Re: A Violent Realisation [Was: Preferences]

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

On Mon, 2002-04-29 at 11:57, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com> writes: 
> > I want to get work done just as much as you do, but reading this thread
> > is scaring me.  It scares me because I am thinking `I am being
> > marginalized, and my feature I depend on will not be there, and I will
> > end up running some other desktop that does do what I need'.
> > 
> 
> The goal of the project should be to appeal to users who did not like
> and could not use the traditional desktop.
> 
> I think we can do that without losing traditional free software
> users. For example, KDE has many such users and doesn't have viewports
> and never has. ;-) But yes, the traditional free software users are
> not and shouldn't be our _primary_ focus.
> 
> The _focus_ of the project, the _idea_ of it, should be to get new
> users who expect a simple Just Works user interface. If the goal was
> to get you or me to use the desktop, we would have just said "OK,
> fvwm2 is great, let's keep it."

All of this must be done without using our traditional users. If we lose
our traditional users, we're fucked, because those traditional users are
also our developers and coders. [Alternately, we can tell those people
to fuck off, at which point we're just a bunch of corporate stooges who
have no reason to be either Free or GPL. I know which option I prefer.]

> But Miguel, you _also_ haven't answered the questions I've posed:
> 
>  - what is the guideline on which prefs to include?
> 
>  - how would you refute or address the argument that each preference
>    has a cost? If you want to make a convincing argument, look at the
>    specific list of costs in my little essay, and address each one.
> 
> This thread is just a lot of pointless emotional speculation based on
> unfounded fears, unless those questions are addressed.

The fears are not unfounded. I personally will have to deal with many
dozens and/or hundreds of bug reports saying 'the 2.0 desktop is less
functional than the 1.4 desktop.' They will be titled 'I don't have a
viewport anymore.' That's fine; I can deal with those who are just
whining because they can't find the same functionality in exactly the
way they expected it. But when the functionality is not there at all (as
with the notion of a two dimensional desktop) it's a legitimate
regression, and a legitimate bug, and we're going to see a lot of those.

To put it briefly and bluntly- ruthlessly /questioning/ every single
option is a great policy. Ruthlessly removing without first questioning
whether or not the functionality is widely used (which most definitely
appears to have been the case here) is not good policy, nor is removing
sane and sensible options without replacing them immediately (again, the
case in the viewport/desktop dimensionality issue.)

Luis