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Fabio Manganiello

Browsing projects on #Sourcehut reminds me of what FLOSS development looked like 15-20 years ago. Ugly interfaces that were just thin layers above the code, barely any README (let alone wikis, or any form of easily accessible and structured documentation), and let's not mention accessibility on mobile.

How are we supposed to build the foundations of tomorrow's FLOSS if we use tools that look even more outdated than Craigslist? How are we supposed to have any credibility when we tell people "stop using Github, try Sourcehut instead"? How do we expect to create user engagement? How do we expect somebody who's not a developer to use software that doesn't even come with an easily accessible documentation?

11 Oct 2022 at 9:27 | Open on social.platypush.tech
57 comments
tyil

@blacklight@social.platypush.tech idk, I greatly prefer the interface of #Sourcehut compared to its competitors. It's simple and effective, and ridiculously fast. The tools like the CI system on Sourcehut is also vastly superiour to #GitLab's in my opinion.

Besides, if you want to use a more hip/bloated/slow interface and still be FLOSS, there's stuff like #gitea.

11 Oct 2022 at 9:48 | Open on fedi.tyil.nl
Kat M. Moss

@bgtlover I could speak up, here, though it involves my belief that if you don't tech nowadays, you are left behind.

11 Oct 2022 at 14:49 | Open on indieweb.social
bgtlover

@cambridgeport90 what does that have to do with sourcehut looking weird, having some a11y issues and using emails and mailing lists as main communication mediums, both for code and discussions? no one who doesn't know tech is expected to use even github, needless to speak about sourcehut, so i dk how can this be reduced to being literate in technology.

11 Oct 2022 at 22:22 | Open on linuxrocks.online
Jesse

@blacklight it’s hard to get people struggling to pay bills and enjoy life to spend what little precious time they have outside their blood and sweat contributions to the capitalist machines designing user interfaces for OS projects. I’ve seen a lot of developers in and out of OS but it’s rare I find a UX designer who is as committed to open source as devs tend to be. Maybe the community is just catching up. I don’t know.

11 Oct 2022 at 15:32 | Open on mastodon.technology
Fabio Manganiello

@jesselawson that's in part true - the FLOSS community has UX designers too, but they're definitely outnumbered by developers that improvise some UX. But I feel also like it's a conscious anesthetic choice in some cases. I see an increasing number of websites about FLOSS that embrace some minimal, pre-2010 UI. It wouldn't be that hard to use some boilerplate CSS or minimal framework and have more modern interfaces. Instead, I feel like it's more a conscious statement in some cases - we want back the web before that we had before the tech titans took over, and that includes the UI. I just feel like it shouldn't be like that. The past decade has seen a lot of improvements on UI/UX best practices, and I don't feel like it's worth throwing them away just for the sake of nostalgia.

@jesselawson that's in part true - the FLOSS community has UX designers too, but they're definitely outnumbered by developers that improvise some UX. But I feel also like it's a conscious anesthetic choice in some cases. I see an increasing number of websites about FLOSS that embrace some minimal, pre-2010 UI. It wouldn't be that hard to use some boilerplate CSS or minimal framework and have more modern interfaces. Instead, I feel like it's more a conscious statement in some cases - we want back...

11 Oct 2022 at 16:51 | Open on social.platypush.tech
STOP WAR (Stefano Costa)

@blacklight @jesselawson "It wouldn't be that hard" LOL just do it yourself, then everyone else will follow.

12 Oct 2022 at 18:15 | Open on octodon.social
Fabio Manganiello

@steko @jesselawson I have a limited amount of time and resources and I already contribute to many FLOSS projects.

I use Gitea instead of Sourcehut because it provides me with everything I need where I expect it to be so I don't have to reinvent the UI/UX wheel of source forges. But if Gitea had to take decisions in the future that I dislike, or Sourcehut had to provide some killer feature I can't live without, then I'd be happy to contribute.

I don't feel like this is a very constructive approach to open-source though - "if you don't like it just fork it and do it yourself". This kind of approach to open-source, where nothing can be discussed without somebody coming up with "just to it yourself", is what causes many projects to have no direction.

