As most OSNews readers know, I got into a spat with the Gnome developers last week, which culminated in my publishing of an angry editorial, which sparked a firestorm of controversy. On one hand, the controversy was positive, because it introduced a lot of people to the fact that many people believe that Gnome developers have not had an effective channel to receive and interpret feedback from users. But on the other hand, the controversy had the negative effect of inflaming passions, putting everyone’s guard up, and perhaps even widening the gulf between those who love Gnome but want a voice in its future, and those who hold its future in their hands. This effect was unintentional, and I would like to apologize for any damage I might have done to the project.I understand that when working with people you don’t know, over an impersonal medium like email and mailing lists, it’s easy for misunderstandings to spiral out of control. In fact, before this more recent controversy, I was on the receiving end of a misunderstanding with Gnome developers when a suggestion that I made regarding a Gnome theme ended up being applied incorrectly and I was the target of some truly unfair online abuse for it. It’s so easy to fly off the handle on an email list or a blog that sometimes we are incensed by something someone says or does, and we respond too hastily, and misinterpret their words or intentions. And because it’s so easy to respond, one lack of understanding can lead to an unnecessary flamewar of epic proportions.
I realize that my confrontational writing style makes me particularly susceptible to this kind of misunderstanding, because I often come on so strongly that it makes people defensive, and they’re in no mood to try to see my true motives. And I realize that I am as guilty as anyone of flying off the handle, and misinterpreting someone else’s words or intentions, and In the case of this current controversy over Gnome user feedback, I may have misinterpreted other people’s points. If this happened, and they saw their points, misinterpreted, and aggressively refuted in my editorial at OSNews, I can understand why they would have been angry, and responded in kind.
I must admit that the nasty personal attacks and blatant mischaracterization of my motives that came forth in the comments at OSNews, on Slashdot, and many personal blogs hurt me deeply. And pondering that, I tried to temper my anger and think whether I may have inadvertently made anyone else feel the same. I realize that being angry and defensive isn’t going to do us or the Gnome project any good, so I would like to extend an olive branch of peace. If I have misinterpreted your words, or mischaracterized your motives, I apologize. And I would like to continue to work with you to make Gnome better. I can’t promise that I won’t continue to disagree or even become angry, but I will do my part to put this particular disagreement behind us and work toward making Gnome better.
I want to be fair to everyone involved. Regardless of what I might have said in the heat of the moment, I don’t honestly believe that the Gnome developers want to be deaf to users’ needs. None of us really believe that we are volunteering our time on this or any other open source project solely for our own personal use. Everyone who has labored on free software ultimately wants it to make an impact on the world, wants it to be used by many people. I believe that the Gnome developers really do have the project’s best interests at heart, and I want to reiterate and assure them, and everyone, that I do too.
It’s sort of an inside joke to us here at OSNews that I have been accused of being too pro- or too anti- just about every OS, platform, and technology you can imagine. While in one thread I’m criticized for talking about open source software too much, in another I’m savaged for being rabidly anti-open source. I spend hundreds of hours working to make Gnome better, but then I’m accused of having a vendetta against Gnome. It would be funny if it didn’t hurt so much. Yes, I’m a hot-tempered internet persona (being Mediterranean and all), but I’m also a human being.
I realize that much of the most stinging criticism I received was from people who hadn’t paid close enough attention to the facts and couldn’t be bothered to even completely read what I said. I’m tempted to set the record straight, but for fear of opening old wounds, let me just say that some people accuse me of short-circuiting the process by airing my grievances on OSNews, but I can assure you that I went through all the “proper channels” for many weeks and months and only posted what I did out of desperation. And I did it not to attack Gnome or open source software, but because I care about it so deeply. I mean, think about it. Would I spend hundreds of hours of volunteer time working to help Gnome and other open source software just as the setup for some elaborate troll? No, you are not being Punk’d. Besides OSNews, GnomeFiles and third party Gnome apps that I help with various ways, I am also the editor responsible for the monthly Gnome column of the European Linux+ magazine which prints in 5 languages.
In conclusion, I think that even if we disagree, we should be able to disagree without making enemies of one another. I’m not going to make any more demands, and I’m going to let this issue rest. I stand by most of the points that I tried to make, but I apologize for misstating anyone’s opinions, and I welcome any of the Gnome developers to respond to my points in editorials at OSNews, or if they prefer to make their points on their blogs or other sites and let me know, I will link to them from OSNews (if they’re written in a conciliatory fashion, of course). I don’t want to perpetuate the flamewar, but if we can all take a deep breath and try to move forward constructively, I would like to use the resources at my disposal to facilitate that. That’s all I ever wanted.
Update 1: Expert-Zone’s Thom Holwerda (who wrote a similar editorial to my original one) also has something to say to the Gnome devs.
At least everyone who likes GNOME can be happy about the publicity the project received this way. I can’t remember any other article get so many comments as the item on slashdot about your article and the response to it.
well there’s always free-speech.. if there’s a flamewar about it it’s not primarily your fault, but the one of the one starting it and making false/exagerated claims… i’m a gnome user and i kinda like it..there are always some quirks but that’s not gonna change my basic feeling about how i like gnome..
They are not devloping a desktop for their “users” and it shows. This is why people do pay for software. Then what they want and need is important. Note: Microsoft seems to be an exception to this, they do whatever they want and then shove it down our throat. By by in large most companies are concered about what their users want and need. Most open source devs seem to wish us users would just go away and not bother them. I have, I pay for what I use. If I don’t get what I need or want I get a refund.
I didn’t agree with the original editorial and found it odd that the rant came from a fellow hacker. Still, opinions are opinions and so you’re free to air them. I’m glad you followed up though, to ensure we understand your motives a little better.
well, i believe you have good intentions, eugenia, but you really should learn how to do politics.
after all, everybody agreed that better user feedback is required for gnome foundation, let’s start from agreement from now on, not from conflicts.
