My intent was to say that a volunteer project is driven mostly by the motivation of the contributors, and that the feedback from users can be a major driver in this.

Yes. I assume the developers have strong feedback from users who do like the change. Here, though, we're hearing from users who do not like the change.

I believe that focusing on the things that can be improved is usually more beneficial to motivation than to get stuck in particular decisions that have been made (in the best of intents).

The developers have stated in no uncertain terms that they're not changing their minds.

The problem begins with the further statement that everyone who disagrees with them is simply motivated by laziness and refusal to abandon 'bad habits'. As I said before... you're dripping arbitrary dogma on my workflow. Some users are in fact unhappy about that.

Please
write a description of your typical workflow (as a whole) when making an argument. Then we can find the things that can be improved together. And hopefully someone will be motivated to pick that up.

That's how the discussion started. The response was 'no one is forcing you to use the Gimp.'

So... this discussion either continues to no avail, dies with bad blood (as more than a few participants on both sides have dispensed with any lip service to diplomacy), or we fork. I don't see a fork over this being particularly productive, unless it's only used as a temporary ballot box.

Monty