@steko @jesselawson I have a limited amount of time and resources and I already contribute to many FLOSS projects.

I use Gitea instead of Sourcehut because it provides me with everything I need where I expect it to be so I don't have to reinvent the UI/UX wheel of source forges. But if Gitea had to take decisions in the future that I dislike, or Sourcehut had to provide some killer feature I can't live without, then I'd be happy to contribute.

12 Oct 2022 at 19:11 | Open on social.platypush.tech
STOP WAR (Stefano Costa)

@blacklight @jesselawson yet you found the time to go around on the internet bikeshedding about "ugly interfaces" of websites that you don't even use, suggesting that it would not be that hard to change the UX/UI to your liking, as if UI and UX were the same interchangeable concept nonetheless. Is this by any means constructive? Use Gitea and be merry, like I do, instead of complaining about what others build and use for their own use case.

13 Oct 2022 at 19:01 | Open on octodon.social
Fedor

@blacklight not everything should be useful, userfriendly or anything like that

sourcehut is lots of fun and a pleasure to use

11 Oct 2022 at 16:43 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
Fedor

@blacklight and FLOSS was awesome 15-20 years ago, nothing wrong with looking like 15-20 years old FLOSS.

FLOSS was also awesome 40-45 years ago

And it is still awesome, in a form of github-ish corp/user friendly FLOSS and it is awesome in sourcehut-ish mailing lists

11 Oct 2022 at 16:47 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
Fabio Manganiello

@fedor that's fine if you use git for yourself (I have a git server with my personal projects that doesn't even run a web server). But if you build something that other people are likely to use too, then I think that it's important to show it on something that most people feel familiar with (unless you're only targeting a small niche of geeks). I feel like there's a lot of interesting software on #Sourcehut that could definitely benefit a lot of people, but most of those who aren't hardcore geeks don't even know what to do with a webpage that seems to be teleported straight from the 1990s and projects that don't even have a wiki or a couple of lines of documentation.

@fedor that's fine if you use git for yourself (I have a git server with my personal projects that doesn't even run a web server). But if you build something that other people are likely to use too, then I think that it's important to show it on something that most people feel familiar with (unless you're only targeting a small niche of geeks). I feel like there's a lot of interesting software on #Sourcehut that could definitely benefit a lot of people, but most of those who aren't hardcore geeks...

11 Oct 2022 at 16:59 | Open on social.platypush.tech
Fedor

@blacklight I highly disagree on the statement "you do something useful -> bear the obligation of making it X". Its a giant source of burnouts in open source.

No, you did something and decided to make it public in the way you like it - awesome! You love sourcehut interface and a mailining list as the way of communicating - awesome, that's your project and your decisions.

11 Oct 2022 at 17:03 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)

@fedor @blacklight

I think in many cases there's a mismatch in 'expectations management' that causes burnout in maintainers. Once a project grows in size and popularity the dynamics change to a large extent. And if the maintainers don't deal with that they'll see the burden and the expectations grow and grow.

Entitlement may be false entitlement in their eyes, but users on the other hand also 'invest' by using the software. In part it is communication mismatches that cause things to go awry.

12 Oct 2022 at 17:54 | Open on mastodon.social
Devine Lu Linvega

@blacklight it's just different aesthetics I suppose, github's interface is an absolute mess, when I first saw srht I was instantly smitten by its design.

I don't think, as a user/contrib of sourcehut, I necessarily want to attract the type of users who'd be looking at github thinking it's a good UX.

11 Oct 2022 at 18:43 | Open on merveilles.town
kline 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

@blacklight being a thin, simple layer over the code is precisely _why_ I consider sourcehut credible.

No stacks of JS aimed to spy on me, no insistence that this is going to be a new paradigm of "social coding", no unexportable lock-ins like in-app-only wikis.

I don't want to be the product of someone trying to force "value add" propositions for cash.

Why talk about "user engagement"? This is useful for selling ad slots. I don't need users to be "engaged" with my code host, just to use it.

12 Oct 2022 at 23:25 | Open on mastodon.sdf.org
dch :flantifa: :flan_hacker:

@blacklight I'm loving sourcehut for my personal stuff, but github.com/charmbracelet/soft- would do me just as well.