In emotional, heated circumstances like this, it’s very hard for anyone to step down and try to apologize; especially publicly. It takes someone big to be able to do that. I’m impressed. I’d like to apologize in turn for being one of the people who initially attacked, without trying to see your side of the story (though I hope my recent efforts to do so in my blog have helped).
Thanks for your hard work on various things you have done in Gnome, from gnomefiles.org to the Linux+magazine you mention, to the pointing out of various issues in Gnome. (One of the reasons for my trying to clear out all the focus issues in Metacity was something you stated).
Definitely. I understood Eugenia from the beginning, so this article wasn’t of relevance to me. However, it is good that she clarified the issue for those who didn’t.
Satus: bug resolved and closed.
What a lot of people are missing is the fact that Eugenia cares about gnome.
From Gnome-files to a lot of the comments she has made about usability and we a lot of things.
You know a lot of people just pick a fav desktop or OS and just shut down and troll about everything else.
Here Eugenia is trying to be involved as a non-programming user of the desktop.
Did the discussion get too heated? Yes.
But at least the woman gives sh*t.
I am not a GNOME user and therefore, I did not even know what was going on a few days ago when many people seem to start attacking Eugenia. Well, now I know.
Anyways, I hope you boys and girls are cool now and life goes on as usual, hopefully better everday.
At least you apologize, it’s a nice thing
The real fact is that we, developpers are working really hard for the users and that we really care about what users think and want… We listen a lot to what users can say…
You have been really unfair with gnome developpers in my opinion.
That was my comment on this story..
Cordially,
Jon1012
Forgive us for not taking your apologies seriously. You went out of your way to cause trouble, and you succeeded. It’s going to take more than a blog apology to repair the damage you’ve done to the Gnome community in the intrest of petty vengance against certain Gnome developers who personally snubbed you.
“Too bad that so many assholes online today really fucked up my day with their intollerance [sic]. Yes, you won the battle, you fucking jerks. But I will strike back, with double the vengeance.” –Eugenia’s Slashdot journal ( http://slashdot.org/~Eugenia%20Loli/journal/99724 )
Thanks a lot. My bugs are getting ignored because all the gnome developers are busy putting out fires that you started.
That’s very big of you to say what you said in the article and all due respect. Truly.
But also: don’t forget that these kinds of disputes happen commonly in FOSS work: who knows, one day, MS management will be quoting you in a seminar one day as evidence that FOSS “always” falls apart!
(NB – I don’t agree with my last point, but it’s an existing criticism of FOSS. All software producers have disagreements, it’s just that proprietary companies do it behind closed doors…!)
it’s a known fact that open source projects in general are lacking in documentation, or are developer-centric (not user-centric). there are notable exceptions though, and these are the projects that are big hits.
it’s good to be in touch with reality. and your editorial just hit it home. personally i’d look forward to the day when open source software projects would have subgroups/teams dedicated to making great documentation, and groups/teams that define the direction of the UI, etc…it’s gonna require more coordinated effort but in the end it’ll be worth it
” Microsoft seems to be an exception to this, they do whatever they want and then shove it down our throat. By by in large most companies are concered about what their users want and need.”
Ridiculous. No company is concerned about what users want and need, only what they can they sell, how best to sell it and how to squeeze as much as they can out of people. It’s never about making the customers happy, it’s about getting them hooked and making them feel good about being hooked. It’s all about style and hardly about substance.
> You went out of your way to cause trouble, and you succeeded
You are assuming too much. These two seperate events had no link even if I was indeed angry when writing that blog entry on 1st of March (mostly angry to forum posters on Ross’ blogs, NOT to the bunch of the gnome developers — except maybe one).
Eugenia
I enjoy your reading your opinion and agree with alot of your points on here. Some readers tend to take things personally and no matter who says what, there are passions that seem to govern people emostions. This is good, because passion is what makes this industry grow. I dont think you should need to apologize, after all this is, in fact what happens in the world of press. Especially when it comes to people’s lively hood. No matter what anyone says on this site, im gonna read it for its value alone. I just wanted to say keep up the good work, the news and opinions on this site give IT professionals insight and direction.
It is funny, really, how people just loose all reason when they feel they are personally attacked and counter attack instead of trying to understand the reason for the critizism.
Anyway. I think Eugenia’s points were (mostly) valid, I pretty much feel the same way.
BTW, aas anyone else noticed that when Linus Torvalds says, in his not so politically correct way, that he doesn’t like someone’s idea or code no one posts insults or personal attacks against him, instead they try to hide in shame?
.. and I’m still using WindowMaker and xterm..
Hey, Eugenia admitted that she said many things in anger, and you are kind enough to quote one of them, from her “personal” (though public) journal. Maybe the Gnome people needed a few days distraction from their business as usual to doscuss some fundimental organizational matters. Your comment was not helpful.
i disagree wholeheartedly with you on most of your points. that being said, i still thoughly enjoy your passionate editorial style (passionate, yet rarely zealotous, which is quite uncommon). people with a brain, opinion, and a forum where they will be heard are few and far between.
that being said, you did start off quite the flame war, and this editorial was very good, and appropriate. i can only hope that the others involved will see it the same way
The thing about impersonal mediums is that you have to take the responses equally impersonally.
That was alot of heat Eugenia, and some of it was unfair. I think a few others owe you an apology back.
I think people forget the contributions you’ve made so quickly, and remember the faults too fast. It’s rather unfortunate.
I think everyone is biased to some degree. To say you’re not biased toward any one particular OS is simply not true. We are all human beings and we have our own likes and dislikes.
Perhaps a clarification is needed on what OSnews.com is about. As domain name suggest is it a news site which reader can expect some journalistic standards? Is it more of an personal blog like opinion site and therefore there is no expectation on unbiased news reporting? I think you needs to pick a hat and wear it.
