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

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

#171

Post by ivraatiems » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 2:53 PM UTC

adnzzzzZ wrote: post #157

ivraatiems wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 attitude is precisely the problem. Being a smart or successful human being does not alleviate your obligation to be a decent human being - neither does having strong opinions and good reasons for them. The argument you have made comes in another form, and…

I think there's another facet to the argument he made that he didn't make. When you're in a position of power and you have to deal with the work of other people you want to waste as little time as possible on people making stupid mistakes that shouldn't be made in the first place. You want to bring the quality of your contributors up. One way of doing this is making people fear making mistakes. Society does this all…

Fear, as you seem to realize, is a crappy motivator. It only work in limited circumstances and for limited periods of time. It doesn't really change behavior permanently. That "society" does it doesn't make it any better (and when was the last time a judge cussed out a defendant for receiving a guilty verdict?)

But I would argue that motivating through fear isn't even relevant to this situation. Is making death threats in order to convince somebody to stop doing something a valid way to motivate through fear? Is cursing somebody out on a mailing list really all that terrifying? If it is, is that the reason Linus, for instance, does it?

I think the answer to all of these is no.

Further, it may be appropriate to shame racists, homophobes or sexists into changing their ways (or, I would argue, just not espousing their views publicly). But is it really appropriate to do this, to this extent especially, to programmers who wrote bad code?

Programming relies on rational, careful cognitive consideration of problems. That's the opposite of what fear inspires. Fear-based "motivation" is lousy in general, and doubly lousy for open source software.

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

#172

Post by DanBC » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 2:53 PM UTC

npsimons wrote: post #152

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…

Every single time someone brings up Linus' "abrasiveness", they never fail to leave out the thread preceding it, where the target of Linus' ire inevitably was being obtuse or childish. How long would it take you to stop being polite if someone refused to respond to anything but invective? And in kernel land, there are some simple rules that must be kept to very strictly, else you can forget about things like reliabil…

People also tend to ignore cultural differences.

Does Linus ever swear in Finnish? Because from what I've been told people in some Nordic countries will happily say fuck and fucking all day, but would be reluctant to use local language versions.

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

#173

Post by imanaccount247 » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 2:53 PM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #107

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 bec…

>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.

Except the anonymity involved means people on the other side send abuse to themselves and their side in order to shift discussion off of the topic and onto how their opponents are evil abusive monsters. And then of course people who just love stirring up shit send abuse to both sides purely because they enjoy it.

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

#174

Post by lukeschlather » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 2:54 PM UTC

Previous discussion with a less flame-bait title:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8414859

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

#175

Post by haberman » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 2:54 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #89

chris_wot wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about anyone else, but when I read Linus write: "Of course, I'd also suggest that whoever was the genius who thought it was a good idea to read things ONE F✦CKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte should be retroactively aborted. Who the f*ck does idiotic things like that? How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?" https://lkml.or…

> (p.s. the irony of posting such an offensive post by starring out the u in fuck... does he not see the irony?) Linus is fully capable of writing "fuck", as evidenced by e.g. [1]. If he stars it out, assume it is a stylistic choice for that particular message. > then I don't think I'd ever contribute to the LKML. If you can't handle a message like that, then perhaps it's just as well. Note the context (though I can…

> While I don't think I'd be as caustic as Linus, I can totally understand the level of exasperation that saga must have caused him given the series of issues in question. And at the point of this outburst, nothing appears to have worked: the stream of crap had kept on coming.

I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but are you saying that being exasperated is justification to be arbitrarily caustic?

There are plenty of open-source project leaders who deal with incorrigible people and do not talk this way.

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

#176

Post by chippy » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 2:55 PM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #107

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 bec…

I think it is related. We will shortly see "Open Source Culture must Die" blog posts.

It's seems as if now it is okay to label an entire activity as a singular group that should be attacked, based on negative behaviour of individuals.

That it is now okay and acceptable to release pent up hatred upon a group, an eye for an eye, abuse for abuse. It becomes justified when the group says "hey, that's not fair" and fights back. A war then is started which further defines and entrenches both sides.

The only logical and ethical stand point is to be a neutral pacifist and have nothing to do with warmongering of any kind.

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

#177

Post by stephen_g » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 2:55 PM UTC

npsimons wrote: post #124

This coming from the man who, when people point out flaws in his design of systemd, says basically "too bad, I'm doing it anyway, and if you don't like it, you can take a hike."

Do you seriously not see the difference between Lennart saying something like "if you don't like it, you're wrong and should use another distro" [that doesn't use Systemd] and Linus saying things like "you should have been retroactively aborted" and "you're so stupid I can't believe you didn't die as a child'?

