"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"

#221

Post by vidarh » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:12 PM UTC

talmand wrote: post #188

vidarh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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…

For such a smart guy, Linus was being extremely dumb in this. Ok, I admit that's my opinion. Most people are not going to see the context of that statement. I'm sure he had his issues with the developer and the relevant code, but that doesn't excuse such a public display. All he did in that matter is make himself look bad and, to a degree, made his project look bad. As it's been stated elsewhere, such actions most li…

> Most people are not going to see the context of that statement.

Most people are never going to contribute to the Linux kernel in the first place. Anyone who is likely to, is likely to 1) actually get at least some cursory knowledge about the community and the process, 2) not deal directly with Linus until they've spent a lot of time getting up to scratch, including submitting patches to sub-system maintainers, 3) get only polite responses from Linus if/when they do deal with him.

I don't think Linus has any reasons at all to be concerned about whether or not people see the context of the statement. The people who don't are not likely to affect his ability to do his job.

> All he did in that matter is make himself look bad and, to a degree, made his project look bad.

Any reasons why Linus should care?

> As it's been stated elsewhere, such actions most likely just drives people away.

Linux does not have a problem with lack of developers trying to get stuff into the kernel. If it drives away some good people, then so be it. If it makes some shitty developers think twice about ignoring repeated admonitions from Linus, then it seems to me like good use of his time.

> A public lashing with this type of language should not be considered healthy for the project nor the open source movement. It only causes negativity within and towards the project with the additional issue, as you show yourself, of not always actually solving the problem.

From my point of view, the negativity tends to show up in discussions like this, rather than in forums where people are actually concerned with these projects. The level of desire for political correctness annoys me greatly. I find a lot of the responses here far worse than the direct language Linus sometimes uses because of insinuations and underlying implications of the statements.

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

#222

Post by Diederich » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:12 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #202

Diederich wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite possible to make it clear that he'd stop accepting code without descending to abusive language. Erecting a 'safety barrier' against someone who was doing a poor job and being verbally abusive are entirely unrelated. You say that blocking these merge requests would benefit many; so be it. Being polite about doing that would benefit the same set of people, and may others at the same time.

It is possible. There are also people involved on both sides, and people get angry and frustrated. > Being polite about doing that would benefit the same set of people, and may others at the same time. And a lot of people believe that sugar-coating it would reduce the benefit by signalling that Kays behaviour wasn't so bad after all.

In my opinion, there is a huge distance between politely pointing out the faults and problems with something and sugar-coating.

And maybe this approaches the crux of the problem. It seems that there is a false dichotomy at work here.

Being polite (or, indeed, just not being verbally abusive) takes less time and energy, and is overwhelmingly more effective, than being overly abrasive.

I don't believe 'Sugar-coating' has anything to do with being polite and accurate. 'Sugar-coating' is all about being less accurate and on point.

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

#223

Post by jgh » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:13 PM UTC

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 find in my project people are generally quite helpful and thankful. I can't say I've received much criticism for sharing a project with the world.

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

#224

Post by mst » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:13 PM UTC

nanoscopic wrote: post #132

cldellow wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better might be to provide links to the cases where he feels hard done by. Re: the app framework naming, there's some partial conversation involving Brian Foy at https://www.mail-archive.com/modules@perl.org/msg34595.html . It doesn't seem to merit nanoscopic's comments, so I wonder if there's more to the story or if nanoscopic is being unfair. I tried to find archives of the Grant McLean XML stuff, but cursory Googl…

I didn't provide a ton of details because I think it is important to be constructive and just make the point that people should be more caring and positive. I don't want or need to try to bash these people. All I am saying is that they were somewhat mean to me. It is my personal perspective. I'm not sure what anyone will get out of reading this stuff in detail. If you are so interested, I requested repeatedly to Bria…

Honestly, the registered list had been on its way out for quite a while by the time that happened; by the point of the discussion, I was only monitoring registrations because I cared about helping people find better names rather than because I thought the final registration click was relevant in and of itself.

You were, and are, totally welcome to upload the module anyway (and in fact I'd encourage you to do so), and you have my apologies if that part wasn't made sufficiently clear at the time.

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

#225

Post by tzakrajs » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:13 PM UTC

Welcome to the Internet? Hack with people irl and this happens way less often.

