It is fine not to like a piece of free software
neilzone.co.uk
It is fine not to like a piece of free software
1–10 of 35 posts
Re: It is fine not to like a piece of free software
#2This guy is correct, of course. But this comes off to me a bit like "how is cyber bullying real? Like just close your eyes lmao".
Yes, everyone is free to do and not do all those things. I assume TFA is writing this due to, yknow, all the various complainings about large (and or small-but-popular) OSS projects being inundated by grumblings and the devs feeling burned out and lashing out in response etc.
I guess my main point is that yeah everyone is free to both grumble and also close their eyes and not look at the screen... but I think what they mean is that we should all be more empathetic in our interactions.
Users should share or not share their concerns, but be empathetic that you're discussing someone's passion or art.
And developers should publish or not publish their code, but empathize that other people will potentially use it and might ask for things or point out perceived issues. You're not hanging up art, people are probably gonna try to use this thing. And you don't owe them anything, but understand people will try to use it if it fits their need.
I know, I know, a tale as old as time "people need to be nicer and more human on the internet." But here we are, and it's still true.
Re: It is fine not to like a piece of free software
#3This guy is correct, of course. But this comes off to me a bit like "how is cyber bullying real? Like just close your eyes lmao". Yes, everyone is free to do and not do all those things. I assume TFA is writing this due to, yknow, all the various complainings about large (and or small-but-popular) OSS projects being inundated by grumblings and the devs feeling burned out and lashing out in response etc. I guess my ma…
I heard a thought recently that went something along the lines of "if any outcome requires 'everyone to just X' then it is not a realistic outcome because everyone will not just X"
I've started to apply this line of reasoning to things like this. "If everyone would just be nicer" sounds great, but we can't expect it to happen.
It sounds defeatist but I think it can also be used to try and reframe things to find real possible solutions instead of wishful solutions
For example: "We know that everyone will not just spontaneously start being kinder. Is there a way we can incentivize people to be kinder when using our platform?"
Yes you can argue that people should just be kind, that we should not have to go out of our way incentivize good behaviour, but unfortunately everyone will not just, so we do have to give them a reason to
Edit: to your "how is cyberbullying real" comment, this sort of thing is an observation that we cannot control other people, we cannot expect them to just, but we can control our own reactions to things.
It's a good thing imo to point out to people that they do not have to take the ire of a random internet user very seriously
Edit2 of course we should not expect people to just stop taking the ire of random internet users seriously either ...
Re: It is fine not to like a piece of free software
#4This guy is correct, of course. But this comes off to me a bit like "how is cyber bullying real? Like just close your eyes lmao". Yes, everyone is free to do and not do all those things. I assume TFA is writing this due to, yknow, all the various complainings about large (and or small-but-popular) OSS projects being inundated by grumblings and the devs feeling burned out and lashing out in response etc. I guess my ma…
It would help to abandon platforms that encourage harassment. Or if such platforms actually bothered to fix their design. It doesn't matter if the encouragement is purposeful or by accident.
Have you noticed that those discussions weren't common before people adopted GitHub?
Re: It is fine not to like a piece of free software
#5This guy is correct, of course. But this comes off to me a bit like "how is cyber bullying real? Like just close your eyes lmao". Yes, everyone is free to do and not do all those things. I assume TFA is writing this due to, yknow, all the various complainings about large (and or small-but-popular) OSS projects being inundated by grumblings and the devs feeling burned out and lashing out in response etc. I guess my ma…
> "how is cyber bullying real? Like just close your eyes lmao".
I guess I read this with a widely different angle of view.
I read it more like "it's fine to disagree with feedback", or "it's fine not to contribute 'back'", and you shouldn't feel guilty about this, or think people are guilty when they do these things.
I think having those things in mind can help feel better and have better communication.
About bullying, the author actually explicitly says that it's not okay:
> A user has the freedom to grumble about the software, or how some facet of the software means that they are not going to use the software. (Well, freedom within the constraints of the rules of whatever system they are using to document that grumble; if they’re doing so on someone else’s computer, whoever runs that computer has the freedom not to permit that grumble…). And, IMHO, the expectation that they should be free to do so without harassment.
Re: It is fine not to like a piece of free software
#6This guy is correct, of course. But this comes off to me a bit like "how is cyber bullying real? Like just close your eyes lmao". Yes, everyone is free to do and not do all those things. I assume TFA is writing this due to, yknow, all the various complainings about large (and or small-but-popular) OSS projects being inundated by grumblings and the devs feeling burned out and lashing out in response etc. I guess my ma…
It would help to abandon platforms that encourage harassment. Or if such platforms actually bothered to fix their design. It doesn't matter if the encouragement is purposeful or by accident. Have you noticed that those discussions weren't common before people adopted GitHub?
They were common, just not as visible. If you knew which mailing lists to be on, you saw all the same stuff.
Re: It is fine not to like a piece of free software
#7This guy is correct, of course. But this comes off to me a bit like "how is cyber bullying real? Like just close your eyes lmao". Yes, everyone is free to do and not do all those things. I assume TFA is writing this due to, yknow, all the various complainings about large (and or small-but-popular) OSS projects being inundated by grumblings and the devs feeling burned out and lashing out in response etc. I guess my ma…
I heard a thought recently that went something along the lines of "if any outcome requires 'everyone to just X' then it is not a realistic outcome because everyone will not just X" I've started to apply this line of reasoning to things like this. "If everyone would just be nicer" sounds great, but we can't expect it to happen. It sounds defeatist but I think it can also be used to try and reframe things to find real…
The “everyone will not just X” issue is, I think, less of an obstacle when you don’t need the “everyone” part.
If “Y% of people just did X, then things would be Y% • Z amount better” is a much better plan than “if everyone just did X, then the problem would be solved.” .
Some proportion of people are likely to be convinced by an argument that they should do something because it would make things better if they did.
You can’t practically expect to convince everyone, nor even almost everyone, to change their behavior with such an argument/plea.
But, if a marginal change in how many people do X would produce a marginal change in goodness of outcome, it can be effective to make such an argument/plea.
I claim that “how kind people are” is a situation where marginal improvements in what fraction of people are at least V kind, produces a commensurate improvement in outcomes.
That’s not to say that improving incentives wouldn’t also be good.
Re: It is fine not to like a piece of free software
#8This guy is correct, of course. But this comes off to me a bit like "how is cyber bullying real? Like just close your eyes lmao". Yes, everyone is free to do and not do all those things. I assume TFA is writing this due to, yknow, all the various complainings about large (and or small-but-popular) OSS projects being inundated by grumblings and the devs feeling burned out and lashing out in response etc. I guess my ma…
It would help to abandon platforms that encourage harassment. Or if such platforms actually bothered to fix their design. It doesn't matter if the encouragement is purposeful or by accident. Have you noticed that those discussions weren't common before people adopted GitHub?
[deleted]
Re: It is fine not to like a piece of free software
#9What I think is unfortunate is where projects decide to write off user feedback only because the user in question hasn't contributed anything other than that feedback. Even if quite a lot of users are saying the same thing.
It is, of course, their right. I just think it's unfortunate, especially when "users" and "potential developers" doesn't have a very big overlap.
Re: It is fine not to like a piece of free software
#10The rotten tomatoes of open source is the sharevalue of the company providing a paid alternative.
https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/adsk
Here is the usability rating of blender visualized as history.