Re: [Ayatana] Regarding Notify-OSD's Position in Karmic Koala

[Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Rorie wrote:

I notice that you don't insist upon one application per
function available in the repositories or launchpad PPAs.
  
      

Of course not. Nor would I resist there being many branches of
notify-osd. But I will resist calls for "this should be an option".
    

And if notify-osd branches fifty times because Canonical has a iron
fisted vision, then you've caused the community to waste resources on a
problem that had a simple fix.
  

Well, if any one of those fifty branches is better, it will get merged in, and the default will get better for everyone.

It would be silly to be attached to a bad idea even in the face of much better ideas. Occasionally we might do that, but it's not likely to be the modus operandi of winners, is it. So hopefully, when confronted by genuinely better ideas, we will embrace them and merge them in. What we WON'T do is merge in everybody's favourite option with a preference or gconf setting ;-)

The downside is, we have to work harder to find the good stuff that gets merged in. Lots of branches may not go anywhere. But hey, the upside is, when you propose something and it IS included, it's more rewarding!

No one is arguing for that.  But design with an iron fist is what mac
and MS do.  It's part of what drove us to Linux to begin with.
  

I'm not here to take away your freedom. I'm not here to take away anybody else's freedom either. And it's an iron fist that can punch for your ideas too, if you participate here and come up with something great and congruent.

Is a gconf entry override for the position such a heinous perversion of
the Ayatana vision?  The ordinary user will never be affected.  Isn't
the power user part of the Ayatana vision?
  

Options cause code bloat which causes bitrot which causes bugs which slows us down. So, yes. In some cases they are warranted, but the cost is much, much higher than people usually realise. And clearly, from what you say, higher than you realise.

I believe it will drive people away, hurt
upstreams, a number of side streams and limited sections of downstream.
  
      

What does that mean exactly? I think you're mouthing off because you
don't like the idea of having to go with something you don't
personally like occasionally.
    

Martin is looking at the big picture.  He's concerned that you are going
down a path that will cause a fork or general disruption.  I agree.
Linux is at a fragile state.  It is posed to make a significant mark in
the desktop/portable market in the next couple of years.  This kind of
derailment could destroy the momentum.
  

I doubt it. I think Linux is resilient. If we're wrong, we're wrong. If you think we're wrong, put your energy in somewhere else where you think folks have got a clue. That's the sensible approach.

I don't mind losing participation - I want us to whittle the group down to a group that works productively and well together. Arguing about whether options are a sensible way to resolve differences of opinion holds less and less attraction in that regard.

But I have no data on that, that's just from my own principles of
inclusion and experience in trying to do the hard job of bringing
together conflicting ideas.
  
      

If you have deep experience of that you'll understand what I mean when
I say you cannot always include everybody if you want a decisive and
exciting result. You can aim to include everyone if you are
comfortable taking a very long time to produce something that is hard
to use and ultimately not exciting.
    

But if you refuse to offer any customization, you tick off the very
people you need to survive.
  

Of course we don't "refuse to offer any customization". We just push back in it really, really hard, because we think the cost is much higher than people realise. It's cheap to throw an idea out on a list. It's expensive to maintain the code, and expensive to users time to have them make decisions they often don't need to have been presented with.

So, sometimes we do offer customisation, when the cost is worth paying.

In this case it is not, is the view, for the moment.

In Ayatana, we'll take an opinionated stance, and we'll apply some
common principles to the design process,
    
        

This principle isn't common,
      

This willingness to be decisive isn't common, no. By common principles
I meant that we will focus on specific areas of the experience, bring 
some specific principles to bear, and live with the results.
    

"Live with the results"  This really scares me.  I've looked forward to
your guidance to the community with regard to big picture concepts like
cadence and collaboration.  

This statement looks like your account has been hijacked and you're in
Hawaii. =0
  

For some people, the cadence idea has the same scary overtones :-)

Whether or not non-computer-specialist people continue to embrace and
enjoy Ubuntu. And whether computer specialists continue to do the
same.
    

It's the second group that you are in danger of alienating. :/
  

I don't think so. A lot of them have moved to the Mac because they don't want to have to make so many damn choices just to use their computer with a UNIX environment.

Because all those things are common sense.  Upstart was the obvious
path.

So obvious that it didn't exist and then took many years to convince Debian ;-)

 Functional forums required commitment and resources.

The forums happened with no resources from Canonical, but were helped by the CoC.

 Polite mailing lists are results of guidelines and majority consensus.

The majority will usually tolerate nastiness to the point of poisoning the experience for everyone. Try hanging out on the lists of some projects, where the minority of leaders don't exercise leadership.

  You
decided to kick out the idiots that didn't agree with your vision of
civilized communication.
  

We didn't kick anybody out. We just established a framework for working together, and people who didn't want that went elsewhere.

Does that now apply to desktop? :(
  

Yes.

Don't think that Ubuntu is built on equality of the producers. It is
not. It's built on empowering the best people to lead and take
decisions.
    

And a huge amount of community support.  The human resources around
Debian and Ubuntu dwarf any capital investments thus far.  

Remember that you stand on the shoulders of giants. And they are fickle.
  

That's true. But they also respect results. I'm hoping we will produce the experiences people will want for themselves, or to emulate. We already see some evidence of that.

We see a dark path.  We see you walking down it.  You don't seem to see
it even with your experience in open source.  It's contradictory and
disturbing.
  

Maybe it's *because* of my experience with open source that I feel this approach is necessary. Putting lots of smart people in a room and offering everyone the opportunity to make all the decisions with options if they disagree is not necessarily the way to produce the most amazing result with all that brainpower. I've seen so much waste in unproductive discussions in our free software communities, just because we can't take time to let competence rise to the top.

Hopefully, this team will shape up to be really productive. There's LOTS to discuss, and many ideas are going to get integrated. You are welcome to participate. If you think the room isn't cosy, or the results aren't going to be worth your time, then don't waste time here. If you think this will be fun, despite the slightly quirky approach, stick around and enjoy it.

Mark

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