If you want changes made to GNOME, who do you ask? GNOME developers? No, you ask Novell/Redhat salespeople.
That’s ridiculous. Gnome is repackaged by hundreds of distributions. If many users want a change, why would you go to ONE DISTRO when you could go to the source of the software that needs repair? That’s just silly.
It’s good to see you wanting peace. Hope you keep helping OSS projects.
But next time remember, if you get angry about some mails in a thread, have a deep breath and read all the answers. Federico’s and Havoc’s interventions on the webpoll issue were respectful and thoughtful enough to get more consideration than the ones that got you angry.
And also, wait at least a day before posting editorials in OSNews like that, in the heat of the moment.
P.S.: You should mention the KDE developers too. They got some nasty effects from this polemic.
“That’s ridiculous. Gnome is repackaged by hundreds of distributions. If many users want a change, why would you go to ONE DISTRO when you could go to the source of the software that needs repair?”
Yeah, except for one thing. Novell bought and paid for Gnome. They’re not ultimately responsible for it? The real question is why is there a Gnome “Foundation” anymore? What did Novell spend that $15-20 million for?
>From Gnome-files to a lot of
>the comments she has made about
>usability and we a lot of things.
Unfortunately, not too meny people gives her credit for making gnomefiles, only place where you can check out latest gtk2 apps. Like this from one blog:
————————-
when she’s put so much time into things like gnomefiles.org (which I think rocks, even if there are a couple issues from the foundation perspective on worrying about it looking like an official site)
———————
Yeah, that’s what we need.. “foundation perspective”. When they tried to make something like that, it sucked big time.
Reading Gnome Planet in last couple of days was painfull. Like they had nothing better to do than bash Eugenia. (maybe she deserved it, but do they have anything more productive to do..like writing menu editor or something?).
Keep up the good work, Eugenia!
I’ve never really understood what it is that gets some people so worked up about you.
Only now are people calming down enough to realize that ELQ made some very salient points.
Personally, I think she should get a medal for making the OSS community take a good hard look at itself and its strengths, weaknesses, and priorities.
And all the folks who went off half-cocked and ranted at ELQ and TH should muster the stones to come here and apologize with with as much grace and eloquence.
(Although, I daresay, that because of them, for about 2 days OS News was more fun than Fandom Wank.)
Come on, what you said in that article was just the truth that many Gnome users think but don’t have a means to express themselves. You don’t have to apologize, I would have said the same thing. There is no big deal about it, it becomes a big deal only if you think it is.
I like that article a lot. Bravo!
It’s back to rationality !
All got very agressiv – Eugenia, gnome developpers, kde developpers …
read also that blog :
http://www.gnome.org/~newren/blog/2005/03/15
I think, it is quite accurate.
Eugenia is also helping opensource. And I hope she will be able to rejoin community.
Like they had nothing better to do than bash Eugenia. (maybe she deserved it, but do they have anything more productive to do..like writing menu editor or something?).
yes off course
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2005-March/msg00044….
As most OSNews readers know, I got into a spat with the Gnome developers last week, which culminated in my publishing of an angry editorial, which sparked a firestorm of controversy. On one hand, the controversy was positive, because it introduced a lot of people to the fact that many people believe that Gnome developers have not had an effective channel to receive and interpret feedback from users. But on the other hand, the controversy had the negative effect of inflaming passions, putting everyone’s guard up, and perhaps even widening the gulf between those who love Gnome but want a voice in its future, and those who hold its future in their hands. This effect was unintentional, and I would like to apologize for any damage I might have done to the project.
??? More like it introduced that to 10-15% and others agreed with developers. I know I did
As I said in previous post, idea could boost (and it’s not bad either) if you would use gnomefiles.org for this. Make a “donation for feature request pools”. gnomefiles.org already is a central repository to look for OTHER (not in gnome tree) gnome software. Why not become more than just that. Gnome base tree can’t afford to track todays users wishes and requests. OTHER software can. And if I think correctly, that software could easily land in base distribution.
Most annoying bugs? … Well, patches can be sent to the gnome-devel, if they are accepted or not, that’s a different story
In years to come everyone will forget the arguments, the Gnome devs will have evolved into a more balanced team and a more pragmatic approach will be given to the collation and processing of information. It has to happen.
Both Gnome and KDE teams will benefit greatly from business “sense” in buckets, donated by the “commercial” desktop flavours we’re now seeing come to the fore.
Everything is getting easier to use, everything is becoming more intuitive, everything is improving, slowly. We all get a little impatient to see things we’d like to, we all get a little riled sometimes when things which we consider “basic” are missing in favour of something we value less.
Larger and more complex the code takes longer to improve and fix, at least if it’s done correctly. I’m totally behind the Novell guy who’s pushing for optimal memory usage and cracking down on waste, that for me has always been a big “feature” of Linux which is slowly being eroded. It’s been interesting to read the guys blog and find he’s doing something constructive and positive, he’s in a good position to of course, advantaged even, he has a “budget” and clearly money talks louder than verbal-bombs. I think and hope there’ll be more such “bounty” for results in future, I think both KDE and Gnome dev communities will gain so much from it, not just the small cash rewards but longer term benefits too.
Meantime, I’ve seen a lot of this bickering before, developers tend to want to do the things they want most first, I should know (hehe), and shouting louder only makes them LESS likely to do what you want them to do (hehe). However, just occasionally you’ll hit a nerve and cause a jerk-reaction coding frenzy, or at least the raise of an eyebrow.
You were right to complain, or rather, you had every right to complain, and they have every right to make a choice…to listen, learn and be pragmatic, or to carry on regardless.
Eugenia has nothing to apologize for.
