"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"

#241

Post by Diederich » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:23 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #233

haberman wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'm saying that sufficient exasperation makes it understandable whether or not it is justified. Linus is human. Humans are not flawless. > There are plenty of open-source project leaders who deal with incorrigible people and do not talk this way. And a lot of people who "do not talk this way" are a lot worse by dealing with these kind of issues through backstabbing or veiled insults. While some are saint-like and nev…

I think Linus (and others) choose to stay verbally abusive because there they exist in a community that both facilitates and defends that poor behaviour.

There is a choice to be made. The choice stems from the basic mindset: am I fundamentally ok with verbally abusing people around me, or should I try to stop doing that?

I don't know what's in Linus' mind. Perhaps he is utterly incapable of never resorting to verbal abuse. But I doubt that's true.

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

#242

Post by enraged_camel » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:24 PM UTC

naner wrote: post #73

For whatever reason, programmers and hackers as a group are disproportionately socially inept compared to the general population. This manifests itself in nasty behavior towards women (underrepresented in our field and generally being more balanced personality-wise then men) and towards each other. In the real world and in the workplace this can be filtered out and mitigated to some degree. Online, in a domain where…

This is precisely why I did not study computer science in college, despite meeting the rather high requirements for the major. I was part of a group tour of the Paul G. Allen Center at UW, and the people I met there were just so incredibly awkward socially that I could not picture myself interacting with them for 3+ years. I ended up majoring in Informatics [1] instead, which is still technical but also interdisciplinary.

[1]: https://ischool.uw.edu/academics/informatics/curriculum

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

#243

Post by embolalia » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:24 PM UTC

forca wrote: post #111

pekk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't appreciate the ageism in this comment. It's unbelievable that in this industry you don't meet 20-something asshats so that you have to single out people in their 30s and 40s.

Please... leave your PC stance at the door. Really. Grown men are never offended at stuff like this...

Grown men? You could've just said "adults". You're making an implication you don't want to, I hope, and one which needlessly maligns a whole group of people. That's the same thing pekk was responding to, albeit less explicit. Nobody likes reading "your demographic, specifically, is horrible." Saying it is unproductive and damages the speaker's credibility as someone with politesse - a particularly bad thing in this conversation, given its topic. It is entirely possible to call out ashattery without resorting to prejudice.

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

#244

Post by forgottenpass » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:25 PM UTC

msielski wrote: post #98

Conflating the Open Source community at large with the Linux community, the Linux development community, and the Linux kernel development community does not help him make his case.

Laying boycots, campaigns to fund a hitman via bitcoin and irc harassment at the feet of Linus doesn't help either.

I won't argue that Linus' attitude has no influence in general, but the categorical differences between this and Linus' hyperbole make it a red herring for the conversation.

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

#245

Post by kazinator » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:25 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #198

kazinator wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot moderate mailing lists because they are not centralized. When you hit "reply all" in a mailing list, the replies go directly to everyone who is on the To: or Cc: list. The list robot is just one of those parties. And of course, private replies are possible that the list robot doesn't even see. Some lists try to fix this by abusing Reply-to: to try to steer discussion replies to the list address, but that i…

That's not what a mailing list is. What you are describing is an email message with multiple recipients, not a mailing list. Mailing lists don't include the email addresses of all of the recipients in the distributed messages To or CC fields, and the From and Reply-to is the address of the mailing list, never a list of all users on the mailing list. Mailing lists are centrally managed, and have a "reflector" or centr…

What you're describing is a particular mailing list configuration (one often seen today); not what mailing lists are.

Traditional mailing lists (such as ones created by a vanilla install of GNU Mailman) do not work they way you describe.

They work like this:

1. You send a message to a mailing list address. This address belongs to a software agent which sends the message to everyone. Your From: header is clearly preserved. The mailing list robot adds itself to the Cc: line to stay in the loop.

2. Someone who wants to continue your discussion publicly hits Reply All. At this point, the mail software composes a a new message which To: you, From: this person, and Cc: to the mailing list.

