I disagree with the concern, because obviously making Free Software easier for non-technically inclined people to use does not make the software harder for technically inclined people to use. This is strictly an issue for proprietary software.

> This is strictly an issue for proprietary software.

it really isn't, as Google Chrome and Chromium shows there's no clear dividing line in the real world. Linux isn't developed by Bob the free software enthusiast, take a look at the code contributions to the kernel.

Overall I'm also in favour of driving linux adoption because it's still a better world but the idea that this has no spill over effect on anyone else is wrong. It's a fiction to think that Linux, just like a browser is anything but a collective project with most development driven by very few organizations who also have commercial or proprietary interests.

> Google Chrome and Chromium shows there's no clear dividing line in the real world.

There are lots of Chromium forks. I don't really see how this contradicts my point.

there's not any genuine forks. They're all dependent on Google, see Vivaldi last year announcing they'll drop manifest v2 support. They're all pretty much cosmetic reskins. Whoever puts up the money for development makes the choices, regardless what license you slap on it.

And if there was a drastic mainstream adoption of linux, whatever implications that has for development focus, it would affect everyone because nobody is going to run a sincere kernel fork.

[1]https://social.vivaldi.net/@Vivaldi/112633927397201824

If they take out options, then you might have to maintain a fork or write a plugin to keep them.

And the time and effort it takes to maintian a project.

The vast majority of people can just benefit from the time and effort that someone felt was worth spending to scratch their own itch.

You're drifting from your original argument. Taking away features usually does make it harder for power users.

I don't think I am. Free Software does not suffer from the same authoritative restrictions imposed by proprietary software. If people don't like features being removed, someone will package the software without the feature removed, and everyone who cares about the missing features can just use that.

For example, people in this thread have been mentioning GNOME as software that has been removing features to the detriment of technically inclined people who want those features. But MATE exists, and I don't have to maintain it. Because someone else felt was worth spending to scratch their own itch.

Yeah, I think I agree with you after all. As long as it's open source, it's okay.

Gnome has sacrificed a lot of control.

i3wm and sway haven't :-).

My point being that it's okay for some projects to sacrifice control, as long as others don't. I can't tell Ubuntu how they should make their distro; what I can do is choose Gentoo (or anything in between).

Gnome can do whatever they like with their own project, but fragmentation is the biggest problem with Linux.