[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.