Mathieu [bochecha] @mathieu@mstdn.fr

@aral I'll certainly agree with you that the new version is much, much worse. 😅

I don't think it's about the consistency of icons though, it's much more about how that lizard with a transparent background is an awful idea in the first place.

@aral yup, that definition perfectly fits what you said:

> someone at System76 is overruling their designers who brought out the first version

@aral we can try yes.

Overriding the app devs decisions is not the way to do it though. Especially when you make profit from their free labour. It's based on the idea we can't work together. It is conflictual by nature.

We're a community, not competitors. We need to try and work together. The "how" is as important as the result.

Hence what we're trying in GNOME now: establish guidelines anyone can follow, encourage devs to follow them, and in some case even offer to help.

@aral a theory about how someone is overriding the designers behind the scenes, without the shadow of a proof, when merely paying attention is enough to show what actually happened.

That's exactly what a conspiracy theory is.

@aral sure, not disagreeing with that.

But then other platforms don't have uniform icons either and that never has bothered anybody except us nerds with an eye for these things.

Icons need to be differentiable at a quick glance, having them all fit into the same shape and color scheme is detrimental to that. Icon uniformity is really not something that matters all that much IMHO.

@aral

> I have no insider knowledge but […] Again, just extrapolating from symptoms.

IMHO this is one of the biggest problem in the FOSS community: way too many people are quick to go full-on conspiracy theorist as soon as some entity does something they don't like.

It's tiring after all these years… 😒

@aral At GNOME we're trying something different: instead of replacing app icons, we came up with very simple icon guidelines, and try to encourage 3rd party app authors to follow them.

Hopefully in the long run that helps improve icon consistency without alienating 3rd party developers.

@aral some application developers complained that system76 was overriding their app identity by changing the icon. And those are apps with good icons (e.g GNOME apps).

System76 did the right thing and listened to the community instead of biting the hand that feeds them.

@alcinnz nobody disagreed with that.

@drequivalent @buoyantair @tbernard

@alvarezp yes.

They might also target only KDE, do a great job at integrating with it, and then we could still use it on other platforms anyway.

@drequivalent @tbernard @alcinnz @brainblasted @alatiera

@alvarezp I call it my home router 😛

@alcinnz @tbernard @brainblasted @alatiera

@drequivalent

That's not at all what we're saying.

What we're saying is app devs target a platform and design for it.

Then, on other platforms, their app should look exactly like they designed it, as if it was running on the target platform.

Is that clearer?

@buoyantair @tbernard

@buoyantair as said elsewhere in this conversation, yes it is.

@drequivalent

Just to be clear, by "take control" @tbernard isn't saying GNOME should become upstream for everything, and the everybody else from i3 to KDE just reuses components made by GNOME. That would be crazy.

What we're talking about is responsibility: desktops should feel responsible for the whole stack underneath them as OS vendors, instead of caring just about their modules and relying on distros to assemble it all.

@steko nobody said anything about blocking. It's open source, you can always do what you want.

But then the elementary folks also have no obligation to provide any kind of support at all, including ruthlessly closing bugs if they were opened by downstream users/developers and only caring about their own OS.

(also, I've been a Fedora developer for more than 10 years, thanks for telling me what I already know 😉)

@alcinnz @tbernard @brainblasted @alatiera

@drequivalent this conversation is specifically about desktop usage. Obviously non-graphical use-cases are different and need to be treated differently. Also, water is wet, fire is hot.

As for everything underneath the desktop, it's required to have a usable desktop, and as such is part of "the platform" of that desktop.

@alcinnz @tbernard @brainblasted @alatiera