The developers should apologize, bunch of prima donnas, they have been ignoring the user basic needs, they ignore bugzilla, the don’t do windows. Well, windows have to be done, otherwise, the job is not done and the house looks like sh*t. Six months to fix something simple? Unacceptable. What, no time? Get out! Let some eager-beaver kid take over and do that in a jiffy, hopefully he won’t have an ego, and be searching for a name for himself. These developers are not interested in Gnome, they are interested in their own path to reaches once they leave Gnome and go to work for some deep pockets company. Proof of this is the bloated mess they got, Slackware bailed out, why?
I blame Havoc Pennington and the rest of the nice managers, for not taking action and doing things right by straightening out the ship; they should be the bosses not the uncouth developers that fly off the handle, when somebody, who really cares about Gnome, tells it like it is. The object of the game is to better Gnome, and they have failed miserably. I hate to see Eugenia apologize, this will validate the sphincters’ reason for continuing their mediocre jobs.
I saw the light about a year ago, now i use IcewWM.
Anonymous wrote:
> It’s going to take more than a blog apology to repair the damage you’ve done to the Gnome community…
It’s not damage, only disruption. “A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing.”
Ano Nymous wrote:
> It is funny, really, how people just loose all reason when they feel they are personally attacked and counter attack instead of trying to understand the reason for the critizism.
A good developer will look for the source reason. Apparently, the Gnome project is (one of many) lacking in this particular class of developer.
Eugenia don’t worry about trolls who are unable to do anything constructive and spend 100% of their time looking for fight.
You rock, You’re the boss and my private usability guru, and there is a lot of people who admire your work.
Good job taking the high road. Looking back, I didn’t so much disagree with the article’s content as much as its tone. It just felt overly harsh (“confrontational writing style”). Hopefully, people can put this behind them and get back to the business of improving Gnome. Thats what we all want anyway.
Really funny. Do people really care this much about one person opinions, motives – whatever they are, and recourse? Come on. Everyone will learn lessons. Move on.
Gnome’s success does not hinge on the balance of this…nor does Eugenia’s.
Quite frankly it all sounds like self-serving pandering. I guess it worked, eh?
This whole thing is so overblown.
The only thing it’s crystalized for me is that my descisions to buy a mac mini and to re-install Windows are the right descisions at this point in time.
After 5 years, it’s time for me to give Linux and a 100% FOSS desktop a rest.
(Anonymous:)
> Forgive us for not taking your apologies seriously. You
> went out of your way to cause trouble, and you succeeded.
> It’s going to take more than a blog apology to repair the
> damage you’ve done to the Gnome community in the intrest
> of petty vengance against certain Gnome developers who
> personally snubbed you.
> (…)
> Thanks a lot. My bugs are getting ignored because all the
> gnome developers are busy putting out fires that you
> started.
Although I agree that Eugenia went way off her track (by losing her temper), I also question the strength of a community that is affected by a meaningless (for a gnome developer) rant on OSNews. A well-established community wouldn’t give a **** about it.
… assuming, of course, that the community *did* care.
You just told what you thought. It’s a shame now you feel the need to apologize and -even worse- that you felt hurt by the comments of people on /. or OSnews or what.
Continue to tell us what you think about it. Who cares about jerks that make flamewars of it? You made people think. That’s ok. Stop apologizing and go ahead.
Forgot to mention, the articles, ELQs and the other one (can’t remember who it was by) were almost spot on. The FOSS desktops are no longer just hobbyist scratch-an-itch projects, thanks to commercial interest.
Nat and Miguel started GNOME and Ximian and they’re at Novell. Suse employes several KDE people and they’re now at Novell too. Sun and HP were founding partners of the GNOME foundation and (if memory serves) it was due to their influence that things like internationalization and accessability were brought into GNOME.
Then there’s RedHat who seem to have a very loud voice regarding the direction of GNOME.
So, all told, these projects really are at the point where it’s becoming more difficult to divorce the interests and demands of joe user from the interests and demands of joe developer, and a means of accommodating both to the satisfaction of both sides will need to emerge over the next few years.
Until then, for me, FOSS dektops are trying hard and failing to be “ready for the desktop” and are way past being hobbyist projects. Personally, I can accept a hobbyist desktop or a commercial desktop, but not one which is trying to be both at the same time.
I guess that’s by way of qualifying my previous post about going back to XP or OS X.
I feel so sorry that I actually paid for an OSNews subscription, I should have known that I was paying for it to be Eugenia soapbox… Now can we, please, get back to the technology news, instead of this useless and counterproductive use of the site as Eugenia’s blog.
A serious and unaddressed tension does exist, in fact, between the notion that F/OSS projects are responsible only to those developers working the code, and the notion that the resulting F/OSS products should be used by millions of people now using proprietary software.
If a product is intended to be used by non-technical lay people — users — then its developers have a responsbility to pay attention to the needs of users. This can be done, superficially, by reading user email or allowing users to file bug reports. More substantially, it should include observing and working with prospective users in the environment in which the software is intended to be used, where the software will be a means to an end.
Developers need to focus on what users are trying to accomplish with their software. Users, believing, usually correctly, that developers don’t understand their work, will often suggest seemingly awkward or improbable alterations to code. Rather than reject these out of hand, developers need to press the users to determine why they want that change and what kind of behavior they believe it will enable.
If F/OSS developers persist in the notion that they are not responsible to their users, then F/OSS software will eventually be used only by F/OSS developers. Users will not happily use software that comes to them as the leavings of cloistered developers.
Attacking hobbyist developers is a worthwhile thing? You stand by the argument, but not the tone?
It seems the truth is that the “Open sourcers” don’t understand the gpl and the Free software movement. Of course the open source movement has made this whole “business freindly” approach synonymous with OSS. But what has been missed here is that the gpl is much deeper than what OSS wishes to imply… it is a direction for a certain type of action, which can only realistically be carried out in a few ways which were mentioned in the earlier thread (ie. there is no one you can hold accountable other than yourself, because it is your own freedom on the line.)