I've been proud to be an early supporter of source hut, getting any FLOSS based business off the ground is really hard, and stopping paying github and giving Drew the same was a straightforward call.

But for any serious work, I need a workflow for people that isn't absurd patch-based email from 1999. It's completely anti UX, and assumes a significant amount of technical background and mindset that is absent from almost all developers and contributors that I know.

I know SMTP in & out, and still, setting up just git to send/receive patches, *and* completely altering how you use your email client, to accommodate SH is absurd.

Not to mention relying on sr.ht/ like cute name, sure, but 99.999% of people will not be putting an sr.ht link into their "oh ye totes legit URL" box.

The github-style PR & web ui is not perfect it's a lot easier than SMTP workflow, for users who have not already switched to this because of some other project's requirements.

@blacklight I'm loving sourcehut for my personal stuff, but github.com/charmbracelet/soft- would do me just as well.

I've been proud to be an early supporter of source hut, getting any FLOSS based business off the ground is really hard, and stopping paying github and giving Drew the same was a straightforward call.

13 Oct 2022 at 6:06 | Open on bsd.network
zem

@blacklight
Documentation is overrated companys like Microsoft or Apple are showing us that it works without one every day! 😋😋(sarcasm)

When I started with Foss, 25 jears ago, I had to learn that Documentation can be more than "Special value input: you can use this to define your special value"

So, yeah, Foss has to do better, and having a good UI also means the user needs a chance to understand what is going on.
@dch

13 Oct 2022 at 6:17 | Open on conesphere.social
:gnu: bonifartius 𒂼𒄄

@blacklight
> Ugly interfaces that were just thin layers above the code

thin layers of code are good and if i buy a tool i go by use not looks.

> barely any README (let alone wikis, or any form of easily accessible and structured documentation),

i think i found everything i need in the sourcehut wiki

> How are we supposed to build the foundations of tomorrow's FLOSS if we use tools that look even more outdated than Craigslist?

if "tomorrows floss" means "blindly imitating ideas of big tech" then it's exactly what i don't want to do.

> How are we supposed to have any credibility when we tell people "stop using Github, try Sourcehut instead"?

if setting up the mail workflow is too much for people, maybe being a developer isn't for them.

> How do we expect to create user engagement?

by building functionally better tools, not by looking better. looking better is a fight that can't be won.

> How do we expect somebody who's not a developer to use software that doesn't even come with an easily accessible documentation?

i don't see what isn't easily accessible here: man.sr.ht/

also you are missing one point with sourcehut: drew started as single person. the success of sourcehut gave me hope that a single person can still do relevant work. additionaly drew is a big proponent of free software as in :gnu: . i think that the whole rebranding as "open source" is part of a push by big tech for people to use permissive licensing, as part of an EEE strategy. sourcehut is AGPL which is the exact opposite of this trend.

@blacklight
> Ugly interfaces that were just thin layers above the code

thin layers of code are good and if i buy a tool i go by use not looks.

> barely any README (let alone wikis, or any form of easily accessible and structured documentation),

i think i found everything i need in the sourcehut wiki

13 Oct 2022 at 6:40 | Open on qoto.org
DELETED

@blacklight by not using sourcehut.

i know some people are "building the foundations of tomorrows floss tools" using sourcehut, but for many of its userbase i think it is the same category as arch linux or vim: its ugliness or complexity is a badge of pride that they are a real hacker

this isnt the case for the whole platform by any means. but in my experience the percentage of toxic community is much higher for sourcehut than some other projects

13 Oct 2022 at 6:43 | Open on merveilles.town
Fabio Manganiello

@noa this hits a valid point. And I say it as an Arch Linux+Slackware and vim enthusiastic power user for two decades.

This is exactly the attitude I've seen on some comments on this thread. Even if I like minimal tools that give me a lot of power for my day-to-day job, it's not what I expect everyone to be used to. I wouldn't call somebody "half-of-a-developer" just because they are used to the GH flow and paradigms. When I build something for myself, most of the time I don't even bother of adding a UI. But when I build something for others, I try to take all the expectations into account.

