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Dear Open Source Project Leader: Quit Being A Jerk

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Re: Dear Open Source Project Leader: Quit Being A Jerk

#21

Post by Zelphyr »

Based on all the "I don't know what you're talking about. I've never seen this." comments I think the author should clarify that its not just the OS project leaders who are guilty of this. The smugness of core developers, and even contributors is worthy of a South Park episode.

If you're a young developer, or seasoned for that matter, and the urge to put down the work of someone else tugs at you, consider this;

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Steve Bourne, inventor of the Bourne Shell (as in, /bin/sh on every Unix system ever). Here is a guy who was literally sitting next to the guys who invented Unix WHILE THEY INVENTED IT. And all this time later he's surprisingly humble, friendly, and genuinely interested in what other, younger developers are doing.

If a guy who has earned the right to be smug several times over treats people with respect, what right do we have to do otherwise?

Re: Dear Open Source Project Leader: Quit Being A Jerk

#22

Post by [deleted] »

steele wrote: post #14
debacle wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When in society did "Look at what this jerk is doing." become something unwarranted? If people are acting like assholes, they deserved to be called out.

Singling out individuals/incidents would support the author's epistemic authority but would undermine their moral authority on the topic

[deleted]

Re: Dear Open Source Project Leader: Quit Being A Jerk

#23

Post by steele »

debacle wrote: post #19
steele wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singling out individuals/incidents would support the author's epistemic authority but would undermine their moral authority on the topic

That's not how the real world works.

What about my reply is contrary to "how the real world works"? I'm fairly confident that if this article had a link to tangible occurrences two things will occur in "the real world": 1) readers will react to those particular incidents 2) the author of the article will be called a hypocrite

Re: Dear Open Source Project Leader: Quit Being A Jerk

#24

Post by mion »

Karunamon wrote: post #13
mion wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not talking about lowering the bar to entry, he's just saying you don't need to humiliate others when they are just trying to help you. You could at least dismiss them in a friendly/neutral way. "Sorry, can't accept this: check out procedure X in the docs."

Hence the "sympathize" part, but then again, I also sympathize with people who are human and eventually want to start inflicting bodily harm on people who can't be arsed to read the FAQ before A'ing the same Q again. Part of the "bar to entry" is that mindset. You don't get a pat on the back and warm encouragement for submitting crap code. You get told your code is crap with the expectation you'll improve before wast…

I know it can be a pain in the ass when people ask you the same (stupid) thing over and over again, but still, IMHO a "leader" of any kind should never bash his "followers". Or he'll end up losing them.

with the expectation you'll improve before wasting the reviewer's time again When you insult people and act like a jerk I don't think you want them to come back ever again.

Re: Dear Open Source Project Leader: Quit Being A Jerk

#25

Post by carlisle_ »

I have to wonder how many people see Linus Torvald's behavior and think what he does is OK. Linus walks a VERY fine line, and his insults and demeaning comments are usually directed at people who "know better."

I have had a few drinks so it's hard to properly articulate what I mean, but maybe somebody else knows what I'm talking about.

Re: Dear Open Source Project Leader: Quit Being A Jerk

#26

Post by TillE »

cloverich wrote: post #20
tinco wrote: post #9

I've never seen an opensource leader make fun of an honest attempt at contribution. What I have seen is a lot of ignoring and rejecting attempts. Miguel de Icaza had a blog post on this I think. The problem with large opensource projects is that they have a lot to do, and simply don't have time to thoroughly follow up on all the small contributions that are ridden with naieve errors and plain formatting issues. Not t…

> Yes it can hurt if your contribution is coldly cast aside, and yes it would be much better if they warmly took you in and taught you in their ways, but if the OSS project leaders don't keep up the constant stream of contributions, improving the project all the time the project will die and all work will have been in vain. Perhaps I'm being naive, but doesn't fostering relationships with contributors promote more co…

That's certainly Gina Trapani's philosophy with ThinkUp, and it seems fairly successful.

http://smarterware.org/7819/my-codeconf-talk-your-community-...