FLOSS has a natural evolution which won’t happen in one night, and won’t happen by following poll numbers, or one overzealous person wanting to reorganize their schedules and priorities.
Eugenia shows that she knows absolutely noting about volunteer group dynamics and the politics behind them. The lead developers were 100% right in saying that “developers do not need to be scared away”, because they would be…. because they want to follow their own free will.
In another post I made the American Idol argument, and why that type of development could never sustain a project beyond the current climate… because users can only guess what they would want, but a developer can conceive of something that a user could never imagine because they familiar with the possibilities which can be created technically and how practical they might be to implement. The American Idol mechanism is not built in to the GPL… it is not a mechanism of it, and it won’t be a mechanism of the community developing projects which are licensed by it. I realize it could be frustrating, but you have to turn that frustration into action by taking the freedom in your hands and finding solutions for yourself.
Also… Eugenia never answered whether she gets paid to write for OSnews, and I have a hunch why.
Enjoy the evolution, and the revolution that is the free software movement. When it fully comes to power by its own mechanisms it will be something that none of us could even fully imagine until we see it. It very well may change economies to meritocratic competitive capitalist organisms where no monopolies will ever exist again. Let freedom ring.
>Eugenia never answered whether she gets paid
>to write for OSnews, and I have a hunch why.
I have answered this MANY times in the past and it’s on my profile too: the answer is NO, I do not get paid by OSNews or GnomeFiles or anything else.
I feel so sorry that I actually paid for an OSNews subscription, I should have known that I was paying for it to be Eugenia soapbox… Now can we, please, get back to the technology news, instead of this useless and counterproductive use of the site as Eugenia’s blog.
Contact me and I’ll refund your OSNews Membership payment, if you really feel that way. I do agree with you, however, that this should be a news site and not a blog or confessional for Eugenia or any other OSNews editor. But we do allow anyone who can write a cogent editorial to air their opinions or gripes about important OS-related issues, Eugenia included. I encouraged Eugenia to write today’s comments (which normally I would consider too personal for OSNews) because of the controversy, and because she and many other people were still quite upset at what had been said.
Anyone else who feels they have a stake in this matter, or any other OS-related issue, and would like to air their views, I invite them to submit them to OSNews. This site is still 90% news and reviews, but the 10% opinion and editorial content has always proved to be popular and thought-provoking, so I don’t see any reason to change the mix.
We all know AQ is a troll. It isn’t worth your time responding, Eugenia.
(Although, I daresay, that because of them, for about 2 days OS News was more fun than Fandom Wank.)
Do I want to know what Fandom Wank is?
Your involvement in the ensuing discussion was like pouring gas on the fire.
Still you weren’t off-base.
they like to flame too, at least you speak your mind.
There’s no such thing as bad PR, there’s just PR. The editorial once more showed us why.
But the controversial thesis also made an interesting discussion. Maybe it will result into something constructive.
Btw, Nikola Pizurica wrote: Unfortunately, not too many people gives her credit for making gnomefiles, only place where you can check out latest gtk2 apps.
Please google for ‘gnome apps’ to correct this statement. Thanks.
Eugenia, I think Penny Arcade put it best:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004-03-19&res=l
I’m glad that people seem like they’re ready to put all this behind, and I look forward to the beginning of a productive release cycle.
2.12, roll on.
It is unjust for a project to tell end-users that their software is user-centric, try to put it into places where end-users have no choice but to use it, and then insult those end-users and claim “volunteer” status whenever they have legitimate grievances with their software.
There can be no peace without justice. Until non-hacker, non-unix end users get the justice they deserve, FLOSS projects should expect no peace and will have to deal with the dissenting voices getting louder and louder.
I don’t even think you should have apologized. This is your opinion, not everyone has to agree with it. Even if some are upset , they are big boys and they will get over it. Now please on with some more news, and less sob stories.
–Ashley
You said that GNOME, and by extension all of Open Source, is not as user centric as commercial offerings, then went on to admit that commercial Open Source offerings are user centric but you don’t want to have to pay for one. That seems kind illogical. Of course, being female, it’s your perogative to be illogical but surely you can understand that the rest of us have a little trouble following your argument if you do.
<p>Volunteers will contribute what they find interesting. Commercial distributions will contribute what their users want. So if you want to make GNOME more user centric doesn’t it make sense to go make your suggestions to the commercial distributions instead of the volunteers?
<p>Sorry if I hurt your feelings Eugenia. I admit I have a failing in considering other people’s emotions when talking to them over the Internet. After all, whenever I find myself getting emotional about something that is said to or about me over the Internet I pretty quickly shake it off.
i don’t see any reason to apologize. it is not your responsibility that 90% of nowadays internet users are brainles trolls who start a flamewar around your article.
…I really like JDS 3 which comes with Solaris 10 – release. I have installed Solaris Express/early access on a SPARC computer earlier, and the JDS/Gnome that came with it was nothing special, but JDS 3 is truly excellent. It’s fast, too, which was an even bigger surprise.
One reason why I preferred KDE to Gnome, is that I found some Gnome developers to be abrasive or even just f*cking mean. I won’t mention names, a certain IRC troll, for example, should be well known to most people around here. He and his friends are mostly employed by Novell, at the moment, which is sad for me, as a lngtime Novell fan.
So, in a way I understand Eugenia. Some Gnome developers just stir the s*it too much.
So presumably they’d be implementing features requested by Novell’s customers right?
Eugenia, you want to be of help. Here’s how:
*Publish an editorial policy. And the moderation rules are not it.
*David Adams should hire an English or journalism major to oversee this site.
*Recuse yourself from writing anything related to KDE or Gnome as you obviously have preferences and a stake in the issue. In fact, I believe that this automatically disqualifies you from making any comparative analysis.
*Take a basic course in journalism. The first rule of writing a good story is “show, don’t tell”.
