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People who own businesses should not act like assholes

blog.kamens.us

11–20 of 43 posts

Re: People who own businesses should not act like assholes

#11

To be honest, it was the author who I felt like, while perhaps not an asshole, showed a pretty intense level of oblivious immaturity. I get it, the other guy was a jerk, especially to someone who was maintaining an add-on for free. But at the point where the author responded with the "Sorry, I don't agree with that," he should have left it at that and moved on. Who cares what some rando on the internet thinks about y…

Randomly punishing "some rando on the internet" in public can be both a fun, albeit nonconstructive, recreational activity and a way to keep them in line by educating the rest.

If this blog post makes even one jerk change attitude towards open-source software (or about dealing with people in general) coming out as vindictive and hypocritical was an acceptable price to pay.

Re: People who own businesses should not act like assholes

#12

To be honest, it was the author who I felt like, while perhaps not an asshole, showed a pretty intense level of oblivious immaturity. I get it, the other guy was a jerk, especially to someone who was maintaining an add-on for free. But at the point where the author responded with the "Sorry, I don't agree with that," he should have left it at that and moved on. Who cares what some rando on the internet thinks about y…

Just one troll feeding another troll.

Re: People who own businesses should not act like assholes

#13

To be honest, it was the author who I felt like, while perhaps not an asshole, showed a pretty intense level of oblivious immaturity. I get it, the other guy was a jerk, especially to someone who was maintaining an add-on for free. But at the point where the author responded with the "Sorry, I don't agree with that," he should have left it at that and moved on. Who cares what some rando on the internet thinks about y…

And honestly, the user's suggestion wasn't bad.

Re: People who own businesses should not act like assholes

#14
The Internet over the years has taught me the fine art of non-engagement. Just... stop. The instant it starts going down a bad road, stop. Don't send another message, or send a blithely positive one just to blunt the energy and move on.

Seems so simple, but I think the need for closure is what keeps many from being able to do this. But it's dangerous. The Internet is dangerous. All it takes is for one person, it doesn't even have to be a party to the interaction, to ruin your day if not your life.

Legal threats? Please. This guy might SWAT you.

Re: People who own businesses should not act like assholes

#15
Wow, out of all the things I've written on my blog, _this_ makes it onto the front page of HN. How droll.

BTW, just to be clear, I wasn't the one who posted the link here. I don't think it's particular relevant to what HN is for, but shrug apparently somebody did.

This is all I'm going to have to say about the attacks on my character here...

When some stranger on the internet acts like a dick toward me in private emails, I call it out -- in private emails.

When I decide that someone has acted sufficiently like a dick toward me in private emails, I put them in my burn-before-read file, and I tell them so, because I don't believe in ghosting people.

That's usually the end of it.

When someone, having been told that they are now in my burn-before-read file, decides they're going to go out of their way to email me from a different email address and harass me some more, then that's just what it is -- harassment. If they'll do it to me, they'll do it to other people, and I believe that calling out harassers publicly is, in fact, the right thing to do. That's why I posted the reviews.

I disagree with the claim made below that it was "bad faith" to do so, because having interacted with the business owner, I was in fact in a position to know his character and how he treats people, and that is certainly an appropriate thing to tell people about who might be considering whether to patronize a business.

The last letter I got from them, asking me take down the reviews, was not "fair." It was an attempt to intimidate me into taking down my reviews. It was, in fact, a classic example of an attempt at such intimidation. If you don't recognize it as such, try reading @Popehat a bit. It is perfectly appropriate to respond with public shaming to someone trying to intimidate you into taking down content you posted about them that they don't like (again, see @Popehat). Ever heard of the Streisand effect?

Finally, as I believe I made quite clear in the blog posting, I would have taken down all of the reviews and the blog posting itself in a second if they had simply apologized. I still would, if they apologized today. There's no expiration date on that offer.

Re: People who own businesses should not act like assholes

#16

To be honest, it was the author who I felt like, while perhaps not an asshole, showed a pretty intense level of oblivious immaturity. I get it, the other guy was a jerk, especially to someone who was maintaining an add-on for free. But at the point where the author responded with the "Sorry, I don't agree with that," he should have left it at that and moved on. Who cares what some rando on the internet thinks about y…

Randomly punishing "some rando on the internet" in public can be both a fun, albeit nonconstructive, recreational activity and a way to keep them in line by educating the rest. If this blog post makes even one jerk change attitude towards open-source software (or about dealing with people in general) coming out as vindictive and hypocritical was an acceptable price to pay.

Trading one jerk for another doesn't accomplish much unless you know one of them personally.

Re: People who own businesses should not act like assholes

#17

To be honest, it was the author who I felt like, while perhaps not an asshole, showed a pretty intense level of oblivious immaturity. I get it, the other guy was a jerk, especially to someone who was maintaining an add-on for free. But at the point where the author responded with the "Sorry, I don't agree with that," he should have left it at that and moved on. Who cares what some rando on the internet thinks about y…

And honestly, the user's suggestion wasn't bad.

The user's suggestion wouldn't actually solve the problem the user wanted solved.

If there are scheduled messages queued to be sent when Thunderbird starts up, then Send Later sends them immediately, before the user has a chance to click any "Stop" button. The only way to prevent that is to delete the message when you no longer want it sent, which is what I explained to the user.

There's also a preference the user could have enabled in the Send Later preferences to tell it not to send messages that are past due by more than x minutes when Thunderbird starts up. So there are actually _two_ different ways already in the extension for solving the problem the user wanted solved.

It's FOSS, I don't have unlimited time to work on it, there are a lot of other more important features I'd be working on if I had time rather than adding a third solution to a problem for which there are already two other solutions.

Re: People who own businesses should not act like assholes

#18

To be honest, it was the author who I felt like, while perhaps not an asshole, showed a pretty intense level of oblivious immaturity. I get it, the other guy was a jerk, especially to someone who was maintaining an add-on for free. But at the point where the author responded with the "Sorry, I don't agree with that," he should have left it at that and moved on. Who cares what some rando on the internet thinks about y…

Totally my thoughts. Plus I thought the email asking him to take down the reviews was fair and respectfully written. And leaving reviews for businesses you’ve not been a customer of is in bad faith.

For me the author can be considered a supplier instead of a customer. Maybe they don't have a legal contract stating the business relationship. But the business owner is using both the software and support of the author. That it is free shouldn't make a difference here.

Re: People who own businesses should not act like assholes

#19
post #15

Wow, out of all the things I've written on my blog, _this_ makes it onto the front page of HN. How droll. BTW, just to be clear, I wasn't the one who posted the link here. I don't think it's particular relevant to what HN is for, but shrug apparently somebody did. This is all I'm going to have to say about the attacks on my character here... When some stranger on the internet acts like a dick toward me in private ema…

What about "mark as spam" and move on? I maintain a few OSS projects and, occasionally, get some of those quite often. I just move on. Or...ask for $(2|5|10)k to do it for him - that also works
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