Live data from Hacker News

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

plus.google.com

261–270 of 487 posts

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

#261
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you for your comment; I appreciate the acknowledgement. I do intend to do as you say and change the name properly, since basically it doesn't matter now that "registered modules" are gone. I have not done so yet simply because the framework is poorly documented ( as far as what is published ) at the moment, and I wanted to add the documentation properly when I take over a whole root namespace. Also; I am a bit unclear as to -how- exactly to claim the whole root namespace, since the way it is done is different among several of the modules I observed.

I assume I simply register a module with a root name to claim it, as sort of a placeholder pointing to all the component pieces. I don't want to include the actual pieces in the root module; just use the root module itself as documentation as I see it done among other CPAN modules.

I would like to point out that I realize that my feeling hurt through the discussion is mostly my perspective; hence stating that I recognize you have many other things to do. My frustration was that I had no knowledge that registrations "were on their way out" and my requests at the time to get it registered properly seemed to be ignored. ( I assumed because there were not enough people who cared about registrations at that point to handle doing it )

Once again thank you and I hope to move forwards and be an active member of the community.

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

#262
The Linux kernal dev community is a community of rough tough programmer bastards. If you can't handle the knocks there, maybe that's not the community for you? I'm sure there are other less abrasive communities you can join? It certainly says a lot about someone who believes that they are entitled to join a community and to demand to have their voice heard and to have the community adapt to their wants and desires. I believe that sort of influence is earned within a community.

I mean, I wouldn't join /r/kkk and expect everyone to "chill out on the use of the N word guys". Maybe, just maybe, I'm not as important to that community as I believe myself to be?

Urgh, I can't believe I'm typing this, but the phrase "be the change you want to see" applies for community membership. Be the beacon of conduct you want the community to share. Inspire the community to aim for those ideals through example.

Or write a snarky blog post about it because you're finding it difficult to get mind share on an obviously flawed project.

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

#263

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…

What's wrong with changing Reply-To?

You mean, what is wrong with setting Reply-To.

Reply-To is a special header that is normally not present.

It has a valid use case (what it is designed for). It's used when someone composes a message on behalf of someone else (like a secretary on behalf of the boss). It says that another person is the real author; please reply directly to that person.

When it's added by a mailing list robot, it wrecks the traditional operation of the mailing list.

For one thing, it becomes hard to reply privately. You hit "reply", and the message is composed to the mailing list.

A mailing list non-subscriber is not able to get a reply to a question posted to a mailing list. So the Reply-to trick is only compatible with subscriber-only mailing lists, which are a pain in the butt.

Reply-To is a wrongheaded solution to a mailing list problem: and that problem is people using "reply" instead of "reply all", generating private discussions that do not go to the list, but unintentionally.

Today, a feature is showing up in mail clients (at least open source ones): "reply to list". This addresses the problem in a better way. The mail client recognizes, from the headers, that the message being replied to is a mailing list item, and presents this clear way of replying. Furthermore, the mail client extracts the correct list address from the headers.

Unfortunately, "reply to list" implementations are still not kind to non-subscribers. The feature assumes the subscribe-only style of mailing list. (What is needed is a list header by which the re-mailing robot can tag the message as being from a non-subscriber, so the mail client can know to keep that person in the loop.)

Also, the direct, back-channel replies sent among participants do not carry the list headers, so "reply to list" does not work for those: it's back to "reply" or "reply all".

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

#264
post #134
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 manifests itself in nasty behavior towards women (underrepresented in our field and generally being more balanced personality-wise then men) and towards each other. Apparently, it also manifests itself in taking things too seriously, not being able to understand the nuanced meaning behind insulting words, and reducing a person's personality to a few mean things he's said. Nice sexist remark, btw.

Nice sexist remark

My comment about men being more prone to unbalanced personality or are you referring to something else?

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

#265
post #119
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think adding your real-name would be a nice move when you choose to give names of people you disagree with?

[deleted]

Is this you?

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/05/why-he...

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

#266
post #130
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…

> fall somewhere on the aspergers scale That's really insulting to people that actually have autism. Don't do that. (And you mean autism scale, asperger's was eliminated as a separate diagnosis.)

I removed that part. Was unnecessary anyways, not sure why I felt the need to make such a comparison.

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

#267
I just want to point out that there needs to be a more clear distinction between "open source" and FOSS "Free open source software". They are two very different things, and I have found that while there are fundamental issues rearing their ugly head in the development model (many eye's theory is on it's last leg, which is why I push the reduced code theory, which is just my made up theory), much of the vitriol happens in the "open source" community and less so in the FOSS community.

The title is a bad on because it lacks this distinction.

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

#268
post #196

So I'm a blogger with posts that occasionally go semi-viral [1], and I've been subject to unpleasant comments on a few occasions. Here are a couple of posts which have gotten me quite a bit of hate: http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/basic_income_vs_basic... http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/equal_weights.html In both cases they are posts about mathematics which use other topics (economics, dating) as concre…

To summarize: The tech community has become weak because we have taken a look at ourselves and realized that many among us are brutish, brash, and generally all-around assholes. But since these people are highly skilled, we should feel that the fact that they are assholes should be swept under the rug and we should "just deal with it." I get that these things exist and that we have to deal with them (change doesn't h…

I don't agree with your summary. Physical weakness in my comparison is analogous to lack of technical skill or incorrectness in tech. It's orthogonal to being thick or thin skinned - one can be an uber powerlifter with a total > 1000lb who gets offended and whines when a coach says "your abs aren't strong enough, work them harder".

I also don't believe it's wrong to want anything.

I merely believe that all the potential changes I've seen suggested (beyond perhaps "everyone magically becomes nice") are probably more harmful than the current situation.

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

#269
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is in part a cultural issue. Realise that this form of "abuse" does not carry much weight in a lot of cultures. A lot of the strongest criticism of Linus comes from a cultural background where people are hyper-sensitive to direct language.

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

#270
post #264
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Apparently, it also manifests itself in taking things too seriously, not being able to understand the nuanced meaning behind insulting words, and reducing a person's personality to a few mean things he's said. Nice sexist remark, btw.

Nice sexist remark My comment about men being more prone to unbalanced personality or are you referring to something else?

Yes, for "[women] generally being more balanced personality-wise then men".
Post reply on HN