[ineedasername]

Why should someone have to look at a username, bio, or life outside of HN to evaluate an HN comment's quality?

It was low effort and clearly not in keeping with HN guidelines on what makes a good comment. Even if his comment is correct it is not at all a productive contribution, when an extra 10 seconds to type "I cofounded Gnome, I would know" would fix that. He doesn't need to prove a negative to add to the conversation.

And would he really know the true reasons here? It doesn't look like he was at RedHat, was he actually involved in Gnome 3 development to know the motivations? Again, instead of a 3 word comment it would take literally seconds to have started a much better discussion. Instead this thread is filled with responses derived from the comment's poor quality rather than the actual merit that Miguel's viewpoint would have.

It would have contributed more to the discussion to say nothing than to post 3 words than derail things in this way.

[mlyle]

Source article made assertions that saber-rattling drove divergence between Linux desktops, as opposed to the popular narrative of divergence we've heard-- and offers no evidence, but only nebulous assertions.

Someone key that was there says "uh, no."

Yes, adding infinite context would make it a little easier to read, but it stands on its own.

[ineedasername]

>"infinite context"

No.

That's a pretty poor straw man. As I said, literally seconds would have done it. Heck 3 more words would have done it. "I created Gnome."

Besides which, the article was written by someone who was also around and claims insider knowledge closer in time to the events than when Miguel was involved with Gnome.

It was a low effort comment that did not coincide with HN standards. You can't talk your way around that.

Miguel is hardly enough of a household name, nor does he appear to have been involved with RedHat circa Gnome 3 such that his 3 word low effort comment can stand, with his username, on its own.

[mlyle]

> Besides which, the article was written by someone who was also around and claims insider knowledge closer in time to the events than when Miguel was involved with Gnome.

He's talking about 2006-2010; during these times he was mostly doing desktop support, it looks like-- occasionally contributing to various online Linux zines. He wrote a similar article in 2013 for The Register. He spent 3 months as a tech writer for Red Hat on JBoss stuff in 2014. Then he did spend 2017-2021 doing tech writer work for SuSe.

> Miguel is hardly enough of a household name

Man... I would have a hard time thinking of more than 4-5 people who were equally prominent in the open source zeitgeist of those years.

> nor does he appear to have been involved with RedHat circa Gnome 3

He certainly was still plugged into the Gnome Foundation and going to the various Gnome meetups, etc, while in a senior role at a Linux vendor doing stuff with Gnome. If there was a problem, I'd think he'd have heard about it.

[gwern]

> And would he really know the true reasons here? It doesn't look like he was at RedHat, was he actually involved in Gnome 3 development to know the motivations?

Was OP?

[ineedasername]

OP was at SUSE when they made an agreement with MS touching on this issue. I don't agree with the OP, I think if there was specific pressure of this sort it wouldn't really be a secret or subject to speculation. My point in all of this is simply that the GGP 3 word comment without anything else is not defensible as a constructive comment.