Or the difference between him telling someone not to use his software and people setting up crowd funding to hire a hitman?

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

#178

Post by digital-rubber » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 2:56 PM UTC

ekimekim wrote: post #127

digital-rubber wrote: post #117

Systemd and PulseAudio are getting pushed down everybody's throat, unasked for. They are both horrible to work with and suck quite a bit, both introduced way prematurely and buggy. Why did he not roll his own distro fully based on systemd to convince people it is so cool? instead of rolling out his own distro, people responsible for distro package/rolling were convinced it should be added to the default; as it was so…

I fail to see how the tools Pottering works on have any relevance to the discussion. Are you claiming that personal attacks are justified if you don't like a person's software?

How you can not see that the introduction and adoption of his tools lead to the anger of users that get this forced down their throats? If there was no such thing as pulse audio or systemd, nobody would be upset with him in the linux community. And where i say attacks are justified at all? I hate violence in any form.

I wrote that i would prefer not to see any of his stuff, nor him in the linux community (for of product nr 3 i don't need). The whole discussion is waste of time and space, just like pulseaudio and systemd. And i wrote that one has to realise when others get SO pissed off they want to hire a hit-man, SOMETHING is up, perhaps requires a second thought. Consider making it optional? It's not a crazy idea.

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

#179

Post by pachydermic » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 2:56 PM UTC

Mikeb85 wrote: post #63

Open source is not awful. It's perhaps the most important thing to happen to computing, ever. Multi-billion dollar companies have formed largely around open source. It enables millions of people to do business. Learning how to code is easier than ever. Saying open source is awful because you've encountered assholes is like saying free market economies are awful because some vendor overcharged you one time, or saying…

>I've personally had nothing but great encounters with FOSS.

Same here. That doesn't mean there isn't a problem, though. I mean, I'm pretty much a nobody. I haven't contributed to the kernel or created a perl module or created systemd so of course I haven't had any issues.

I'm sure Poettering isn't making this stuff up. People are so pissed at him for systemd and it makes no sense. And he's right to call out Linus for saying those things. Whether you think the people deserve this kind of abuse or not it's just toxic for the community at large and there isn't any reason to say stuff like that (I'm talking death threats or the most hurtful insults you can think of). If someone drops the ball don't take their work and ask them to leave - if they don't, you should be able to ignore them.

>Saying open source is awful because you've encountered assholes is like saying free market economies are awful because some vendor overcharged you one time, or saying cars are awful because some guy cut you off yesterday, or saying free speech is awful because some guy insulted you in public the other day...

What he's actually talking about is a pattern of bad behavior. Of course there are going to be random assholes on the internet - that's not what he's talking about. He's talking about all of the abuse he gets from the actual community on a regular basis. Systemic abuse and vitriol.

I love open source. I owe my career to Linux and my passion about it. But that doesn't mean we can't make it better. And this internet bullying stuff is a real problem - it's very well documented. Ignoring the problem is the worst thing you can do short of contributing to it.

If we're going to have a real community then we have to make sure people feel safe and welcome.

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

#180

Post by jtbigwoo » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 2:57 PM UTC

xroche wrote: post #88

chris_wot wrote: post #2

Yeah, this was discussed about an hour ago, and it hit the flame filter pretty fast. I'd suggest that it won't last very long on the front page. Incidentally, I find it very sad that we can't discuss this on HN. What has happened to Lennart, and the behaviour of Linus Torvalds as a bully, is probably something decent to talk about. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8414859

You need to understand one thing: you are wrong. Linus Torvalds is not a bully. He's in charge of one of the biggest and most successful project out there. And this project is open-source, and anyone can contribute to it. Anyone. Even your cat. Imagine the Windows codebase being opened to anyone, with anyone being able to suggest fixes and send patches, or ask questions, or make suggestions. You do not want any idiot…

>> You have to understand that the alternative to "Linus is mean" is "Linus let a fucking patch enter the kernel, and it broke millions of machines around the world, causing millions of dollars worth of damage". Every single line committed in the kernel must be carefully checked, and if you lack the skills, just go away, because it will (1) spoil the precious kernel maintainers time and more importantly (2) do damages to millions of users.

This is a false dichotomy. You can tell people to go away or get better without telling them it'd be better if they'd never been born or wishing violence upon them. I honestly don't have a problem with Linus telling somebody their code is terrible. Linus has often taken it to another level in belittling and abusing the people around him.

Linus has a pattern where his first (or second) reaction to an issue is to START SHOUTING AND NAME CALLING in an attempt to shut down discussion. If the issue blows up he comes back and gives a reasonable, considered response. It's a pattern that's not helpful.