Re: [dwm] Being not so elitist

Well this little exchange has made my morning quite entertaining. :)

I would like to propose adding xft support and gnome systray support to dwm.
And also sound effects.

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 09:41, Kurt H Maier <karmaflux_AT_gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 8:14 AM, Antoni Grzymala <antoni_AT_chopin.edu.pl>
> wrote:
> > To sum up: I really cannot understand what's so cool in being a dick.
> > And a rather softish one, too.
>
> This may come as a huge shock, but not everyone is motivated by a need
> to look cool on the internet.
>
> > Being a non-dick is not equal to a social-networking hugfest, as Kurt is
> > implying in his mail quoted above. That's no boolean, there are stages
> > in between, which might come as a serious discovery to some of you here.
> > Watch the coming years for similar revelations.
>
> I can't figure out why you typed this except as an attack vector.
> Maybe I'll meditate on it for years and experience a revelation. Are
> you suggesting that the text "This keeps its userbase small and
> elitist. No novices asking stupid questions." is being a dick? If so,
> I disagree. "Being a dick" is relative. I don't think anyone here is
> being a dick, but others might. Catering to either extreme of the
> spectrum is a waste of everyone's time.
>
> > Your mail is so grand, as if you wrote a large number of extremely
> > elegant and useful operating systems. Heck, you just as well may have,
> > but somehow I've never heard of Kurt H Maier, the great coder (no
> > offense intended, just the sake of argument). On the other hand, I have
> > heard of other people like, say, Paul Graham, who really are great
> > coders, write great prose, and the last thing that would cross their
> > minds would be calling themselves "elite". Even though, yeah, I do
> > personally consider them "elite".
>
> Fallacious. Argumentum ad verecundiam. I'm allowed to have opinions,
> whether or not you've heard of me.
>
> > You guys are fucking participating in a *simple wm* project. And to all
> > the loudest "elitists", it's not even you who wrote the thing
> > originally.
>
> Yes, we are participating in a simple wm project, and the fewer idiots
> we have marching onto this mailing list and demanding ridiculous
> feature-creep and handholding, the longer it will *remain* a simple wm
> project. dwm's the only window manager I can stand using any more,
> and I'd rather not have to fork it because the gnometards show up and
> try to integrate networkmanager into the status bar.
>
> The text this thread describes was on the website the day *I* signed
> up for this mailing list. Did it keep me out? No, because I haven't
> developed a terminal case of thin-skin syndrome from sitting in front
> of a hugbox terminal. That text is not keeping out anyone worth
> having in. I'm not talking about programming proficiency, here; I'm
> talking about keeping people out who have this inexplicable drive to
> turn every software project into huge bloated crap. The userbase for
> this wm is necessarily small. If that userbase were to grow large, it
> would signify one of two things: either everyone has figured out they
> don't need all the UI crap forced down their throats (unlikely), or
> else dwm has changed into a mainstream window manager (terrifying).
> Whether people change their UI needs we can't control, but if dwm
> starts going mainstream, it will mean something is very wrong.
>
> > Also, calling *oneself* elite is just ridiculous. Self proclaimed elite.
> > Self proclaimed deity. Yeah, right. Go get some treatment.
>
> You seem to be approaching the word "elite" from a
> script-kiddie-braggadocio standpoint. Please stop. The phrasing in
> question is "small and elitist." "Elitist" in this case means
> "encouraging control by an elite minority." "Elite," before it was
> ruined by BBS kids and usenet pseudohackers, meant "a member of a
> privileged group." I submit to you that dwm users are privileged to
> be so, and not having the mailing list flooded with requests for xft
> support is a pretty nice thing to have.
>
> So yeah, the userbase is small. And I'm glad. The userbase is
> elitist. We want Anselm in control, and not some Debian Subcommittee
> for Window Management and Interface Design. And novices don't
> generally come here and ask stupid questions.
>
> And that's the way I like it.
>
> # Kurt H Maier
>
>
Received on Tue Jul 29 2008 - 13:50:05 UTC