The parent correctly notes that theming is a valid feature of the platform, and asking essentially for ignoring the feature because of brand issues sounds ridiculous. It maybe 'unhelpful', but sometimes we just express our opinions here, not running consultancy services. It's called commentary section for a reason.
I don’t take issue with people expressing opinions, or even pointing out that theming is a platform feature.
But I do take issue with attacking developers who write applications for free, and contribute to the Linux ecosystem, for making a reasonable request to platform developers.
That paragraph continues. The letter is absolutely also aimed at end users:
> If you like to tinker with your own system, that’s fine with us. However, if you change things like stylesheets and icons, you should be aware that you’re in unsupported territory. Any issues you encounter should be reported to the theme developer, not the app developer.
Just not with the same vehemence as its message directed at distros.
But I mean it's also technically correct. How could an application developer make any kind of guarantee in the face of arbitrary theming and tinkering by the end user?
Read that quote extract again—"If you like to tinker with your own system"—that is clearly saying to the distro developer to understand the distinction between your personal preferences and what you might distribute to others.
If the letter was aimed at end users, that qualifier would have been redundant. Therefore the letter is not aimed at end users.
It is not a reasonable request, though. End users want the ability to theme their system, and you cannot expect each end user to make their own themes. People rely on distributions for this to happen.
I understand that the devs do not want to be responsible for bugs stemming from broken themes, but this is the wrong solution. Ultimately the solution is a better theme API, not this which would essentially stop custom themes all together for most end users.
In other comments people argue that this isn't aimed at end users, but end users would of course also be impacted from this.
Theme API could be an improvement, but it isn't a perfect solution either - because the same complaints with the same arguments show up in relation to distros patching application code. It's a general problem of who changes the software. Some FLOSS developers seem to desire to have "producer/consumer" relationship with users of their software, seemingly forgetting that the entire point of FLOSS is to make this relationship model impossible to enforce.
I don't see a good technical solution here, but I see two social ones: a) developers of FLOSS must understand they're writing software that can and will be modified and re-released by others, sometimes individuals and sometimes organized groups (like people making Linux distributions); and b) users need to understand that if they have a problem with their software, they should reach out to people from whom they got that software for support. If you got a program from developer's home page, you should contact them directly. If you got it from your distro, then distro maintainers should be your first line of support.
(Also c), some users won't understand b), and forwarding support requests to appropriate people is just part of publishing FLOSS.)
It doesn't matter if the end users want the ability to theme their system—if the software they run is not designed to be themed, then it's not designed to be themed.
It doesn't matter if the software is designed to be themed. If I want it to be themed, I'll theme it anyway, and if I can't, it means the software and the platform it's running on is garbage, and I'll go find a different one.
Nobody is saying that you must not apply your favourite theme to whatever apps you like on your own computer. Not me, not the linked article.
If themes are so important to you, pick your app based on that criteria. If you think an app is garbage because it doesn’t theme well, fork it and write a better version yourself.
The main point of confusion in this whole thread is whether or not the article states you shouldn't apply themes on your own computer. To some, myself included, it kind of does. Linux distributions are not individual operating systems - they're essentially skins on top of Linux kernel, created bottom-up to offer opinionated choices to users. Picking a distribution is like modifying software on one's own computer, except without duplicating the same work other people would do. In this sense, the article does ask users to not customize software on their own machines.
That is an unfair inference because the author of the post explicitly says otherwise. To the extent he is speaking to you, he is only saying "thar be dragons" and that he will not explicitly support your use of a theme—therefore you should file any theme-induced bugs with the theme author and not with him.
> But I do take issue with attacking developers who write applications for free, and contribute to the Linux ecosystem, for making a reasonable request to platform developers.
How is releasing software under a license and asking people not do things allowed by that license reasonable?
That was the case in the early days of GTK3, but I don't think it is anymore.
If GTK3 still does not support theming, that explains why theming causes issues. In which case it would be better to implement proper theming support because stopping distributions from theming clearly doesn't work.
Oh yes, people have always done it, via one hack or another, and as long as it was more of a "for people who really want to fiddle" it wasn't that much of an issue.
But now expectations have risen, people expect more solid behaviour and look/feel from their apps, and distros routinely have quite different GTK themes.
Totally agree. Users have the power to do what they want at the end of the day. What's annoying is when you install an app and by default you don't recognise it's icon because of theming. Or the menu text is suddenly the same colour as the background, thereby making it unreadable and unusable.
Hell there’s even a paragraph aim directly at end users.
> If you like to tinker with your own system, that’s fine with us.
You’ve completely dismissed all of their concerns out of hand, in an entirely unhelpful and hostile manner.
Why did you even bother writing a comment?