Op 13-8-2015 om 20:39 schreef Gary Gregory:
Where? Why? Gary
Ha, do you need to know? I am often very critical and I also don't hold
my mouth when they tell me to. I feel like many people in OSS treat you
very badly and I speak out about that. If someone is acting like an
asshole I say so. Mostly because if I don't, I have to accept bad
treatment, and I just.... I guess I just passed the age where I would
just willfully submit to some bad treatment that is repeated every day
with the thought of it being decent or civilized behaviour.
In some places if you are outspoken and also mention negative/critical
aspects of the system or whatever, you quickly get nasty responses from
people who are invested in believing that it is the Best of the Best.
For instance, that Jira system is /really good/. Supposing it was some
rotten system and I'd say "You know, that system really sucks. I don't
get why you keep working with it like that" and I get a response of
"Well, if you don't like it you can go elsewhere, we're not changing
it." and I say "Hey, don't be like that, I was just offering an advice
and you should also listen to people from the outside, especially if you
want them to join you or cooperate with you" and they go.
This is often a sort of truism in Open Source.
They will tell you that if you want an influence you should get your
hands dirty. "Giving ideas is cheap, working your ass off proves
yourself to the community and then when you have gained trust you can
start offering ideas."
So general helpful hints or suggestions or criticism meant for
improvement is often dissuaded, laughed off, ridiculed (mostly), and
fought. At the same time they wonder how to attract new people and
contributors.
I can only say it here because this is one of the few projects I have
encountered where "get involved" is not one of the first links on the
website. There is one other project in Apache Commons where it does and
you can immediately see the culture is more like that of the cultures I
have just described. Any project that says "Get Involved" as one of the
first things it gives you is a project without a strong personal project
lead that takes responsibility for the entire suite or thing. Anybody
who concerns himself or herself (if that happens) with the entire thing
will never be constantly be looking for new contributors. Because you
can't do your project if you are constantly dependent on something from
the outside.
Anybody who has a strong personal component in the project will know
that foremost is what you do yourself, your own investment and
commitment and more important, LOVE. If any person comes across such a
project he/she will immediately see that the project is receiving a
great deal of love, and so will be happy to join as it is a happy
environment. Many open source projects, mostly the linux distributions
I'd say, are just not very happy places I feel. They are rather cynical.
Cynical of progress and improvement. Cynical of the possibility of real
good software.
That's when you get when you use Linux desktops exclusively. Gnome is
just notoriously poor these days and Kubuntu was never fully functional
in version 4 (I mean KDE) with important things that just didn't work
yet. The quality in any case is just sub-par from what you would expect
from an inspired person. You can only conclude that most people who
participate are not very inspired, or their inspiration is taken away
from them: the project is too big to still have a personal thought about
it. You become one with the masses so to speak; you are assimilated.
People take on the success of the entire system as their personal goal,
which is impossible. You can't become responsible for the experience of
desktop KDE when that means you have to develop all of its applications
as well. Kontact, and all of the widgets, and many more KDE apps are
developed by a form of core team. That just decide that "KDE should have
such a thing, so we should make it" instead "I really feel like creating
this".
Trust me when I say that returning to Java development for a while and
not dealing with linux essentials (I am even just using Windows at this
point) just makes me a happier person. I hardly miss LInux at all and
I've used it exclusively for about half a year. The only thing I miss is
the power tools; the command line tools. So I install GnuWin32 Grep, and
more of that. In Linux I can script; in Windows I can't; that is what I
miss from Linux. I couldn't really miss the desktop environment, the
only thing I liked in KDE was Clementine, and it is probably developed
by a very inspired person, because it is a fork that has improved over
its main root (Amarok) just as for instance I believe Icinga has
improved over Nagios (monitoring applications). There is no other
application I fondly remember that surpasses in any way what is
available on the Windows platform, not even Krita and if they say an
open source development model is superior, it should show, and it
doesn't. For libraries; perhaps, libraries are pretty much useless
unless they are free and open. Components that you require to build
together, to create a bigger thing out of, these have to be open. Nobody
could use a commercial building block if there was a risk of it going
away, or changing its license, or changing its pricing, all that stuff,
it is too much dependency. Open source is mostly about being independent
of commercial failings. Of getting to "own" whatever you use in a real
way instead of just being a licensee.
That's also why I am here, Log4J doesn't really fully agree with me the
way it is constructed; the static initialisation, happening in the
background; the separation of public API from core components/API, any
system should of course have an interface, but not an interface between
interfaces. But Log4J is the only thing that is ever mentioned so I
don't really feel like doing anything Logback or whatever the other
options are. So why am I here? To put in some love and some effort and
to see if it could evolve towards something I like, even if it is just
me who reaps the benefits because I deviate from the norm and no one
else really agrees with that. But I know how to code Java even if I
don't know many things (yet) like the whole annotations thing. And I
don't know plugins and I don't know anything really.
People that use Linux desktop only don't believe in good software. They
believe in mediocre software as if that is the best thing that can come
about. They deal with and accept that they are to use or have to use or
are constantly using sub-par solutions. Anybody coming from the Outside
is quickly scared away from that because popular products that sell well
in the marketplace really have to be Good in user interface terms.