*If this is supposed to be a news site, keep your opinions to yourself on your own personal site.
One non-site related piece of advise, if you are going to be a part of the open source community, learn to play by *our* rules. In other words, show me the code, the documentation or the double-blind user study that backs up your claims. Otherwise, you have the same standing than any of the charlatans on Trafalgar Square.
*Learn to take tips such as this one in a positive light. Being angry all the time is not good for your heart, you know.
But all you are saying is already happening. Every good developer does exactly this (press users to explain what they really want to do, observe casual users what they have problems with) and people often share their observations and findings for everyone’s benefit.
It is simply wrong to assume, that just because GNOME doesn’t do everything that’s most popular (or not) in the web geek community, they don’t care about users at all. In fact they do not listen _because_ they care about users. All users.
That is why controversies like the latest one are really sad, because they only make the problem worse. Not a single developer claimed that users are unimportant, but only that users can’t dictate what developers are doing (for obvious reasons) and that tech news readers aren’t the audience you want to poll to decide on general desktop functionality. Still people took this as “developers don’t care about users” and went on a rampage.
>*If this is supposed to be a news site, k
>keep your opinions to yourself on your own personal site.
No, osnews is not just about news. We have said this many times. Just like in any other news site, editorials and opinion pieces are part of the weekly menu.
I’m afraid your deep insight was lost on me.
One non-site related piece of advise, if you are going to be a part of the open source community, learn to play by *our* rules. In other words, show me the code, the documentation or the double-blind user study that backs up your claims. Otherwise, you have the same standing than any of the charlatans on Trafalgar Square.
Show me the code they say. Sure, that way as Havoc said in that very thread they can ignore your patch.
Right you only count if you are big corporation that has enough cash to throw at a double blind study?
Right all the people who use the software every day if they are coders or not, if they do submit a patch or not, or god help us they are a sysadmin who is not a very good C hacker are all ignored? Or should be?
I think not and from the fact the entire thread was started by a gnome developer asking for ideas on how to better include users in the process, even the Gnome developers are not as ardent and arrogant as your comments.
“By Anonymous (IP: —.trin.cam.ac.uk) – Posted on 2005-03-15 23:42:33
We all know AQ is a troll. It isn’t worth your time responding, Eugenia.”
And people who post anonymously have a good reputation?
you have renewed respect from me after this
not everyone have the guts to say they are sorry…
and yes, the net is sadly a impersonal place, i guess thats why these littile smilys got “invented”
until the day that we use avatars or video to deliver our posts and articles, maybe we all should try to learnatleast some basic smilys and use them so as to indicate when we are sarcastic and similar. why? well those kinds of speaking is very much a effect of tone and visuals. get the right smile in place or the right tone of voice and people are more likely to understand that what your saying is not what your 100% talking about
still, it would be a boring net without some flamewars now and again. i know i have both started and taken part of my fair share. sometimes i didnt read between the lines, sometimes i took offense where there was none, and sometimes the basterd at the other end was trolling and i stepped right into it.
thing is, we are all human. and as long as we keep going forwards as a group, some infighting must be expected. but as long as people have the ability to do like eugenia just did, we should atleast not be moving backwards
When looking at the infamous Eugenia-gate scandal, one has to look at the facts.
Who is Eugenia?
She runs a fan site for OS, and people with an interest in the OS scene who don’t want to wait for the CNN one-paragraph/4week late spin, tune in to hear some interesting comments, often from those in the thick of it. That’s all Eugenia is, and nothing more. She has her role to play, and her site is very entertaining, most of the time…it’s the OS world’s version of taking a break from mowing the lawn and watching a sitcom sipping some lemonade.
On the other hand, I think it’s fair to say that Eugenia is more involved than Joe six pack, when it comes to the OS scene, and I mean Joe six pack OSS user. Nonetheless, this does not make Engenia anything near a member of the developer community, and her agressive posts on the GNOME message board quite simply are “not the way it’s done”-period, no way around that. If for no other reason, you make nice when you are in someone elses living room, and the GNOME boards are not meant for the same random spewing that you see in a OS news board.
Who is Gnome? A very high level project used by hundreds of thousands of people. The developers are going to be sensitive when they perceive a slight issued by someone whom they know has a forum to make her perceived grievances known.
Nonetheless again, I think GNOME community reacted to Eugenia’s comments as if they were sent by someone who has the power to derail their project–which is in no case true, nor is that her intention. And yes, we known planet GNOME cannot be bought for $30, that was pretty funny!! This is not an SCO trying to destroy LINUX kind of thing but the response has been vitriolic.
A fire started, burns brighter when gas is poured on it. Whatever Eugenia’s faults, as the runner of this “sitcom” here, she tries to entertain, and she also does let her true emotions out, which you have to appreciate, even if they are off track–she’s not a schemer, she is herself.
No harm, no foul, in my opinion.
So this all started becuase Eugenia wanted to have those 20 features developed.
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2005-March/msg001…
It seems that Engenia wanted to help, making the requests, but wanted to make sure that they were developed; that’s why she didn’t want to use the bugzilla.
Why didn’t she just created the list of features that she would like to see, put that on a page, and sent that to the the developers, in the first place?
Actually, where are the features that she would like to see? Instead of just giving comments on how to improve gnome, she wanted to prove that the whole development model was wrong, and that her way (a pool?) would fix everything…
One non-site related piece of advise, if you are going to be a part of the open source community, learn to play by *our* rules. In other words, show me the code, the documentation or the double-blind user study that backs up your claims. Otherwise, you have the same standing than any of the charlatans on Trafalgar Square.
Yeah, just like the GNOME developers are doing when they add new features like spacial browsing or the lack of a menu edition tool… After all, they know what’s good for you, just like the chinese government (on another Square).
I am not sayng developers should be their users’ bitches but they should consider their opinions since they are the ones using it. Few people knows how to code but many among them have great ideas that could make your software better. Anyway, why should you bother to develop and distribute your program when you don’t give a shit on who might use it?
