As bad as Apple
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Jeff91 Nov 07, 2011 12:25 PM EDT |
I've said it once and I'll say it again: Hacking at something to make it useful when the creators definitely don't want it to be useful is STUPID. It tells those creators that it is OK to keep changing things in off ways and locking users out of their own systems - You will keep using their software anyways. Props to Clem and the team for making something useful out of that mess. But seriously wouldn't using KDE for the main edition at this point be a better use of time/investment? At least then the improvements they make would be likely to go upstream. ~Jeff |
| Grishnakh Nov 07, 2011 12:57 PM EDT |
I agree completely. Hacking on something to make it do something the creators never intended, and actually want to prevent, is a waste of time, plus it's much harder than hacking on something where the creators intended for it to be able to do such things. KDE was always meant to be configurable, and any patches that way are likely to be accepted upstream, reducing maintenance burden. Not so with Gnome3. They've even said they don't want you even using themes, because that makes it not as recognizable as Gnome3. |
| gus3 Nov 07, 2011 1:26 PM EDT |
OTOH, this project may be the well-deserved public-reputation spanking that finally gets the GNOME devs' attention. I'm not holding my breath. But the possibility IS there. |
| cabreh Nov 07, 2011 1:38 PM EDT |
And on the third hand there are those of us who equally dislike KDE. Go figure eh? |
| tuxchick Nov 07, 2011 1:49 PM EDT |
Sometimes forks are awesome. Like Wireshark, LibreOffice, X.org to name three. Forks are the secret nuclear weapons of FOSS; when all else fails, take the dratted thing and make it better. |
| lcafiero Nov 07, 2011 3:38 PM EDT |
I don't agree, Jeff91. I think it's a worthy undertaking to take something that is potentially good, but currently may not be, and improve on it. Which is why GNOME 3 with the Mint GNOME Shell Extensions, if they work well, should be integrated into GNOME updates as soon as possible. It's win-win for everyone. The ball is clearly in GNOME's court now, and judging from some of the blogs in GNOMEland, I think they're listening. My hope is that gus3 may not have to hold his breath long. Clement Lefebvre and the Linux Mint team are on the right track here, to their credit. |
| Jeff91 Nov 07, 2011 3:47 PM EDT |
If they get taken on upstream - then it is a worth while project. If Gnome devs continue the the direction they have been though I would highly doubt we will see these much needed improvements merged upstream any time soon. ~Jeff |
| Grishnakh Nov 07, 2011 4:22 PM EDT |
@cabreh: Then you have Ubuntu/Unity, and nothing to complain about, right? Or, if you're into the low-resource thing, there's Xubuntu/XFCE or Lubuntu/LXDE. |
| Jeff91 Nov 07, 2011 4:42 PM EDT |
Grishnakh - Don't forget E17 when mentioning light weight :) ~Jeff |
| TxtEdMacs Nov 07, 2011 4:54 PM EDT |
tc, You are such an optimist, is the fresh air in Eastern Oregon or the just the altitude that gives you that high? Quoting: [...] [T]he secret nuclear weapons of FOSS; when all else fails, take the dratted thing and make it better. If you believe that I think you should research the efforts of one team that indeed improved the product by forking* but gained ever lasting, petty animosity from one of Free Software's guiding lights. The hypocrisy exhibited was astounding, on one hand he attacked the sale of commercialized book documentation** of Free Software applications while refusing to share its documentation with a related application built upon the same foundation. Then refusing to merge the two. YBT Hints: * Look at the history of the emacs vs. xemacs divergence (aka fork). ** Where we all know how well Free Software is documented ... all you have to do is read the code, understand its quirks implicitly so that you have insight on its every function. In this case, free meant the colloquial "free as in beer". Thus, despite the assertion that Free Software need not mean at no financial cost, commercial efforts were not welcomed on the same basis when it came to documentation. Instead we have his exemplary example to emulate ... Ah "Freedom ...", but only when it is done MY Way! Which is the reason I gag when I see Linux prefaced with the unnecessary "GNU". I understand his dislike of Jobs, in so many ways they are so similar. [I leave it to the reader to determine if [serious] tags should have been included.] |
| jimbauwens Nov 07, 2011 5:13 PM EDT |
Quoting:I agree completely. Hacking on something to make it do something the creators never intended, and actually want to prevent, is a waste of time I personally do this all the time, hacking calculators (TI's latest) to do stuff they weren't intended to do. Now I don't know if you mean what I do, but if so, I can't disagree more. |
| Grishnakh Nov 07, 2011 5:59 PM EDT |
