Another user/developer banned from GNOME's bugzilla without any warning

"In fact, it's one of the things that keep me from trying out stuff like Linux for real."

If you're even remotely involved in technology as a profession, this is a deficiency in your skillset. Linux now runs much of the world and isn't really a novelty.

"If a question like 'which audio driver do i best install?' can only be answered by reading through a multi-year flamewar, why would I bother?"

Unless you have specialist needs it's not really a question that should pop up any more, your distro of choice ought to make that decision for you.

"Still, to me, 'end-user FOSS' and 'hate and anger' are somehow symbolically linked."

Kinda. This is a bit different as it's not a war over "A or B" but the direction A is taking.

The problem, particularly with Gnome at present, is that the direction it's taking is not appreciated by most existing users. It's compounded by the fact that a lot of people liked Gnome 2, and the Gnome team basically canned that at short notice. Distributions then started to roll out Gnome 3 and remove Gnome 2. Gnome 3 forces them to work differently and takes away a lot of choice. So users were annoyed, the desktop environment they liked seemed to be being taken away from them and the new one seemed to be making a lot of stuff worse.

From the developers' perspective (as far as I can tell) the thought was basically that Gnome 2 was finished, stable, unexciting and old fashioned. A drive took place to create a new, modern desktop with a consistent experience. Logically then, this would bring new users to Linux. Some resistance from techies was to be expected, people don't like change, but they'll thank us for it in the end.

I'm not 100% sure why the distros ditched Gnome 2 quite so fast, but the announcement of support and development basically being dropped didn't help. The Gnome team also seem to have gone out of their way to make sure that the two could not easily reside on the same system.

Anyway, these three things in confluence make people feel like the Gnome team have taken something from them (not really true) and the Gnome team think that naysayers are all entitled and change resistant (also not really true). So it's no wonder it's a rather heated area.

If you want to watch FOSS at its constructive best I recommend the debian mailing lists. You'll still find disagreement on there, but you'll also see people helping each other and getting stuff done.

I think part of the reason for your perception is probably that FOSS is done far more out in the open than something like MS Windows, and in a far less hierarchical way, so there's nobody to pull rank or to hush things up. Linus may well be in charge of the kernel, but only has a limited say over the user space (for example).

(This has become quite a bit longer than it was meant to be!)

Also, I'd be interested to know if you think the vitriol between FOSS advocates is any worse than, say, all the Mac/Windows shouting matches you see all over the net? Or Ps3/Xbox weenies? (BTW if you really want to see FOSS vitriol go observe a GPL vs BSD license freedom debate!)

I think people on the net just like to argue. I know I do. Free/Open software is developed out in the open through mass collaboration, which gives so much wonderful, flamey opportunity.

Ah all I have read is the comments and the post. Based on that he did not come off that way to me. Though there is always more to stories.

The interaction escalated, but you were as much to blame for that as well. The problem is the ban hammer. An independent judge would either ban you both or neither. This is supposed to be a profesionally run project, not scriptkiddies in dome irc chatroom acting tough.

And i second the other remark. You wouldnt dare behave like this in public. Trying to get somebody removed from a conference for an opinion you do not agree with, nor are willing to discuss.

And lets be honest. The gnome bugzilla ban list, is likely bigger than the launchpad ban list, eventhough you guys have much less contributors. You guys are running a clubhouse with the self esteem of 13 year old boys. The highest standards for others, the lowest for yourself.

All the gnome hate can be summed up in one simple question: when are you guys going to behave profesionally. Be the better party in conflicts. Show some patience. Show some understanding for the relationship people have with your product, and just in general "play nice".

Because between the conflicts with canonical, kde, users, contributors .. The one constant is "gnome devs dont play nice". And its 99% of communication. Tone of voice, and socially handicapped individuals with little empathy and ban hammers.

Well, end-user support is hard, there's no way around it.

KDE has encountered its share of flamewars and even banned developers as well, though we normally seem to default to near the opposite end of the spectrum where we string a problem along and let it fester until finally someone will make the decision to utilize le banhammer. This has negative effects on our developer pool.

After the last major crisis a couple of years ago we formed a "Community Working Group", the team behind which seems to have done a good job of helping resolve issues behind-the-scenes before they become HN and /. headlines.

But to answer your question it has nothing to do with FOSS in particular, and everything to do with customer support. I used to work retail and that was way worse, at least here I can add someone to my killfile.

Whatever happened outside bugzilla should have stayed outside bugzilla. In GNOME's bugzilla I always provided value, and to ban me because of a couple of comments that have nothing wrong is overkill.

Do you think it would be fair if a judge ordered jail time because you didn't clean the dishes? No. Domestic issues are domestic issues, and criminal issues are criminal issues.

But good riddance, I'm better served helping projects that don't ban a person just because (s)he has a different opinion. Like Linux, and Git.