EDIT: having talked to some folks i think it's worth clarifying that this interpretation of events may not be totally correct (certainly it's cynical), things are messy, and details are typically not available for $reasons. While I would very much prefer that we get more transparency (or at least that GNOME foundation members would), I don't want to be responsible for spreading misinformation so I encourage you not to take this at face value and instead starting asking more questions and demand more from the GNOME foundation.

> Be GNOME foundation
> Huge potential, clout, possibilities to take Linux to the next level with proper planning and community organising
> kick out board member for trying to actually improve things and ruin his reputation on the way
> huge shitshow
> executive director fails to secure enough funding to even pay her own salary and leaves
> eventually find someone new to be ED
> also kick him out after 4 months for trying to actually change things for the better

i think something needs to be done about the 20+ year GNOME veterans on the board who aren't willing to adopt change

i'm not a foundation member and don't plan to be, but i do care about the future of GNOME and despite the best efforts of many wonderful people it's not looking good rn

@cas There's a reason why I haven't touched GNOME since 2012. It has so many issues that I refuse to acknowledge it as "first-class Linux desktop" and I believe it actively harms Linux adoption.

@cas .... *big sigh*

@elly i don't think i would agree with that assessment... i didn't make this post to hate on the developer community (though many agree there are critiques to be made there too)

@cas well in the end it's the community deciding who should represent them and I'm sure that sooner or later they'll figure things out at some point.

@karolherbst if they survive to the next board elections xd

@cas @elly the development and product aside, the gnome project is really not looking good and even if the actual gnome desktop would be perfect, it still changes nothing to the world if the backing foundation does shit

@cas do you have a few links I can read? I think I read about all this before but it's quite vague in my memory.

@cas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wtvXoXh0VU

@cas thats so sad

@cas It's almost like the people that got in conflict with the Code of Conduct have an interest in the public filling the void with conspiracy theories instead of just acknowledging that they messed up. Not showing accountability will most likely just contribute to the CoCC being more cautious with rehabilitating the offenders.

The Foundation and CoCC clarified several times that they can't and won't release more information. Wasting everyone's time by repeatedly asking will change nothing.

@cas Many people in the community have been given limited additional information and the possibility to ask questions. Most have acknowledged that and moved on. A minority has decided to twist every single fact that they have been told. This significantly contributes to me having lost any trust in these people that are still "asking questions." An independent review confirmed one CoCC decision. That's all we will learn from the Foundation and CoCC. And that's the end of the story for me.

@sophie yeah I don't think much would come out of debating those CoCC decisions without additional information, and i understand that they can't publish that information. Moving on is the sensible thing to do. That said I don't think it's right to argue that these are conspiracy theories -- at least from the interactions I've had with folks who I trust are operating in good faith (and have every incentive to do so).

we can agree to disagree and move on.

@cas i still think what happened with holly was ridiculous. she was set up for failure and drug through the mud by the lundukes of the world for nothing that actually mattered without any visible support from the foundation when that happened…

@cas gnome seems like it's got a lot of wonderful devs and the governance is going in exactly the wrong direction.

e.g. gtk4 and even 3 removing a lot of features people use and want (typeahead in file browsers anyone?), generally trying to force a tablet/mobile UX onto desktop users, putting random controls and menus into window titlebars

They have a vision, they're executing on it, and if the users don't like it they're just along for the ride. This is the exact opposite of what Linux is supposed to be about.

@sophie @cas only that people did acknowledge that they messed up.

Whenever talking about some sort of sanctions imposed by a CoCC there is a lot to be said about proportionality too.

@sophie @cas CoCC decision can be confirmed and still be out of proportion. Then the decisions taken by directors acting on their own going against the direct decision of the board... Are those also confirmed by the independent review?

We get stuck on technicalities and fail to see the huuuuge red flags.

@cas This is a quite pessimistic outlook, GNOME Foundation has existed for over 2 decides, we shouldn't let minor differences derail GNOME's mission. The HR office needs to resolve these differences amicably.

The HR and operations team need to be more transparent to prevent speculations like these and we as contributors should raise our concerns with those accountable rather than resorting to outright public criticism.

@sudhanshu98t if all it took was raising concerns it wouldn't have reached this point

@azonenberg @cas which features were removed

@jannuary @cas The one that bothered me the most was the forced switch to "search first" file browser dialogs rather than being able to type a file name to select it.

This is a nightmare if you type e.g. "CMakeLists.txt" and it pulls up every one in every subdirectory of your project.

There were others but that was the one that sticks in my mind because it was the biggest workflow breakage

@azonenberg @jannuary ctrl+L?

