The Sinking, Open Source Ship

I’m tired of seeing comments complaining about GNOME being Apple (think “the devil”) or KDE breaking everyone’s fun by adding/changing 10 billion features.

Stop treating GNOME and KDE like they are consumer companies. They need time and talent and do everything for very little (monetary) gain. One of the reasons desktop Linux will never succeed with “normal” people is because there’s not enough hands to keep the duct-taped ship afloat. If people don’t step up, it will become a sinking ship very fast. Not to mention the people who think they can do better and jump ship only to rebuild the same exact ship some place else.

Some developers are very opinionated and bad at communicating because most developers don’t know how to communicate with people. They’re used to developing for themselves, but not with others. Don’t get me started on the marketing, branding, and UX design angle!

At the end of the day, there’s a person behind the screen and on those git servers, and making comments like this only dehumanizes them more. It’s easy for people to make blanket comments like this because they view these people as just as nebulous of the worst executives in Big Tech.

Show your developers some love more often or help out your favorite projects or software you use. If you don’t know how to program, use them, report problems, or do testing. It’d be nice for a change than complaining online.