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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"

#101

Post by vph »

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…

I failed to understand this line of criticism. Open Source is a software development model. It's not a model of society and does not guarantee to consists of only well-mannered people. There are ugly, difficult people everywhere, not just in Open Source projects.

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

#102

Post by pekk »

liveoneggs wrote: post #28

Maybe these strong reactions from core linux engineers have meaning. Maybe strong reactions from large parts of the user base have meaning. Maybe one reaps what one sows.

People also reap things that somebody else sowed, or that nobody sowed. There is no physical law that anyone will be treated fairly.

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

#103

Post by rtpg »

kenjackson wrote: post #85
tomp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I don't consider this bad. Sure, it's offensive, but he has quite a good reason to be upset - reading one byte at a time will be really slow. Could he say it in a better way? Obviously. Could you interpret his words in a less literal way? Obviously. I don't know Linus, but he seems a good, selfless guy, with the best intentions at heart. If he's not politically correct, who the fuck cares? Sometime…

For most people the difference between being a complete jerk and a normal guy is simply what they say. Would you tolerate a manager who talked to you this way? I wouldn't. Not even Linus. And then I'd point out all the pretty crappy code Linus had checked in.

I've found that the best way to check myself on the internet is to imagine I'm talking to someone face-to-face.

It becomes a lot harder to call someone a 'fucking moron' if you imagine it as a guy standing in front of you.

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

#104

Post by jaegerpicker »

I certainly agree that there some Open source projects that are extremely toxic, like the Linux Kernal, but I wish people wouldn't say all open source is that way. The author has been through a lot of crazy shit for very silly reasons, note I'm not blaming him in any way - no one should go through that over volunteering free work. But I've contributed to Django, Flask, Python, Meotor, and Node.js in different ways and though it's varied in how pleasant the experience has been for the most part these communities were really awesome, when dealing with the core teams. I think those are good examples of better open source communities and I think they will tend to pick up more developers that aren't willing to put up with all of the crap involved in the Linux project.

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

#105

Post by vidarh »

mike_hearn wrote: post #71
tomp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I don't consider this bad. Sure, it's offensive, but he has quite a good reason to be upset - reading one byte at a time will be really slow. Could he say it in a better way? Obviously. Could you interpret his words in a less literal way? Obviously. I don't know Linus, but he seems a good, selfless guy, with the best intentions at heart. If he's not politically correct, who the fuck cares? Sometime…

It's really not political correctness to just keep technical discussions calm and non-personal. Meanwhile, consider the chilling effect that kind of attitude has. I know quite a few skilled engineers who would just walk out if their boss talked to them like that, regardless of the merits of the underlying discussion. It's just wildly unprofessional and when Linus does that kind of thing, it sets the tone for all the…

In this case Linus had tried for quite some time to get the person in question to stop pushing crap. Linus eventually told him he'd stop merging his code. From that point of view, if he'd walked after being talked to like that, it'd have been seen as a benefit by many.

EDIT: I find it quite amusing that I get downvoted for a fairly dispassionate and mostly objective explanation of context, yet several of my far more subjective and controversial comments elsewhere in this thread have gotten heavily upvoted. Figures.

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

#106

Post by adsr »

rdtsc wrote: post #50

> By many he [Linus] is a considered a role model, but he is quite a bad one. I give Linus a pass. Given the success of the project and the size of the team, I would rather have a foul mouthed Linus than perhaps no kernel and no Linux. It is not a positive characteristic. I wish he wasn't as abrasive but that is his personality. What I feel Poettering is doing here is a bit of a "well on technical merits Linus was ri…

> I give Linus a pass. Given the success of the project and the size of the team, I would rather have a foul mouthed Linus than perhaps no kernel and no Linux.

This appears to be a false dilemma. I don't think the success of the kernel and Linux depends on Linus' foul mouth. And I think the point was that he, as a role model may influence and inspire others to adopt the same behavior.

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

#107

Post by bhouston »

I'll probably get burned for saying this but I think this is related to GamerGate/SocialJusticeWarriors. I think that other controversy is being portrayed as anti-feminist (and there is a lot of undertones of that) but I think that it is more indicative of a general problem -- it is basically unrestrained incivility against those whom one has disagreements, or who has done perceived wrongs.

For some reason it has become really easy to escalate things quickly from what are disagreements or perceived wrongs to really intense hatred and online forms of retaliation that is so extreme that it overshadows the original disagreements/wrongs.

It is almost like one needs a new form of Godwin's law for group arguments, the first one to go full "4chan" (or whatever) on a subject is declared the loser of the argument, whether or not they had a valid argument to begin with.

This type of crazy retaliation is really harmful to those that are targeted, but it also serves to detract from legitimate arguments. It is just weird.

But this is the internet and I suspect it isn't really that easy to curb going full "4chan" on subjects because it can be "fun" for those involved because there are few personal consequences -- as per that sociology concept of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deindividuation.

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

#108

Post by lallysingh »

nilved wrote: post #82

I read this article and was very confused about how somebody could create an open source project that lead to actual death threads. Then I googled Lennart Poettering and it all made sense. PulseAudio and systemd make for a particularly wretched resume: Poettering is probably responsible for more frustration to Linux users than anybody else right now. Not that I'm not going to condone online harassment or blame the vi…

Note that nobody else has built competing projects, and he didn't force any distribution to use them. Yet the software seems quite popular.

Sometimes someone has to step up to do the dirty work and write software that can only give mediocre results. I think he's getting flack as the scapegoat for the general consumerization of Linux (ala ubuntu, gnome, etc).

Really, if people don't like these systems, or if they weren't worth the trouble, why not do something about it? They sound like itches that could be scratched. That was the spirit of a previous, less popular open source movement. Now it's full of useless bitching assholes who will spend 10x the time complaining over time actually fixing.

Note: I'm not saying that you personally are in that category. But this guy should be able to respond with "fix it, fork it, or fuck off."

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

#109

Post by jingo »

The author of this g+ post is the author of "systemd", a controversial new program being installed by default into some of the most popular distributions of the GNU/Linux operating system.

It seems that some Linux users are unhappy with systemd.

While I do not agree with any user being disrespectful to the author by targeting him personally, the fact that users are seriously upset about systemd as a program gives me hope for the future of the popular Linux distributions.

When the author says "Open Source is awful" maybe he is revealing his true colors. Perhaps he is better suited to closed source development which is insulated from public review by users and other developers at-large. But that is for him to decide.

There was a post on HN a little while back by the developer of a popular glibc alernative for Linux who told us he has been using a flat, linear /etc/rc file for over a decade and his boot times are substantially shorter than with systemd. But more importantly, his approach is simple by comparison. How many users will be able to debug systemd by examining the internals?

It is this type of "hands-on" user that gives me hope for the future of the distributions that are experimenting with systemd. I hope these users will speak up if they have not done so already.

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