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Toxicity in Open Source Discussions

tylercipriani.com

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Re: Toxicity in Open Source Discussions

#41

Post by DiggyJohnson »

jollofricepeas wrote: post #39
personjerry wrote: post #4

One thing I learned from playing video games is that online, you can just ignore and block anyone. Seriously, everything is detached. What's the difference between a stranger on the internet yelling at you versus a crazy homeless man in San Francisco yelling at you? Absolutely none, their thoughts affect in you in 0 ways, feel free to ignore and carry on with your day. Edit, because a lot of replies are getting off-t…

Let’s just be honest. I won’t use the “U-word” because it usually sets HN on fire everytime it’s used. BUT …the conditions are such that maintainers should bargain collectively. THE CONDITIONS: - entitled people screaming at you to do stuff. - corporations taking advantage of you. - being paid very little.

How on Earth could open source maintainers possibly unionize. What am I missing that makes your suggestion remotely feasible or value adding? Am I a scab if I fork a union FOSS project?

Re: Toxicity in Open Source Discussions

#42

Post by Gigachad »

johnny22 wrote: post #37
Gigachad wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never interact online with your real name. The internet is not a real place. Block the people who are annoying and get on with doing what you enjoy. They can try to cancel your online name all they want. It doesn't matter.

Many (if not most) contribute to FOSS projects under their real names, and often have their email addresses (even if maybe project specific), so they can bother you off list in various ways. This happens in FOSS projects even to this day. There's this one dude who is banned from a popular linux distro mailing list, so he reads the public archives and emails the people he has disagreements with to yell at them. Nobody…

If you are interacting with FOSS as part of your job then this is unavoidable. But if you just want to contribute and share some stuff, it's better to keep it separate. Don't let some online drama affect your source of income.

Re: Toxicity in Open Source Discussions

#43

Post by dnissley »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #16
personjerry wrote: post #4

One thing I learned from playing video games is that online, you can just ignore and block anyone. Seriously, everything is detached. What's the difference between a stranger on the internet yelling at you versus a crazy homeless man in San Francisco yelling at you? Absolutely none, their thoughts affect in you in 0 ways, feel free to ignore and carry on with your day. Edit, because a lot of replies are getting off-t…

It is interesting to see the differences in how people handle negativity online. Some people have no problem ignoring negativity and moving on. Others get satisfaction in hitting the block button. Others can't let it go and will eventually let negativity consume them and burn them out. Learning how to shrug it off is imperative for anyone who wants to post something online. If you can't ignore negative comments and m…

> Some people have no problem ignoring negativity and moving on. Others get satisfaction in hitting the block button.

Not sure if you were trying to set up this dichotomy, but there's a middle ground here where you recognize yourself as someone who has trouble letting it go and can use the block button to help you ignore and move on without feeling perversely satisfied by it.

Re: Toxicity in Open Source Discussions

#44

Post by dnissley »

Gigachad wrote: post #27
didgetmaster wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just ignoring someone, IRL or online can have its consequences. The homeless guy can attack you physically. The online troll can try to cancel you digitally. If the last few years have taught us anything, it is that no one is safe from abusive behavior by people who feel entitled to something you have (money, time, etc.) and seem to have nothing better to do than go after you for the slightest thing. Online they can…

Never interact online with your real name. The internet is not a real place. Block the people who are annoying and get on with doing what you enjoy. They can try to cancel your online name all they want. It doesn't matter.

I disagree with never using your real name. The internet is a real place. Block liberally, absolutely. Use anon accounts liberally as well.

Re: Toxicity in Open Source Discussions

#45

Post by AmericanChopper »

doix wrote: post #14
AmericanChopper wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never excuse this sort of behaviour, but if you want to understand the corporate dynamic with open source, then you need to dig a little deeper than this imo: > the person commenting is often actually in a pretty crappy situation because of their employer has a shitty understanding that open source is about participating, not consuming. The most frustrating thing about using open source in a corporate environ…

> So far, this expectation has always held true, even with the more professional operations like Red Hat This is different from my experience, this happened around 9 years ago, so I can't even remember the software. But there was some bug that was fixed in a later version of some software. The version in the redhat repo was severely out of date (and we were stuck on an old version of redhat anyway). I tried to get th…

All of my recent interactions with Red Hat have been bad. Recently I had to fire them of a project they were supporting because they only wanted to use Red Hat certified container images, the image they were trying to deploy was configured to run as root for absolutely no reason, they refused to fix the image, and they refused to use a non-Red Hat image.

