Call off the pistoleros [Was: Menus in Hoary/Gnome2.9]

[Jeff Waugh]

<quote who="Jerry Haltom">

> This is not an insult of any kind, just an observation: This type of "oh
> well, upstream removed it, guess we will too" attitude is what keeps MANY
> people from using open source software.

I don't want to encourage this thread, but I do want to correct this "guess
we will too" misconception. We ship GNOME. We make changes where necessary.
When major subsystems change and *unsupported* features are no longer there,
we are part of that process. Good riddance to the old menu system, and the
equally terrible *unsupported and scary* editing gumpf on top of it!

In fact, I have an example at hand that directly contends with your point.
Right now I am figuring out the best mailcheck applet to add to hoary given
that the one in gnome-applets has been removed. We will automagically
replace the old one with the new one, though probably not migrate settings
(unless I can find an applet that already migrates them). Upstream removed
theirs, we're going to replace it with an even better one.

[ Also, you do realise that the "MANY people" you're talking about won't
realise that an obscure applications: location exists, and probably don't
have the foggiest idea that they can edit their menus, right? Hidden (!)
feature regressions are not even remotely a major barrier to acceptance of
FOSS. :-) That said, having sane menu editing would be a welcome feature.
But not unsupportable cruft. ]

Let's not call every speed hump a roadblock, hey?

Thanks,

- Jeff

-- 
linux.conf.au 2005: Canberra, Australia                http://linux.conf.au/
 
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