Quicksilver and GNOME Do
Once in a while, someone sees GNOME Do and screams bloody murder that I’ve “stolen” something from Quicksilver or that I’ve “cloned” or “forked” Quicksilver and simply renamed it and that I’m trying to hide the similarities. It’s not enough, these people cry, that I mention Quicksilver on Do’s homepage and discuss the technical differences between Do and Quicksilver at length in my design document, which includes the following page:
Does it look like I’m trying to hide something?
Quicksilver was my favorite program on Mac OS X — which I’ve used since Public Beta 1. I’ve probably installed QS on over thirty of my friends’ computers. There would be no GNOME Do without it. But Quicksilver isn’t perfect, and there had never really been a Linux equivalent. So, I figured, why not spend my senior year of college exploring a program that fascinates me, and what better way to explore a program than to try to write it myself? I could release it as free software so everyone could use it and learn from it (Quicksilver was closed-source at the time), and best of all, my school will give me credit for it. So I wrote GNOME Do, and (1) got the Quicksilver functionality I longed for on Linux, (2) learned a lot about free and open source software, (3) met some incredible people, (4) got college credit, and (5) had a lot of fun.
I’m not sure what it is about this whole situation that has some Mac users foaming at the mouth, calling for my flesh to be branded with a “QS” so that everyone will know my crime. It’s really off-putting. On Linux, this kind of work, when done well, is considered a good thing for the community and society at large. My hope is that someday, a brave young student reads everything I’ve written about GNOME Do, “steals” everything I put into it, and makes something faster or smarter or different with it. It seems that the Mac community considers this a terrible, terrible thing to do — after all, WWSJD? By the way, a friend of mine got Do running on Leopard two months ago.
26 Comments
June 11th, 2008 at 2:00 am
David - just ignore them. Gnome-do is one of my favourite parts of linux
The latest version is awesome!
June 11th, 2008 at 7:16 am
I’m not surprised at that reaction since I’ve had my fair share of similar reactions from some Mac users. I’m not a developer but what they told me when they found out I’m using Linux the reaction was along the lines of “Why do you use a operating system that has stolen all ideas from somewhere else? Why not use an OS that has some ideas of its own and where you can get support if you need it?”
But in my opinion those Mac users are basically saying “Pot? This is kettle. You’re black” even if they don’t know it. It’s hardly a secret that Apple’s webkit is forked from khtml for instance, and is a very important part of the apple desktop. KDE users, Gnome users, Apple users and even Windows users benefit from that (the webrendering engine in Adobe AIR is based on webkit for example) and I can not understand why so many fail to see that forking, competition, and taking the good ideas from product X to try to make an improved version or whatever is benefiting everyone regardless of OS in the long run. Besides, just about every piece of software got it’s original inspiration from somewhere else at some point.
What I’m trying to say: don’t let them get to you. Gnome-do is an excellent piece of software and considering its popularity it seems like a lot of Linux users agree that it is filling a spot that needed to be filled.
June 11th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Wait, you’re getting lectures on open source from Mac users?
That’s rich.
June 11th, 2008 at 9:44 am
“My hope is that someday, a brave young student reads everything I’ve written about GNOME Do, “steals” everything I put into it, and makes something faster or smarter or different with it.”
Aah..funny you should say that David…I was just going to ask you: I’m quite free in the second half of this summer, and was wondering if you mind me porting Do to Windows. It would ofcourse be a sub-project that gives full credit where its due (i.e you guys), and may perhaps be a good window for many windows users to find out that the source of a great program that they will fall in love with is actually the ‘hard, ugly linux’. Ofcourse, if you scan the web, Windows users have been literally begging for something Quicksilver-ish forever, and this would be the perfect answer to this huge need…
June 11th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Don’t let them get you down. You’ve clearly done the right thing.
June 11th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
You’ve written a great application and I don’t think the fact you’ve incorporated similarities from another program you liked (not available on your platform of choice) should cause any bad blood with Mac fans. I imagine the ones complaining are a minority.
I hadn’t used Quicksilver before trying Gnome-do and was really surprised how it changed the way I “do” things on my computer more quickly (didn’t believe it when reading about it).
