Other/future projects • Re: GTK2 revival

If I seem less than enthusiastic about this, I should clarify that it's not because I have the mentality of Brodie or those who don't think this is a lot of work. It's actually a bit more personal, and I want to clarify before people start assuming I'm as bad as him.

It's... basically, I never shipped my SunOS/Solaris builds with GTK2. I used GTK3 from the beginning, used to complain as early as 2019 that it was nonsense that we had to have two Linux builds just because some people prefer an old toolkit because it looks better with themes or something (before we dropped 32-bit builds, I think it was 4 Linux builds). Always thought it was so weird we dropped 32-bit builds in favor of keeping GTK2 because the community here was so obsessed with it. I never shipped Epyrus with GTK2, and got annoyed with people who kept asking for it. Even did a Python 3 port of the Python 2 codebase in part so people self-building Epyrus to have a GTK2 version couldn't throw it in my face that building UXP was "too hard" because tracking down Python 2 or Tauthon is difficult, SSL doesn't work, they don't know which branch to build against, they don't know how to use a Docker container, etc. Plus, I was hoping supporting Python 3 might draw more modern Linux users whose distros don't ship Python 2 anymore into contributing. I always wanted people to fix themes so they look better on GTK3, or just... do something more reasonable than constantly repeat their old saw about GTK2 being "the best version" of our application and everything new being bad like a bunch of people at a high school reunion who feel like they peaked in high school and have nothing good to say about their lives since then.

And now... instead of newer contributors or people who will help us target modern Linux... we get, well... this. Pulled right into the firestorm of GTK2 revival energy, right when I thought people would start taking GTK3 more seriously and finally realize we can't do GTK2 forever, and I have to get demoralized seeing just how many people on this forum have more in common with the values of the types on VOGONS or MSFN or whatever than I was hoping. The timing just made it feel like a giant middle finger from the universe, an admonishment, "No, sorry, sir, you are working on a project for old people that like old stuff, you don't get to move it forward, you don't get to do anything except watch them worship their idol called GTK2, and scoff at your GTK2-atheism, at your non-belief. The GTK3 version won't be made better, there won't be a port to anything newer, this new fork will be used as an excuse to ignore modern Linux, all your work is going in the retro Linux bin as a toy for Slackware and Devuan users to play with. Sorry, that's what you get for working on UXP and thinking it was worthy of a serious investment of time! The kind of people that surround your project won't ever do anything but drag you backwards and scold you for wanting to support modern platforms, getting excited about every retro fork and lashing out at every deprecation. They'll keep pining for GTK2, for SSE2-only builds, and Windows XP, and never forgive you for moving forward. That's your potential userbase, and it's not the one you wanted, not the one you were working this hard for. Deal with it."

But... being honest, I guess GTK2 existing is a good thing. There was nothing wrong with GIMP's old interface and I'm sure a lot of old games depend on it. I guess as selfish as this sounds, I only care about what it means for us, and I just don't like the fact that we're being dragged backwards and told it's okay to never change, never adapt, become irrelevant to anyone except people who like retro desktops as novelties. If it was only happening to other projects I hadn't invested in and didn't care about futureproofing? I'd probably think it was kind of funny and not care. And it's not Daemonratte's fault... but unfortunately he's opened a window into something I didn't want to look at, and now I'm seeing how far apart my values and goals are from a lot of people in this community, and feeling like I'm wasting my time trying to bring anything forwards. Because the people here just want the past preserved pixel-for-pixel, bug-for-bug, they don't want the spirit of the past carried forward and kept relevant on newer platforms. I don't know what I was expecting... I guess I liked to think other people had a similar vision, that they understood, but instead I'm surrounded by backwards-looking mechanics who remind me too much of the type of man who refuses to buy a car made after 1970 on principle, and rebuilds the carburetor every two weeks because he can't find replacement parts but is just that stubborn. He has something bad to say about no 8-track tape player, about air bags, about power steering, about automatic transmissions, about power windows he can't roll down... can't see any good in anything after his era. That man is not a visionary... he's just stubborn and likes old things and can't see any good in anything new. Maybe because of trauma, maybe because of nostalgia, I don't know, but it's not rational, it's not healthy, and it's not something I want to spend my life catering to.

If this was a fork of GTK3 or something still in wide use, I would get it... but this is something that was deprecated 6 years ago that's been on the chopping block of a lot of distros for a long time. I just... I don't know anymore. I was already sick to death of the GTK2 forever brigrade, and now they have a huge advocate giving them a shot in the arm. Again, Daemonratte didn't do anything wrong... he just showed me something that's really hard to look away from about this community and took a lot of the wind out of my sails.