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-32

Open source projects are too dogmatic for their own good (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 week ago by anticurrent@sh.itjust.works to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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Why are open source projects too rigid and stuck in dogmatic position ?

take for example mastodon, its CEO recently posted a toot asking who has already considered deleting facebook / threads after the recent controversies, but on the other hand ignores that his stubbornness about certain points like not adding quotes just doesn't make the project appealing for ordinary people, this feature has been the most request since twitter exodus two years ago. and at every surge of new users mastodon struggles to keep them using the platform, why do these projects struggle to acknowledge what people want the most and deliver on it.

another example is LibreOffice, I was trying to get acclimated to this new office suite and was happy to find that I can theme it to my liking to ease up my transition. but it wasn't long before I found out how tiny dogmatic decision really pushes to give up on it. I found that LO doesn't auto-capitalise first letter after line breaks but only after end of sentences, something Word has been doing as long as I can remember, LO argument is that only a . and ! characters mark the end of a sentence in "proper English". line breaks don't qualify as a proper end of a sentence for them.

For people coming from proprietary software that among many short comings still strive to offer the best features and smoothest user experience, it is hard to try and stick to open source projects and even contribute back.

Should big OSS project shift to more democratic structures, where decisions are made based on consensus? or do you think the actual models are fine, and I am an entitled user ??

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[+] anticurrent@sh.itjust.works -17 points 1 week ago (4 children)

That's an aucorrenct feature that has been shipped with MS Word for as long as I can remember.

MS Word is one of the most used software il the planet, I believe Microsoft has enough data on why the majority of people want that. what I don't get is why software with smaller userbases think they know better (ie sometimes they do). Or why LibreOffice is so stubborn on keeping the menu bar default instead of the ribbon-bar, I am not inconvenienced by changing it once and for all, but I know many people who ould nope out at first sight and never give LO a second chance ever again .

[–] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 12 points 6 days ago

MS Word is essentially a monopoly, but that doesn't mean that every detail of its features is worth copying - quite the opposite, actually. And again, why do you even want to automatically capitalize the first word after a line break that is not a proper sentence stop?

Or why LibreOffice is so stubborn on keeping the menu bar default instead of the ribbon-bar

AFAIK many users, especially those used to the old UI, dislike the ribbon design.

[–] lucullus@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 5 days ago

You are just assuming, that MS actually knows and cares for what users want. In my experience its the other way round. MS will introduce a change/new behavior and user have to adjust their own behavior, because most are not willing to switch to a competitor program.

I remember very well how much my father sweared at the computer because MS changed the UI to the ribbon bar. It wasn't at all what he wanted and MS didn't care to ask users beforehand.

[–] Don_alForno@feddit.org 3 points 5 days ago

It annoys me to no end whenever MS word does that.

[–] unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

About the Ribbon: Apparently M$ has a patent (or multiple ones on) it, so they ultimately have the last say on what is and isn't allowed. They did make a licence availiable royalty-free, but I assume that that licence didn't cover enough of what LibreOffice needed, so they probably struck a deal with M$ about having the option, just not as the default.

I haven't researched this all that much, so mostly speculation. Although the M$ having a patent part of someting so true. And that patent (apparently) explicitly states that use in directly competing software with M$'s is forbidden, at least for-profit.

Idk, maybe it's a case of patent restrictions, or LibreOffice being LibreOffice.

Honestly, a really interesting rabbit-hole.

[–] anticurrent@sh.itjust.works -3 points 6 days ago

I know about Microsoft patent, I am not sure whether MS does license it to other software makers as it is very wide spread from big companies like Autodesk to smaller ones like NirSoft. I think they just made the patent to camp on it and intimidated big players with it, the opensource OnlyOffice do ship the Ribbon and they haven't faced any trouble for it so far.