On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 6:14 AM, Barry Roberts <[email protected]> wrote: > I admit I only read about half the article, but it my impression is of a > tempest in a teapot.
Well spoken. On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 10:34 PM, Michael Torrie <[email protected]> wrote: > just "Linux"). I'm not referring to just Gnome here. Seems like a lot > of projects lately have devs who are hell-bent on heading down their own > path despite what people who actually use their software would think or > want. Makes me really sad because Linux still has a lot of potential > and I've enjoyed using it over the years because it could be made to be > a useful tool to serve my needs. Also well spoken. I am currently enjoying working on a project that cares about platform, only in terms of packaging and platform-specific issues. We have a number of users pushing towards support on disparate platforms because they believe in the project, and they want it to grow. A number of our users migrated to us from our competitors. Some of these were rudely denied the ability to submit patches upstream to their competitor for functionality that was required in their infrastructure, because "that's not how it works" with said competitor. These were welcomed with open arms into our community, and some of them have become key developers for us. Something that is at odds with the story that Michael posted is the fact that we have also welcomed patches which allow our software to interoperate with our competitors. This may seem confusing to some, but among other things, it helps open migration paths from our competitors to us. It's kind of like using Wine to let users coming from the Windows world into the Linux world. If only Microsoft would help Linux apps run in Windows, maybe they could get some of their users back. In their push forward, Gnome seems to be making a concerted effort to alienate their current user base, which is unfortunate. They forget that freedom of choice is important to a lot of Linux users, and in the end, that may kill them. -- "In order to create, you have to have the willingness, the desire to be challenged, to be learning." -- Ferran Adria (speaking at Harvard, 2011) /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
