Eric Raymond claims Unity and Gnome3 are 'Vile'

New blog post: You know, maybe Linux people should just give up on "user friendliness" after all, because the crap we're emitting these days by trying for it is truly vile.Armed and Dangerous » Blog Archive » Ubuntu and GNOME jump the sharkUbuntu and GNOME jump the shark. I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.04 and a week or so back in order to get a more recent version of SCons. 11.04 dropped me into the new “Unity” GNOME interface. There may be pe...

Eric Raymond posted this on Google+ pointing to post on his Blog.

This was my comment to him:

Vile? Seriously? I would submit that the use of such rhetoric demeans the true meaning of that word and all that it should represent.

The computer revolution has presented us all with the unique opportunity to compete with our ideas. You don't like the default window manager choice made in Ubuntu? Cannonical will succeed or fail based on the ideas they express in this new Unity interface. That is the beauty of this 'Idea Economy'. It is, we keep saying about choice. You of all people should realize that (Ubuntu == Linux) = False. Use another distro. Or change the window manager, download XUBUNTU or LUBUNTU. Stop kvetching and find one of the plethora of choices and then write a post extolling it's virtues. Even better, don't like the direction of Unity and/or Gnome, start a new project and show us your better idea. Fork the damn code of Gnome 2.x and pursue a different path. That is, after all, the point of the OS in FOSS, yes? I bet you have enough followers that you wouldn't have to actually do much coding and, who knows, you may invent the newest better mouse-trap and the world will beat a path to your collective door.

Finally, and I think most importantly, while I agree with you on how wrong it is to find a blob of binary configuration data I find your discussion of the topic condescending. While I used to program for a living, back when GUI interfaces existed on mafchines @ XeroX Parc, your, making it simple enough for you non-programmer types (i.e. we're just to simple-minded to understand) insulting. Even the average Linux 'power-user', who has never written a line of code has more than likely run a terminal session and edited a .cfg, etc. file. The implication that they are incapable of understanding this without having 'children's corner' is NOT the way to persuade people to you cause.

The way to do that is to Show them Something Better.