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Why Drawing Tablet Brands Won't Collaborate on Linux Floss Drivers

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Re: Why Drawing Tablet Brands Won't Collaborate on Linux Floss Drivers

#31

Post by shermantanktop »

myrmidon wrote: post #12
burnte wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's been a decade long argument? Sounds like someone is just emotionally attached to something not changing. Those are the hardest problems to solve.

Not necessarily. The technical people managing the repos might just be opposed to name changing in general (seeing how a boatload of links, references, documentation would require updating, some of which you don't even control), and meanwhile those people might feel the "misbranding" drawbacks much less (if at all).

That’s exactly it. So many engineers aspire to build generalized, flexible components that get tons of adoption by being easy to use. The problem is that they have have just volunteered to be disconnected from their users. And this myopic refusal to rename Libwacom is a perfect example.

It’s probably down to one underappreciated Linux dev somewhere who is tired of the debate and spends their time fixing actual bugs.

Re: Why Drawing Tablet Brands Won't Collaborate on Linux Floss Drivers

#33

Post by burnte »

myrmidon wrote: post #12
burnte wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's been a decade long argument? Sounds like someone is just emotionally attached to something not changing. Those are the hardest problems to solve.

Not necessarily. The technical people managing the repos might just be opposed to name changing in general (seeing how a boatload of links, references, documentation would require updating, some of which you don't even control), and meanwhile those people might feel the "misbranding" drawbacks much less (if at all).

I would categorize all those as emotional reasons not to change, not logical reasons.

"It's hard!" So? "It's complicated" So? "Some of it other people control." This will always be the case, you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough.

If the status quo means a worse project, then you're not changing because you don't WANT to, not because it's a good idea. And that's an emotional, not logical ,decision.

Re: Why Drawing Tablet Brands Won't Collaborate on Linux Floss Drivers

#34

Post by burnte »

KaiserPro wrote: post #5
burnte wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's been a decade long argument? Sounds like someone is just emotionally attached to something not changing. Those are the hardest problems to solve.

Name changes are controversial. Nothing gets nerds going more than changing a project name so companies work better with OSS.

Yes, I know, but that all just underscores what I said about it being emotional. Logically it's not only Wacom but for any tablet. It would do better with a new name as other competitors would help. But the emotional resistance to changing the name keeps those logical improvements form happening.

Re: Why Drawing Tablet Brands Won't Collaborate on Linux Floss Drivers

#35

Post by pmontra »

jrm4 wrote: post #30
burnte wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's been a decade long argument? Sounds like someone is just emotionally attached to something not changing. Those are the hardest problems to solve.

Preach. And it's a disease . Signed, the guy who will forever believe GIMP could have been a contender with a name change decades ago.

In non-English speaking countries gimp is a short word that is so seldom used that nobody knows what it means. I used GIMP for a very long time before running into a story about the meaning of the English world. It was only GNU Image Manipulation Program to me.

It still is a contender for image editing programs, for limited photo retouch, for very limited drawing (draw a rectangle outline without googling?) I use LibreOffice Draw for that.

Re: Why Drawing Tablet Brands Won't Collaborate on Linux Floss Drivers

#36

Post by ChocolateGod »

happymellon wrote: post #28
wiether wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue has always been with the reasons invoked to make the change Otherwise it would have been smoother

You didn't hear the foaming at the mouth shouting to rename master recordings, master documents, or dub over The Master from Dr. Who. Considering how much effort we had to out into fixing pipelines because of hardcoded scripts, and the lack of good reason to do it its no surprise that it was scoffed at. White keyboard warriors needed to make a change, but couldn't do anything meaningful as it would require actually d…

I thought the purpose of the rename was to encourage these contributions that apparently weren't happening because of the branch name?

It certainly helped GNOME whom was one of the biggest proponents /s

Re: Why Drawing Tablet Brands Won't Collaborate on Linux Floss Drivers

#38

Post by 17383848 »

MomsAVoxell wrote: post #17
ndiddy wrote: post #2

> Well, because it's true: many of the repositories are named after "Wacom". It's a historical legacy on GNU/Linux. It's also a decade-long debate that these repos should be renamed differently. If the project being named after Wacom is actively causing other companies to not contribute because they believe it’s a Wacom lead project and they’d be helping a competitor, I don’t understand why this is even a debate vs.…

Its most likely a debate because making such a major refactoring effort is actually a heavy work load, there are lots of bits and pieces to tie together and cut out and so on, and the folks capable of shepherding this change through all the parties out into the distro's are already underpaid/under-appreciated too much as it is .. Hopefully, this situation will get some traction with a bit of noise about it, and the d…

[dead]

Re: Why Drawing Tablet Brands Won't Collaborate on Linux Floss Drivers

#39

Post by bandofthehawk »

myrmidon wrote: post #12
burnte wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's been a decade long argument? Sounds like someone is just emotionally attached to something not changing. Those are the hardest problems to solve.

Not necessarily. The technical people managing the repos might just be opposed to name changing in general (seeing how a boatload of links, references, documentation would require updating, some of which you don't even control), and meanwhile those people might feel the "misbranding" drawbacks much less (if at all).

It seems like it would be simple to just create a fork and archive the old repo. Add a note to the old repo, update a couple of the most important docs and links, and then worry about the rest later. It can be low hanging fruit for new contributors.

Re: Why Drawing Tablet Brands Won't Collaborate on Linux Floss Drivers

#40

Post by ffaccount2 »

burnte wrote: post #33
myrmidon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. The technical people managing the repos might just be opposed to name changing in general (seeing how a boatload of links, references, documentation would require updating, some of which you don't even control), and meanwhile those people might feel the "misbranding" drawbacks much less (if at all).

I would categorize all those as emotional reasons not to change, not logical reasons. "It's hard!" So? "It's complicated" So? "Some of it other people control." This will always be the case, you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough. If the status quo means a worse project, then you're not changing because you don't WANT to, not because it's a good idea. And that's an emotional, not logical ,decision.

>"It's hard!" So? "It's complicated" So?

So there's no point in wasting time on this, if perceived problems are low or nonexistent. Current maintainers probably look at it from a technical pov "it's just a name, who cares"

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