@cas @jannuary Sorry I misspoke. It searches rather than simply moving to the file in question.

CMakeLists is a bad example, it's more like if you have Foo.cpp, MyFoo.cpp, etc in one directory. You can't just type a file name to go to it.

@cas @jannuary see the ticket here https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/2366 where they basically go "working as intended, your old workflow is no longer allowed"

@cas @jannuary in particular the design rule of "Search is the preferred mechanism for finding things and filtering views" is something I strongly reject

@cas @jannuary And multiple devs explicitly state "a PR to add the old behavior and a preference to switch between them will not be merged, period, typeahead is dead by royal decree".

@azonenberg @jannuary yeah, search is the way. would be nice to toggle recursive search

@cas @jannuary Guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

KDE, Windows, etc. all let you select files by name when you type in the open dialog. I know what my files are named, I just want to go to them. Often just typing a few letters is sufficient and I do not want to find every file containing that string in the name.

I'd be fine with having search vs typeahead as a preference in a config file somehow. But completely removing typeahead because some redhat guy decided he doesn't like it, and screw the users who want it, is not OK. There were third party patches to revert those changes for a while but gradually stopped getting maintained and I'm not aware of any way to get typeahead back in gtk4 at all.

@azonenberg @cas i fail to see why they shouldn't be able to make design decisions you personally don't like

@jannuary @cas Software exists for the users, not the developers.

If you save a minute of developer time to collectively cost users hours of frustration, it's a net loss for the community.

Making breaking UI changes or "change for the sake of change" is something I am strongly opposed to as a matter of principle.

If there are fundamental technical reasons why backward compatibility cannot be maintained by a preference, it needs to be clearly communicated *why* this is the case. But the decision to break a workflow should only be made after extensive user feedback surveys and high level discussions to make sure that this is the only way forward.

In v0.x / alpha software that is still being rapidly iterated on, it's a different story. Prototypes are expected to be unstable and things will change. But once you have a large userbase depending on your platform, you need to understand that everything they need to relearn is going to have a cost magnified by the size of your entire userbase. When Microsoft breaks a workflow on Windows it costs the users tens of millions of dollars in aggregate, if not more.

@azonenberg @cas "many people use it" is not a convincing argument on why nautilus should act differently to every other GNOME app with regards to search. every change breaks someone's workflow.

@jannuary @cas I'm not talking about nautilus I'm talking about the file open dialog in GTK (which breaks workflows in *every GTK application that switches from gtk2 to 3*)

There should be a gconf setting so that a user can get the search way we have now, or the typeahead way from gtk2 / KDE / Windows.

And this should be a system-wide, user configurable setting just like "what color a button is". There is no technical reason why this can't be the case, it's purely political on the part of GTK maintainers.

@jannuary @cas And with something as fundamental as a GUI toolkit this is just as extreme, since changes there will affect every application on every platform using the toolkit.

If someone decides scrollbars in GTK5 are going to work backwards from how they did before, yes they *can* do that. But from an ethical and user freedom perspective, it's the wrong decision even if some UX boss says do it. It would be like if the GNU people had decided to change the "list directory" command from "ls" to "dir" or something to align with Windows.

@azonenberg @jannuary @cas Some GNOME design decisions do annoy me; but in the file dialog, you can get type ahead just by typing a '.' - it then gives you focus in an editable text thing and that seems to work as expected to me - is that what you're after?

@penguin42 @jannuary @cas Open a folder that has files "foo", "bar", "baz". Type "f".

If it doesn't select "foo" as soon as you hit the "f" it's broken.

@penguin42 @jannuary @cas with proper typeahead you'd be able to just do f enter and open foo.

@azonenberg @jannuary @cas I kind of agree; but with typing the . or / for me as a work around is enough for me; if it didn't have that then I'd be equally annoyed.

@penguin42 @jannuary @cas the point is that if you type . f it doesn't immediately select foo. you have to type the entire filename.

Compare this to how the file browser works on windows where if you have focus on the list view and type a letter it immediately selects the first file starting with the characters you typed.

Until GTK3, every OS and DE I've ever seen did it that way. Then GTK3 decided they had to be special.

@azonenberg @jannuary @cas I'm testing here in Gnome document viewer/evince 48.1 on Fedora 42. If I type ./2N3 it highlights the '2N3904.pdf' as soon as it's unique and I just hit return. It seems to be case sensitive on that, which is crazy; but hey. So try ./f and see if it gets the 'foo' for you?

@cas I'm not quite aware of what happened but yeah, there need to be reforms to ensure that everyone is heard and no unilateral decision is taken.

@cas sounds rough. thanks for sharing a summary