> I'm glad you have some good things to say about them but the toxic negativity really needs to end.
That negativity has been for the most part earned. Obviously "toxic" negativity is a problem, by very definition, but I truly don't think anything in this thread (before you started commenting and things got heated at least) crossed the line into being toxic. You may disagree on that criticism, but from where I'm sitting it was legitimate.
Things like "I would be happy if they stop opposing server side decorations in Wayland" is entirely appropriate and, while demonstrating an underlying frustration, isn't toxic. Especially in a non-professional setting like this one. That's about the most passive and polite way to criticize Gnome I can imagine. It even uses passive voice! (Note that I attribute a lot of things to "Gnome" as if that was a person, I do that mostly because I don't want to call out individual contributors by name, not because I don't understand that Gnome is an organization composed of a bunch of people)
>There's no "stance" it's just a statement of facts. This is the way things are. Call it harmful or not, GNOME developers can't change it.
No, that's a statement of opinion. Gnome doesn't want to implement XDG-decoration, which is fine, but don't pretend the opposition is going against the facts here. XDG-decoration is subjective, and most non-gnome linux DEs have decided to implement it. It's a choice not to.
There's a lot of things you're saying are facts that seem to me to be subjective calls by the Gnome team. Adding a dconf setting for typeahead instead of recursive search would be another example of a subjective call.
Now their stance may be supported by facts, facts like the wayland spec requires you to implement CSD, or adding more dconf settings goes against Gnome design guidelines, but that doesn't make their conclusion some kind of immaculate fact. It's still subjective opinion, it's just supported by some facts.
So this is where it gets tricky, even something like "should gnome prioritize implementing the XDG-decoration spec" is highly highly subjective. When we debate "should gnome implement the XDG-decoration spec" we're actually debating a lot of more ephemeral subjective stuff. To debate that kind of subjective stuff we need some kind of framework, and if we can't agree on any sort of community standards aside from "I do what I want" we're going to have a hard time with that.
>That negativity has been for the most part earned.
No, it hasn't. It's unacceptable for you to make personal attacks calling them "shitty people" because they closed a bug report. It's unacceptable for you to demand that open source developers spend their time addressing your concerns for free. Period. End of story. This isn't up for debate and you're acting like a troll by constantly coming back on this. So I'm asking as person, can you just stop this behavior, please. If you can't agree this is unacceptable, you'll always be a toxic participant in open source. I'm not even exaggerating here. Open source developers will never owe you anything, the entire point of it is it's all voluntary and any contributor can come and go at any time they please. Read this article if you want to know more about why this type of toxic entitlement is always harmful: https://mikemcquaid.com/entitlement-in-open-source/
>You may disagree on that criticism, but from where I'm sitting it was legitimate.
And I'm telling you it's not. You're sitting in a place with incorrect information.
>Things like "I would be happy if they stop opposing server side decorations in Wayland" is entirely appropriate
First of all, that's not what you said originally. You're walking it back again. I wish you would just be honest and apologize and say you were out of line before. Second of all, they're not doing that. Your statement is incorrect and misleading. GNOME isn't opposed to anyone else implementing server side decorations in Wayland. There's just no point to them implementing it in GNOME.
>That's about the most passive and polite way to criticize Gnome I can imagine
Well you need to imagine harder because that wasn't passive. You're framing it like GNOME is actively standing in the way blocking someone from implementing server side decorations, when they've never done that. You can put server side decorations in your own Wayland implementation, or use another one like KDE that already has it. GNOME can't "oppose" anyone from doing that.
>I do that mostly because I don't want to call out individual contributors by name
You already did call them out by name. Again, if you have a disagreement with an individual contributor, you should talk it out with them instead of trash talking them behind their back on social media. Trash talking makes your behavior frustrating to deal with because nobody can trust you not to start fights.
>Gnome doesn't want to implement XDG-decoration, which is fine, but don't pretend the opposition is going against the facts here.
There's no "opposition," this isn't a fight or a debate and it never was. Open source is a team sport and the other team you play against is the computer. It's not about people vs other people. Either you're helping out the team working on the code or you're not. You're still framing this in needlessly confrontational and combative terms, this needs to stop.