@jimbauwens: Are you distributing these modified calculators? Have you gotten TI to include your modifications on their calculators? You're confusing hobby modification/tweaking with serious software development. Forking a large codebase is not a trivial proposition, and if your changes aren't accepted upstream, that's what you have to do if you want to continue your work. However, forks are dangerous because the two codebases rapidly diverge, so unless you're prepared to expend the significant effort maintaining that fork, continuing to develop it, maybe going back to the older project and trying to appropriate their changes and merge them in (which gets more and more difficult as the codebases diverge), your fork will be a dead-end. There have been some successful forks in FOSS, such as XFree86->Xorg, OpenOffice->LibreOffice, etc., but these forks had lots of supporters who were ready to expend the necessary effort; they weren't just one-man projects, and they also got many of the original developers of the parent projects to abandon their projects and join their forks. I seriously doubt Mint is going to be successful in starting an exodus of Gnome devs ready to help them out. |
| gus3 Nov 07, 2011 7:42 PM EDT |
@Grishnakh: But if he were to publish what he did, so that others could do the same, how is that different from publishing source code diffs? |
| Grishnakh Nov 07, 2011 10:16 PM EDT |
@gus3: Publishing source code diffs to some ancient version of some other project is of very limited utility. No one's going to bother working with that; code has to be maintained or else it becomes nothing more than a historical curiosity. If you just make some diffs to some version of a project, throw it out there, and never look at it again, before long those diffs simply won't work because the mainstream version has evolved. |
| helios Nov 07, 2011 10:56 PM EDT |
I seriously doubt Mint is going to be successful in starting an exodus of Gnome devs ready to help them out. Ahem....there may not be an "exodus" but there are uh....some that just might be working with the Mint folks to help out this hybrid. Little birdies and all that. They've got some help... |
| cabreh Nov 08, 2011 3:29 AM EDT |
@Grishnakh - Actually right now I'm still using PinguyOS with Gnome 2.x and Docky. You left out Gnome 3 shell as another possibility. If the Mint thing fails I'll probably end up on Gnome shell rather than going back to KDE (once an avid user a long time ago). I expect Gnome 3 will (even against the devs wishes) become usable again. I just don't want to go through the painful process when I have work to do. |
| montezuma Nov 08, 2011 10:01 AM EDT |
I thought Clem was very diplomatic in his approach to MGSE. He said that the technology introduced by gnome 3 was very promising etc. In addition shell extensions such as this were a gnome developer idea in the first place so I think the idea that the developers are inflexible is silly. Additionally Clem has said it will be possible to use MGSE in other distros easily (eg Ubuntu) which makes sense since it is afterall simply an extension. All of thise factors make me optimistic as well about where this is all heading. Toward more choice and toward the constructive use of new FOSS. |
| Scott_Ruecker Nov 08, 2011 1:35 PM EDT |
Just to chime in with my two cents.. I happen to agree with Larry's sentiment; Quoting:I think it's a worthy undertaking to take something that is potentially good, but currently may not be, and improve on it. Open Source software whether it has ten million users or just one is worth 'hacking' on. All FOSS software is good just by its copy-left licensing. We all enjoy the benefit of deciding whether we like it or not because who here would ever seriously entertain the idea of not running FOSS software? Like this software or not like that software, the beauty of a debate on whether something is good enough for us is that we actually have a choice in the first place. For the life of me I cannot imagine being forced to use Windows or Mac software the rest of my life. Thank Goodness for Linux and all FOSS software (and everyone who hacks on it) otherwise we would all be MS or Mac fans..and that would suck. ;-) |
| mbaehrlxer Nov 08, 2011 1:53 PM EDT |
TxtEdMacs: the xemacs fork is much more complicated than that, there were issues on both sides that prevented merging. for a counter example look at the egcs fork. also a gnu project. if the xemacs story were exemplary, then egcs should have seen a similar response. instead it was a clean revolution with (i think it was) rms just agreeing to accept egcs as the new gcc. rms is an opportunist in such matters. if he sees an opportunity to improve gnu, he will take it. the opportunity just didn't present itself like that with xemacs... greetings, eMBee. (disclaimer: i used to use emacs and xemacs when xemacs had a different name, until being a sysadmin converted me to vi, but my grandma is still an emacs user (she used xemacs until a few years ago when i discovered that emacs had matured enough to have a sensible gui with menues)) |
| jimbauwens Nov 09, 2011 5:48 AM EDT |
Quoting:@jimbauwens: Are you distributing these modified calculators? Have you gotten TI to include your modifications on their calculators? You're confusing hobby modification/tweaking with serious software developmentTo more clear, I'm working on the software side (although I also made external hardware for it). There is a huge community around this, and we distribute our modifications that make the calculator much better, and even fix problems. TI clearly doesn't like some off these things, but it doesn't stop us from doing what they don't like. And yes, I currently have some good communication with TI, so they might eventually include some stuff I make. But that doesn't mean I may not do stuff with the calculators that they don't like. (TI calculators are used by most students in the world, so there is a huge 'market' for the modification made by the community) |
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