Am Donnerstag, den 22.04.2010, 09:38 -0400 schrieb William Jon McCann: > Hi Christoph, > > Your message is pretty offtopic for the fedora desktop list and has an > unnecessarily contentious tone. I'm not sure why. And it isn't cool. Sorry, but the whole thread you started it offtopic for this list as it not only affects GNOME users but the whole distribution. Both me and Adam have asked you to move this discussion to devel list to get more people involved. I'm sorry if my mail sounds contentious to you, on the other hand your mail sounds arrogant to me. Sorry, I can't help it, I really wish I could. > On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 5:27 AM, Christoph Wickert > <christoph.wickert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Am Mittwoch, den 21.04.2010, 20:33 -0400 schrieb William Jon McCann: > >> Hi, > >> > >> So, that's cool. I take it back - let's not limit pointless updates - > >> it is certainly a silly idea. ;) > > > > IF they are pointless, they should be limited to 0. If they are just > > optional, there are still users who want the latest and the greatest > > versions. During the whole discussion about the update process we > > learned that this is one of the main reasons why many people prefer > > Fedora over other distributions. If this is pointless, I'm afraid we are > > a pointless distro. ;) > > I'm sorry but I am not at all interested in rehashing that > fedora-devel discussion. I am however interested in hearing thoughts > on how we can achieve the two things that I mentioned. Before we talk about implementation details we should discuss if the goal is shared by the contributors and the users. You are doing the second step before the first. > >> Jokes aside, this is what Jesse and ajax told me on IRC that we (the > >> project) had decided. So I was just repeating it here. > > > > AFAIR "the project" has never decided anything like this. I am not > > saying that I'm against this idea, I'm just a little surprised. > > > >> Most of the time when I say "we" on this list I mean the people who > >> are interested in designing and defining the user experience of this > >> desktop thing. > > > > You mean this GNOME desktop thing, right? Please stop using the word > > "desktop" as a synonym for "GNOME". > > Dude, please. You do realize you are sending a mail to the > desktop@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx list? So let's please not have this > level of conversation here. I know, I already said that the name desktop@... is inappropriate for this list. > > As this topic not only affects the (GNOME) desktop bug the whole > > distribution, I really think that it should not be discussed on the > > desktop list. > > Ok, well, obviously I did. I'm sure you can do better on devel list... > >> Some of the time I refer to people who have some > >> expertise or opinions I respect in the area of experience design. > >> Other times I mean "I". Which one I mean will depend on the > >> situation. If that is too confusing then just assume I mean "I", > >> think carefully about the matter, and challenge me on it in a > >> constructive way. (where constructive means "how you'd do it if you > >> had to and your reputation depended on it"). > >> > >> We can continue to have discussions about having discussions about > >> making great things or we can just make great things. Believe it or > >> not given the opportunity and the will - I know we can. But dithering > >> is death. > >> > >> It is pretty clear that we want to make the user experience around > >> updates better for our users - now we need to do it. There will be > >> people who don't agree (at least until we demonstrate it is better by > >> actually doing it) but we need to do it anyway. > > > > Sorry, but to me this attitude sounds arrogant. People "just doing > > something" - especially GNOME people - is not how community works and > > often is the source of a very unpleasant update experience. > > Dude, I am pretty familiar with how this community works, thanks. I have not been talking about *this* community but about community in general. Unfortunately you are right, the Fedora community often works by some (GNOME) people just doing what they think is right and the rest of the community has to follow them. It's sink or swim. > Design is a pretty arrogant thing - it is also a very difficult thing. > And extraordinarily hard to do in the open. But we do it. And we > have to make very difficult and risky choices every day with everyone > in the world potentially a critic. And we have discussions and > debates and we listen to everyone. You listen to everyone? Then why not bring this up on devel list in order to get feedback from the people affected. Why not bring it up on the users list? Sorry, you are *not* listing to everyone, just to your fellows who share your view. > But at the end of the day we need > to make choices. Those choices should get made by someone with > experience in the matter and willing to put their reputation on the > line for the choice. And should be informed by and consistent with > the rest of the experience around the product. That's that whole > meritocracy word we throw around. And yes that is how our community > works. Look, I really don't want to start a flame war or to get personal, but if you are talking about reputation and experience all the time, I think you should know that the reputation of the GNOME SIG not the best, even within Red Hat. People say they are selfish and do what they want no matter if it helps Red Hat/Fedora or not. On there other hand I'm also aware that they are people who think I'm a dogmatic dumb troll who just cares about some desktops that nobody uses anyway. Maybe they are right, I know I'm dogmatic, but I can't help it. If I'm convinced of doing the right thing I fight for it, but if someone proves me wrong I'm the first to thank him. The fact that I was second in the latest FeSCo elections shows that there are a lot of people who trust in me and my work. I think it is completely normal to have competing groups with different goals within the project. It's completely normal to respect some people or opinions more than others. The question is how we deal with this rivalry. We can continue to let every group do what they want and could try to bring all them together and have a dialog. I suggest the latter. Even in a meritocratic community the leaders are supposed to work together. > > Think of the recent hal update that broke every desktop but GNOME in > > F13. It was not announced (at least not for F13) and it was pushed after > > the beta freeze only for the GNOME people to finish their hal removal > > feature. Is this your idea of just doing "great things"? > > I am only talking about stable release updates here. So, this isn't relevant. The update process for F13 is already the same as for the stable releases. And it is relevant because this it is the result of "just doing great things" (tm). > > What is great for GNOME or for you as a maintainer is not necessarily > > great for others. This is why there needs to be a discussion instead of > > "just doing it". > > One of the weighty responsibilities of a designer is to know a bit > about what makes things great for others. That is really hard. But > very important. If that is done poorly repeatedly then the reputation > of the designer suffers. So, there is a selfish motivation for this > kind of empathy. It's sort of wonderful if you think about it. > > There has been plenty of discussion. Now, we just need to do it. Before we do it, would you be so kind as to show me where in the previous discussions we reached a rough consensus that we need to do it at all? Again, I'm not really against it, I will accept the opinions of the community. But I'm skeptical that it works out, I'm afraid it will not be trivial as it involves a lot of depended packages and in the end slow updates down massively. It will add a lot of work to rel-eng which results in other problems cause the manpower is limited. And I'm afraid it will add massive bureaucracy, the main reason for contributors leaving lately. > In > my opinion these issues are the number one (or two - maybe after the > installer) problem we have right now. So, does my opinion matter more > than yours or Kevin's? I don't know. If we aren't able to solve the > problems that I'm trying to discuss here then probably not. Your opinion indeed matters more. Not because you are doing a better job than me or Kevin and not because of your reputation, but because you don't care about what others say and just do what you think is right. What you are doing affects Kevin or me, but I doubt that mine or Kevin's decisions affect you. So at the end it the day your opinion definitely does matter more. I know this mail is more about your approach than about your goals as such. I just wanted to straighten out that I strongly disagree with your approach. If you show me when/where our community reached a consensus that we need to limit "pointless" updates, I'll be more than happy to get back to the implementation details again. > Jon Regards, Christoph -- desktop mailing list desktop@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
