C'mon. You are telling people that build and maintain core infrastructure used on millions of Linux installations all around the world that they are fundamentally misunderstanding Linux.
This is why I don't maintain free software, and God bless those who do.
If you look at the signees (especially the two or three that actually seem the most invested in this message, and responded to the discussion thread linked above), you will see that these are not the people building "core infrastructure" used by "millions". It's a random grab-bag of default Gnome applications, the kind most Linux users who are aware of alternatives immediately remove from distributions that ship it. "Random Gnome developers" as a group have been notorious for decades for not really gelling with the wider Linux ecosystem.
Looking at the project maintained by the front-runner of this movement, it has had 5 total reported issues in the last year, none of which are related to theming, so I'm not sure I understand what the big support struggle they're chafing at is either.
Do you actually disagree with any of the points I made? Or just the fact that I made those points to people who supposedly have positions of authority?
When did I get to be 'not a random person' around here? Heh, I know I have a high karma but my HN glory days are long behind me.
Anyway, since you asked:
> If you don't want people to theme your software (or rather, you don't want your software to be themed by distribution maintainers), why not write your own license forbidding just that? No one will want to touch it with a 10 foot pole, but hey, you won't have distribution maintainers theming your software.
This is just... Well let's just say it's you that doesn't understand free software. First off changing the license to deal with this is like solving a problem with your business by nuking your competitors from orbit. It's way way way too heavy-handed an approach.
Second, I dunno if you've ever actually worked in software before, but the people churning out the features, in this case the themes, more often than not don't really have a say in what they're building, even in the case of open source. Opening a public conversation like this is exactly how you solve this kind of problem. It's a democratic commons. Talk it out. There's no one person you can just email and say, hey, this is hurting us, knock it off.
You're basically just telling these people to shut up and take it. You don't care about their needs, or what they're going through every day. They make a website like this to stand up and be heard, and they hear your voice, hey, you over there, you're out of your lane, shut up and code.
It's... an immature response. The kind of immaturity that makes me believe that explaining why past the most basic observation would be an exercise in pissing upstream.
> They're like an arrogant chef who, after cooking your dinner, instructs the waiter to remove all the salt and pepper shakers from the table because they don't want you changing the flavor of their dish.
They are more like a chef who asks the waiters to not add salt or pepper to the dish before serving it to customers, because the customers will blame the chef then. If the customer adds a ton of salt, then it's clearly their fault and the chef says he is fine with that.
That will be an issue they will need to deal with because of the license they chose. They picked GPL (https://help.gnome.org/admin/gdm/stable/license.html.en) that means as long as the intermediary ships their changes too then all is good. They are basically asking to be the only fork of their code. I get it, they have spent tons of time getting it 'just right'. They may find that a hard sell to some integrators who make it a point to put their own spin on their distro. This is basically a 'do not fork our code' ask.
I get the idea. But the GPL allows for this? They would need a different license to get that? Pretty sure GPL is 'we may or may not give support if we feel like it' sort of license. The only real obligation is to provide the code including any changes you make.
This letter isn't a legal demand, this is a request to people who are interested in the health of the ecosystem and community.
The way similar sorts of issues are often enforced legally is by using trademarks so that if someone forks your project, they have to be clear that it is separate.
In this case, it isn't a fork and it's hard to see how those tools would apply but the underlying issue of user confusion and brand harm are still similar.
Oh I get that. But what many do not realize when they give the work away like in the GPL you also give away control. They have given away control but now are asking for it back. That is up to the distros if they want to do that. They are perfectly allowed to do so. But they are perfectly allowed to not do so. This is one of the 'downsides' to open source. People may use your source in a way you do not like. I have this same conversation every few years with people on the net. It is usually about the time they realize people are not giving stuff back up stream (their intent) but realty is GPL does not require that.
It basically is for a better term a fork. A small fork but a fork non the less. There are changes they are distributed downstream, but the rub is not back upstream. In this particular case people are going thru the trouble of making a theme pack that is kind of unfinished. But not finishing the work and not upstreaming it either for whatever reason. Hence the letter. But strongly worded letters do not always get things done. Maybe it will but I doubt it. The distros forked because the upstream was not doing what they needed. So the distro managers did it. But now they are asking 'just ignore that part of the GPL that says you can modify the code'. This is basically a missing feature of the upstream so downstream is adding it in.
I see both sides I really do. But if you give away code do not always expect it to be used in the way you expect.
You seem to have some fundamental misunderstandings about what is happening here.
