The future of Xfce (or beating the Gtk3 horse to death)

[Ray Andrews]

On 19/03/13 04:17 AM, houghi wrote:
> What is the downside of XFCE being too similar to Enlightenment? I 
> hope there is more to XFCE aside from 'not looking like 
> Enlightenment'. I think what should happen is to just look at what the 
> goals of XFCE are. Especially in the long run and take a decision with 
> that in mind. If that results in Enlightenment and XFCE being very 
> similar, then so be it. If you are afraid it will look like 
> Enlightenment, then you might take a decision that does not look at 
> the XFCE goals (unless 'not looking like Enlightenment' is a goal) and 
> will be less XFCE then it could possibly be. How would XFCE fair if 
> XFCE is not similar enough to XFCE? houghi 

The disease of Microsoft-think continues to spread.  The Gnome people 
are already terminally ill with it and it would seem that many xfce-ers 
are deeply infected.  No surprise, the entire Linux world is suffering a 
pandemic of it, but I thought xfce might have immunized itself.  Maybe not.

"Too similar to Enlightenment?"  Gentlemen, we are not selling a product 
here.  We do not need to worry about differentiation.  If xfce was a 
vacuum cleaner, then we'd want to be sure that no competing brand could 
use our bags, and that our bags could only be bought from our stores. 
But we are not selling vacuums, we are trying to create a usable desktop 
with a secure future. "Brand name recognition", is a null value.

The single biggest thing keeping Linux from 'taking over' is this sort 
of fragmentation.  I put it to you that if xfce and enlightenment got 
more similar for the reason that great minds think alike, this would be 
what biologists call 'convergent evolution' and it would not be a 
problem, rather it would be a thing to celebrate. Even better would be 
the MERGING of xfce and enlightenment. Supposing the devs got to 
thinking that their goals were so similar that the combined strengths of 
a united effort were worth the marriage?  Imagine if, instead of endless 
fragmentation, we had a culture of cooperation and merger?  I want to 
live long enough to piss on the grave of M$--at this rate, it's not 
going to happen.