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What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

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Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#151

Post by ddunkin »

rachelbythebay wrote: post #103
jmillikin wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regarding the actual program, I don't write shell > utilities in JavaScript so I can't say whether it's a > good or a bad implementation. It's just not my space. According to some other posts here, the quoted mockers are Ruby programmers. I believe the Twitter posts are about the concept of writing sed in Node-Javascript, not necessarily the implementation. As I understand it there's something of a rivalry between…

Hum. It reminds me of performance art, to be honest.

It does, any art really. If the software were the brushes, no piece of software is right for every artist.

Should we trash people for making 'yet another social network' or 'yet another online map database'? This is even a smaller scale project and barely worth the effort to complain about.

Programming can be a much more creative exercise, and sometimes people forget that. I don't always do things to be useful, I do them to be fun and educational.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#152

Post by nowarninglabel »

Man I know how this feels. The very first piece of code I ever open-sourced (5 years ago) was put on a "Wall of Shame". Turned out though that the person doing this had never even looked at my code, they were just a petty, jealous person who saw something with a title that irked them. I don't claim to have great code, but I am happy to still be putting lots of open-source code out there, and I'm happy I didn't let that first asshole discourage me. Fortunately, the rest of the community saw that this guy was an asshole, and the "wall of shame" was quickly brought down, but it'd be really nice if we didn't let such petty assholes make it into a position where they can ridicule people in such a public and far-reaching way in the first place.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#154

Post by magikarp »

thirsteh wrote: post #147
magikarp wrote: post #21

As the lead developer for Cryptocat, this sure rung a bell for me.

There's something to be said about encouraging people to use crypto software that might not be well-written, though. To me, it's fine to write whatever you want in any language you want, but if you write an application and market it as "communicate securely and anonymously", or any kind of software that could put people's lives at risk, really--like Tor--you should be confident it is secure, i.e. that you know how to…

Oh absolutely. As Schneier noted in that blog post, we did solve the issues that were presented to us, switched to a signed browser plugin, OTR, got a full audit, and so on. But other than the handful of awesome and helpful critique, man were people assholes on Twitter.

I stand by Cryptocat being a usable privacy tool today, and I think we were quite responsible in our development process. There's always media hype making us look like something we're not (a magic bullet for activists and other people in danger to solve all their problems,) but that's why we have warnings everywhere on our website and inside the app itself.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#155

Post by Bockit »

goostavos wrote: post #122
jrockway wrote: post #20

I don't really see the problem. I never remember sed syntax and instead just use perl -e. It follows that someone may want to use JavaScript instead though I would personally avoid JavaScript at nearly any cost. As for haters on the Internet, yeah, welcome to the Internet. If you do something, chances are someone hates you. Why? They are jealous that you are getting attention instead of them. They could write a bette…

>Welcome to the Internet. If you do something, chances are someone hates you. You know, this is really what we have to keep in mind, or at least try to any way. Doesn't stop it from stinging a bit when it happens though. Especially when they are the first kind of comment you receive when you show a project in a public forum. I usually expect a couple of 'Fuck you. My eye's are bleeding from your coding." style commen…

Not related at to code at all but your comment about catching you off-guard reminded me of a comment chain I was a part of on reddit. There was a comment about assigned seating in movies and I replied with how I liked the system and why, and then the reply to me was something along the lines of, "Remind me to never hang out with you.". Water off a duck's back to me but it did give me a moment's pause and I recognised that if I weren't used to such behaviour it would have affected me.

It reinforced a feeling I have that, sadly, you can't seem exist in communities on the internet without being ready to put up with unanticipated 'hate' (for lack of a better word).

I know many people who given time to become more experienced, would benefit greatly from various aspects of the net, but I worry they wouldn't last a week before they decided it was something they never want a part of.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#158

Post by thirsteh »

magikarp wrote: post #154
thirsteh wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something to be said about encouraging people to use crypto software that might not be well-written, though. To me, it's fine to write whatever you want in any language you want, but if you write an application and market it as "communicate securely and anonymously", or any kind of software that could put people's lives at risk, really--like Tor--you should be confident it is secure, i.e. that you know how to…

Oh absolutely. As Schneier noted in that blog post, we did solve the issues that were presented to us, switched to a signed browser plugin, OTR, got a full audit, and so on. But other than the handful of awesome and helpful critique, man were people assholes on Twitter. I stand by Cryptocat being a usable privacy tool today, and I think we were quite responsible in our development process. There's always media hype m…

Yeah, don't get me wrong. People who have nothing to add can go disappear.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#159

Post by byroot »

anthonyb wrote: post #127
byroot wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus is often rude, but AFAIK not gratuitously, but I may have missed some of his public messages. But even if it's the case, he is rude with the guys who work with him, his "captains" that he knows since a long time. He do not bash a random project on Github totally unrelated to him just like that. You can't compare.

No, Linus is often gratuitously rude.

Got a link ? Of Linus being gratuitously rude with a perfect stranger ?

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#160

Post by kamaal »

Frankly, I think by now I've sort of got used to it. Its not just the case with Open source projects, This happens everywhere. I've been facing these sort of problems since I was a kid. Be the first guy to build a model from clay, or the one to write an essay, or the one to participate in the science exhibition. Nearly everyone will first find ways to crap on your work than find something positive about it.

After all these years, I just feel these are just ways a guy who doesn't work find a way to justify his inaction. Just make others work look bad, and then you can just go back relax and do nothing. Make your inaction look better than than the guys action.

People just don't get 90% of all success is just showing up thingy. Now coming to this project, a guy on twitter as shown on the blog says 'Ever wanted to make sed or grep worse?'- Oh! What does this guy think? Sed and grep are the best designed tools out there? Heck learning sed is a nightmare- the language is so terse it may take you months to make any significant headway learning it. There are like dozens of special cases you have to learn and handle.

Then why does sed win? It wins because the tool occupies space where there is no, or little competition. Sed shows up!!!

Everytime you see somebody produce a piece of work which is helpful in solving a problem think about why you couldn't have been the guy who could have done that, instead of finding ways to justify why you aren't have the guy who did that.

At the end, only ones who don't get laughed at are the ones who do nothing.

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