Olive <oesser@noemail.org> wrote:
>
> Linus had already in the past highly criticized the lack of
> configuration in Gnome while the Gnome project seems to think that too
> much configuration option confuse more than help the average user.
> Unfortunately, Linus seems to use offensive words against Gnome and I
> personally do not believe it is a good idea (for example
> http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usabi.../msg00021.html ).

I'm not sure what is offensive about what he said. He doesn't agree with
their design philosophy, and makes that quite clear.

> Now Linus is the principal author of the kernel, he is not responsible
> for the entire system which is made of several components. What is good
> is having choice. Personally, I do not like these "desktop" at all and I

Sure, and Linus has been a very strong leader. There are always disagreements
going on within the community. Linus should not be expected to tip-toe
around or play politician when he feels strongly about something.

For example, many members of the FSF and kernel developers are gung ho about
GPLv3. Linus does not like it, and believes it will harm Linux. Just
recently, some kernel developers put a patch in that would change the
warning message you get when you load a non open source module (say, the
Nvida one). Now it would warn the user that it would be deactivated, or
unsupported, or something like that, within a year. Linux was very blunt
in saying he would not pollute his tree with such a patch to further
the political goals of others.

There was also a lot of conflict during the 2.3.x (or maybe it was 2.5.x)
VM development. Linux was rejecting a lot of code. Many people were
worried he would piss people off and lose developers - and bring about
the end of Linux (we are always hearing about the end of Linux coming,
just like the end of Slackware). Instead Linux stuck by his beliefs and
Linux is better for it.

- Kurt