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

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

#371

Post by lukaslalinsky »

I think this very much depends on your own attitude. Sure, there are assholes who will say things about how useless is your project and how they hate you for it, but this is not the norm in open source. And it's definitely not the norm when it comes to developers, not users. I have worked with various people in open source, including some that are known to be "not good at dealing with people", but I never had a serious problem with them.

In fact, just a few weeks ago I had a wonderful experience contributing a patch to cairo. You meet a new person and you are working together with the goal of the best quality code. I was not doing much open source development for some time and it was amazing how great it felt again.

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

#372

Post by fl0wenol »

forca wrote: post #43
fidotron wrote: post #30

He's just the new Drepper. Coming from almost anyone else this might be reasonable, but him? Just pointing out someone else is an asshole does not negate you being an asshole. Honestly, it's people like him and the systemd noise on all sides that have made me lose faith in Linux. By contrast Linus has git too, which is potentially as big a contribution as Linux was in the first place. History may even demonstrate git…

Linux has become simply the invisible platform upon which so much runs. This is true by virtue of not only Android, but other stuff. Take notice, though, that more and more businesses are shunning Linux in favour of BSD. PS4, most routers, switches, increasing numbers of embedded chips now run NetBSD and OpenBSD (esp. in wi-fi security space). Businesses are also increasingly wary of the GPL and using maximally free…

Can you elaborate on why this is a concern for you now as opposed to 10 years ago? As far as I'm aware, nothing significant about licensing, best practice, or case law has changed. (Linux didn't adopt GPLv3, so...)

Developers in the Linux space the developers get nervous when vendors want to take it and graft DRM/black box components on the side and not document them or allow others to do the same. You can do this under GPL with a hardware-assisted solution, but not in pure software. If you treat your firmware as part of a black box where the keys to the kingdom are baked into the firmware, then you're probably better off with something that isn't copyleft.

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

#373

Post by forgottenpass »

mike_hearn wrote: post #120
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…

You realise that there are large, commercial projects that are just as high stakes as the Linux kernel or arguably even higher stakes, and they manage to operate with reasonable team dynamics? There is no correlation between "runs an important project" and "must be an asshole" even though certainly everyone has off days from time to time (I've been known to flame people when reaching the end of my tether but usually…

You realise that there are large, commercial projects that are just as high stakes as the Linux kernel or arguably even higher stakes, and they manage to operate with reasonable team dynamics?

I wonder about those projects sometime. If we took all of the conversations that ever took place at their office and stuck them online and in public. What would that be like? How many journalists and bloggers would find inflammatory quotes that can be published out of context to shame the person who spoke those words? How would Linus stack up next to John Doe of the Foo project?

Or, think about everything you read, said, wrote or heard at work over the last month. Now imagine hand wringing blogposts about all of it. Especially the things that you want to exclude from this thought experiment because they would have never been said if your only communication method was a public mailing list.

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

#374

Post by Diederich »

mcantor wrote: post #361
bronson wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I am upset and angry that you keep making the same mistakes." No, remember the context: you've already used nice, direct words, and Kai has ignored them multiple times. Now you need to shake Kai's cage. Linus might have gone overboard, but his technique has more chance of success than yours. Also, this is not a sterile corporate environment. The LKML is more like a dive bar than Applebee's and that's the way they li…

This debate exists on a spectrum of gray areas, but I'm pretty sure "you should be retroactively aborted" crosses the line from "shaking someone's cage" to "flagrantly excessive verbal abuse", if for no other reason than it equate's the target's worth as a human being with their skill as a developer, which is obviously not a healthy viewpoint.

I'm a big believer in 'spectrum of gray areas'. This particular quote from Linus is particularly bad.

What I want to firmly point out is the general community's level of acceptance of verbally abusive language.

There could be a debate about what constitutes verbal abuse, on a case by case basis. And that would turn into a mess.

What I'd love to see is the community acknowledge that using and even encouraging such language is bad for everybody, and it's bad for the open source movement, big time.

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

#375

Post by bronson »

mcantor wrote: post #361
bronson wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I am upset and angry that you keep making the same mistakes." No, remember the context: you've already used nice, direct words, and Kai has ignored them multiple times. Now you need to shake Kai's cage. Linus might have gone overboard, but his technique has more chance of success than yours. Also, this is not a sterile corporate environment. The LKML is more like a dive bar than Applebee's and that's the way they li…

This debate exists on a spectrum of gray areas, but I'm pretty sure "you should be retroactively aborted" crosses the line from "shaking someone's cage" to "flagrantly excessive verbal abuse", if for no other reason than it equate's the target's worth as a human being with their skill as a developer, which is obviously not a healthy viewpoint.