Anything that is mediocre just won't sell, but that doesn't happen like
that in the Linux desktop world. Anything that's mediocre gets
introduced because there's no one buying it anyway and people just
assume it will improve over time. Most of the linux desktop apps would
NEVER sell in a marketplace that sees competition and people willing to
make something really good. They just don't have a commercial mind which
means they don't have a user-oriented mind. I could go on about this
forever.
Log4j is a component used by commercial applications, which means there
are going to be many people who are going to have a real problem if the
project is not good or goes sub-par. I like that word ;-). There is a
real reason to make something good or even excellent. In a sense,
because of the chain of services, Log4J is used by end-users on for
example an iOS platform. That makes it a commercially viable and
important tool component. Something like KDE will never make it through
to anything, not wishing to dissuade or disqualify it or to ridicule it.
It is really rather good. It looks good, it has a bit or even a fair bit
of potential. Some of the designers are inspired or seem to be inspired
and take on personal goals that do not cover the entirety of everything.
But still, seeing the mechanics of a Linux development environment,
having to deal with all that ....rather poor software, poor libraries,
poor build tools I'd say, poor everything. I am or was for instance for
a while observing the Plasma mailing list if I must and may say so. I
feel for these people. It is just not really from my perspective an
elegant or nice system to work in. C++, all of the difficulties of
dealing with complex libraries.....
They run into things they want to achieve but are not possible. In KDE 5
they changed the calendar / clock settings to honour the locale set for
the system. But the locale comes with time zone and all of the
summer/winter time things and all that. So now you, as a user, are no
longer able to set those aspects individually, separate from the locale
setting. So the configurability of KDE became much less in that area due
to a design choice. Nobody really wanted that. No user really wanted
that. But they are just following some standard or principle. Then when
there is a problem with the clock you are screwed, because you can't
adjust anything. By design. You can't even change the 24h/am-pm notation
I believe. You are stuck with the default. Or you can change it and it
doesn't work, there are many bugs. So who is really happy about it? No one.
And that's just cynical.
That's just really cynical. That doesn't believe in good software at
all. In KDE 5 they changed so many things in such a short time without
good thought that the system is almost unusable. Many people complain,
including myself, about the usability of the graphical theme the
contrasts are not good. Many themes have transparencies that renders the
interface unusable. The new default window switcher is awful although
you can change it. None of the default window switchers are really good.
Not only did they change the theme, they changed the window manager and
they upgraded/altered the entire underlying library structure. There is
a full scale, full time and worrying and tiring effort underway to
convert every damn application to the new plasma 5 framework and until
it is done those apps are mostly or partly unusable. Even the default
file manager, Dolphin(...) was not even ported even though KDE 5 has
been released I believe a long time ago (like a year ago). At the same
time they are flaunting it as a new release worth trying or worth
mentioning. It is utterly incomplete. That is just not only cynical, in
fact it is not very cynical, but it is just stupid and mundane and quite
utterly also a bit slighty of the insane type.
I'm just not sure at all whether it will work out in the long run; too
many loose ends I believe. Whoever can use that? And the way these
things go, KDE 4 will not see any development anymore. I even dislike
the default editor, Kate, greatly. So now you have a default editor that
maybe many people would not like. gEdit is not really any better.
Neither is TextEdit on the Mac. They are all mundane, sub-par
applications. They rather feel you /should/ like it and that that
/should be/ the truth even if it isn't. They live in a make believe world.
So what do I use for my short editing tasks? Still notepad. :P. It boots
instantly, I have it running within about a second or two. The interface
is minimal but pleasant, something Kate does not achieve. There are
gripes about copy paste with line wraps, but that's about it. Other than
that it is a nice thing even if it could be so much better but at least
it doesn't get in the WAY. And all those other tools DO. Kate is just
hideously designed with the colours and the contrast and the spacing
between the various components. It would definitely not win a design goal.
And Linux designers are big EGOS often. Since THEY designed it, you may
NOT ;-) criticise it.
So that brings me back to the question that was asked.
I was recently booted from Ubuntu Gnome and Kubuntu I guess. Or I booted
myself from the mailing lists but I was banned on the forum. Of Kubuntu.
They couldn't stand argument and criticism but they thought it was
alright to be disrespectful and condescending, vile and aggressive in
their responses to me.
And since their foremost demand is to be "civil" even when they are
really being nothing but, I have to watch my words a bit. Politeness can
take the form of vitriol and vitriol can take the form of politeness.
Just because someone seems to be civil doesn't mean he is not an
asshole. And just because someone calls out the assholeness doesn't mean
that person is being impolite. They want to be polite only in name but
not in actual fact. I guess that is what many people in the world do.
They treat you nicely and then they steal from you. They pretend to like
you and then they gossip about you. All in the name of good manners. I'd
rather hear to my face when someone doesn't like me, but that doesn't
seem to be appreciated much by others ;-).
Anyway that was the gist of my message of being blocked. There is also a
Java forum from whence I removed myself ;-) and another forum where I
was blocked that had nothing to do with technology but where people are
scared to death of any form of contact that they think should be "in the
mind of the prosecutor" so to speak. I'll leave it at that I guess;
questions: I live on the moon these days.
Regards,.
and I hope I'm not wasting your time with this. Because I guess I am
wasting mine :P :P.
Bye again, and see you soon.
Love you,
B.
