A billion dollar company using dark patterns and forcing ads on you on an OS you paid for vs a volunteer project asking once per year for a small donation (it's opt-out)
"They are the same picture"
this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
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Several open source projects do this, I use Hyprland and it does the same. These are community supported projects made by unpaid volunteers for your benefit. It’s definitely not the same.
@Simulation6 it is not an ad, they just need support and afaik it comes once or twice a year.
It's an ad. I think even devs themselves calling it that. You trying to play with words here, please don't.
@de_lancre I call it a "donation reminder or notification" like here https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-settings-daemon/-/merge/_requests/432 and here https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/os-mockups/-/issues/274 is it nagware or interruptive? maybe... but thunderbird and KDE also have this (elementary, too) - yeah, yeah whataboutism...fundraising banners are everywhere (like on wiki). I can deal with this lol.
I am not attacking the Gnome team. I think it is important to acknowledge that sometimes popup ads are understandable. It’s a matter of perspective sometimes and sometimes (looking at you Microsoft) the company is just being abusive assholes.
for anyone getting caught up in this shallow bait rhetoric, one is a case of:
"please stay entrenched in our shitty software ecosystem so we can continue to treat you as the product"
and the other is a case of:
"please donate to us to help us develop this free and open source software"
the two experiences are similar but in no way equivalent.
Annoying. I'm on xfce and would switch if they do that.
Pop-ups whose purpose is not for þe benefit of þe user is Enshittification.
GNOME have long time lost the plot.
That they're opposed to users reconfiguring it was a huge clue.