@noa this hits a valid point. And I say it as an Arch Linux+Slackware and vim enthusiastic power user for two decades.

This is exactly the attitude I've seen on some comments on this thread. Even if I like minimal tools that give me a lot of power for my day-to-day job, it's not what I expect everyone to be used to. I wouldn't call somebody "half-of-a-developer" just because they are used to the GH flow and paradigms. When I build something for myself, most of the time I don't even bother of adding...

13 Oct 2022 at 7:21 | Open on social.platypush.tech
censored for “transphobia”

@blacklight @noa I had to take a look when I heard it was “ugly”, which in tech stuff (but particularly on the web) ugly in the mainstream means beautiful simplicity to those not keen on shit embedded in a blob of #JavaScript to support animations & round corners that only look right in some select browsers & exclude other ppl. It also means the maintainers are not bogged down in aesthetics.

13 Oct 2022 at 8:24 | Open on freeradical.zone
censored for “transphobia”

@noa @blacklight Regarding the lack of docs, sr.ht/~sourceware/gcc/ (for example) links to a website in the top tab. I suppose this comes from the UNIX philosophy of doing one small job well, while deligating other duties to other tools. In the #deleteGithub mission, it’s good to know the audience. #SourceHut’s landing page warns “Welcome to sourcehut, the hacker's forge!”

13 Oct 2022 at 8:33 | Open on freeradical.zone
DELETED

@blacklight yeah, it was my first response, but i was hesitant to say it for fear of generalising or sounding bitter. but unfortunately looking through the thread only cemented my view that im not wrong :(

13 Oct 2022 at 13:47 | Open on merveilles.town
Max Cahill

@noa @blacklight i love how the responses devolved into exactly this

i bounced off sourcehut hard for this reason; suckless brand elitism and gatekeeping dressed up as progress.

glad it works for some people and we need more little sites doing what they think is right; but "doesn't work out of the box with email clients that 99.99% of normal people are using, but that's a good thing actually" is a hell of a hill to die on.

14 Oct 2022 at 0:21 | Open on merveilles.town
donut :alpine: :xfce: :clj:

@maxc @noa @blacklight

Kitschy, narrow minded suckless software and hacker poser aesthetics go hand in hand.

Patch email based contributions feels like “no we need to use Git the way it was designed, because it’s an option and it exists” kinda mentality.

IME, I see a very significant gulf in “give a damn level” between devs I work with who are paid, and fossbros.

Paid devs tend to use the tool that is paid for or provided. They are usually impatient.

Fossbros adore THIS kind of stuff.

16 Oct 2022 at 16:01 | Open on fosstodon.org
donut :alpine: :xfce: :clj:

@maxc @noa @blacklight

Which is to say,

I think there is a non trivial relationship between how niche and convoluted or “suckless/hacker/simple/streamlined” a software setup is,

And how little it’s going to get used by people who actually have deadlines, pay stubs and other projects and responsibilities on the docket.

It’s the difference between seeing a hand drill as a drill; and seeing a drill as a beautiful machine that needs to be pared down to its best design and reforged ad nauseum.

16 Oct 2022 at 16:03 | Open on fosstodon.org
Fabio Manganiello

@wholesomedonut @maxc @noa as a former uber-minimalist myself, I agree with your conclusions.

When 12 years ago I redesigned my whole personal website to have a bash-like interface (blash), and built a CMS (nullBB) for forums that didn't allow images at all (instead, it would calculate the edges of pictures through Sobel maps and render them as ASCII art), I wasn't aiming to build something that people could use easily, or quickly be productive with.

Most of these projects don't fall into the "programming for a functional purpose" category (heck, configuring many of those projects requires editing a config.h file and recompiling the source code). They are more in the "programming as a form of art", or as a statement, category.

More than ten years down the line, I'd be tempted to say that enough of this art has been made, and enough of these statements have been made, so they're not even original anymore. If in 2022 one considers accessible and intuitive UIs and stylesheet mastering as disposable skills, then they're just bad web developers.