>When we debate "should gnome implement the XDG-decoration spec" we're actually debating a lot of more ephemeral subjective stuff
No, there's no debate to be had here. If you were serious about discussing these issues you'd take it up with the GNOME design team. In a sense their decisions are subjective but they don't just make them at random. They're trying to make a consistent system within a particular framework targeted at a particular set of users. And the same things about development apply to them too. Nobody on the design team gets to "win" every debate. Some ideas are just bad and they lose and get thrown out. All the things you're saying have been discussed to death already. Do you think the design team hasn't heard this already in the years previously when these were brought up before? They have, you're not making any new arguments that would ever be convincing. You're just saying "I wish they would implement this" and that's like, ok? All the GNOME designers have about 1000 features they want to implement too, but time is limited so realistically they can only pick a few and they have to throw out the rest.
> It's unacceptable for you to demand that open source developers spend their time addressing your concerns for free. Period.
Do you understand the difference between that and general criticism of a project?
If you had to write guidelines on criticizing a project like Gnome in an acceptable way, what would they be?
My suspicion is that you think any criticism is unacceptable, but if you have some actual guidelines other than "people are mean to Gnome" I would be interested in hearing them.
Personally I think you've been very disrespectful during this thread, but as I generally enjoy debate I've been willing to put up with it until now.
I think I've already explained multiple times what good criticism is. I'll repeat it with some other tips. Always present criticism in a helpful way. Be as respectful as possible every time. Only give feedback that you yourself would be willing to hear from someone else. Make sure the other person is comfortable with you before offering criticism. Never offer criticism unless you're also willing to offer to help. Acknowledge that sometimes your criticism could be wrong and apologize when it is. Accept that sometimes you have no useful criticism to give and in those cases, the best course of action is to stay quiet. Present new information each time instead of repeating old information. Use the "feedback sandwich" and always pair your criticisms with equal or higher amounts of praise. Avoid criticizing in areas that you're not qualified in. For code, that means don't talk about it unless you've personally studied that code in detail. Avoid personal attacks. Avoid trash talking. Avoid starting fights. Avoid continuing old fights. Avoid holding grudges. Avoid rumors and hearsay. Avoid "ranking" people against each other. Never look at anything in terms of "opposing sides." Avoid creating situations where one person wins and the other loses. Remember that everyone is on the same team and as a good community member, the ultimate goal of your criticism is to support others and create situations where everyone can win.
This is fairly generic advice and it all isn't even related to GNOME. This is a general guideline for any healthy community. You can read about all this in random books about community building. If you want to be part of open source you just have to be a good community member, there's literally nothing else to open source. That's why I say it's unacceptable to do those negative things. There just isn't any other way this works. These are communities of equals, you aren't the boss and no one else is your boss either, so it's on you to manage your own conduct.
I'm trying to be kind to you but you're making it difficult when you lead by saying nasty things about people I know, like they're acting shitty just because they declined to implement a feature that you were personally invested in and they weren't. And you keep insisting that they have to do this or they deserve it or something like that. Please just don't do that, it makes it extremely hard to engage with you when I have to keep going through this wall of "but don't you see this other person sucks" or that type of thing. You're automatically putting everyone else on defense when you do that and it messes up the whole conversation.
That's how you criticize a person, sure. How do you criticize Adobe for the issues around Pantone support? How do you criticize wizards of the coast for the OGL issues that are going on right now?
I don't see how these questions are related. Those are businesses. Volunteer open source projects aren't businesses. There's no barriers for anyone to join the project and start changing it from the inside. And they're specifically set up so you don't have to boycott them when disagreements happen, you just fork the project.
>There are a bunch of barriers, you don't have to go far to see people asking if pull requests would be welcomed for a particular feature.
That isn't a barrier and you don't need to do that. You just implement the feature in your own fork. I can tell from this you're not a developer because this is a common confusion. When you ask for a pull request you're not trying to get through a social barrier. You're actually asking someone else to do you a huge favor by taking time out of their day to review your code for free. And then if they merge it you're also asking them to maintain it for free and fix future bugs in it for free. Normally you would have to pay to get other developers to do that.
