Martin Flöser Steps Down As Maintainer Of KDE's KWin

[Guest]

We had ages of UI (lab) research.

Lab research from the age before touchscreens. Quite a lot has changed in the past 10 years in how people use interfaces.

Konsole without 'status bar'. - Horror.

Wtf is a terminal status bar? I spend my day in the terminal running tmux and vim and I have no idea what you're talking about.

We have knobs. - Like knives & forks. Generations of people have learned how to use them...

The newest generation using computers grew up on touchscreens. Many of them don't own a mouse yet alone know what a middle mouse button is.

I want to decide myself. - Or leave.

I get it, you're one of those people who just generally don't like change. Maybe you should leave and use something classic like Xfce. No hard feelings.

[kalomel]

ngraham I learned about it only through some links posted here, and I dearly hope the decision to allow root user access for Kate and Dolphin will be revisited again at some point.

Most users (even some devs) don't have the technical knowledge to understand that what they are doing when they run GUI apps as root is really bad. Quoting Emmanuele Bassi from Gnome, where there has been a similar discussion:

there are no *real*, substantiated, technological reasons why anybody should run a GUI application as root. By running GUI applications as an admin user you're literally running millions of lines of code that have not been audited properly to run under elevated privileges; you're also running code that will touch files inside your $HOME and may change their ownership on the file system; connect, via IPC, to even more running code, etc. You're opening up a massive, gaping security hole

It is technically just wrong, and no "please be careful" warning will heal that. Wouldn't it have been enough to introduce a compile time flag, as a convenience for Kali to not having to maintain their patch? I don't see any other recipient of these changes.

(the changes in question are unrelated to sudo, it's really only about root user)

[Sonadow]

Can we perhaps now have EGLStreams compatibility on KWin?

Not that I ever intend to use the proprietary Nvidia driver (I'm saving for a GT 1030 to use with Nouveau, because I only need it to draw my desktop, so the locked clockspeeds do not affect me significantly), but it's really nice to have the option there in case I would ever need to resort to the proprietary driver.

[ngraham]

you very much do. Maybe not or less so user originating criticism, but the current MO of the VDG seems to be: someone has an idea which is seen as the best thing since sliced bread and accepted without even thinking of possible implications, if that idea follows current applications and or guidelines and if it fits the big picture. You then propose it and go full steam ahead, ignoring all arguments against it or replying with disbelief or "but x and y of the VDG all think it's better", which simply does not invalidate a technical argument.
You ignore anything against it and push things forward against criticism and maintainers, this is what happened here, this is what drove and will drive people away.
And then, later on, you might notice that it wasn't the best idea but then you can't go back.

That's the picture I get by only reading a few of the tickets linked or mentioned.

So in addition to the comments already made on what specifically you should change: how the VDG works. Maybe reflect, sit back and wait a bit more, and be more open minded and accepting to arguments that do not fit your current view of the issue at hand.

And to answer your previous question (got eaten by forum filters, so I reply to it rather late): Hi Nate, I'm Daniel, I am "only" a concerned user and I don't think we met or know each other, no.

I'd like to mention that if you're not actually involved as a KDE contributor, you're not getting the full picture. There's a lot of context that's not encapsulated by what's publicly visible--as always, when an institution's dirty laundry gets aired. Maintainers are not dictators, and it's especially unfair when people try to block changes in projects that they don't even contribute to. There's some history here that you may not be aware of.

Nonetheless, we are working to improve the situation in several specific ways, including bringing stakeholders to the table earlier, formalizing our communication process, and working towards a unified vision again. I think we can find a way to advocate for the users without upsetting our developers (and to be fair to us, most are very engaged with us and we have great relationships; it was only a few who were complaining).

[andre30correia]

the same guy who make a flame war because mir now gives up from wayland too, linux desktop is dead

[nuetzel]

Lab research from the age before touchscreens. Quite a lot has changed in the past 10 years in how people use interfaces.
[-]

Oh, I see your _desktop_ has a touch...

Stop this stupid 'modern' is better attitude.
It's so short jumping.

[MartinN]

Phoronix: Martin Flöser Steps Down As Maintainer Of KDE's KWin

Martin Flöser (nee Gräßlin) who has been the maintainer of KDE's KWin since 2010 is leaving his post...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...aves-KWin-Post

Just a hunch, but I think this was in the making ever since he got married and changed his last name to Floser.. which is kind of strange, usually the bride takes the groom's last name, unless it's a cultural thing where he's from (Germany?). Maybe his family demands aren't leaving time for him to focus on KDE.

[Delgarde]

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.

Hmm... I've got no horse in this race – haven't used KDE in years – but reading those threads, I definitely get a sense of designers saying "do this, it'll be easy", and expecting the developers to agree.

Design is *hard*, and one of the most critical bits of the job is to make sure you're on the same page as the technical experts... things which sound easy are often all but impossible, and difficult-sounding things can often be easier than you'd think. They *are* a pain in the neck some times... but all the design in the world ain't worth crap if nobody can implement it.

[Nille_kungen]

Just a hunch, but I think this was in the making ever since he got married and changed his last name to Floser.. which is kind of strange, usually the bride takes the groom's last name, unless it's a cultural thing where he's from (Germany?). Maybe his family demands aren't leaving time for him to focus on KDE.

I know many here in sweden that took the last name of the bride if they have a very common name then some take the less common name.

[R41N3R]

This is exactly why I've spent a good part of the last 6 months working with the Discover developers to improve the UI, and they've been working hard to fix the crashes and bugs. When we ship 5.13 in a few days, I think you and others will be pleasantly surprised.

In no way, shape, or form are we unaware of the criticisms or ignoring the issues. it's just easy to miss the progress if you're not following the development, which is part of the reason why I try to highlight these pre-release improvements over at https://pointieststick.wordpress.com...-productivity/

What kinds of changes or improvements would *you* like to see?

I do use Plasma 5.13 beta already, so I'm aware about the changes and I can still see the broken layouts and crashes in e.g. systems settings on Wayland. Doing a lot of UI changes didn't mean so far, that technically the right changes are done yet. At least I do not believe that the UI changes can blend the users that much to ignore the fundamental deficiencies. I think at the end of the day the quality matters, nice interfaces are forgotten fast, they are replaced easily with the next trend.

After reading several of your posts on Phabricator, your blog post and the one in this thread, I do have the feeling that you do ignore critics and issues. And you certainly do a good job in hiding this behind nice words, but to me this seems like a lot of PR speak. This might work towards most of the users, but I certainly can understand why it pisses off other developers and knowledgeable people. Understanding critics usually means to respond on concerns and not just answering with standard arguments or by ignorance. From my professional career I know that often the good developers are not the easiest ones, but it is worth to go into discussions with them, accept the challenges, learn something and find together new solutions. And this is why I'm worried. Loosing Martin as the maintainer of Kwin opens the door now for easy but on the long term stupid changes. Allowing UI apps to run as root, just shows the first downgrade development on Kwin and Plasma. To do a change just for convenience without the right technical solution is just not what I'm expecting from a professional project like KDE. But as we speak about KDE, I'm confident that there are enough other people in the community to correct these errors again.

This is my opinion so far regarding this topic and not just a personal critic, I do not expect an answer, I will measure you against future developments.