Adding on to myself, a core frustration I have with Wayland criticism in specific is that a lot of people seem to bring very totalized expectations to the debate.

I confess, I still think The Cathedral and the Bazaar describes a very real distinction in how stuff is developed. One grand pre-designed edifice, versus a lot of different forces in a action slowly sussing out what works well. There's so many people mad sad and angry that everything isn't already perfect. There's people mad sad and angry that everything isn't more centralized, isnt all the same. They see the lack of a core display server as some horrible flaw.

That freedom to try & iterate & explore solution spaces has made things go slower. Sure, yes, and that's had pain. But we've seen so much innovation at the edge, various servers trying different takes & different protocols, and then coming together to try to figure out how to mesh stuff together.

Some people are so averse to these sticky complicated involved processes. It's short term inconvenient to not have a dictator deciding, just picking from off the cuff.

I try to empathize with these views, & I get the yearning for not having to hash stuff out, to some degree. But I don't see any nuance that I'd hope for. I don't see that these harsh unforgiving critics get the stakes, I don't see that they have any appreciation for iteration, I don't see that they have any idea the benefit of this being a social not dictatorial process. They apply their preconceived notions of software as cathedral building to a situation that is shooting for long long long stakes, that wants direly to be long term good after watching many shortly made ad-hoc decisions compound into the X schmorgasboard of ideas.

I feel like these people don't want to be reasoned with. They don't want to consider the Bazaar model. They don't want to respect or love the expansion/contraction of innovation-at-the-edge and then coming together. They by and large don't see that the ability to build a Wayland server out of nothing in a weekend has a decent-if-different counter-position to their angst that one could keep reusing X to build new WM's.

I believe & cherish that we are iterating through Wayland. Protocols are happening. The progress has been clear and nots le, even though various pieces have been harder to settle upon & get right. It's commonly said that the protocol discussions (wars) are resistant to listening to app devs, but in many many threads it's clear there's dueling ideas of what the protocol ought to be, of what works well, but people interpret un-acceptance of their idea as rejection. Things are iterating. Some pieces are harder than others but it seems clear there s iteration. And the village of ideas model that's happening here keeps seeming to make good critical assessments, keeps finding very high quality options, after hard tribulation.

I don't see the nuance from critics: they have specific issues but so often comprehension for the scene, only their own personal bailiwicks. Their criticisms are often the best thing happening, are why this is working, maybe just not at their asked for pace (but instead a build-it-for-life path). They see innovation at the edge as terrible and bad and their enemy, when it is the salvation & protection from mistakes & ability to try things safely that lets us figure stuff out. Critics of systems similarly felt persistently low dimensional, shallow, uninterested & unengaged & uncontemplative. I want nuance and respect, ability to recognize tradeoffs & appreciate the other views, regardless of what one feels, and I find that severely lacking in most HN criticism. And the critics are soooo vocal, so persistent. They exhaust us. While offering little.