My second most recent interaction with Red Hat involves them sending an engineer to perform an Ansible Tower upgrade, only to find out the engineer they sent had no idea what he was doing, so we ended up teaching him how to upgrade Ansible Tower safely.

However, after thinking about it, I don’t think they properly illustrate the problem I’m talking about. Red Had incompetence is the sort of incompetence I’d expect from certain big enterprise vendors. They don’t have the “check your entitlement” attitude. They have the “we don’t care about you at all” sort of attitude that I would expect from say Oracle or Broadcom.

In my experience at least…

Re: Toxicity in Open Source Discussions

#46

Post by kasajian »

rudeness is unacceptable, but there's also the belief that if someone is working on open-source, then any type of a complaint about the software is unwarranted. That actually itself is entitlement. No matter if open or closed source, sometimes customers are going to complain.

Re: Toxicity in Open Source Discussions

#47

Post by pella »

relevant: https://polite.technology/preview

polite.technology is a free text under the CC0 license originally penned by Tom MacWright

"This is a book about the social interactions and situations that are the underpinnings of the open source world. It's about how humans collaboratively create software.

This isn't a programming handbook or a guide to using GitHub. If that's what you're interested in, there are links in the bibliography to great resources.

Specifically this is about creating open source software. Open source software, loosely defined, is software that is free to share. Typically, open source software is released under a license that reverse-engineers copyright in order to protect this right to share, instead of doing copyright's traditional work of restricting sharing.

The ramifications of this tweak to copyright are tremendous. Open source software doesn't have to be a closely-guarded secret: instead, it's usually created in public spaces, shared widely, and distributed for free. Since everyone can read the source code and contribute changes back, software projects can become collaborative projects between multiple companies, private individuals, foundations, and even governments, all sharing in the work of creating software and the benefit of having it.

The successes of open source software have been world-changing: the Linux operating system runs the majority of the Internet, the git version control system is the basis for GitHub, and thousands of other pieces of open source software make everyday life possible. On a personal level, open source software and the systems of collaboration it comes with have enabled people to work remotely, make friends, and learn about parts of systems that were previously the exclusive domain of experts.

But that's the ideal. The everyday work of creating things is difficult and fraught - filled with the same social difficulties as any other job, along with unusual new challenges. How do communities scale when they contain differing opinions and styles? How do decisions get made without formal power structures - or does decision-making require the creation of such structures? What about the way that these projects interact with companies who wield the power of commerce, users who have the power of speech, and developers who may have more technical skill than collaborative ability? ... "

read more --> https://polite.technology/preview

Re: Toxicity in Open Source Discussions

#48

Post by [deleted] »

personjerry wrote: post #4

One thing I learned from playing video games is that online, you can just ignore and block anyone. Seriously, everything is detached. What's the difference between a stranger on the internet yelling at you versus a crazy homeless man in San Francisco yelling at you? Absolutely none, their thoughts affect in you in 0 ways, feel free to ignore and carry on with your day. Edit, because a lot of replies are getting off-t…

[deleted]

Re: Toxicity in Open Source Discussions

#49

Post by fmajid »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #45
doix wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So far, this expectation has always held true, even with the more professional operations like Red Hat This is different from my experience, this happened around 9 years ago, so I can't even remember the software. But there was some bug that was fixed in a later version of some software. The version in the redhat repo was severely out of date (and we were stuck on an old version of redhat anyway). I tried to get th…

All of my recent interactions with Red Hat have been bad. Recently I had to fire them of a project they were supporting because they only wanted to use Red Hat certified container images, the image they were trying to deploy was configured to run as root for absolutely no reason, they refused to fix the image, and they refused to use a non-Red Hat image. My second most recent interaction with Red Hat involves them se…

Or IBM, which they now are.

Re: Toxicity in Open Source Discussions

#50

Post by AmericanChopper »

fmajid wrote: post #49
AmericanChopper wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of my recent interactions with Red Hat have been bad. Recently I had to fire them of a project they were supporting because they only wanted to use Red Hat certified container images, the image they were trying to deploy was configured to run as root for absolutely no reason, they refused to fix the image, and they refused to use a non-Red Hat image. My second most recent interaction with Red Hat involves them se…

Or IBM, which they now are.

Yeah I keep forgetting about that…
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