Re: Re: MIME types, again ("Nautilus" ain't the answer)

on Sun, Feb 13, 2005 at 02:42:58PM +0000, Crispin Flowerday ([email protected]) wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-02-13 at 08:53 -0500, Ian D. Stewart wrote:
> >ben wrote:
> >
> >> The developer can't anticipate the user's needs. Make simple, solid
> >>
> >>tools, each of which does one thing really well, and let the user mix
> >>and match as needed.
> >>  
> >>
> >Unfortunately, many of the developers (or at least the developers who 
> >have posted here; I?ll give the others the benefit of the doubt) believe 
> >that not only can they anticipate the user?s needs, but they know the 
> >user?s needs better than the user does.
> 
> I think you are mis-informed here, we don't believe that we can
> anticipate user's needs, we are however realistic, The Galeon
> development team is tiny, we all have full time jobs. We do not have
> time to implement every tiny feature that individual users want. If
> you, or anyone wants to help develop it, then your more than welcome.

Crispin:  with all due respect, the takeaway I got from that discussion
is that the Galeon team should have a very serious discussion about what
widget sets and directions the future of the project is to take.

The persistant lesson I've seen WRT GNOME is:

  - A *very* strong echo of all that Ben said, above.  His post should
    be printed and framed.

  - The project has assimilated a tautology which makes it blind to
    criticism.  Technical users aren't its target demographic.
    Nontechnical users aren't qualified to comment on the project (see
    the Agony in Seven Fits and related linux-elitists thread for
    repeated iterations of this from Waugh and Pool, Havok makes similar
    comments, taken as gospel among GNOMEites).  Therefor:  if you're
    qualified to criticize, you're not a user.  And if you're a
    user, you're not qualified to criticize.  *That* is a very worrying
    situation.

  - The project is wont to take dramatic turns in direction.

  - It is better suited to periodically shipped, kitchen-sink distros.
    E.g.: Red Hat.  SuSE.  Mandrake.  It's *poorly* suited to
    continuously updated distros, e.g.:  Debian.  This is something I've
    noted for years.  The problem is that when GNOME starts making
    another of its quantum shifts in direction, a continuously-updated
    distro finds itself straddling the divide.  And worse, some of these
    shifts (e.g.: libonoboui) kill man-years of project development
    time.  Try convincing me that Galeon hasn't lost 2-3 years of
    development time on account of that.

  - Incidental:  KDE also suffers from the "it breaks contiuous upgrade
    distros" problem, *but*, because of the decreased interdependence
    between apps, a given application is likely to continue working,
    though the full desktop itself doesn't quite gel.

  - The reasons for the above are probably of interest.  About 1998, I
    made the observation that:

       In five years, Linux will have changed the proprietary software
       world beyond all recognition.

       In five years, the proprietary software world will have changed
       Linux beyond all recognition.

    Simply:  you cannot serve an interest without being changed by it.
    GNOME in particular has been adopted by several corporate interests,
    including Red Hat, Sun, HP, IBM, Novell, and others.  The ongoing 
    concern I have for GNU/Linux and free software is that it's going to
    find itself increasingly manipulated by corporate interests.  This
    needn't be all bad, particularly if there's good balance between
    interests.  However it's also something which we need to be
    cognizant of.

  - Interdependence.  GNOME is an *awful* lot like legacy MS Windows in
    the sense of 

  - As Ben said:  the problems and scope of issues with GNOME are too
    great for any one person to fix.  The best that we can hope for is:

    - Raise awareness of the problems within the GNOME community to
      address these issues

    - Raise awareness of the problems within non-GNOME project
      communities to _either_ get GNOME to address these issues _or_ to
      have the projects evaluate other development environments.

  - An explicit statement that non-coders are unqualified to voice
    design evaluations or objectives.  Specific Waugh quote:
    "Non-coders who think they know better than experienced coders are,
    more often than not, noise."  I say:  when the same themes are
    raised, repeatedly, by persons with a significant level of
    experience (myself, Chip Salzenberg, Don Marti, multiple posters to
    this list).

  - A focus on the part of GNOME devs on the negative aspects of a post,
    to a point.  It's amazingly difficult to argue issues when your
    opposite is _entirely_ nonresponsive to substantive issues, while
    dropping insults and obscenities like they were going out of style.
    Hence:  the Agony in Seven Fits (incidentally, it rates higher than
    Carroll's "Snark" in Google for that phrase.  Let's juice it some
    more:

        http://zgp.org/pipermail/linux-elitists/2004-January/008588.html

    *READ* that.  It's *MEANT* to be a *MASSIVE* embarassment to the
    GNOME community.  And I don't take to humiliating people in public
    lightly.  Waugh _really_ crosses the line, and simply _doesn't_ take
    subtle hints.

    Nonresponsiveness, typified:

     Post:
      http://zgp.org/pipermail/linux-elitists/2003-October/007607.html

     Response:
      http://zgp.org/pipermail/linux-elitists/2003-October/007608.html

     Noted:
      http://zgp.org/pipermail/linux-elitists/2003-October/007702.html




With that said, clearly, Galeon can't do everything from scratch.  The
project is an interesting "glue" project leveraging the core of a
browser (Gecko) and a development environment (GNOME / Gtk).

My recommendations would be that: 

  - Galeon reassess its relationship with GNOME. 

  - That a formal request be made by Galeon developers to the GNOME team
    to address issues such as those addressed in this and other recent
    galeon-user threads.  Both technical (e.g.:  save-as dialog, tab
    navigation, MIME bindings) and cultural (attitude of the GNOME
    community to negative feedback).

  - That alternative widget sets be identified and evaluated.  If
    suitable, action taken to adopt same.



Galeon *is* a wonderful browser.  Its association with GNOME is becoming
an increasing liability, and has cost the project massive user base.  It
needs to be addressed.  Ignoring and/or insulting critics is not an
appropriate response.


Peace.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <[email protected]>        http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
    Warning:  plot details follow.

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