Hot take: good riddance.

@emi @vkc No, Wayland neeeds to care too, not just DEs. Right now, global keyboard access and other things which assistive technology would require is all over the place and DEs are allowed to do their own thing. Those kinds of features should be a part of the core Wayland specification. Accessibility should never be a third-class citizen. And the accessibility landscape is already fragmented enough. We don't need Wayland adding to it

@tragivictoria
I mean to agree with @vkc FOSS users don't need to overreact to dev decisions, because the community can change the software to their liking. Extensions are just a for-instance for how these changes are shared

@gabriel @vkc My primary usage is the terminal to replace kb shortcut. It is hit or miss, whereas right click paste always works. But I'm on kde and Wayland, where x11isms sometimes even still work.

@lxak@goblin.technology @vkc@linuxmom.net oh no, i didnt meant to question this, i just meant to say that extensions arent really necessary here, since there are at least 3 GUI options for changing it (and its being discussed to put it in Settings app)

@vkc I got annoyed regularly by middle click back in fuckin 1997, I’m glad others hate it too

@vkc I have no issue with people that prefer GNOME. Choice is good.

What isn't good is :

1) 'a valid user of Linux' is a problem, right there. *Unix* is not just Linux. I understand this is (hopefully) shorthand, but still..

2) Middle button gate. Good : doing your own unique thing. Bad : potentially excluding people and discounting their workflow for no good reason. *Especially* when it did work, and then does not.

3) Using GNOME as a shortcut for making Wayland accessible. Not really a GNOME issue, but if the only way to make Wayland usable for various groups is a specific compositor such as GNOME rather than fixing Wayland to work with *all* compositors, it's a real issue that restricts the choice of using Unix.

@vkc hear hear!

@vkc Middle-click paste is one of those "weird Unix" interaction things that really requires other "weird Unix" things to work well, namely focus-follows-mouse and the concept of an X11-like selection mechanism.

It broke when scrollwheels took over the middle button.

It broke when you slipped while bringing a window to the front, thus causing a selection in *that* other window, and thus losing the selection from the first one that you intended to middle-paste.

I loved it in 1996; not anymore.

@vkc I've never had GNOME prevent me from using another desktop!

I have, however, had another desktop prevent me from using GNOME.

@tragivictoria
Oh cool! You'd know more than me

I try not avoid making assumptions that aren't already save or measurable empirically. I was elaborating on the the cause and effect of GNOME, their actions and how they are received by the larger FOSS community.

GNOME are free to act in accordance with how the foundation and the collective from which it is composed wish to manage the development of their software and surrounding community. There are social consequences however, to neglecting the needs and interests of the people using it.

Telling someone to go fork the software or go elsewhere is not a reasonable response nor conductive to keeping a healthy community and userbase. It only communicates that you are not interested in considering external output which will rightfully make the people who use and are invested in GNOME and its ecosystem rightfully frustrated.

That is why my previous post outlines and urges the necessity of listening to your community and move in lock step with them or else you'll end up in the same circumstance that GNOME currently is.

@DiogoConstantino@masto.pt @vkc@linuxmom.net

@vkc every time I interact with the GNOME developers the way I interact with normal parts of the open source community (i.e., come to collaborate, bearing patches and bug reports, seeking to improve the software), I am met with inexplicable rancor and disrespect. everyone knows GNOME for this pattern of user-hostility. that's why people are emotionally charged

@vkc Oh…my…gosh. I've never liked GNOME (or KDE). But so 🤬 what? My spouse, who is not a programmer, has enjoyed every version of GNOME since 1999 & a Linux-based system has been her primary desktop for decades.

I'm vaguely aware that *yet again*; like some kind of clockwork, the world wants to -post about #GNOME for the 2ⁿ-th time.

I gave this #GUADEC keynote 10 years ago directed at these haters; I'm sad it's still relevant,though.

https://sfconservancy.org/videos/2016-08-12_Bradley-Kuhn_GUADEC-2016_Keynote.webm

Cc: @federicomena @ebassi @karen

@vkc part of this is that GNOME seems to hold the stance that users and developers will never be the same people. GNOME does not focus on empowering users to modify and improve their software. it's really at odds with the ethic that permeates most of the free software community, where you shouldn't have to be a developer to use a program, but users are encouraged to change and improve how their computer works for them

@vkc

I'm old enough to remember this behavior dating back to at least CDE on traditional Unix systems like Solaris in the mid-90s, if not earlier. It was a great feature then.

BUT...

That was back when mice looked like this! They had a literal middle mouse button. This design predated the scroll wheel, which was added much later, and merged in as an extremely awkward and unreliable middle mouse button in some cases. The old behaviors make no sense anymore, at least not as default behaviors for most users with modern mice.

@bkuhn @vkc @federicomena @ebassi @karen Funny I just posted almost exactly the same thing a few hours ago.

These people are crazy and should really get a life