[Xfce-bugs] [Bug 5934] Xfce system-wide settings

[bugzilla-daemon at xfce.org]

http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5934

--- Comment #9 from Jannis Pohlmann <jannis at xfce.org> 2009-11-01 02:32:01 UTC ---
*sigh*

I'm not going to hold your hand explaining how to best approach communication
with open source development teams. Everyone who has commented on this bug has
been an Xfce core developer for several years, so if you want us to butt out of
your report, you have nobody left to listen to your request(s).

This is what I extract from your messages (and I'm pretty sure you'll prove me
wrong):

- you're refering to yourself as one of the best software design directors out
there,
- you have little experience with bug tracking systems,
- you have little experience with communication in open source software teams ,
- you don't know how Xfce works internally at all,
- you're not interested in explanations on why things are the way they are,
- you strongly think Xfce does something very wrong,
- you want to direct somebody to do it right; and
- you want the people investing their time in all this to back off and shut up.

Well... good luck with that. Let me say two more things:

I talked about the GUI mainly (because most of the settings are stored in a
central system already) in my last comment and I didn't defend our design. In
fact, I told you that there is room for improvement. This was not a
misunderstanding at my end, these were (very brief) explanations for you to
understand how the architecture of Xfce looks like. 

It is very easy to call yourself one of the finest in your profession. It is
also very easy to make a high-level suggestion such as "change the settings
system to not do something unless user doesn't explicitely say: I want this".
For this whole thing to work, you need to consider three things though: 

1) Do your homework. Investigate how things work internally and what needs to
be changed for things to work the way you expect them to. Try to figure out how
to communicate your ideas to the community in the best way. This differs from
community to community. 

2) Document your ideas, create a clear outline of what needs to be done,
possibly including a roadmap. 

3) Deal with the possibility of being disappointed. People might not do exactly
what you want, especially not if they are volunteers and perhaps don't have the
time, consider other aspects to higher priority or simply disagree with you.
This can happen to you even if you are a professional.

So, if you are still interest in this matter, I suggest you follow Nick's
advise and create a wiki page on http://wiki.xfce.org/ to document your ideas
verbosely.

Cheers,
Jannis

-- 
Configure bugmail: http://bugzilla.xfce.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are the assignee for the bug.