"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"

#341

Post by Diederich » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 5:43 PM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #334

Diederich wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kalium, you bring up the strongest point in favor of defending and using verbally abusive language. I've been through military basic training, and such language is routinely used because it is quite effective at communicating error by breaking down mental resistance and barriers to correction. In that case, the potential for emotional harm is outweighed by the net reduction in the probability for physical harm on the…

I agree, there are other methods to accomplish the same thing without the toxic side effects. That is not in question. The question is if those methods produce superior outcomes, as a lack of the side effects in question does not by itself represent a superior outcome. Remember, the goal of an open source project is useful code. A friendly and emotionally supportive community is only desirable if it aids in achieving…

This is, I think, a variant on the 'ends justify the means' argument. But sure, we can talk about that.

I concur that open source projects' primary and over-arching goal is and should be to produce good code.

When the leader of a project freely (though not so frequently in this case) uses verbally abusive language, that has the strong effect of limiting the diversity of potential contributors to the project.

I'm willing to assume that a more diverse project tends to be a project that will produce better code.

In this particular case, bad code wasn't included in the project. The abusive language did nothing to stop merge of bad code.

So did verbally abusing this developer somehow cause his/her future contributions to be of higher quality? I don't know the answer to that.

Or perhaps did this verbal abuse generally raise everyone else's code quality, because they didn't want to become a victim as well? Perhaps.

One thing I am certain of, though, is that such choices artificially and severely limit the possible side of the contributor pool, and that's bad.

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

#342

Post by lmedinas » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 5:44 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #259

Lennart specifically called out Gentoo; as a Gentoo user, I do want to speak up in defense of the Gentoo community. I will concede the point that Lennart has, by far, probably received more vitriol per-capita from the Gentoo community than any others. I'm not going to defend any of the personal attacks launched on him. However, Lennart writes very opinionated software, and the opinions it takes are more at clash with…

To me this resumes all: "I am used to rough discussions on mailing lists, and yes, when I was younger I did not always stay technical in flamewars, but nowadays I am pretty good at that, I am sometimes articulate, but never personal."

With all due respect for him but he is eating his own food. See this posts and you understand:

1 - https://plus.google.com/+LennartPoetteringTheOneAndOnly/post... 2- https://plus.google.com/+LennartPoetteringTheOneAndOnly/post... 3 - https://plus.google.com/+LennartPoetteringTheOneAndOnly/post... 4 - https://plus.google.com/+LennartPoetteringTheOneAndOnly/post...

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

#343

Post by bronson » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 5:44 PM UTC

zimbatm wrote: post #203

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…

Why is is that each time offensive Linus quotes are used only a handful of them show up ? Over the thousands of emails that have been exchanged in the last fifteen years there surely must exist a bigger variety.

This is a fantastic question!

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

#344

Post by fl0wenol » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 5:46 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #164

vidarh wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How you managed to read that into the message above is totally beyond me.

>This is a Linus' flaw, of course, but one we can live with in the context of his hugely positive net contribution. Said in response to a comment by Linus directly stating that someone should be retroactively aborted (murdered).

I think you should be retroactively aborted due to your unrelenting pedantry which serves no one and isn't even amusing.

Just kidding, I hope you die in a couch fire.

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

#345

Post by talmand » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 5:47 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #221

talmand wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) g…

I got it. Since so few people are likely to see the conversation then I suppose it's okay for him to belittle someone in such a manner. If no one sees you behave badly, then all's good.

If someone involved in a public facing project open to the masses doesn't care in any way how they appear in public, then that's just a problem that will likely never go away. I suppose as long as people are willing to accept the abuse then it won't negatively affect the project that much in terms of contributions.

Another one, got it. As long as people still continue to desire to contribute then other people's behavior is totally acceptable.

So far, I have yet to see any one person's comment reach the level of the quoted statement. If you can't see that then I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Also, you are assuming quite a lot about my level of tolerance for political correctness. Simply pointing out that someone behaves in a bad manner and suggest that maybe there was a better way is not political correctness.

Again, we shall have to agree to disagree. Projects will carry on regardless.