@wholesomedonut @maxc @noa as a former uber-minimalist myself, I agree with your conclusions.

When 12 years ago I redesigned my whole personal website to have a bash-like interface (blash), and built a CMS (nullBB) for forums that didn't allow images at all (instead, it would calculate the edges of pictures through Sobel maps and render them as ASCII art), I wasn't aiming to build something that people could use easily, or quickly be productive with.

16 Oct 2022 at 17:25 | Open on social.platypush.tech
Fabio Manganiello

@wholesomedonut @maxc @noa it's a bit like the niche category of esoteric programming languages. Nobody would scold you for entertaining yourself with some small scripts in BrainFuck, LOLCODE, Shakespeare or Whitespace in your spare time. But if you start believing that those should be taken seriously as programming languages, and that all the patterns that made programming easier and more accessible over the past decades are bad, then we have a problem.

16 Oct 2022 at 17:31 | Open on social.platypush.tech
Charadon

@maxc You referring the (to be fair, dumb) thing where a lot of e-mail clients default to HTML rather than plain text, and that garbles a git patch? Yeah, it's a weird hill to die on, but at the same time, I understand the frustration of e-mail clients not having a plain text option =P

16 Oct 2022 at 16:17 | Open on fosstodon.org
Max Cahill

@Charadon yep that's the one. Including gmail. It's certainly frustrating but also, it's the world we live in, and pretending it's not is also frustrating

16 Oct 2022 at 21:02 | Open on merveilles.town
Charadon

@maxc Ah... gmail. The frustrating thing about them, is that even if you use an e-mail client that HAS plain text, it'll still reformat it to HTML when sending. But yeah, one thing I do find weird, is how git, as far as I know, can't just use e-mail attachments. It wouldn't be *that* hard to include the diff as an attachment rather than the body of the e-mail itself.

16 Oct 2022 at 21:06 | Open on fosstodon.org
Fedor

@noa @blacklight I can feel some negative some negative energy implied into words of "a pride that they are a real hacker"

Whats wrong with spending your free time doing things you enjoy and feeling the way you enjoy feeling about it?

(also sourchut is actually great, but this is completely offtopic to my point. I would be 100% okay even if it would be totally unusable with pigeon post as the only means of communication)

16 Oct 2022 at 16:26 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
DELETED

@fedor yes, there is negative energy. i have been insulted for my choice of tools many times by many of the people who flock to sourcehut, vim, etc, in discussions only tangentially related to those tools.

people can enjoy what they want in their free time and have their own interests, but i will always consider them a dick if they think they are somehow superior because of it (i feel the same about music)

fwiw i also use and like emacs, sourcehut, and other hackery type software.

16 Oct 2022 at 16:38 | Open on merveilles.town
Fedor

@noa I am not qualified in psycology enough to be sure about this

but I somehow feel like toxicity is a very unfortunate, but important step of "fucking around/finding out" on things.

Folks like belonging to groups and "holy wars" can give some sense of comradery I guess?

But I would not blame srht and strong opinions on things in general on people being toxic

16 Oct 2022 at 17:24 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
Fabio Manganiello

@fedor @noa I have been using suckless software for a long time myself. I even converted my own website to a bash-like interface years ago. As I said earlier, I still use irssi and mutt a lot, and I've been a strong adherent to this aesthetic for a long time (although I've always disagreed on the fact that "minimal" needs to mean "minimalistically ugly and with no JS/CSS": that's just nostalgia of the 1990s that doesn't lead anywhere).

I've been in these discussions for almost two decades, and, while I believe that everybody is free to use the tools they want, or customize tools to their liking, we're also responsible as a FOSS community of being accessible.

If the good-looking and accessible software is either paid or privacy-invasive, while the free stuff has a steep learning curve and it discards all the UI/UX design patterns matured over the past two decades, most of the people will still choose the good-looking thing - and it's a game where we all lose out.

@fedor @noa I have been using suckless software for a long time myself. I even converted my own website to a bash-like interface years ago. As I said earlier, I still use irssi and mutt a lot, and I've been a strong adherent to this aesthetic for a long time (although I've always disagreed on the fact that "minimal" needs to mean "minimalistically ugly and with no JS/CSS": that's just nostalgia of the 1990s that doesn't lead anywhere).

