[_2paq]

> It can be forked, it can be changed, your freedoms are enforced.

Sure, let's pretend that every user is a programmer who knows what a hard fork is and, even if he is a programmer, he's willing to create hard forks of each and every GNOME software he uses to support features that worked before and don't work now. This has worked out great for PopOS and Budgie right?

It's so much easier to just fall back on the open source argument and ignore the fact that it means nothing for the average user who doesn't know the first thing about C code or git to be able to make the changes he wants to.

[shatteredgate]

It's not clear what you're talking about because there isn't a reality where this does whatever you want without programmers working on it. Average users are always going to need help from them, regardless of whether it's upstream or a hard fork. That choice also doesn't seem to be relevant to Pop!_OS and Budgie because for them it was a choice between hard fork or start from scratch, which is primarily a technical choice which needs experienced programmers either way.

[_2paq]

> there isn't a reality where this does whatever you want

I wish something called user choice and configuration options existed in this reality.

[shatteredgate]

There are multiple ways to get that though. One of them would be if a lot of hard forks existed, then you'd have a lot of options to choose from. Or those developers can contribute upstream and work on adding tons of options to the upstream project. My point is that there isn't a world where you just get the choice and options out of thin air without programmers, eventually someone has to program the options in somewhere or they just won't exist.

[ungamedplayer]

One is a world where its possible and legal. The other is where it's not legal and very difficult.

Sucks that end users can't "hard fork" and fix their shit, but I can't fix planes either, we all pay for our choices.