[zxzax]

>their thing is a waste of time

This is incorrect. GNOME users would not consider it a waste of time, just like KDE users would not consider it a waste of time for someone to do work on KDE, or Mac users would not consider it a waste of time to work on macOS, etc. Please consider that your suggestion can be considered rude, you are simply not the target audience.

In general, open source doesn't work like this. These are volunteers, nobody can really tell them to go work on something else, because they work on what they feel like, which may or may not be seeking the approval of people like you. If you want to find another project that seeks your approval, that's great, go do that, let us know about it later and maybe I'll even try it out. If your goal is to harass open source developers until they quit open source, then please stop doing that, that would be making it worse for everyone.

[jrm4]

Sooo, I think this is an overly simplistic view, and this is probably the conversation we should all be having, what's driving a LOT of this isn't "what developers choose to spend their time on as something like a hobby." And perhaps it's not the developers who we should be talking about anyway, I'll grant that.

There are "moneyed" business interests who have a lot at stake at their team winning mindshare and profits. Now, I have no problem with businesses being businesses generally. But part of their "product" is these interfaces. And so again, what I would suggest is that pushing GNOME type interfaces is, long term, a bad strategy that is likely to continue the trend of "Linux" being a second class citizen, by wasting energy toward the impossible goal of beating MacOS at their own game.

Conversely, pushing more configurable and slightly more techy KDE-like interfaces I think has stronger likelihood of making "on the tech margin" people more excited and interested in Linux, and ends up helping more people overall.

Now, I could be wrong about this -- but, while I definitely agree with "no one should to demand what open source developers do, especially if they're not being compensated" -- it's equally as bad (if not worse) to suggest "let's not offer big-picture criticism of trends in open source software that affects a lot of people."

[jrm4]

Aslo I absolutely accept that what I'm saying is rude. It 100% is.

I adhere to the idea that you should never be rude unless you feel there is something at stake that makes being rude worth it, and I think "trying to gain ground on the Linux Desktop" a thing that affects LOTS of people outside of the developers, is.