16 Oct 2022 at 17:17 | Open on social.platypush.tech
Fedor

@blacklight @noa while I totally agree with your point I disagree on who "we" are and what "responsibility" means

Should I personally go redesign all FreeCAD/Gimp/Emacs UI to make it more accessible?

Or should I maintain full test coverage on a fun thing I ended up publishing on srht in 2018 that has 0 users?

When and on what responsibility kicks in?

16 Oct 2022 at 17:36 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
Fedor

@blacklight @noa Honestly I think we are all on the same page here

If you say "I am cool FOSS project I will beat ProprietaryCompetitorX, give me your money" - you probably should work on being as accessible as possible, just by your public contract, I totally agree with that.

But I just want to say that this contract is not implicit for all FOSS. Did not publicly said this - bear no responsibility, do whatever.

16 Oct 2022 at 17:39 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
Fedor

@blacklight @noa I, personally, draw a line even little further.

I consider myself resposible for my direct sponsors, people who are actually involved by paying money, contributing code etc. And I want to be attractive for new sponsors, just because I need more money hah

In my mind I do not held responsibility for anyone else. Overthing on "greater good" makes me go into a downward spiral of "not being good enough" and I am just not doing anything at all, which is not good for anyone.

16 Oct 2022 at 17:44 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
momcorp

@blacklight I certainly don’t expect anyone who is not a developer to read source code. Sourcehut is a tool for programmers and teams, not end users.

13 Oct 2022 at 13:00 | Open on mstdn.io
Joost van Baal-Ilić
marius

@blacklight I'm not sure this is not a coincidence but it looks like Drew wrote about the esthetics of SourceHut:
drewdevault.com/2022/10/15/Sta

Maybe his words would be an answer to your questions.

15 Oct 2022 at 10:06 | Open on metalhead.club
smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)
smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)
Chartodon

@humanetech My boss put in a fixed delay between fetches to avoid tripping the surge protector. I could be quicker if I detected getting blocked and then paused, but this is simple and effective.

Like me.

@blacklight

16 Oct 2022 at 9:15 | Open on mathstodon.xyz
smallcircles (Humane Tech Now)

@Chartodon @blacklight

I understand Chartodon-Colin 😜 it was more an observation that this was one of the biggest conversations I've been part of thus far :)

16 Oct 2022 at 9:17 | Open on mastodon.social
Juan Luis

@blacklight Impossible to decide where to start replying to this multi-branched thread (and, oh the irony, Mastodon doesn't do a good job at showing those branches), but 10000 % agreed with what you said.

A few folks monopolizing the replies essentially saying "#Sourcehut is just fine" illustrates the problem perfectly.

Some thoughts:

16 Oct 2022 at 10:45 | Open on fosstodon.org
Juan Luis

@blacklight It's clear that some hardcore F/LOSS users couldn't care less about the very concept of UX, dismissing it as bloat. We need to build bridges with people who have the vision of open, decentralized technology that creates delight and can reach "the average user". @humanetech is a huge source of inspiration to me.

16 Oct 2022 at 10:46 | Open on fosstodon.org
Juan Luis

@blacklight F/LOSS folks are often worried about finding "the open alternative to X", without reflecting one second what problem does X resolve, if any.

And this is a bad strategy, because capitalism will keep producing X'es endlessly and relentlessly, and the F/LOSS community will always be doomed to pursue impossible goals.

What about solving the problem of "having an online presence" and "being in the social network kids these days find cool"? That's what 99 % of small businesses want.

16 Oct 2022 at 10:49 | Open on fosstodon.org
Juan Luis

@blacklight Damn, even autonomous social centers ignore the #fediverse. It's easier to find them in Twitter than it is to find them here. While Mastodon has advanced the #fediverse a lot, there are still some rough edges.

But fixing those require designers and UX people, which are nowhere as privileged as coders. And therefore, it's more difficult that the find the time, the energy, the incentives to help us.

Especially if we are assholes to them, or dismiss their work.

