GnomeFiles
September 7, 2008I try to stay away from angry rant blogging, since it doesn’t really make me look good, but sometimes, I jut have to let of steam a bit.
Not too long ago, Eugenia took down GnomeFiles.org because it got hacked, and she didn’t feel like fixing it any more. She set up a redirect from GnomeFiles.org to OSNews.com, which is not weird seeing OSNews is more or less GnomeFiles’ parent.
Oh boy, the reactions.
From the OSNews contact form:
Whatever lame reasons lead you to put down gnomefiles.org just don’t redirect me to this osnews.. it’s a shame that a site like gnomefiles.org is in hands of incompetents…
And from the OSNews mailing list, a certain Ray Carter:
OS news
Why have you taken over the Gnome Files site?
God I hate people like you. I shall never read your rag and will advise others to avoid you like the plague.
If you are a yank may many hurricanes forever plague you.
Why don’t you just go away.
I was baffled. Here OSNews and Eugenia are, working hard to provide a service to the GNOME/Gtk+ community - a service they aren’t providing themselves - and this is what we/she get in return? Eugenia has received almost nothing but crap from the GNOME and Gtk+ guys, for her often harsh but almost always valid criticisms, and despite all that, she continued to work on providing a valuable service for them. A service, I might add, almost all self-respecting desktop environments/operating systems provide.
You know what? The GNOME and Gtk+ community can GO FCUK THEMSELVES. If I were Eugenia, I’d let GnomeFiles stay offline, and I wouldn’t find a maintainer at all. Let them figure it out themselves.
Bunch of ungrateful twats.
Men, do I agree with you or what. I can’t believe how ungrateful these idiots are.
They should be thankful of the great service provided to them an obviously have no clue on the amount of effort she gives in order to provide this service.
Sylvain
Comment by Sylvain Jette — September 7, 2008 @ 11:08 pm
Funny, I’m working on it now. This makes me really excited to continue (NOT).
Comment by Adam S — September 8, 2008 @ 2:51 am
I have been a satisfied user of Gnomefiles for a long time and I am quite sad the site may close down.
However, I do not believe in the sincerity of your explanations. As an experienced webmaster, you are used to statistics. You know for sure that , for any subject you have, say, 2/5% of trolls. You found them. You publish these commentaries as if they were the real and global expression of the Gnome users. I think this is disingenuous.
I suspect that you wanted to kill this site because it was a drain on your resources and was going downhill. This is OK, is enough and nobody can condamn you for this. On the other hand, don’t accuse all Gnome fans to be globally ill-educated because of some stupid commentaries.
You know it’s just not true.
FYI I reported the closure on the French Ubuntu forum this way:
http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?id=250429
Comment by roger64 — September 8, 2008 @ 5:55 am
And here we have you, accusing Eugenia, Adam, and I of lying.
I’ll add you to the list of grateful users.
Comment by Thom Holwerda — September 8, 2008 @ 7:33 am
You could’ve anticipated such reactions, and could’ve solved it by not putting up a redirect, but some notice that the site is - and will be - down, with some explanation. I don’t think every gnomefiles visitor constantly follows Eugenia’s blogging.
Comment by l3v1 — September 8, 2008 @ 8:04 am
Hey Thom,
what is the difference between gnomefiles and http://www.gtk-apps.org/ ? Only the emphasis on gnome?
Cheers,
Tom
PS. Remember: Trolls and haters are always the loudest.
Comment by Tom — September 8, 2008 @ 8:10 am
I think I need to restate my position
I express here clearly my utter sympathy to the victims of such hateful and stupid posts like Thom, Eugenia and others. I also thank them for their previous so useful, hard and demanding work on behalf of the Gnome community, which I should have done first.
Trolls are everywhere. Please consider that the vast majority of your former users were NOT this kind of people, like for any other community. This is just plain common sense.
This said, there is a French age-old saying which runs this way:
“Who wants to kill its dog, says it suffers from rabies”
“Qui veut tuer son chien l’accuse de la rage”
Comment by roger64 — September 9, 2008 @ 6:48 am
Well, i\’d have to agree with roger64, it just seemed like eugenia was abandonning a great project for another hidden reason. She doesn\’t have to explain, but heh, you don\’t abandon a site because of a bug, even nasty, you can\’t expect people to understand… Looking at alexa.com, the site was quite successfull, no loss of audience at least.
And please don\’t call me ungratefull or worse, i\’m just an external observer, i don\’t use gnome anyway.
Comment by billy — September 9, 2008 @ 10:45 am
For what it’s worth, the guy who wrote in with the “God I hate people like you” comment did apologize after I chastised him in my reply and set him straight.
Comment by David Adams — September 10, 2008 @ 1:44 am
1. Who is Ray Carter anyway?
2. gnomefiles.org was a great service and we linked to it from both gnome.org and gtk.org in several places. A lot of people in the GNOME community was grateful for the site and miss it.
3. Not all my favorite bugs gets fixed either.
Sorry that software development works like that.
Comment by Andreas Nilsson — September 10, 2008 @ 9:12 am
Btw, if there is any way that the GNOME community can help OSNews get the site up again, let me know!
Comment by Andreas Nilsson — September 10, 2008 @ 9:13 am
Have Your voice be heard:
Comment by HeadLess — September 13, 2008 @ 9:29 pm
Have Your voice be heard:
http://www.petitiononline.com/80907/petition.html
(repost, tags mixed up)
Comment by HeadLess — September 13, 2008 @ 9:30 pm