I don’t read osnews due to the editor’s opions.. no need for the apology…
I read OSNEWS cuz it has links to some great OS News going on.
I guess my deep insight would be that employees of Novell are paid to work on things that customers of Novell care about. Whereas volunteers are not paid by anyone (by definition) so they can work on whatever they please.
Seeing as there actually are paid employees working on GNOME (you can’t say that about many open source projects) I think it is logically consistent for GNOME to claim that it is a user-centric project and have volunteers that ignore user feedback.
That’s not to say that all the volunteers ignore user feedback, just that it is acceptable for a project that claims to be user-centric to have volunteers which do, because they have other developers who don’t.
> So this all started becuase Eugenia wanted to have those 20 features developed.
Very wrong. It had nothing to do with that.
That’s nice. I don’t see how this relates to my post, though. Any chance you missunderstood me?
Sorry I misses that article and the fireworks, but whatever you said, Eugenia, like trashing the stuff or whatever, what’s the big deal? Everybody needs to chill a little. It just some friendly trash talk, you know what I mean? No need to get thin-skinned. Free speech, dudes!
I like OSnews because the user interface is cleaner. I don’t like the user interface of the Slashdot web site, in fact I get lost there.
Perhaps the proper channels that users can use to make feature requests to GNOME develoeprs are not effective, however your articles have not proven this yet, because they go off on tangents. There is a basic method that anyone can use to write an essay article, which protects you from straying from your thesis, and destroying your own argument. In Canada an English 30 course deals with essay writing, but I’m not sure of the equivalent course in the USA. That would be a good begining toward learning how to write productive artices, in which the thesis can be defended. Just raise the level of your writing, and be more professional when you actually choose an article to publish. Going off on tangents on a blog is different.
The difference between what a user wants and what I want is that out of hundreds of Linux distributions, I prefer to use Ubuntu. Ubuntu is the only Linux distribution that I consider using for personal use and for business use. What is so especial about it then? It suits *my* taste, *my* need, *my comfort*, me. Do I count as an aunt Tilly or a grandmother? No. Do I count as a geek-no-developer? No. What’s my opinion worth then? Zero. Taken alone, most opinions are worth zero. Based on usability studies, opinions are worth gold.
For example, games are not going to be a reality anytime soon on Linux, so many people will continue using Windows for the time being. Should we adapt Linux to Windows game players? Or maybe, if Linux is gaining acceptance in the enterprise desktops, where people need to use just a handful of programs, should we adapt Linux to the needs of the businesses?
By making Linux more business friendly, people will invest more money on Linux, helping develop it to the point of making Linux the ultimate multimedia and gaming platform. Wait and see. 🙂
This is totally off topic, but Linux will be acceptable to gamers when games become Open Source. It’s really unlikely that the consume-and-forget games of today will become Open Source but some MMORPGs are already available. So I guess it really depends what you define as “anytime soon”. I think there will be an explosion in Open Source MMORPG usage in about 2 years time. Is that anytime soon?
I don’t see all the FOSS developers responsible for this “User Friendliness” problem. The main ones who I see as being responsible are the ones who take RMS’s political and even verging on RELIGION view of FOSS to seriously. These people tend to place user friendliness below “total software freedom” (in otherwords making or using software with the GPL or some other “copyleft” license ONLY) in their considerations when developing a project. I on the other hand hold to the Open Source philosophy held by Linus Torvalds and Eric Raymond where there is room for both proprietary and FOSS development in computing. (As you know Linus was the first one to allow exceptions to the REGULAR GPL so that proprietary nVidia drivers could be used in the Linux Kernel) Indeed most of the successful and user firendly FOSS projects even including some from the Free Software Foundation like the GCC family of compilers and programming libraries actually hold more to the Open Source than pure Free Software philosophy. (The other GNU license, the LGPL in fact is built on allowing the mixing of Proprietary code and FOSS programming libraries as the Open Source movement does.)
Microsoft hit a home run with its DirectX technology, which is very proprietary and easy to use. It means that it takes some effort to break free of the DirectX trap.
And I think that it was all constructive critics for the Gnome team. Just because some overly vocal individuals do not agree with you point does not mean that you are wrong or you are the only person having that opinion. I think that most users would tend to agree with you.
I live in capitalism, I have to work for a customer to make money – If I disregard my customer I will soon have to find another job.
Paid or not – Lots of people depend on being productive when using Gnome. Listening to your customers or for that matter, your inner voice (Luke), I believe doesn’t make a difference as they probably tell you the same thing.
I love Gnome. I also understand that discussion and sometimes disagreement are important parts of all developement processes. Your article was entirely appropriate and needs no apology but to offer one diplomatically sometimes is helpful. Political correctness where you never say anything that offends is a disease of American Culture that needs to go away because too much is often left unsaid. Much good will come of this discussion and it is this right to sincerely express opinions popular or not that gives much strength to O.S. News.
Also, for the Gnome People, thank you for all of your work and the gifts you have given me. Write your code for your own reasons and if they parallel with others wishes so much the better. I wish I could write code and contribute but since that isn’t one of my god given skills all I can do is thank those that do. Thank you.
The proverbial desktop user.
Which is why Eugenia should have been addressing her “user feedback” concerns to the commercial Linux distributions who pay developers to work on GNOME instead of to the volunteers who work on GNOME. That’s what caused most of the controversy: the perception that Eugenia was telling volunteers what to do with their time.
Don’t worry Eugenia, you’ve done very little difference to the Gnome project. A rant on OSnews and Slashdot will have no effect on the hardworking developers out there. They do what they do because they love what they do. There was no such “controversy”, just yet another flamefest in yet another online forum. Ho hum. The developers who make the real difference in this world will not be bothered by some yelling on some blogs out there. They’re too busy doing real work.
n/t
She was frustrated, she was angry, she did not understand the free software development model, forgive her. Eugenia, don’t write when you are angry.
