Saturday, May 17, 2008

We want their feedback, but we also want to do what’s best for them.

Sorry. I've had opinions about 'Usability' and free software. This cements it. Count me out.

Link


Comments:
This blog post wants to be a Twitter.

Care to elaborate on your points or just want to make a snarky comment knowing it will be on Planet KDE?
 
Considering the person that made the Usability comments is actually persuing Usability as a career, and chose to get involved with free software, you chose to make a snarky remark? Awesome.

I don't get it honestly. Celeste makes some rather good arguments. People like her are needed desperatly in free software, and all you can do is ignore her? Brilliant!
 
The old fiefdom in Free Software was always the 'developer'. Back in the days of yore that led to a lot of "RTFM" and "Like it or fork it!" type stuff. As Free Software developers have matured they've gotten better at communications to some extent... Now there are the even less charming new fiefdoms of the 'Usability Experts' and 'Artists'.

One of the most frustrating things about following KDE 4 has been following 'expert wanker' discussion. Artists with immutable visions, unflinching self justifying usability experts, and best of all them cross wanking with some developers.

To be honest watching it is vile. Back in the day is was "RTFM" and "Fork it or like it!" Now it's:

1) You're not an expert so you can't get what you (and a whole whack of angry peasants) want.

2) Oh, you're not an expert, so here eat some more vision. Good luck trying to parse my 'new new' jargon and extract the juicy bits.

3) You obviously don't get the vision. Have some more while I wank with the experts.

4) If you peasants don't shut up I'm not going to talk to you any more. Experts only from here on in.

Personally #4 is my favorite. That and the incestuous cross wanking. KDE 4, "Winning the experts! (... while alienating loyal users.)"

A little ranty... Sorry.
 
If you are not appalled by that comment, I'm obviously in the wrong crowd.

Derek
 
I think James is talking about the reaction to RFEs like
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=154535.
 
Kevin, I hope thats it, the BUG poster makes little sense and is failing to realize that the tool box is a small part of a larger whole (I can't wait will all of the fancy work space stuff is done... just imagine having several different desktop setups with different sets of applets for different purposes, you could even switch to a media center layout at anytime!)

James: I'm just a loyal kde user, but "Like it or Fork it" :P
 
While james post seams a bit over the top, after reading though the bug report i have to agree with Kevin. Fortunately i think the actual link has now been expanded to a reason explanation, but in its original state it basically said
"WE know how YOU should use YOUR desktop, now STFU and let the grown ups get on with the work."

The lack of reasonable developers is why I use kopete over pidgin, despite pidgin supporting the protocols I use better.
 
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