Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Glyph (glyph@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Aug-2026 09:03:47 JST Glyph

   RE: https://mastodon.social/@mcc/117118750064883850

   I hate to shit on the work of people giving stuff away for free, but, this sucks. I am exhausted by every product I use being infested by this aesthetics-only design, design that is purely about how it looks and not how it works, even the open source ones, even the ones I support with donations or patronage. I agree with all of mcc’s critique but I don’t know how and don’t have the energy to channel this somewhere useful. maybe the thing that gets me to pick another instance will be this UI.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Aug-2026 09:03:45 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Chuck

     @ChuckMcManis @glyph People whose behavior is to continually copy whatever the latest corporate garbage UI design trend they see, rather than respecting the evolution of UI design completely outside of corporate-controlled shit, should not be welcome on our (FOSS community's) projects.

   • Embed this notice
     Chuck (chuckmcmanis@chaos.social)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Aug-2026 09:03:46 JST Chuck

     in reply to

     @glyph I share your pain (and exhaustion). I realized that for many, if not most, people the first thing they see is what they think of as "good", so as the median age of Linux committer went down, Linux desktops became more and more like Windows. Similarly with apps which are being made/committed to by people whose first experience was this sort of design aesthetic.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Aug-2026 09:23:11 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Chuck

     @ChuckMcManis @glyph On this I disagree strongly. If you intend to be responsible running a project you want people to be able to depend on, you absolutely do not accept volunteers to come in who are not willing to get onboard with the project values. Which should include not subjecting your users to corporate-bullshit-style redesigns every year or two, or similar usability breakage.

     Your first and most important job as a maintainer is to say no. Always.

   • Embed this notice
     Chuck (chuckmcmanis@chaos.social)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Aug-2026 09:23:12 JST Chuck

     in reply to

     • Rich Felker

     @dalias
     I feel you, but that is super hard to do when all you have to work with are volunteers. If you're fierce in your enforcement you get called "unwelcoming" and "judgemental". Not a good look when you depend on volunteers to carry some of the load. Coaching and management skills are not widely distributed which doesn't help.

     Bottom line is that its a real challenge no matter how you slice it.

     @glyph

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Aug-2026 09:46:09 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Chuck

     @ChuckMcManis @glyph As a maintainer of one that's 15 now, that's a pretty easy example to provide. 😁

     As for how, I don't think there's any big secret trick for pulling that off. It's mainly a matter of not chasing growth, and being willing to explicitly dismiss or just ignore people who show up behaving as if you owe them influence.

     For a sole maintainer this is maybe "easier". For an organization, it requires establishing institutional consensus and procedure, and ways to ensure it remains clearly a matter of values and not cliquishness.

   • Embed this notice
     Chuck (chuckmcmanis@chaos.social)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Aug-2026 09:46:11 JST Chuck

     in reply to

     • Rich Felker

     @dalias
     I think you would find we agree 100% on this, I wasn't arguing your requirements. Here is the challenge for you though, find even *one* FOSS project where the maintainer(s) were able to both enforce project values, and have it survive with those values for more than say 5 years.

     I want to learn how from projects that pull that off.

     @glyph