What happened to gnome?

Their hubris may have finally caught up with them.

"No, fuck you. You'll use your computer how we tell you to, and you'll like it!" just isn't very compatible with "Please give us more money!"

which is surprising as there are A LOT of GNOME fanboys. I personally don't get it, I've tried several times to give it a shot but it just constantly annoys the piss out of me.

The GNOME Foundation has been going downhill for a while, they keep having to cut spending, and cut, and cut. The latest is:

https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-GitHub-GitLab-Redirect

(Forgive the Phoronix link.)

Works for Apple, but I don't expect much overlap with Linux users.

Even Apple allows more user customization and choice than Gnome does these days.

I imagine AI scrapers have a lot to do with the massively increased hosting costs. I'm assuming Anubis et al didnt fix all their bot traffic issues

Watch people unironically celebrate FOSS developers running into financial issues from bot traffic, because they don't like Gnome shell.

Wait a second. Is this just Lunduke gaslighting people again, like the last time all the idiots were saying that Gnome was going to go bankrupt within a year?

I'm out of the loop. What's the issue with phoronix?

It's really, really, really bad reportage. 90% of what they post is just rewording emails from mailing lists with nothing added at all. They're just regurgitating words they don't understand.

They focus a lot on drama and it's like a twelve year old decided to write about all the most superficial drama without any technical understanding of what they're writing about.

Their "benchmarks" have been heavily criticised too and it's clear they basically have no idea what they're doing and the numbers aren't to be trusted.

Their English prose is terrible. "For this ..." wut?

All in all, just a sorry excuse for a website. If it were a newspaper, the appropriate term for it would be a "rag".

the massively increased hosting costs.

Eh? What increased hosting costs?

Bots aggressively scrapping everything they can.

That's not GNOME-specific. klangcola@reddthat.com is saying GNOME have experienced "massively increased hosting costs" but there's no mention of increased hosting costs in the article I linked to, massive or otherwise, and as far as I know, nobody has mentioned any increase in the context of GNOME, hence my question.

Given that hosting costs have objectively increased across the board due to AI scraping, and the GNOME project just introduced these changes, it is obviously sensible to assume that GNOMEs hosting costs have increased too.

it is obviously sensible to assume

I disagree. There's no need to make assumptions. And even if there were, this does not seem like a sensible assumption to make given that the GNOME Foundation's financial woes long predate the rise in AI scrapers.

Ah, and why isn't it reasonable to assume that the increase in hosting costs which is hitting everyone for the last few months, is also hitting GNOME? Why do you think they are exempt, when even big commercial platforms are struggling with the amount of traffic generated by AI scrapers?

Firstly, the GNOME Foundation’s financial woes long predate the rise in AI scrapers.

the increase in hosting costs which is hitting everyone for the last few months

I know of no such increase.

Thanks for your insights!

The only reason I use desktop Linux is because of GNOME and the UX of the GTK ecosystem. Not everyone care about 5 billion points of customization, they care about simplicity & consistency. 😄

I know of no such increase.

The more you know 🌈

Yes, whip me harder daddy.

I'm so glad KDE forces me to use every point of customization and doesn't allow me to enjoy their well-curated default experience out of the box.

It's great that they don't tuck the power-user features away behind advanced options menus and give me a simple almost gnome-like experience from the get-go.

Even better, I'm glad that KDE doesn't dare to take user feedback into consideration by hosting KDE community summits where they prioritize three major user concerns per session, instead of telling users that a feature everyone wants doesn't belong and reclassifying as wontfix.

(For those unable to tell, this is pure snark and sarcasm, KDE does all these amazing pro-user things and gnome doesn't.)

And yet when I look at the UI of KDE, it's not for me. At all. 😅

Totally fine that other people use it and appreciate it! All I'm saying is I'd still be full-time on macOS if it weren't for modern GNOME.

Firstly, the GNOME Foundation’s financial woes long predate the rise in AI scrapers.

Sure. Does the Gitlab -> GitHub redirect also long predate the rise in AI scrapers?

I know of no such increase.

If you haven't been staying up to date, maybe do that before dismissing explanations? The increase in scraping is such a massive issue that it's been discussed to death again and again, and big parts of the open internet has changed.

You're basically calling bullshit on a charity having increased fuel prices, because you're not aware of any Iran conflict!

Super aggressive scraping bots who ignore robots.txt

It's not unique to Gnome, and it's been a problem for a year or so

You're basically calling bullshit on a charity having increased fuel prices, because you're not aware of any Iran conflict!

Perfect metaphor

Err, not adding their own input is good reporting.

Let the audience decide for themselves what to think.

You're not making sense friend.

I think there's been a misunderstanding about the issue. They're rewording other people's emails and presenting it as their own work. If they just directly quoted the email it wouldn't be an issue.

Does the Gitlab -> GitHub redirect also long predate the rise in AI scrapers?

Nobody from GNOME has linked the Gitlab -> GitHub redirect to the rise in AI scrapers.

If you haven't been staying up to date, maybe do that before dismissing explanations?

I surely would were you only to provide references to sources backing up your claims.