Amazed and appalled

[Mike Hearn]

As I was one of the original authors of the notifications spec,
somebody pointed me to the recent discussions on xdg-list about it.

When Christian and myself wrote this spec, it was to solve a problem
the Linux desktop had: the only poptart implementation was KDE
specific and so most of the apps we used or worked on (like Gaim and
Wine) did not use them. The point of freedesktop was to solve that
sort of problem, so we stepped up and spent our evenings and weekends
doing exactly that. It was not a perfect solution. It did not include
every possible feature, partly for reasons of time and partly for
reasons of design.

But it met the needs of many apps, they started to use the spec, and
we thought the problem was solved. This was in line with the
philosophy of the xdg founder, Havoc Pennington, who believed in
deployed code above endless email threads.

5 years on, I just wanted to say that I am in awe at how much time has
been wasted discussing the *name* of the *interface* of the
*notifications system*.

How are unpaid volunteers expected to get shit DONE like this?

Do you seriously expect ANYONE to volunteer their time to work on
solving problems when the result of the work is that many years later
you are said to have "screwed people over" and are a "hijacker"?

I don't work on Linux anymore and care little for its future, but I
have to say, don't you guys have MORE IMPORTANT problems to be solving
than POPTARTS?!?