System76: A Case Study on How Not To Collaborate With Upstream
blogs.gnome.org
Preface: the following post was written in the context of the events that happened in September. Some time has passed, and I held off on publishing in the hopes we could reach a happy ending with System76. As time has passed, that hope has faded. Attempts to reach out to System76 have not been productive,...

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7224516

Imagine spending 3+ years on staying mad at GNOME to release the most underwhelming software imaginable.

System76 is best known for spreading misinfo and lies about GNOME and other upstreams, selling overpriced re-branded clevos, “being made in America”, loving rust and hyping on twitter and mastodon.

Most of the “backlash” against GNOME comes from the a community that has more opinions than users or just straight up misinformation and spite.

COSMIC is very poorly designed, it might be written in the “memory-safe programming language” but it’s clear that they don’t have a design backbone. They basically created the caricature of GNOME’s adwaita but now you can paint your windows in whatever barf-inducing color you want.

They built an entire new desktop from scratch rather than work with GNOME or KDE and in that amount of time, literally every issue that sparked that redesign was resolved upstream in both aforementioned desktops.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    1213·
    4 days ago

    A bit unfair IMO by the downvoters to not explain their downvotes?

    Spreading false information about Gnome claiming it is insecure sounds like a valid concern for the Gnome team.

    • priapus@piefed.socialEnglish
      171·
      4 days ago

      Its dredging up drama from 4 years ago, while also only sharing one side of it. It just seems pointless. If for whatever reason you want to discuss drama from this long ago, I think it would make far more sense to include multiple perspectives or an outside view.

    • blunderworld@lemmy.caEnglish
      225·
      4 days ago

      Speaking for myself, it’s because I interpret the post as using sensationalist, biased language. Right or wrong, I don’t value content that tries to manipulate the readers perception that way.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
        53·
        4 days ago

        Thanks, you are of course entiled to your opinion.
        But from the content of the article, the headline seems fair. Be careful as an opensource project.
        Hopefully other projects have better experiences, but it seems System 76 has acted in bad faith for some reason.

    • stuner@lemmy.world
      142·
      4 days ago

      Spreading false information about Gnome claiming it is insecure sounds like a valid concern for the Gnome team.

      Could you point me to that, I couldn’t find anything related to Gnome security in the linked article.

      A bit unfair IMO by the downvoters to not explain their downvotes?

      There were disagreements between Gnome and System76 and they decided to go separate ways. The whole “contributing to upstream” situation is also kind-of muddy at best. Maybe that’s grounds to write a disappointed blog post 4 years ago, but saying that they are “not to be trusted” today goes too far IMHO.

      Also, looking at how Gnome and System76 behave upstream (e.g. in Wayland) today, it seems to me that Gnome is the bigger problem…