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

#226

Post by Mikeb85 » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:14 PM UTC

inclemnet wrote: post #159

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…

> Open source is not awful. He specifically said 'in many ways', then elaborated on some of these ways. You're doing nothing more than fighting a strawman. > Open source is merely the idea that sharing code is good This is just an argument from being pedantic - he's obviously talking about the open source community at large (and specifically, some sub-communties), and I can't honestly believe you don't know that. > I…

> He specifically said 'in many ways', then elaborated on some of these ways.

But none of those ways have anything to do with open source. You need to look no further than #gamergate to see that people act like assholes on the internet.

> This is just an argument from being pedantic - he's obviously talking about the open source community at large (and specifically, some sub-communties), and I can't honestly believe you don't know that.

I know that, but equating a concept with people is like equating the corner block outside with the drug dealer that sells there. "Street corners are awful!"

> t's incredibly obvious that the original post isn't referring at all to the general philosophies of open source, but to the actual communities he participates in, in terms that are not remotely unusual.

So instead of saying those communities suck, he says open source can be awful in some ways...

Communities can suck in any industry/hobby/interest/etc...

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

#227

Post by DonHopkins » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:14 PM UTC

The thing that is awful about "Open Source" is that it was a term coined by Eric S Raymond in order to attack Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, and to make a name and money for himself as a so-called "hacker", without actually having to write any useful code, or even read anybody else's code and report bugs with his very own "millions of I's".

If you want to see how the Open Source fish rots from the head down, you have to look no further than Eric Raymond's own blog: "In the U.S., blacks are 12% of the population but commit 50% of violent crimes; can anyone honestly think this is unconnected to the fact that they average 15 points of IQ lower than the general population? That stupid people are more violent is a fact independent of skin color." http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=129

Or in his own words: "And for any agents or proxy of the regime interested in asking me questions face to face, I’ve got some bullets slathered in pork fat to make you feel extra special welcome." http://web.archive.org/web/20090628025127/http://www.nedanet...

"When I hear the words "social responsibility", I want to reach for my gun." When receiving an award from an organization called Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond

"Ego is for little people" "[bla bla bla...] I’ve blown up the software industry once, reinvented the hacker culture twice, and am without doubt one of the dozen most famous geeks alive. Investment bankers pay me $300 an hour to yak at them because I have a track record as a shrewd business analyst. I don’t even have a BS, yet there’s been an entire academic cottage industry devoted to writing exegeses of my work. I could do nothing but speaking tours for the rest of my life and still be overbooked. [...bla bla bla]" (...and on and on ad nausium -- he really needs to work on his BS!) http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1404

The hacker culture can do just fine without ESR's "reinventions", thank you. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7728146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7727953

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

#228

Post by theflubba » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:15 PM UTC

POETTERING EFFECT - It appears that lately some Linux developers are concentrating on changing things (that work fine) with no particular reason, breaking existing functionality in the process and running away before the job is really finished (sometimes called the Poettering effect), while in fact it would be better to make a nicely polished finished system that can be used from installation without having to tune it up.

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

#229

Post by jtbigwoo » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:16 PM UTC

filmgirlcw wrote: post #168

I'm glad Lennart wrote this, though obviously I'm sorry he had to do it. I'd like to think this would open up a bigger dialog about the truly decrepit level of discourse that is common on all too many OSS projects (not all, of course, but many of them, and oftentimes, the older, the more nasty), but I'm not that idealistic. I don't think anyone, least of all Lennart, would say that his projects (particularly PulseAud…

>> So why is it acceptable and passed off on the "outer" channels?

>> Open source is no longer a new quirky movement. It's the status quo.

I wonder if this isn't part of the problem. Many of the massive open-source blow-ups have been between people who are being paid to do it. It's not like a guy from Red Hat, for example, can just pick a different project to contribute to. His jobs depends on working in these abusive environments. The only way to stop contributing would be to get a different job.

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

#230

Post by cookiecaper » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:16 PM UTC

haberman wrote: post #175

vidarh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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 plent…

It's a style choice, and I think both the choice to utilize it and the reception to it are heavily dependent on the participant's cultural background and upbringing. A lot of people see this kind of message, applied to someone who Really Should Know Better, as a form of tough love and half-tongue-in-cheek way to place extra emphasis on an important message.

Some people can form that understanding as the basis of their relationship and continue on happily, able to both give and receive this kind of criticism. To others, it is completely foreign and incomprehensible and they don't see the tongue-in-cheek at all and just interpret it as blatant, outright hostility, which is generally not the actual subtext.