or desktop environment, and then there are things like Regolith [1] which use some Gnome software but are pretty unrecognisable compared to a default Gnome install.

Gnome devs are just writing software. Their desire to deifne and own and control a platform is their problem, not ours.

[1] https://regolith-linux.org/

> if they just said "we'll close tickets for anything to do with theming" or similar, it'd be fine

Honestly, this is probably the best approach. It puts the onus back on the person making the modifications for things that they know and understand that are fundamentally trivial in nature.

> I'm sorry but just becuase you make some software that works together you don't get to designate it a platform and decide you should control it.

I don't see anything about this post as an attempt to exert control. I think it's pretty reasonable to ask that users don't theme their apps with the implication that if they do they're not going to get any support. But to your point they should probably just come right out and say that.

> Completely antithetical to free software. If I want to modify your code or the environment it runs in, I will.

It's fine to politely ask not to modify code in certain ways. It's only antithetical to free software to take away your right or ability to modify it however you want.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com