This interesting snippet here caught me ungarded:
LXF: Some people have accused Ubuntu of mimicking Mac OS X – what’s your take on that?
DS: I don’t take a position on every silly little thing that people say, but if forced to take a position on the matter, I would say “haters gonna hate.”
Totally in disregard of the question, it tries to slam the mere mentioning that there might exist something different than one’s own opinionated view. Well, there’s no better way to show it with that classy witted answer, sure…
Now what does this say coming out of the mouth of someone who uses MONO as the wonderful gift to bring the “loved by all” technology to the world in the form of Gnome DO?
Now what does this say coming out of the mouth of someone who uses MONO as the wonderful gift to bring the “loved by all” technology to the world in the form of Gnome DO?
#1 by twitter on August 9, 2010 - 11:50 pm
How very strange. There is nothing wrong with copying GUI elements that are useful. The OSX interface does not suit me but there’s no reason people who want it or pieces of it should not have it as free software. The fundamental organization of OSX is just a repositioning of the NextStep Dock with the addition of transparency and animations. GNUStep, E16 and several other free sotware projects have similar elements or have more exactly coppied OSX.
#2 by harrytuttle on August 10, 2010 - 3:39 am
I’m exactly your point twitter! As one can say there is nothing wrong with copying it, there should also be nothing wrong when someone else expresses some criticism if he feels it’s going in the “wrong direction” in his point of view, maybe because he feels going “the apple way” not to be superior. So why does David not simply say, that each one is allowed to have his or her own taste and opinion and that’s fine, because this is normal and nothing to be worried about. It appears though that with how he answered that question, he seems to imply that _all_ critics related to that topic must be ‘haters’ and therefore can in its entirety simply be dismissed, where imho each user can and should be allowed at least express their opinion, even if he/she has no final say in the decision outcome, because Ubuntu is known to be led by a “dictator for life” (just like MS and just like Apple). But the mere possibility that someone using (and presumably “loving”) Ubuntu thinks that copying or nearing a Mac-like GUI is not a step in “the right direction” should at least be debatable, so to comment with “haters gonna hate (no matter what)” is imho not very convincing. I think this could be more like a reflex, that increasingly is used to face two other concerns: Mono critics (its just the technology, how can you “hate” a technology?) and MS (its just another money making software company, how can you “hate” a company?), so now Apple (which is increasingly becoming on even greater threat to free software, but again seen by some people as just the greatest tech company currently on earth, so why gonna “hate” anything that comes from them or their technolgy?). This seems to be evolving into a pattern, and it’s becoming increasingly more VISIBLE: Pulling the HATE-card, where there is really nothing more than just valid (and often valuable) OPINION about a specific topic the card-puller seems to disagree with.