ls output changes considered unacceptable

From: Jason A. Donenfeld Subject: ls output changes considered unacceptable Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2016 11:50:28 +0100

Hello, There are some software changes that are simple accidents resulting in bugs; folks find them, fix them, and all is well. Then there are intentional changes, which don't affect functionality, but instead change _essential aesthetics_. These are much more alarming issues, the kind of issues that get under your skin, that disrupt your relationship with the terminal, as though you suddenly woke up and all your countrymen but not you spoke with a hardly comprehensible accent. It's a shock, a disruption, a psychological chasm. And, when such a change is made in software considered "core", by a single individual unilaterally without extremely wide consultation of the larger community, it is clear that a grave an unacceptable thing has happened. The recent change to ls (commit 109b922) must be reverted immediately, a new package version released, and only after large multi-distro discussion might a similar change be made. There are, of course, benefits from having multiple output modes, with varying levels of escaping. Such options are well received. Changing the default, however, is not. The commiter's suggestion of "use option XYZ to get the old behavior back" does not appreciate nor respect the subtleties an expectations of ls output, something best looks somewhat similar on most machines, without the need for intense configuration, aliases, or global environment variables. We don't want those single quotes. We don't care about their alignment, their coloring, their triggers; we simply do not want them. There are so few people who actually want this feature, it's appalling it would be made the default. Distributions across the community are in the midst of working around this calamitous new change. There is not a single community that has a majority of users who prefer it. Every numerical method of determining desirability, whether its electoral, condorcet, majoritarian, or even meritocratic, fails to find any desire for this change. So, please, do the sane and responsible thing: revert 109b922, release a new version, and then start a community wide discussion, and see where you get. Any discussions that are currently occurring, while 109b922 is not reverted, are don't done on a legitimate basis. Thanks.

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