81–90 of 119 posts
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The "offender" could/should be more polite, but enforcing etiquette mustn't stifle progress. I don't mind the downvotes, but could you add why you disagree?
Commenting about why you should be downvoted might stifle progress (of your karma downwards.)
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I couldn't agree with that. Imagine what the landscape of software would look like without all those abrasive "bullies" that Mozilla is wringing their hands about: no Theo, no Zed, no Steve, no Richard ... hell, no Linus, for that matter. So any open-source community would be better without them, eh?
I don't know about other open source communities. Perhaps they thrive on toxic environments full of bullies. But I do know quite a bit about the Mozilla community and I'm quite certain that we are better off without him.
It's my opinion that when you call a Thunderbird developer "some simian" and when you tell them to "Die die die die" and "Seriously, screw you" and you say things like "You know, every time I see a comment from [a specific Thunderbird developer] I just want to reach out through the intertubes and cut off his damned fingers to prevent him ever writing any code..." and when you're warned in a very civil tone with a cle…
Richard Mlynarik is a hacker with a deservedly excellent reputation. And sometimes he has a sharp tongue which in context can be both enjoyable and terrifying. But here's the important part for entrepreneurs: what percentage of users of mozilla products or any product bother to submit bug reports? What Richard is doing here is investing his time into making Mozilla better. I am always amazed at the projects and compa…
What Richard is doing here is investing his time into
making Mozilla better.
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I am amazed at projects that allow toxic people to disrupt and mistreat other project members. I'm amazed when people defend bullies because they've got some kind of oldschool hacker credibility. Not having to listen to "a hacker with a deservedly excellent reputation" say he'd like to cut off your hands so you can't code any more is absolutely not a loss to the project. It's a proper and right kind of excision to re…
" I'm amazed when people defend bullies because they've got some kind of oldschool hacker credibility." I actually said nothing like this, did I? What I actually said, a) he's has a reputation as a very smart individual, and for good reason, and b) his bug report specifically was not bullying at all, but was precise, accurate, and passionate. For what it's worth though, I don't find his calling a developer to be a si…
A bug report should factually describe a problem and the steps a dev can take to reproduce them.
Your frustration is a symptom of your own unmet expectations. The problem with _any_ expectation is that (being constant) it is bound to be unmet, eventually, given that the world is in a state of continuous change. So you can either lose your cool, or understand that this is the nature of the world, adapt and move on.
The title of this post has "click bait" plastered all over it, and that single post takes the whole thing out of context. I'm sorry I fell for it.
Google _all_ his bug reports and understand in the context.
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Yes, I saw one in a link posted above. Definitely out of line. No second thoughts on that. If the ban had happened in reply to one such post, it would have been unquestioned by many.
Yeah, unfortunately for everyone he was only warned on the worst of the interactions and given a second chance. Sometimes a ban on the first offense is better. Still, a ban after a failure to heed a warning seems completely reasonable. Heck, a re-evaluation of the original interaction with the knowledge of how he behaved after the warning would have worked too. But again, the important thing isn't where the ban happe…
Banning him now makes me think the developers of Thunderbird are ego maniacs.
It's my opinion that when you call a Thunderbird developer "some simian" and when you tell them to "Die die die die" and "Seriously, screw you" and you say things like "You know, every time I see a comment from [a specific Thunderbird developer] I just want to reach out through the intertubes and cut off his damned fingers to prevent him ever writing any code..." and when you're warned in a very civil tone with a cle…
Nursing a grudge against someone for a year, banning him for a grumpy bug report, then spamming discussion threads with hand-wringing about what a toxic abusive bully he was really seems like a waste of time to me. I guess you can "coordinate" your community however you like, though.
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This, exactly. I don't know Richard but this thread has triggered my curiosity, so I've looked at a few of his bug comments and the pattern is that they are funny and strongly worded, but the strong language isn't directed at a person - it's squarely aimed at the problem.
Morendil, his comments are often very much directed at individuals and not at features or bugs. Calling a developer a "simian" and shouting "screw you" and actually saying "You know, every time I see a comment from [a specific Thunderbird developer] I just want to reach out through the intertubes and cut off his damned fingers to prevent him ever writing any code" are all direct and personal attacks that should not b…
Part of me wants to agree with you. Richard does "name names" and directly voice an opinion of another person's abilities and a judgement of their actions.
One of the comments in this HN thread reads: "Get off your high horse you fucking moron". That is abusive. Never mind that this comment is in response to someone I happen to disagree with.
On the other hand I did not find the "cutting off his fingers" comment abusive. It comes across an elaborate, possibly overwrought, way of saying "This guy is making me angry". It is OK in my book to give people feedback on how their actions are making you feel. The imagery is violent, the tone is not.
What I do find abusive is the phrase "people like you" which Richard uses in the same comment. So my considered opinion of these comments would be yes, they are somewhat abusive. But I would stop well short of "bullying".
Richard's attacks have a clear object-level target, which is not a person: he is clearly making legitimate (not necessarily true, but legitimate) claims about the TB development process - that it breaks features that worked, that the concerns of some users are being summarily dismissed, and that there is a pattern of these things happening over and over again.
Yes, the tone he uses for saying those things sometimes crosses a line. But on balance, the impression I'm taking away from this dispute is that Richard is being banned not so much for his tone, but more for saying things that are true and that the people wielding the power to censor him are unwilling to hear.
That aspect of the whole mess, the way the power asymmetry plays out, is what I suspect has people coming out in Richard's defense. People with ban buttons should usually err on the side of tolerance.
The success of open source rests on participation, and participation is a two-way street. When you open a bug reporting system, the intended message is "we care about your concerns". Marking a bug as "won't fix" sends the exact opposite message. That makes it, too, a power not to be used lightly: someone wielding that power indiscriminately can easily turn into what I'd not hesitate to call a "bully".
At some point these tensions stopped being about mere civility, and started being about the power politics of open source. At least, that's how it looks to this outside observer.