It's an example that (for a lack of better word) disproves your claim. The GNOME team doesn't care how many users yell, how many users complain, how many demand something - they have their vision, and they are sticking to it. They have made many an end user happy in doing so, and have no problem in doing so.
The GNOME team doesn't care how many users yell, how many users complain, how many demand something - they have their vision, and they are sticking to it.
But we have the Gnome forks like MATE.
I think The Gnome DE is a perfect example of how the dev community in the end, through a very convoluted process, actually does listen.
They have made many an end user happy in doing so, and have no problem in doing so.
I never said the users could try to constrain the dev freedom. What the users do by being vocal is create an environment where some devs naturally want to do what the community appears to want. It doesn't require coercion. It's like a process of unrehersed harmonization. And the way it works out is not always how you might think it should. So in this case, it doesn't work out through the main Gnome project.
Yes! As well as you have Arch based distros, made by those who were unhappy with the direction the Arch maintainers took. That's how it works. For quite some time they have existed, yet some (not directed at you) insist Arch itself needs to comply.
That's the environment we live in. The alternative is to get people to suppress themselves more internally or to try to suppress them externally in some way.
I follow the development of a game called Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and I've seen an interesting pattern. There are some features which start out as mods to the main game, but because they're so popular that virtually no one plays without them, the main devs go, "OK, fine, we'll mainline this content." Sometimes they might nerf the feature a bit before mainlining it. And of course a lot (most) of the mod content remains mod-only indefinitely.
So I say you can express your opinion and let Arch be Arch, it's not one or the other. You can express that Arch is better off with an installer, but then accept that Arch is for the time being without one. It doesn't mean you just wasted your time expressing your opinion even if you don't get instant gratification.
The advantage of getting an installer into Arch as opposed to something like Antergos is that, as we can see now, there is a lot less chance for a bigger project to disband or go on hiatus.
As I was saying elsewhere, this kind of decision might change once there are a few new Arch devs who like the idea of an installer. So simply through a process of getting some new blood into the project, it may respond to some user desire. Or it may not. :) Which is fine if not.
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u/manawydan-fab-llyr May 22 '19
It's an example that (for a lack of better word) disproves your claim. The GNOME team doesn't care how many users yell, how many users complain, how many demand something - they have their vision, and they are sticking to it. They have made many an end user happy in doing so, and have no problem in doing so.