June 11th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Ignore them, I’m a mac user and when I must work on linux (for a customer), I will be happy to have a QS (like Gnome Do) on it. It will be great to have similar addin capabilities on both.
greetings martin
June 11th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
David- ignore all the crap, gnome-do is a great program. Keep up the good work
June 11th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Great stuff David, I just need to port this to run on Windows now!
June 11th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I like the black glassy interface… just change that to be default :), and problem solved hehe.
Anyway I believe that DO is better than Quicksilver(or I have used Quicksilver just a little :)).
June 11th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
I agree with Jack, just ignore them. This app RuleZ man!
June 11th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
some people hate
but I love this app
keep it up
June 11th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Danish: There are several alternatives for Windows already (I’m using launchy, see launchy.net). Anyway, it would probably be great to have Do on both platforms. Give it a try.
June 11th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Great work, I’ve been looking for something like that for some time. You’ll find people to hate your work no matter what you do. Keep up the good work.
June 12th, 2008 at 4:27 am
Gnome Do 0.5 is awesome!
I do not think, that QS or Launchy can compete it.
June 12th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Do not let those people get you down. They said the same thing about GNU, GNOME, and Mono. Why reinvent something entirely when you can modify working ideas to produce an amazingly useful and familiar application that is free and usable on a free software operating system.
C# is far more cross platform friendly then applescript anyway(mono and dotGNU). There is no way you could have ported QS to linux, and Gnome Do is in no way a ‘fork’. It is a spoon - you tasted all the good ideas from QS and then added in alot of ideas, skill, love, and work. Imagine a world where scientist where restricted and criticized for using existing theories, logic, and information.
June 12th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Thanks for GNOME-Do, I really love it
June 14th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Don’t mind them! They’re just jealous that mac is going down and linux is the way to go.
Great job man! You’re the best.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Yeah, it sucks when you pay to be the coolest kid in town, and then somebody profanes your Holy iGrail. Shame on you, man! And thanks for your excellent work. I’m loving it.
June 23rd, 2008 at 3:01 pm
[...] it’s obviously - and admittedly - highly derivative of the OS X Quicksilver application, it’s a nice piece of work. One that [...]
June 28th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
First of all, great job on Gnome Do. I can’t imagine working in any desktop environment without it. The latest version fixes many of the problems I had with it before, and now it’s almost perfect. At such an early point in development, that’s a great feat. Secondly, I’m glad that this app was inspired by Quicksilver and is derivative of it. That’s a highly thought-out and great move on your part, and that fact that you don’t hide it as well is something. Many open-source projects simply rip-off proprietary apps, at the same time being highly critical of the proprietary apps that they were derived from. And most of them are designed different just for the sake of being different, or so that the authors don’t face accusations of cloning another project. QS is open-source, and the more borrowed from it, it is better. Why duplicate so much effort just for the sake of being different, so that you can claim to innovate, when QS already has a tried and tested interface that just works? Keep it up!
July 1st, 2008 at 10:11 am
Hi,
I only want to wish you all the best. I believe you are doing very important work, so, please, don’t let your joy to leave you.
I used to develop software for Mac and their commnunity is just totally different (in a bad way).
Good luck!
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:28 pm
david..
gnome do is saving so much more time… and saving the world’s time is perhaps the best investment of anyone’s time…
think of how many countless hours you have helped save around the world… im sure that this is one of the killer apps for linux (and hence any platform)
keep up the great work!
now only if the web worked as seamlessly…
im sure this will come default with future distro releases…
July 8th, 2008 at 4:12 am
Keep on the good work! Gnome DO really rocks!
July 12th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Too bad i didnt come across this blog before. Great stuff you got here. Thanks.
August 14th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Haven’t used gnome-do (more a dmenu person), but it looks great, and from the feedback here you can tell it has many fans.
Linux devs are always in a damned if you do damned if you don’t position. Provide a familiar UI and they’ll say you copied it. Use a different UI and they’ll complain it isn’t intuitive.
Ignore the fanbois who have no idea what the four freedoms are.
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