3. You receive the message directly. The robot also receives it because it is in the Cc: loop, and sends it to the subscribers. (If you're also one of the subscrbers, and the list is configured that way, it will avoid sending you a "list copy").

4. And so it goes.

But what do I know; I have only used mailing lists for 25 years, and run mailing lists of my own on my own server.

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

#246

Post by baldfat » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:25 PM UTC

So I will go what appears Off-Topic but I think this is a pattern.

KDE 4.0 is release and KDE specifically says that they don't want Distros making packages for the .0 release. Distros do make packages because the community was excited to see it. Then a storm hits over what a 4.0 vs 3.99 release means.

PulseAudio comes out. Is stated that it is not a solid release yet and Distros please don't install. It gets installed and the whole community freaks out on PulseAudio.

KDE 4 and PulseAudio are SOLID and probably best of show in their categories now. BUT the community always will spread out hate (and even lies) to both projects because it wasn't solid on day one.

SystemD is considered bad because it is made by the same person that head up PulseAudio. That is enough for the community to never let go of the acceleration peddle on hate. SystemD got out of the trap that caught C# and Mono on Linux.

There is a reason why SystemD is on most systems. It is the best solution for the vast majority of people. I personally find it so much better then what was there before in practice and MUCH easier to understand.

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

#247

Post by freshflowers » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:26 PM UTC

The problem with many self-organized groups of engineers is that they equate meritocracy with technical contributions.

This is a very, very limited way of approaching the complex dynamics of people working together. It shows up in many ways. Most open source communities are not good places for people who can contribute design, documentation and god forbid, people management skills.

A pervasive illusion amongst software engineers is that we can do without "soft" skills, and nowhere does this manifests itself more in places where no boss or company forcefully adds those soft skills into the mix.

Some open source communities are lucky enough to have people that have both the technical chops to get respect based on technically focused meritocratic values and have other "management" skills. Most don't. So once conflict arises (as it inevitably will, because they are human beings) and simple meritocracy no longer suffices (because both sides are smart and contribute), the community either breaks up or devolves into a permanent Lord of the Flies atmosphere.

It has nothing to do with Open Source in general. It's the lack of value placed on soft skills in tech driven meritocracies.

(You can see the same thing in tech start-ups founded by technies, but there it usually gets quickly corrected after the first PR disaster.)

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

#248

Post by robomartin » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:27 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…

Lord of the Flies. Regrettably, human interaction, in the context of the achievement or retention of power, can devolve into scenarios of violence that range from verbal and psychological to the unthinkable. Open Source is obviously not immune to this.

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

#249

Post by freehunter » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:27 PM UTC

forca wrote: post #111

pekk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't appreciate the ageism in this comment. It's unbelievable that in this industry you don't meet 20-something asshats so that you have to single out people in their 30s and 40s.

Please... leave your PC stance at the door. Really. Grown men are never offended at stuff like this...

But what about young men? Or young women? Or grown women?

While I don't necessarily agree with pekk that saying "30s and 40s" is ageism or discriminatory at all, saying "[people] are never offended at stuff like this" is exactly the problem the tech community is trying to solve with being more inclusionary of other people and cultures. Yes, people do get offended at offensive remarks. No, not everyone sees them a joke.

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

#250

Post by Diederich » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 3:29 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #237

Diederich wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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' h…

When we're dealing with someone who repeatedly have ignored advice, instructions and admonitions and continues to cause major breakage, then yes, it would be sugar-coating to write something similar to what you suggested. The point is that the person in question was being rude and disrespectful by continuing to ignore the instructions he'd been given in the past, and repeatedly caused a lot of very real, very heartfe…

It's quite possible to be angry about something, and also be polite in ones response.

This is also revealing: the idea that it is somehow dishonest if one chooses to not publicly verbalize one's own internal state.

We should think about that for a moment. This is the proposal: "I am being dishonest unless I verbalize my anger about a topic."

I would submit that dishonestly would require a more direct statement.

"I am not angry about your continued choices for ignorance."

That would be dishonest.

In my opinion, not saying anything about one's internal state can't be dishonest. No information was given.