"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"

#351

Post by fl0wenol » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 6:00 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…

There's a piece you're missing in observing this phenomenon.

It is difficult to motivate a group of individuals to "hate on" an individual, technology, or movement without a personal stake. As 4chan would say: "Not your personal army".

The escalation process to this point is not quick. Instead, it is often cryptic, hidden, or complex to understand. When you see it laid bare, it can make a twisted sort of sense if you were there to see it build up; if you saw the initial back and forth vitriol between two parties.

Once a tipping point is reached, the building tensions spills over into an adjacent community which then bandwagons. This is the point where parties start complaining about forum invasions, threats, and it spirals out of control. This is where it becomes visible outside the community.

When you see the fighting from the outside, it is all noise and no signal. By this time all of the discussion that could be had between parties was already had. The time for legitimate arguments had been passed, and now it is only an emotional clash of personalities and communities.

What you don't see are all the disagreements and intra-community conflict that never make it to that level and are resolved quietly. These greatly outnumber the knock-down, drag out fights, or at least they never escalate to media attention.

I think what we're seeing now is not a fundamental shift in the state of online discourse, but rather the changing role social networks and "media outlets" that report on online controversy acting as a delayed amplifier which only fans flames and provides a place to appeal after all context is lost. Social media also enables bandwagoning and cuts across interests but tweets and hashtag oneliners cannot capture the nuance of the lead up to the current conflict.

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

#352

Post by Mikeb85 » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 6:02 PM UTC

inclemnet wrote: post #328

Mikeb85 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps he's simply talking about the communities he's actually involved in. Then he should have said 'The communities I'm involved in are awful'. And I'd agree. I didn't realize he made PulseAudio and Systemd (or was involved in some way). I personally don't mind either project (neither have harmed my Linux experience, Pulse is convenient for my uses), and I think both get a lot of unwarranted criticism. Not least…

> Then he should have said 'The communities I'm involved in are awful Luckily he doesn't need to, because (as above) he's obviously talking about the open source community. > I could care less You couldn't care less. I really think none of your criticisms are a real problem, or that there's any real ambiguity. I won't keep replying, it doesn't seem useful.

> Luckily he doesn't need to, because (as above) he's obviously talking about the open source community.

Which open-source community? The Linux kernel community is very different from say, the Haskell community (which is also very invested in open-source).

> You couldn't care less.

You accuse me of splitting hairs on semantics, yet you choose to correct me here. You understood what I meant, local slang here (for better or for worse) is to say what I wrote (even if it's not 100% gramatically correct), but you are more than willing to criticise me for not 'accepting' ambiguous language for something that should be 'obvious' to 'the open-source community'...

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

#353

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 6:06 PM UTC

[deleted]

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

#354

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

gambiting wrote: post #257

xroche wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I work on a project which sells millions of units each year. You could also argue that idiots committing code to the code base should be stopped. Yet I am very certain that if my manager started calling anyone an idiot and telling them they should have been aborted, he would very likely end out of work very quickly. Yet somehow it's acceptable of Torvalds? How? Good quality work can be done without telling people the…

I think another issue here is that those who idealize the Jobs/Torvalds way of doing things automatically assume that they're going to be on the "good side" of things. The same way people who idealize things like eugenics know that their genes will, of course, be allowed to spread.

What they don't seem to realize that its more likely they'll be on the receiving end of the negative traits they applaud. Either by an occasional screw up or because Mr Bossman is having a bad day. To be humiliated in public like this is often very painful, even for the thick-skinned. The day that happens, they're lawyering up and getting HR involved because, how dare someone yell at them. In their minds, the yelling only happens to someone else, the imagined dumb peons they see themselves as being above.

I think way too many techies seem themselves as John Galt-like supermen, and that the negative consequences are for the sub-humans. There's a real dynamic of here of dehumanizing others that's often swept under the carpet. I think this dynamic is sociopathic.

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

#355

Post by nkurz » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 6:08 PM UTC

Linus posted a very relevant document yesterday entitled "Linux kernel management style". I wonder if Lennart's piece is in response (or perhaps vice versa). I'd recommend reading each in mind of the other.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8417154 https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux....

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

#356

Post by Diederich » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 6:15 PM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #348

Diederich wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The diversity that I am talking about has nothing to do with the variability of code quality. Like you, I want to produce and to consume the best possible code.

The diversity I'm talking about is in personality types. There's a lot of people, even on Hacker News, even in this thread, that would be excellent technical contributors to the Linux Kernel, except they have a personality type that requires them to spend more emotional energy dealing with verbal abuse, either directed at them, or just being flung about.

As you say, size isn't the most important measure of a contributor pool.

In my mind, angry, hateful language, especially if it is accepted by the whole, will greatly limit the amount of talent available.

Good development and merge practices has and will continue to keep bad code out.

And note, I have not said anything about being warm, friendly or inviting. I'm not necessarily suggesting those be specific goals.

Finally, nowhere have I suggested that anybody stop working on features, and instead '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"

#357

Post by meapix » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 6:17 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.

How could a person who has 24 hours a day be:

1. very nice. 2. receiver of whatever shit (including good shit) people send. 3. productive. 4. responsible to make a critical system work. 5. a filter of bad code. 6. ...

Without offending anybody?

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

#358

Post by meapix » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 6:19 PM UTC

vidoc wrote: post #303

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…

I'm wondering what kind of world you would like instead? Would you like those mailing lists to be an environment similar to what you have in the mass media, where political correctness and hypocrisy is rampant, and anytime someone crosses the boundary we use words like 'hate'?

No thanks

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

#359

Post by mcantor » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 6:19 PM UTC

vph wrote: post #100

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 failed to understand this line of criticism. Open Source is a software development model. It's not a model of society and does not guarantee to consists of only well-mannered people. There are ugly, difficult people everywhere, not just in Open Source projects.

Genuine question: Did you read the article? I feel like the author's main point is that there seems to be a higher abundance of toxic interactions in Open Source than other communities.

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

#360

Post by Kalium » Mon, Oct 06, 2014, 6:23 PM UTC

Diederich wrote: post #356

Kalium wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The diversity that I am talking about has nothing to do with the variability of code quality. Like you, I want to produce and to consume the best possible code. The diversity I'm talking about is in personality types. There's a lot of people, even on Hacker News, even in this thread, that would be excellent technical contributors to the Linux Kernel, except they have a personality type that requires them to spend mor…

A diversity of personality types doesn't guarantee better code either. I'm suggesting that there's a tradeoff to be had with the various aspects of open source that require time and energy. Spending an increased amount of time and energy on supporting a personality-diverse community (and less on other things, such as writing code) should not be assumed to automatically equate to better code.

There is a very real possibility that angry language results in an increased ability to ship code by discouraging more net-negative contributions than net-positive ones.