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themafia 6 hours ago

> They did what they thought was best.

My problem with it is their proxy for "best" seemed to be "opposite of X11." This was not a solid engineering choice, and I think this post is trying to demonstrate, that had costs.

I'd probably be completely fine with Wayland if it didn't have this obsession with military style desktop security. If it was as open as extensible as X11 by default then we all would have switched. X11 isn't pretty to write code for, but when it works, it works exceptionally well. Wayland seems to have made the wrong sacrifices where it mattered most.

MBCook 6 hours ago | parent [-]

They were in a better position than anyone else to be able to make those calls.

To whatever degree the choices didn’t work out, which I think is likely overstated, they learned something. But if they just threw everything away again, people would be pissed. Again.

This all feels like so much Monday morning quarterbacking.

themafia 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> They were in a better position than anyone else to be able to make those calls.

I don't trust blind appeals to authority.

> But if they just threw everything away again

No one suggested that.

> This all feels like so much Monday morning quarterbacking.

I don't like the system. I don't know what to tell you. I write a lot of X11 software. I don't really want to switch to writing Wayland software. The developers missed this point of view.

The adoption rate is unusual. I'm offering an explanation. I understand people consider it hostile to Wayland but I can't understand why. If you want to solve the fundamental problem, then I have to admit, I'm part of that problem, for the reasons stated. You can ignore them, but you'll have to live with an exceedingly slow adoption, which as the article points out, may be so long that it is replaced nearly the time it is finished. Which would not be ironic considering that's exactly what is happening to X11.

Again, I have nothing against leaving X11, but it should clearly be a hard sell to anyone who likes X11 to go to a platform that is actively hostile to some of it's well regarded core features.

Open source has become fractious. It feels intentional. I say all these things because I honestly wish it was not. If none of this had happened we'd have a genuine alternative to the commercial offerings, and given some of their choices lately, we could have greatly capitalized on that. Que bono?