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"Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

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Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#321

Post by artagnon »

mike_hearn wrote: post #54
nanoscopic wrote: post #32

I think this is an important point for people to accept, acknowledge, and keep in mind as a reason to strive harder to be open and accepting to people, especially those you don't agree with. I got a bunch of attacks from members of the open source community, due to developing my XML parser. ( Grant McLean and others ) I also got attacked by Poul-Henning Kamp, and then threatened that he would "shame" me for pointing…

The internet in general has problems with this, but I suspect it's much worse in the open source world where unmoderated forums are standard. If you look at the moderation tools available in something like mailman, they're very poor. It's just not been a priority for technical discussion forums at all. And the social convention is to leave forums largely unmoderated anyway, so it's easy to get into a downward spiral…

You make it sound like moderated development is the best style; if you preselect people through a standardized interview process (like a software firm), or prune messages based on some algorithmic filter, you trade off diversity. In the extreme case, the community can be caught up circle-jerking on the same set of ideas.

The key idea in an open community is organic moderation. The currently influential people in the community "bless" the threads with interesting ideas/ patches; they decide how much deviation from "civil" behavior they can put up with. In a good community, attention-seeking behavior would be condemned by the influential people in the community. The health of the community depends a lot on the initial contributors.

It's true that this kind of model scares of a lot of contributors, but it also attracts many others who would have been eliminated in a pre-selection.

The main takeaway from Lennart's post is that more community building work is required: they don't automatically become good communities.

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#322

Post by Touche »

Some people are attributing this phenomenon to the internet, but I don't think that's accurate. I studied Russian history in college and the writings of various members of the communist intelligentsia had the same vitriol. Particularly the writings between Lenin and Karl Kautsky. My professors called it "maximalism", a term that hasn't caught on in general use. It's meaning is the belief that anyone that disagrees with you even in small ways, disagrees with you fully. I think this attitude is what occurs in OS communities, where people who generally agree find themselves in angry exchanges.

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#323

Post by kstrauser »

fareesh wrote: post #214

Can someone here clue me in about why mailing lists still appear to be the de-facto platform for communication for a lot of open source projects - particularly those that are centered around kernel development and other low level "stuff"?

Because the alternative is web forum software, none of which is as good at thread management ("alert me to replies to this thread", "hide this thread", "beep when Jane Smith posts") as a good email client. Also, email is ubiquitous: you can follow and participate in conversations from a phone as easily as a desktop. Finally, you only have to learn one email client, and can then use those skills on every mailing list you join. That's in contrast with "project Foo uses SomeBoard v1.3 and has this new feature, but project Bar uses SomeBoard v1.1 and doesn't have it yet. Project Baz uses OtherBoard 0.6 which has this one cool thing but lacks have the features of SomeBoard."

Remember, this is the same group of people that gets passionately whipped up about text editors. Can you imagine them not having strong opinions about forum interfaces? Defaulting to good old email and letting everyone use their interface of choice is probably the only practical way to get everyone to participate.

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#324

Post by Diederich »

Kalium wrote: post #310
Diederich wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with that. "It upsets and angers me that you're continuing to make the same mistakes over and over again." vs. 'abortion', etc. Both examples communicate emotional content. Only one of them is verbal abuse.

The old writers' saw runs "Show, don't tell". It speaks to effective communication. It applies here. Consider which is more effective in person - the phrase "I am angry" uttered in a calm tone of voice or profanity and insults in an angry tone of voice. One of those states anger. The other communicates anger.

Kalium, you bring up the strongest point in favor of defending and using verbally abusive language.

I've been through military basic training, and such language is routinely used because it is quite effective at communicating error by breaking down mental resistance and barriers to correction.

In that case, the potential for emotional harm is outweighed by the net reduction in the probability for physical harm on the battlefield if such lessons aren't learned absolutely.

Make no mistake: the kind of language Linus (and so many others in our community) uses can and does cause emotional harm, primarily to people who might be called 'thin skinned'. This is discriminatory against some personality types.

In the balance between using verbally abusive language to more effectively communicate error and not doing that, I believe there's no question: verbal abuse is wrong, and should be avoided, and not defended. There are other ways to accomplish the same thing, without all of the toxic side effects.

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#325

Post by vezzy-fnord »

Someone1234 wrote: post #309
crististm wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. About ten years ago, there was a saying on Gentoo site saying that it is a bug if you can't customize your gentoo system the way you want it. Personal attacks are not OK, but he should keep his opinion on what _my_ machine should do for himself. For what it is worth, his systemd is a bug.

> but he should keep his opinion on what _my_ machine should do for himself Releasing free software and what you accuse him of are entirely different things. Frankly I'd like to understand how you even equate someone releasing software which you aren't even forced to use, to essentially ramming his opinions of how YOUR machine should run down your throat. The anti-systemd people really aren't coming across at all wel…

Unfortunately, things aren't as simple as you'd like them to be.

The systemd developers have made many political decisions that ended up putting systemd in a position that makes it difficult to avoid. The prime move often cited is the engulfment of udev inside the systemd codebase and entangling it with systemd's shared files (formerly belonging to libsystemd-shared, not it's just a big libsystemd blob), and later rewriting the build system so that it was harder (though not impossible) to make udev-only builds. This and many other decisions prompted the creation of eudev. Of course, now they're converting the transport layer from Netlink to sd-bus, thus intending on making udev systemd-only, and taunting Gentoo users along the way.

Furthermore, various distribution maintainers (though particularly Debian and Arch) are placing various components that optionally use systemd libraries, or provide systemd units, as being dependent on systemd. You can see this with Arch and lighttpd.