Re: Dear Open Source Project Leader: Quit Being A Jerk

#27

Post by benmccann »

cloverich wrote: post #20
tinco wrote: post #9

I've never seen an opensource leader make fun of an honest attempt at contribution. What I have seen is a lot of ignoring and rejecting attempts. Miguel de Icaza had a blog post on this I think. The problem with large opensource projects is that they have a lot to do, and simply don't have time to thoroughly follow up on all the small contributions that are ridden with naieve errors and plain formatting issues. Not t…

> Yes it can hurt if your contribution is coldly cast aside, and yes it would be much better if they warmly took you in and taught you in their ways, but if the OSS project leaders don't keep up the constant stream of contributions, improving the project all the time the project will die and all work will have been in vain. Perhaps I'm being naive, but doesn't fostering relationships with contributors promote more co…

More contributors means more work for the project maintainers since it's more code they have to review, discuss, and commit. Very often the maintainers don't care about bug fixes or enhancements if it's not for something that's impacting their work.

Re: Dear Open Source Project Leader: Quit Being A Jerk

#28

Post by pbhjpbhj »

debacle wrote: post #11
steele wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anonymous examples would help make the point, but outright pointers to the behavior described is not a not too distant cousin of "hah check out this jerk"

When in society did "Look at what this jerk is doing." become something unwarranted? If people are acting like assholes, they deserved to be called out.

>When in society did "Look at what this jerk is doing." become something unwarranted? //

The point is here that it's assumed that the people making the pull request are attempting to make an honest contribution and the response they're getting is "look at what this jerk is doing".

I don't think it's possible to give real life examples without making it possible to find the people involved. Clearly the author isn't wanting to publicly chastise particular leaders; nor would they it seems want to draw attention to particular code that wasn't adopted and led to [over-harsh] dismissal of the contributor's effort.

Re: Dear Open Source Project Leader: Quit Being A Jerk

#29

Post by Karunamon »

shadowfiend wrote: post #18
Karunamon wrote: post #4

A part of the hacker mindset ("hacker" as used in the jargon file, and in this site's title) is intolerance of stupidity. Ignorance is one thing, that can be learned away. Stupidity is wasting developer's time by asking questions that are addressed in the documentation or that can be instantly solved with five minutes on Google, or submitting pull requests that go against a published style guide, are plainly wrong or…

There is literally nothing that you gain from being derisive that you can't also gain from being polite. And the tone you set for your community is vastly different. Derision of stupidity is probably one of the worst characteristics of hacker culture, because “stupidity” tends to be shorthand for “disagreement with my point of view”. I have trouble making a cogent argument around the derision of stupidity because der…

>Derision of stupidity is probably one of the worst characteristics of hacker culture, because “stupidity” tends to be shorthand for “disagreement with my point of view”.

Then it's not stupidity. That's not what this article (at least that I can see), or my post, was talking about. I was referring specifically to failure to RTFM as the big one, with a side order of bad commits and pull requests.

Ask any tech support monkey at the end of their day what they think about the average person. Then remember that this person is getting paid to do it. How do you think someone who rolls a project as a labor of love feels?

And anyways, if you have an open source project, and it's set up in such a way that commits have to be approved by one person or a group of people, then that one person or group of people are the only people who's point of view matters, at least when it comes to that code in that project. Don't like it? That's what forking is for.

>Derision and bullying are indistinguishable from each other

Disagree. Derision is a society's way of pointing out that you did something you shouldn't have. I have absolutely no problem with mocking stupidity. Stupidity is evil and everything wrong with the world, and should be mocked and driven out mercilessly at every opportunity.

And you'll forgive me for thinking that pointing at a silly pull request and saying "wat" isn't even on the same ballpark as "bullying".

>What does blithely ignore mean?

Okay, as an example: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Introduction

A well defined process and a very good guide to what you should do if you want to help. Ignore means just that, "ignore". If you got a pull request into that system, then you obviously got ahold of that information some way.

>I will posit that anyone who is trying to contribute to your project is doing you a kindness.

But if you're wasting people's time, then that effort is wasted, and having the opposite effect at worst. That time spent dealing with your question which is answered in the docs or telling you why your pull request isn't going to be committed could have been better spent advancing the project. Time is valuable.

Re: Dear Open Source Project Leader: Quit Being A Jerk

#30

Post by mion »

benmccann wrote: post #27
cloverich wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes it can hurt if your contribution is coldly cast aside, and yes it would be much better if they warmly took you in and taught you in their ways, but if the OSS project leaders don't keep up the constant stream of contributions, improving the project all the time the project will die and all work will have been in vain. Perhaps I'm being naive, but doesn't fostering relationships with contributors promote more co…

More contributors means more work for the project maintainers since it's more code they have to review, discuss, and commit. Very often the maintainers don't care about bug fixes or enhancements if it's not for something that's impacting their work.

How can bug fixes and enhancements not impact their work?
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