> people are going thru the trouble of making a theme pack that is kind of unfinished. But not finishing the work and not upstreaming it either for whatever reason. Hence the letter.
No, this is not an "unfinished theme" for the specific app. This is a default theme that is being applied to every single app by the distribution.
> There are changes they are distributed downstream, but the rub is not back upstream
That is not the rub nor even tangentially related to the issue here. "Upstreaming" doesn't make any sense in this context.
> They have given away control but now are asking for it back.
> The distros forked...
Again, this has nothing to do with GPL other than as an analogy. This is not a fork, it is a user configuration feature. It is one that these developers could easily chose to disable by hardcoding styles (thus requiring anyone who wanted to customize the UI to fork and compile their own, which they would be able to do under GPL.)
However, the developers want to continue offering users this feature so are asking distributions to stop choosing a consistent look and feel across apps over the risk that their untested default theme break the underlying application without users being aware of why.
I personally don't understand how distributions would care so little about the negative impacts on users and developers. It seems perfectly plausible that distributions that care so much about a consistent appearance could QA the effects of their theme on core apps and then have a prompt on launch before applying their themes to apps which they have not QA'd.
You say you see both sides here, so perhaps you can explain why it makes sense for distributions to risk breaking apps with untested default themes without informing the user just to ensure that apps in the OS look similar.
> You seem to have some fundamental misunderstandings about what is happening here.
Upstream devs want to control what down stream devs are doing to their code/configs that are under the GPL and the downstream are doing a crummy job at it? What is to not understand? An open letter signed by a bunch of people saying 'dont do this to our code' sounds like they want some sort of control. They gave away that control.
> No, this is not an "unfinished theme" for the specific app. This is a default theme that is being applied to every single app by the distribution.
That sounds broken and unfished to me. I do not see it as anything but not finished. If 'bugged out' suits you better then just use that term. If the distro spent more time making it all look right that would be finished would it not? Distros do this allthetime to packages. I have dozens where I have to go unbork a broken package because of what the distro did or neglected to do.
>"Upstreaming" doesn't make any sense in this context.
Why not? They are making changes then shipping them but not contributing it back. It would make it easier on everyone else. But they want to keep their 'secret sauce' is my guess or lack the will to do the proper work to upstream it.
>You say you see both sides here, so perhaps you can explain why it makes sense for distributions to risk breaking apps with untested default themes without informing the user just to ensure that apps in the OS look similar.
They can totally do that. It is what most distros do to differentiate themselves from other distros. Some distros are bog standard no changes others have all sorts of tweaks to make their distro special. See something like an Arch vs RedHat. Arch is closer to 'no real changes other than recompiled for your machine and rolling release' whereas RedHat touches everything to make it special. This is usually considered a feature in the linux world.
That they are shipping broken themes is on the distro. As per the GPL again. The originators of the package are asking for a 'hey fix your junk'. That may or may not happen. The distro packages are under no obligation to fix it. They probably should but that does not mean they will. I have some distros I use where the packages are 3+ years out of date. Because no one maintains it.
You seem to be deliberately ignoring that GPL covers all of the files in the package. Including preconfigured items. That would include any preconfigured theming. The GPL does not really make that distinction. It is border line a 'you touched it last' style of working. It is one of the reasons people created CC licenses to make that distinction and what is the expectation.
I am not saying it is right or wrong. I am saying they are within their rights to do it. Why would they risk doing that? No idea. It is not something I would personally sign my name to. I would guess time, money, or lack of understand or a combination? Gnome would just be better off naming and shaming them and saying 'xyz distros are breaking our code be careful'.
That Gnome is saying 'please stop' is probably because they are getting all sorts of noise from broken distros. Put that at the top of your forum and say 'if you are coming from distro XYZ we may or may not look as they broke it here is a link to the distro forum'.
This letter isn't a demand, legal or otherwise. It's a collection of requests that along with arguments based on a shared interest in the health of the ecosystem.
You do realize that people do things or avoid doing things for reasons other than complying with the law right? This is one of those times.
The only place where GPL comes into it is that it makes sure that goodwill requests is such as this one are as far as it will go and distributions can't be legally forced to comply. That lack of legal force makes it more important to have a strong community to keep the ecosystem healthy.
So instead of ranting about "gah, they just don't understand GPL", it makes more sense to discuss the underlying problem, both on the technical side of how theming is implemented and on the cultural side of how default theming is explained and enabled.
The responses from GNOME members were quite enlightening. Really shows the level of respect they have for anyone besides the in club.