I'm not trying to be pedantic here but, despite your quote marks, Linus never said that.

My interpretation of that email chain reads: anyone who is stupid enough to continue reading byte-by-byte after being told that it's a bad idea should be retroactively aborted.

The implied subject makes a big difference. (I still think it's over the line but I understand that everyone makes mistakes in the heat of the moment)

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

#376

Post by solipsism »

antirez wrote: post #254

I must be very lucky... because after many many years of writing open source, being involved with at least three communities (IT security with hping, Tcl language with Tcl/Jim-Interpreter, Databases with Redis) I still have to receive serious attacks. Actually the only attacks I can remember are about my vision on how diversity should be handled (I was accused of sexism for saying that people are all alike), and a fe…

Could you hint or point us toward some of the ways your vision on software development is far from what is considered good practice? I like to absorb counter-normal opinions.

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

#377

Post by grandinj »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #149
RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be very interested if you could provide evidence of Lennart being an asshole. I've honestly never seen him be anything other than professional.

Here is one of his more infamous statements: http://lwn.net/Articles/430699/ "What I actually suggested in that interview was not so much that the BSDs should adopt the Linux APIs, but instead that people should just forget about the BSDs. Full stop." He's also been an annoyance in Steve Langasek (Upstart developer)'s Google+ feed, and his post regarding the inseparability of systemd-logind as a main argument for why…

So his technical opinions warrant personal vitroilic responses?

That's a rather .... interesting position.

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

#378

Post by _delirium »

forca wrote: post #363
oDot wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never used BSD before, but from reading FreeBSD's BSD vs Linux [0], I can't see a major difference aside of the license, and the number of distributions available. Can you please explain what made you go on off using BSD/Linux? [0]: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/explaining-bsd/compa...

I have noticed over the last ten or so years that FreeBSD in particular is ridiculously stable -- far more so than any Linux distro I have tried, including Red Hat, CentOS, and Debian. I have stable Linux machines running Debian and I have FreeBSD test machines running the same software. FreeBSD uses less resources (exact same HW), tends to be slightly faster, and is arguably easier to admin on a daily basis. Let's n…

I also like both FreeBSD and Debian (have no real experience with the others). But on performance it varies a lot by workload. To take two examples: over the years at any given point in time, FreeBSD has had a better networking stack than Linux, but worse scalability to large numbers of cores. Though there is some ongoing sponsored work on the latter [1,2].

[1] http://www.ixsystems.com/whats-new/freebsd-foundation-and-ix...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8123512

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

#379

Post by alexqgb »

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…

Exactly. And I'm not impressed with the way the "professionalism" police are so quick to condemn Torvald for one justifiably angry email while giving such a conspicuous pass to a sustained pattern of passively aggressive, measurably destructive, and flatly un-collegial behavior that is the true definition of unprofessional.

In other words, there's a pretty egregious double standard being applied here. In my experience, that typically favors the kinds of abusive personalities who have discovered some easily-exploited aspect of the social system to simultaneously provide cover for their own bad behavior while limiting their target's ability to retaliate.

If I were on a team stuck with this guy, and required by professional norms to bite my tongue, I can safely say I'd take supreme satisfaction in seeing such a nasty employee get this severely excoriated. And make no mistake, this isn't about "feedback" or "criticism". It's about driving the guy out of the shop in a way that provides a suitable catharsis for everyone who has had to put up with his actual and sustained unprofessionalism.

Of course, tf this were an arbitrary, unjustified, or otherwise baseless response, I could see how it would be hugely damaging to Torvald's authority, and the trust he relies on. But in a case like this, the opposite seems true. And if it puts others who present similar problems on notice, so much the better.

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

#380

Post by DSMan195276 »

mcantor wrote: post #359
vph wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

I'm not the same person you responded to, but regardless I'd argue that there probably isn't much more toxic interactions in open-source then there is in any other communities. People tend to fight and get angry over stuff they care about, that happens everywhere. The thing with open-source is that all of those communications are open, and thus it's much easier to see.

The thing is though, how many times do you think anybody on here has actually looked at the Linux Kernel mailing list for a reason other then a post on here about Linus getting angry? I'd wager not many. Everybody loves to see a good fight, but it's rare to see someone being helpful and nice highlighted. I've only seen one post on HN highlighting Linus being nice and helpful, even though that's the bulk of the posts he makes, and I see one every time he gets angry. For example, looking at some ones he sent yesterday, I'm seeing this (https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/10/5/96), this (https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/10/5/112), and this (https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/10/5/107), all of which are generally nice and well mannered questions, and explanations of things people may need to do differently.

I don't think the Open Source community is nearly as toxic as people make it out to be.

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