>but it is a business
No, this is false and you're getting confused again. Some businesses can contribute by volunteering their employees' time, but that's different from the project itself being a business. The project itself (as in the collection of all the contributors) isn't deciding what those people are paid or what they work on. The project itself doesn't have the customers or answer to them, the business does and that's a separate entity both legally and functionally. Do you see how this is fundamentally different from a business?
>I don't think it gets a pass just for being open source, any more than the linux kernel or Wikipedia does.
A pass on what, exactly? You're coming back to this combative language again, please stop.
Gnome is a business, same as Wikipedia. They have a charter and a board of directors and almost one million dollars in revenue in 2020. Lot less in 2021 though, and I don't see any newer reports (I'm not looking in depth right now).
>A pass on what, exactly?
Criticism, in the same style as you'd criticize any business, or at least Wikipedia.
So I ask again, what guidelines would you give for criticizing companies like Adobe, wizards of the coast, Wikipedia, the linux foundation, etc?
>You said "changing the project from the inside", which a fork isn't.
Yeah, it is. The inside of the project being the code. You just fork it and change whatever you want. What else do you think that means in the context of software?
>Gnome is a business, same as Wikipedia
No, GNOME and Wikipedia are both non-profits. They're not businesses. "Business" usually means a for-profit company. In both GNOME and Wikipedia, the money is mostly all going to administration costs and costs to run the servers. Currently no GNOME developers are paid by the non-profit, and Wikipedia editors aren't paid either. Ask any of them and they'll verify this. I think you're confused as to how most non-profits actually operate.
I haven't said anyone gets a pass on criticism, I'm not sure why you're pushing that point. I don't think you should throw bad, low-effort angry criticism at businesses either. But open source projects aren't businesses, so I can't answer your question because it doesn't make any sense. Please ask a different question or rephrase it.
My original point was your criticism is lacking in substance and it needs to improve, and also your anger is misguided and unhealthy. I get that you're passionate about open source so that's why I'm explaining it. GNOME is just an open source project given away for free by community volunteers, it's not a business. They can't see you're upset and just charge you a hundred bucks to send customer service to your house to fix whatever missing thing you have on your computer. The anger is just going to go nowhere and rot, it's your responsibility to channel your energy in a productive direction, like actually being respectful and convincing people (with solid facts about design and tech issues) that your way is the right way.
That negativity has been for the most part earned. Obviously "toxic" negativity is a problem, by very definition, but I truly don't think anything in this thread (before you started commenting and things got heated at least) crossed the line into being toxic. You may disagree on that criticism, but from where I'm sitting it was legitimate.
Things like "I would be happy if they stop opposing server side decorations in Wayland" is entirely appropriate and, while demonstrating an underlying frustration, isn't toxic. Especially in a non-professional setting like this one. That's about the most passive and polite way to criticize Gnome I can imagine. It even uses passive voice! (Note that I attribute a lot of things to "Gnome" as if that was a person, I do that mostly because I don't want to call out individual contributors by name, not because I don't understand that Gnome is an organization composed of a bunch of people)
>There's no "stance" it's just a statement of facts. This is the way things are. Call it harmful or not, GNOME developers can't change it.
No, that's a statement of opinion. Gnome doesn't want to implement XDG-decoration, which is fine, but don't pretend the opposition is going against the facts here. XDG-decoration is subjective, and most non-gnome linux DEs have decided to implement it. It's a choice not to.
There's a lot of things you're saying are facts that seem to me to be subjective calls by the Gnome team. Adding a dconf setting for typeahead instead of recursive search would be another example of a subjective call.
Now their stance may be supported by facts, facts like the wayland spec requires you to implement CSD, or adding more dconf settings goes against Gnome design guidelines, but that doesn't make their conclusion some kind of immaculate fact. It's still subjective opinion, it's just supported by some facts.
So this is where it gets tricky, even something like "should gnome prioritize implementing the XDG-decoration spec" is highly highly subjective. When we debate "should gnome implement the XDG-decoration spec" we're actually debating a lot of more ephemeral subjective stuff. To debate that kind of subjective stuff we need some kind of framework, and if we can't agree on any sort of community standards aside from "I do what I want" we're going to have a hard time with that.