Opensource sucks
Project GoneME is the first attempt to try moving the GNOME Desktop into a new direction. As a long years contributor and ex-GNOME Foundation member I got quite unhappy with the new direction that some core decision takers have chosen without further feedback with the community or their participants.
[He then goes on to cite technical issues as the reasons for his decision.]
So we have yet another project to do what KDE and GNOME do, only “better”? What a waste of time and effort. I’m no enemy of choice, but the real problems with GNOME (and KDE) are not technical.
The problem is that everyone is aping an existing GUI paradigm. Does no one realise how much it sucks? Where are the guys who are actually trying to reinvent the way GUIs work from the ground up, or at least partially question the current paradigm? Well, ok: they’re working for Apple.
The situation is due to the fact that research and design on that kind of level involves solid knowledge of fields outside programming. Most of the people involved with many open source projects seem to be code monkeys who know nothing beyond programming (and not even that very well). As a result, they view the code itself as the end rather than a means, and few of them even develop an awareness of the intricacies of the issue being solved, let alone contribute any expertise to the progress of the state of the art. Like a flock of mindless engineers bickering over whether to build a square wheel using wood or iron, they get hung up on technical issues of the implementation of flawed ideas and inadequate ideals without ever taking a step back to look at the big picture.
This is why the open source world sucks.
Referenced in The sorry state of usability.