Martin Flöser Steps Down As Maintainer Of KDE's KWin

[tomtomme]

Am I reading something wrong or is his complaint about the VDG is that they're finding problems in the visual design and proposing solutions?

yes you are reading wrong. His problem is not them proposing solutions, but implementing them without consulting the experts.
One more porlbem of martin seems to be, that he is tired of explaining, when he has to say "no". It shows that he got a bit too comfortable in his maintainer role, as explaining a "no" is invaluable especially for new contributors. Even Linus Torvalds explains his "no" standpoints (sometimes quite colorful)

[Guest]

Well, I for one read his explanation as "I don't like it that I'm not a dictator and I have to debate my decisions with designers".

I'm grateful for his work but I strongly disagree with him on multiple points:
- client side decorations
- his thinking that the focus should be on new features instead of bug fixing and usability fixes

I fail to see what a window manager has to do with the design.

Well, it's the UI of the operating system. It gets designed before it's implemented.

[shmerl]

I hope KWin developers will continue good work and will implement Vulkan based compositing.

[schmidtbag]

Does anybody have any specifics where he disagreed with the VDG, or changes that went through because of the VDG? It's hard to know if he's just too bitter and stubborn to allow for change, of if he's the only sane person who is trying to protect users from stupid decisions.

[sa666666]

I stopped reading the threads when another developer brought up a comparison to "white privilege". I see that KDE is now starting to get infected with the same disease that is bringing down Gnome.

[Fuchs]

Does anybody have any specifics where he disagreed with the VDG, or changes that went through because of the VDG? It's hard to know if he's just too bitter and stubborn to allow for change, of if he's the only sane person who is trying to protect users from stupid decisions.

My best guesses would be https://phabricator.kde.org/D12732 and https://phabricator.kde.org/D12795 given security was mentioned, and potentially, given the timing, https://phabricator.kde.org/T8707 with https://phabricator.kde.org/D13276, but that's guesses, there might be more and others. Best ask him directly? It's not like he disappears completely, just stepping down as a maintainer.

On that: I think it's very sad that he steps down due to his knowledge in the field that is, imo, unmatched. I had and still have quite heated disagreements with him, e.g. on the windows close shortcut in present windows or with regards to Wayland / nVidia / EGL. So whilst hoping that things there might improve, I think it's a huge loss to be filled.
Also I hope that there are plenty of other people who are against decisions such as CSD that might be tempting for looking nice, but are not only technically potential issues but also on the UX end.

Kind regards,

Fuchs

[ngraham]

So the VDG and their headless approach did cost KDE even more people.
Glad it's not only users they lose due to removing functionality and making KDE GNOME 4.0, but finally also some developers.
Maybe people can stop them before it's too late, or maybe people can fork the remaining good pieces out and create a desktop for power users.

Wait, what? What features did we remove? Half of the goal of the Usability & Productivity initiative is to make KDE Plasma a good desktop for power users. What are your specific complaints? What can we do better?

[tessio]

I stopped reading the threads when another developer brought up a comparison to "white privilege". I see that KDE is now starting to get infected with the same disease that is bringing down Gnome.

Snowflake can't handle some words, hum?

[BwackNinja]

I read his explanation as saying that he doesn't being a maintainer to be as meaningful anymore and he's not valued in that position.

I don't have any first-person experience about this, but from his statements about the VDG, they treat themselves as experts beyond the real scope of their expertise and that's shown through the points he makes.

[1] tendency to do changes and reverting them again
[2] taking easy solutions like flipping defaults without looking at the big picture
[3] tries to dictate much more than just visual or design
[4] does not consult domain experts
[5] presents final solution and disallows discussion as you were not part of the telegram discussion

The problem in the outcome is that they don't look at the big picture[2] and have to back out changes they make[1]. The reasons for that happening are that they dictate beyond their expertise [3] and present a non-negotiable final solution [5] without acknowledging that those with expertise might be aware of caveats that they aren't aware of [4].

If this is really the case, then the desired situation would be that the VDG examines problems and reaches out to the domain experts to gain a more complete understanding and then present their solutions. The current situation seems to be that the domain experts have to insert themselves into discussions that they did not previously have to in order to have a voice in technical decisions made by a group not expected to be making technical decisions.

In addition, the real enjoyment in programming is in building new features. With the rest of the current situation being unpleasant, having product development stalled is rather disheartening. You have to remember that these are volunteers; they are only here because they want to be. If quality developers aren't considered to be a valuable resource in this landscape that seems perpetually understaffed, then projects will stall and/or die.

Finally, talking about users complaining more loudly about how they think things should be, they don't value good developers either. A project isn't meant to cater to everyone and there's a development and maintenance burden for trying to make it do so. Developers are usually keen on accepting patches for functionality individuals want, but not on doing the work themselves. That's not laziness, that's good time management. A number of users isn't an indicator of quality, but rather a reflection of the market you're catering towards. If you try to cater to everyone, you may net more users, but you compromise the direction of the project, those users may not stay that long either, and you can end up with something you don't even want to use yourself.

[sa666666]

Snowflake can't handle some words, hum?

Responding to a troll, obviously, but it's not the specific words, but the mindset of the individuals involved. Once SJW's infect a project, it's all downhill from there.