(Although, I daresay, that because of them, for about 2 days OS News was more fun than Fandom Wank.)
Do I want to know what Fandom Wank is?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fandom_wank
.
Talk is so cheap.
It amazes me that Eugina seems to think this is some sort of controversy?? People can talk and talk and talk all they want, call it ranting, call it shouting, but makes no changes in this world. An empty can makes the most noise. There were plenty of empty cans here the past few days. Finally, if there is going to be any change, it alays goes down to the real workers, the programmers. Nothing that happened in OSnews will change anything.
How many man hours of the developers time have been wasted due to this silly argument. This rant has not helped anyone at all and is an annoyance to the project. The developers made a decision on the direction of their projects, and we accept that. Of course if they have to babysit every little tantrum thrown out there, no work will be done. I’m glad that the developers didn’t waste any time replying in OSNews.
I would just like to congratulate them in a job well done so far, despite having to handle annoyances such as this.
“She was frustrated, she was angry, she did not understand the free software development model, forgive her. Eugenia, don’t write when you are angry.”
I second that! She’s so much better writing when she’s happy
Seriously, I think we’ve all been there before, ranting about something before sanity regains control. And then feeling like an idiot. She apologized and that should be the end of it.
Nice that you apologized, but I think you should respond point for point to some of the rebuttals, such as:
http://www.pycs.net/lateral/weblog/
Basically all your points got shot down, and I haven’t seen any decent defense of them aside from self-righteous flamers on these forums.
I think many people are forgetting that open source software already has a built in solution to the problem of people being dissatisfied with the project (whether this is because of deaf developers or something else).
FORK IT.
This is what happens to OSS projects that are going in the wrong direction. A common argument that I’ve seen is that if developers are not willing to listen to users, they should step aside for someone that is. Well guess what, no-one is stopping these new developers from forking the project and listening to users until their ears bleed.
Basically, if this were really the problem people are making it out to be, we’d already have a UserGnome and a UserKDE out there right now, and they would be wildly successful.
But we don’t. Funny that.
Controversy? No way. OSNews is another Slashdot. Good for a few laughs, but very easy to ignore.
Controversy? No way. OSNews is another Slashdot. Good for a few laughs, but very easy to ignore.
Fork it. Heh, that’s funny. You know you actually have to do work to fork something? You can’t just say “GNOME is broken. Here’s all the things that I think should be fixed. We’re starting a fork!” and then sit around and wait for someone to show up and implement it for you.
Eugenia, this site is great. That’s all I have to say.
Direct comment link Hmm
By leo (IP: —.gv.shawcable.net) – Posted on 2005-03-16 03:32:57
Nice that you apologized, but I think you should respond point for point to some of the rebuttals, such as:
http://www.pycs.net/lateral/weblog/
Basically all your points got shot down, and I haven’t seen any decent defense of them aside from self-righteous flamers on these forums.
Yep another voice of a programmer who is developer-centric.
Wow. There is a lot of surprise in that opinion.
Havoc in half of the damn thread that started this nonsense refuted that guy.
Let me summarize his opinion:
You don’t contribute so shut up.
Even though a ton of the gnome developers get checks from Novell or RH they should all be treated as donating their time and even asking for something like a feature request is a transgression to the great programmers gods. And god help you if you want to actually help the programmers find out what those nasty little end lusers really want. That is just a secret opening to the mean end lusers forcing their wishes upon the mighty programming gods.
Ok but what about the people that try to contribute through patches that are ignored and even Havoc on that thread admits it?
What about all those feature requests that are ignored? Its not like Eugenia’s main point was that bugzilla is too hard.
The guy busts here for not doing something but she was proposing to try and do something. Maybe she did not have the best idea but you would think from the response that the women got from a handful <–(note this!!!) of developers she had gone to each of the developer’s houses and crapped in their coffees.
Oh yeah, its so much fun to contribute to Open Source when you get that attitude back. The sad part is that a bunch of people I think responded to her in a completely reasonable way.
But a few responded like Eugenia was demanded they hand over the rest of their working lives to the whims of internet polls and user feature requests. She did not say that she was coming over to their house to chain them to the keyboard.
It was all about getting more user input and that was it.
She was even big enough to admit she did the wrong way and in a way that hurt the overall project.
But even when the programmers find the newest library they need off of gnome-files they will still curse Eugenia as they download it for gnome-files not being a Foundation site.
If you’ve been around long enough, you’d recall there have been attempts to fork GNOME. The forked project is clinically dead. Some people, users especially, underestimate the amount of effort it takes to establish and manage a successful free software project, like GNOME or KDE.
Let me summarize his opinion:
You don’t contribute so shut up.
Re-read the article I linked to, nowhere does it say that.
And since your basic assumption is wrong, there is no point replying to the rest of your post.
If you’ve been around long enough, you’d recall there have been attempts to fork GNOME
Yup. I remember the last time.. Can’t remember what it was called. I think the only patch to ever come out of it was one to reverse the button order.
Indeed, talk is cheap, but most people have no idea how much work developing something actually is. I do, and therefore I am very grateful to get all this kickass open source software for free. Yes it has warts, big deal, this is common to all software.
I’ve had bugs fixed and features implemented in OSS, even though I contributed nothing more than a bug report or feature request. That’s more than I can say about any proprietary software I’ve used.
Let me summarize his opinion:
You don’t contribute so shut up.
Re-read the article I linked to, nowhere does it say that.
And since your basic assumption is wrong, there is no point replying to the rest of your post.
Actually his point was even more harsh.
Developers are essentially the only ones that count and if you want to count then become a developer.
You don’t respond but you comment which is typically behavior when one does not have a decent retort.
I hate to do this, but the project was called GONEME.