[matheusmoreira]

> surprisingly, there's also lots of pushback from maintainers of projects who don't want to change this, for whatever excuse they can produce.

There doesn't need to be an "excuse" though. "I don't like it" or "I don't want to do it" is more than enough. They're the ones maintaining the damn things, the least we can do is respect them. They don't really need to justify anything, acting as if they had to is how you get pushback. They probably deny you just to prove that you have no power over them, because you insinuated otherwise with words like "excuse".

[fsckboy]

> They're the ones maintaining the damn things, the least we can do is respect them.

we don't respect maintainers who leave in buffer overruns or x-site scripting, why should we respect maintainers who don't respect users? yes, they're writing and maintaining, but undoubtedly also using tons of respectful opensource that other maintainers take care of.

it's like driving a car ("everybody faster than me is a maniac, everybody slower than me is a moron") and cursing cyclists, then jumping on your bike and running red lights, stop signs, crosswalks, sidewalks, you name it. To have a civilized society we all have to go out of our way a little bit for other people, throw away some trash that's not yours.

like forum/reddit moderator phenomenon, there is something about the power (and most definitely the nagging they get from impolite users) that makes the developers act like douches when they probably aren't the rest of the time.

but that's not an excuse for crapping all over my dotfiles and home directory tree.

[heleninboodler]

> why should we respect maintainers who don't respect users?

Saying that using dotfiles instead of ~/.config means they "don't respect users" is a little dramatic, don't you think? Like it or not, unix has historically treated dotfiles as "hidden" and nobody expects you to get upset that they created a hidden file in your home directory without your consent. It's not really about respect, it's just convention you apparently don't like.

I currently have 60 dotfiles in my home directory and probably deliberately created less than 10 of those. The fact that anyone would be upset by this is news to me and most likely is news to a lot of the developers that created these things: cargo, dbus, docker, gem, gnome, gnupg, gphoto, java, kde, maven, mozilla, osquery, rpm, rustup, ssh, vagrant, vim, vscode, wget, yarn, zoom. Not that "this bad behavior is widespread" is a good excuse, but the point is that I don't think the world is at all in agreement that this is "bad behavior."

[SkeuomorphicBee]

Just to clarify, it is not just about "hidden" files looking good. There are many reasons one may want to move config/data/cache files to other locations, E.G. in my case I have a computer with home on a small partition that simply can't fit all the crap those misbehaving programs try to put there. I simply can't install Flatpacks on that machine because they obviously won't fit in a small home and can't be moved because of a maintainer who is very disrespectful to users (the bugs full with messages of users pleading for him to allow them to move apps to other partitions is disheartening).

[account42]

> Saying that using dotfiles instead of ~/.config means they "don't respect users" is a little dramatic, don't you think?

No I don't think so. For many applications (i.e. only config, no cache) it's literally an additional getenv and minimal logic when opening your config files. No additional dependencies needed. The amount of effort required is tiny compared to the benefit multiplied by the number of users that don't want dotfiles in their $HOME.

[matheusmoreira]

> we don't respect maintainers who leave in buffer overruns or x-site scripting, why should we respect maintainers who don't respect users?

Because they're the ones putting in the work. I could patch all the programs to use whatever paths I liked best if I really cared but the truth is I don't want to put in that much effort. So I just work with what I'm given instead.

Besides, dotfiles conventions are not even in the same category of technical decision as literal vulnerabilities. One puts people at actual risk, the other is just opinion on file system taxonomy.

I mean, I have opinions on proper file system organization too and they certainly don't match Unix "tradition" but I don't go to other people's issue trackers and shame other developers when they make "excuses" for not following whatever scheme I thought up. I have reasons and I can certainly try to convince others that I'm right but it's simply offensive to show up out of nowhere with an indignant tone demanding that others make changes of a subjective and frankly trivial nature and then criticizing them in other forums when they refuse.