There’s been a post, titled Why the display server doesn’t matter. It received a few responses:
- Martin Gräßlin – Why the Display Server DOES matter
- Aaron Seigo – more on why the display server does matter
Aaron and Martin are not saying anything that hasn’t been said before. What I find interesting is how the communication is happening. Martin is a well known developer and has spent a lot of effort on porting KDE to Wayland. Aaron communicates a lot 😛 Now I know various developers will hate “change management” courses and the theory, but one thing that is stressed during such courses is to acknowledge and understand what people affected by a change are saying.
Looking into the responses given by “Canonical” (in quotes because I’m not sure if every response was from a Canonical person) towards the various feedback given regarding the change (Mir as additional display server), one common theme is highlighted by the various responses: “it doesn’t matter”, “it is just a bug in the application”, “it is just a bug in the toolkit”, “the toolkit abstracted wrongly”, etc. Sometimes these answers are conflicting. Saying partly that the toolkit abstracts it, while also saying that currently the toolkit is lacking should indicate that there is a problem (at least in the communication).
Despite the pain caused by this change, there is no acknowledgement. Just a repeat of “it doesn’t matter”. As a result, the very people you need to make this change happen will feel ignored and being dismissed. You need these people, yet they’re being dismissed. What gives? It seems headed towards failure. Why not acknowledge and try to understand?