Look at it this way, every decision you make when designing software,
you weigh up the pros and cons of all the options before you make it.
When neither option has any concrete benefit over the other, that's
when it's down to personal preference and that (I would argue) is when
you make it configurable and then, only then when it's worth the extra
work. I would say that notify-osd's positioning is one of those
occasions.
Luke.
And that's where the problem begins. How many options would you make configurable? In worst case you'd
have it with as much options as you have different opinions. And this can quickly become unmanageable.
Noone takes options away from users in Ubuntu. Anyone can replace the application provided by the distribution for anything
of their choice.
In case of Notify-OSD location, it seems that the argument here is for something that most of its users haven't even seen yet. I find it interesting that such a debate can be around something that is not even officially released. I would say, let the main group of target users use it first for some time. If the need for options will become obvious, I think that Mark and all the people working on it would also agree with that, and options will appear - they are not an enemy after all.
Alex.