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

#346

Post by Alupis » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 5:53 PM UTC

> I don't usually talk about this too much, and hence I figure that people are really not aware of this, but yes, the Open Source community is full of assholes, and I probably more than most others am one of their most favourite targets. I get hate mail for hacking on Open Source. People have started multiple "petitions" on petition web sites, asking me to stop working (google for it). Recently, people started collecting Bitcoins to hire a hitman for me (this really happened!). Just the other day, some idiot posted a "song" on youtube, a creepy work, filled with expletives about me and suggestions of violence. People post websites about boycotting my projects, containing pretty personal attacks. On IRC, people /msg me sometimes, with nasty messages, and references to artwork in 4chan style. And there's more. A lot more.

My jaw dropped. Feelings about systemd aside (I actually quite like it), this is uncalled for, and outrageously bad.

Grow up! Hiring a hitman? Are you for real?

Anytime someone makes a large project that gets traction, people are going to disagree; that does not make it acceptable to launch personal attacks, and call for violence against the developer.

As a community, we need to call out the people doing this and show it's not acceptable; irregardless of any politics that may be involved.

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

#347

Post by angersock » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 5:55 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #199

minikites wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is different for men and women. http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/women-ar... "Accounts with feminine usernames incurred an average of 100 sexually explicit or threatening messages a day. Masculine names received 3.7." http://time.com/3305466/male-female-harassment-online/ The study pointed out that the harassment targeted at men is not because they are men, as is clearly more frequently the ca…

When the message is a threat of violence or hitmen, it should be taken serious regardless of the targeted person gender. It is very important to not trivialize harassment directed at men because they are male and not female. That is part of the very gender stereotype that it is the cause of the statistics your referenced, and reinforcing that behavior will only make things worse.

No, that's stupid, because the cost of taking it seriously is far far greater than the estimated badness of any of those threats.

Reasoning like that is why we have the TSA.

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

#348

Post by Kalium » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 5:56 PM UTC

Diederich wrote: post #341

Kalium wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, there are other methods to accomplish the same thing without the toxic side effects. That is not in question. The question is if those methods produce superior outcomes, as a lack of the side effects in question does not by itself represent a superior outcome. Remember, the goal of an open source project is useful code. A friendly and emotionally supportive community is only desirable if it aids in achieving…

This is, I think, a variant on the 'ends justify the means' argument. But sure, we can talk about that. I concur that open source projects' primary and over-arching goal is and should be to produce good code. When the leader of a project freely (though not so frequently in this case) uses verbally abusive language, that has the strong effect of limiting the diversity of potential contributors to the project. I'm will…

An open, warm, inviting, inclusive, and friendly community that cannot author useful code is of immense social value but very little technical value.

I'm not willing to assume that a more diverse project and larger potential contributor pool will automatically produce better code. Not all contributors are of equal value. Some contributors are of net-negative value, particularly those like Kay who persist in such. It is highly desirable to limit the potential contributor pool to as few of those individuals as possible.

Size is not the sole meaningful measure of a contributor pool. Quality is equally - and often more - important.

When dealing with matters tangential to a core purpose, sometimes the ends do justify the means. When was the last time you thanked an open source developer for stopping development on features you needed (perhaps permanently so) in order to encourage the surrounding community to be nicer to one another?

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

#349

Post by crististm » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 5:57 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #309

crististm wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. About ten years ago, there was a saying on Gentoo site saying that it is a bug if you can't customize your gentoo system the way you want it. Personal attacks are not OK, but he should keep his opinion on what _my_ machine should do for himself. For what it is worth, his systemd is a bug.

> but he should keep his opinion on what _my_ machine should do for himself Releasing free software and what you accuse him of are entirely different things. Frankly I'd like to understand how you even equate someone releasing software which you aren't even forced to use, to essentially ramming his opinions of how YOUR machine should run down your throat. The anti-systemd people really aren't coming across at all wel…

I guess I'm seeing to much into "mechanism not policy" don't I?

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

#350

Post by CamperBob2 » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 6:00 PM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #68

mike_hearn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet in general has problems with this, but I suspect it's much worse in the open source world where unmoderated forums are standard. If you look at the moderation tools available in something like mailman, they're very poor. It's just not been a priority for technical discussion forums at all. And the social convention is to leave forums largely unmoderated anyway, so it's easy to get into a downward spiral…

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…

Maybe that's how mailing lists worked "a quarter century" ago, but it's most certainly not how mainstream mailing lists work now.