[FusionComm] Truly disappointing

[Alyssa Hung]

On Tue, July 3, 2007 8:03 am, RYX wrote:
> Hi everbody.

Hello. Good to see some activity on the mailing lists again; though 
endless debate may be a bit much, complete silence isn't that much more 
savoury. ;)

> Those people who cried for a combined community still prefer hanging out
> on oc.o and still aim at having their own community where they can be the
> kings - even though we finally agreed with nearly 100% of their wishes and
> requests. Nobody of the so called "beryl devs", except Danny, ever came to
> compiz.org for announcing new ideas or helping users - if they come at
> all, it is for bitching, nitpicking or correcting people.

I am awaiting the proper setup and announcement of the unified forum. 
Whether that is at forum.compiz.org, compiz-fusion.org, or elsewhere, I 
believe waiting for an announcement would be wiser than making 
assumptions, as many of us have been said to do in the past.

Please don't interpret my patience as mere inaction. I am ready to act 
on specific implementations of the details pertaining to the forums' 
eventual future.

> Users come to the compiz forums and tell me that they tried compiz and
> beryl but nothing worked for them, so now they installed "fusion" and want
> help with it - likely because of being misinformed by "other sources".
> Seriously, this mess has created such an incredible amount of
> confusion that especially the community has to be informed about what is 
> going on. And before that, we should create some roadmap or targets to 
> show them (hint, hint).

I've been trying, and continue to try, to refer to Compiz as the one 
project. There are several structural challenges that I haven't been 
able to ignore, however.

Most notably, when people make suggestions for plugins that are 
currently distributed together with Compiz-Core, such as Cube or Rotate, 
I can't help but think that the features requested may be be implemented 
for quite some time; it has traditionally been the style of developers 
who contribute to Compiz-Core to be patient and prudent about choosing 
what to implement and how to implement it. The same goes for features 
that may require Core changse to implement, such as being able to show 
thumbnail previews for minimised windows.

Bug reports pertainig to components distributed with Compiz-Core are 
also tricky. Weeks ago, I filed a bug report to the freedesktop.org bug 
tracker (Bug 11331) about inconsistent key binding behaviour in the 
Scale plugin. The bug has not received any replies; was it received and 
reviewed by any of the developers involved? Bug reports to oc.o aren't 
always resolved quickly, but they _have_ been resolved.

I was asked why Blur and Reflection won't work with the same hardware 
that used to work fine with BlurFX in Beryl, and after going through his 
configurartion, I had to admit that I honestly don't know. Maybe some 
combination of Beryl's plethora of allowances and workarounds made the 
hardware work without needing a "proper" fix, such as a driver-side or 
server-side correction. Is Compiz-Core ever likely to implement such 
workarounds...?

I want everyone to be happy with their compositing manager, and to show 
that Compiz can work for everyone, but when I'm asked questions like, 
"Why can't Compiz do ____ when Beryl can? Isn't Compiz Fusion supposed 
to be better?" It's hard to think positively when there are still 
feature regressions and compatibility regressions going from Beryl to 
Compiz (seemingly directly caused by conflicting philosophies between 
the past and the present), and there seems to be less developer presence 
than ever.

The divisions between Beryl, Compiz, and Compiz Fusion don't exist 
entirely in the minds of misinformed people... To those with problems, 
those with ideas, and those on the receiving end of stymieing bugs and 
usage scenarios, the structural challenges that separate Compiz from 
Beryl are very real.

I _want_ this project to succeed, and _try_ to make it successful in the 
ways I can as a user. I'm sure many users want a compositing manager 
they can be proud of and really get behind. But wanting isn't enough... 
As many suggestions as we offer and as much assistance as we provide for 
each other, there's little we can accomplish without good faith from the 
developers.

> Let me ask you one question: what do you all expect to happen once we
> have a combined website for the combined project? I'd (still) really like
> to hear your answers on this ... We still have no goals, roadmap, 
> merge-agreement or "peace-contract". Well, as long as we have ten 
> different packages and a website the rest will come by itself, right? 
> Sure.

I expect for community resources such as wikis and packages to be more 
cohesive.

I wish to see more developers being accessible; whether that means more 
forays into the forum, greater participation on the non-dev IRC channel, 
a greater tendency to act on bug reports and feature requests, or 
otherwise showing the users that someone is listening, and someone cares.

I hope that users "misinformed" about the nature of Compiz Fusion may 
truly be misinformed rather than being simply misunderstood.

I would like to see Compiz thriving alongside other compositing 
managers, perhaps evolving beyond its scope as a mere compositing 
manager at some point, instead of being killed by the first serious 
competitor that comes along (read: KWin).

> btw: I still work on the new layout, but if it means that the
> compiz-forums have nearly no support whenever I am not around, it shows me
> how interested everyone is in a "combined community" and immediately puts
> my motivation back to zero ..

Does that depend on which forum we consider the Compiz forum? I'd rather 
not set the mood for unifying our communities against the backdrop of 
this chilling distinction.


~Alyssa