Further, GNOME's adoption of systemd libraries was negotiated by Lennart as far back as 2011. Though it would have likely occurred anyway, he was an active instigator in the ordeal (https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2011-May/...), and a couple of years later was arguing on his G+ feed that with systemd-logind being unportable and inseparable, that this should be a reason for Debian to adopt it. He chose to do this rather than continue ConsoleKit or make logind an independent daemon. Currently, more is being consolidated: Avahi is now becoming systemd-resolved, and kmscon is becoming systemd-consoled. Among other examples.

But it's not just the GNOME Shell, some core Desktop Linux applications now depend on systemd libraries, as well. upower and udisks2 come to mind. The former even caused quite a stir in Gentoo circles when a regular upower update was suddenly pulling in the entire systemd stack.

The whole point of systemd is to be the standard userspace middleware for a GNU/Linux system, and to be an absolute essential.

No, Lennart is not a rampaging monster, but to say that he's just some innocent bloke who's simply releasing free software, is bullshit.

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#326

Post by Diederich »

tbrownaw wrote: post #314
Diederich wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Linus (and others) choose to stay verbally abusive because there they exist in a community that both facilitates and defends that poor behaviour. There is a choice to be made. The choice stems from the basic mindset: am I fundamentally ok with verbally abusing people around me, or should I try to stop doing that? I don't know what's in Linus' mind. Perhaps he is utterly incapable of never resorting to verbal…

Random theory time: People who are harmful to the project, should be removed from the project. If you're not a company but an "open" project that can't fire people, you pretty much have to do this my making them not want to say. So if someone causes enough trouble, just pile on the verbal abuse until they get fed up and leave.

I think this is another false dichotomy. It's quite possible to efficiently limit the damage someone can cause to a project without resorting to verbal abuse.

Most simply, refuse to merge their stuff unless it has quality. You don't have to hold their hand; say: "You are making the same mistakes over and over again. Your stuff isn't going to get merged, and we're not going to spend any time explaining to you why."

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#327

Post by pyre »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #305
pyre wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand that. On the same token, I see a lot of people that seem to celebrate "bluntness" as if it is 'proof' of something (e.g. skill, 'lack of bullshit', etc). I don't think that this is right, or an opinion that should be encouraged.

Bluntness is exactly that - a costly signal of competence. http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/12/more-signaling.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/01/excess_signalin.html I wish I could find his article on incompetence as a costly signal of criminal commitment.

There are plenty of people that are blunt (or assholes) who are not skilled at anything (or who have skills that are no longer in demand).

There are plenty of people who are 'skilled' and 'blunt,' but their skillfulness is only in navigating corporate politics, and taking credit for the work of others...

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#328

Post by inclemnet »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #313
inclemnet wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But none of those ways have anything to do with open source More bad arguments! He didn't say that open source is unique. Perhaps he's simply talking about the communities he's actually involved in. > equating a concept with people I don't think you do get it. Nothing about Lennart's terminology is particularly unusual - the 'open source community' in standard parlance is a fairly well defined set of people, organi…

> Perhaps he's simply talking about the communities he's actually involved in. Then he should have said 'The communities I'm involved in are awful'. And I'd agree. I didn't realize he made PulseAudio and Systemd (or was involved in some way). I personally don't mind either project (neither have harmed my Linux experience, Pulse is convenient for my uses), and I think both get a lot of unwarranted criticism. Not least…

> Then he should have said 'The communities I'm involved in are awful

Luckily he doesn't need to, because (as above) he's obviously talking about the open source community.

> I could care less

You couldn't care less.

I really think none of your criticisms are a real problem, or that there's any real ambiguity. I won't keep replying, it doesn't seem useful.

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#329

Post by imanaccount247 »

pantalaimon wrote: post #289
imanaccount247 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That video is Phil's friend defending him by ignoring reality and saying "you are wrong because I say so". Phil started getting hate because he exploited people, ripped them off, abused them and acted like he was some sort of genius for making a game he didn't even make, which won an award that was won because his investor owns the contest and judged the entries. The hate grew to massive portions mainly because of hi…

Can you provide any examples for that?

http://www.lazygamer.net/pc-gaming/is-phil-fish-about-to-be-...

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#330

Post by mst »

nanoscopic wrote: post #261
mst wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, the registered list had been on its way out for quite a while by the time that happened; by the point of the discussion, I was only monitoring registrations because I cared about helping people find better names rather than because I thought the final registration click was relevant in and of itself. You were, and are, totally welcome to upload the module anyway (and in fact I'd encourage you to do so), and…

Thank you for your comment; I appreciate the acknowledgement. I do intend to do as you say and change the name properly, since basically it doesn't matter now that "registered modules" are gone. I have not done so yet simply because the framework is poorly documented ( as far as what is published ) at the moment, and I wanted to add the documentation properly when I take over a whole root namespace. Also; I am a bit…

There is not, and never has been, any enforcable means of claiming a whole root namespace; the demise of the registered modules list hasn't changed that at all.

Basically, just upload the thing, and document whether you want other people's extensions to live under the root namespace or somewhere else - e.g. DBIx::Class extensions are mostly just under DBIx::Class:: whereas Moose extensions live in MooseX:: - and a hybrid would be Catalyst, where certain types of extensions live under e.g. ::Plugin::, ::Model::, etc. and then things that don't fit in any of the usual extension namespaces go into CatalystX::

You'll find, generally, that people writing an extension to your code will respect your choices, and that any violation of them will usually be an accident and quickly resolved by filing a bug saying "hey, could you follow the policy please".

I did, honestly, mean to email you off list explaining what was likely to happen wrt the registered module list (starting a thread about it at the time on modules@ would likely have been ... unproductive).

Unfortunately, I completely forgot, a failure for which I'm hoping my responses to you today will at least partially compensate :)

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