16 Oct 2022 at 10:52 | Open on fosstodon.org
Juan Luis

@blacklight It saddens me to see that the state of the conversation is still so poor. But it inspires me a lot that there are people voicing their concerns and even patiently arguing with obtuse folks. I don't think I would have so much patience.

In other words: thank you ❤️

16 Oct 2022 at 10:53 | Open on fosstodon.org
:gnu: bonifartius 𒂼𒄄

@astrojuanlu @blacklight
> It saddens me to see that the state of the conversation is still so poor.

because people disagree here and instead are happy with sourcehut not being yet another github clone?

it's not that i don't want nice usable software, it's that my idea of nice & usable is different. implement aria stuff to help accessibility? fuck yeah. add meta tags to have other tools process my stuff? of course. add shitloads of JS so that a page can't be used in a browser like netsurf or with js disabled? fuck off. maybe "the browser" just has outlived it's days as application platform.
this "make it ez" line of thought has brought us shit like systemd and consolekit and i hate it. things can be usable without being technological dumpster fires. you wrote yourself that we shouldn't imitate things in "floss". imitating shit to make it more sexy for more adoption is the opposite.

> even autonomous social centers ignore the #fediverse

of course they do, their members are probably in to virtue signal like 99% of people are everywhere. a fringe social media network doesn't help with that, so it's ignored.

@astrojuanlu @blacklight
> It saddens me to see that the state of the conversation is still so poor.

because people disagree here and instead are happy with sourcehut not being yet another github clone?

it's not that i don't want nice usable software, it's that my idea of nice & usable is different. implement aria stuff to help accessibility? fuck yeah. add meta tags to have other tools process my stuff? of course. add shitloads of JS so that a page can't be used in a browser like netsurf or with...

17 Oct 2022 at 6:32 | Open on qoto.org
Juan Luis

@bonifartius I don't have time for arguing with you, sorry

17 Oct 2022 at 8:44 | Open on fosstodon.org
:gnu: bonifartius 𒂼𒄄

@astrojuanlu i don't even want to argue with you 🤷‍♀️

i just don't see why having a radically different UX from mainstream is a bad thing. i think it's a good thing that free software isn't constrained by what is "trend". i think those radically different approaches are an unique selling point.

things like sourcehut which are not "fancy" also enable people to to use it which might have problems using github etc.

i'd venture that composing mails is likely more easy than navigating the github ui if you are handicapped.

the gamification by github has always deterred me (and i know from others) from publishing my things there, as they never will get many stars. the commit graph facilitates a style of work which very likely is bad for mental health.

it's no surprise that many long running projects are often just a repository somewhere and a mailing-list. it's a surprisingly efficient style of work while keeping people sane as there is no virtual pressure like a commit graph.

@astrojuanlu i don't even want to argue with you 🤷‍♀️

i just don't see why having a radically different UX from mainstream is a bad thing. i think it's a good thing that free software isn't constrained by what is "trend". i think those radically different approaches are an unique selling point.

things like sourcehut which are not "fancy" also enable people to to use it which might have problems using github etc.

17 Oct 2022 at 9:05 | Open on qoto.org
ashwinvis has not

@astrojuanlu
@blacklight
If it makes you happy, I recently heard that in the recent KDE conference, it has been decided that one of the goals of coming years will be accessibility

community.kde.org/Goals

17 Oct 2022 at 21:08 | Open on mastodon.acc.sunet.se
Aral Balkan

@blacklight Yeah, this is why I recommend/use @CodeBerg. No need to perpetuate FLOSS arrogance; it benefits no one (apart from the egos of some über geeks, I guess.)

When I see SourceHut it’s an immediate turn off for me for a project. It says “Keep Out, Über Geeks Only.”

(And this from someone who’s been making things with computers for over three decades. I just don’t like private members’ clubs even if I happen to meet their eligibility requirements.)

28 Oct 2022 at 12:03 | Open on mastodon.ar.al
Endless Mason

@blacklight
Aah yes, craigslist an example of why UX is so make-or-break for a product.

28 Oct 2022 at 12:11 | Open on mastodon.lol
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