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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday May 03 2015, @04:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the can't-we-all-just-get-along dept.

Bruce Byfield addresses the all-too-often-seen ugliness in open source software circles, and the tendency of open source enthusiasts, to start flame wars based on their personal preference.

He explains that most people working in open source development and free software have very strong feelings of satisfaction in their contributions to the community. But often these feelings have an ugly side.

The issue was brought to a head in an article about the decline of Apache OpenOffice, and the ascendance of LibreOffice. His email indicated that many writers wanted to see Apache humiliated due to differences in their approach even though the products were basically the same code-base.

What disturbs me is when the strong feelings devolve into insularity that excludes other free software projects.

Why, for example, would I possibly want to see OpenOffice humiliated? I prefer LibreOffice's releases, and -- with some misgivings -- the Free Software Foundation's philosophy and licensing over that of the Apache Foundation. I also question the efficiency of having two office suites so closely related to each other. Yet while exploring such issues may be news, I don't forget that, despite these differences, OpenOffice and the Apache Foundation still have the same general goals as LibreOffice or the Free Software Foundation.

[More after the Break]

This reminded him of the Desktop Environment wars, KDE vs Gnome, while several smaller players like XFCE, LXDE, and Enlightenment and a host of others, chug along largely unscathed. We see the same sort of camps forming around File Systems, Init Systems, as well as many user-space programs. We see user communities vilified, and companies trashed, usually for something tangential to the actual free or open source software involved. People become insular.

Sometimes, this kind of insularity may reflect which projects a person works on. However, at least as often, it is voiced by average users with no direct connection to any of the projects involved. It appears an expression of the human need to belong, although an unusually misguided one. ... In fact, I suspect that this insularity is responsible for much of the opposition to diversity efforts. After all, when your sense of who you are depends on externals and what you define yourself as not being, any change becomes uncomfortable -- and, often, an outright threat to your sense of self.

Personally, I'd have to say that what annoys me most about free and open source software are the forced marches imposed on the users, for frivolous reasons. To combat the insularity I see in myself, I try to install a different Distro, or a different OS every 6 months or so. I guess it's time to add a new Desktop Environment to those experiments. virtual machines are a godsend for this.

Bruce goes on to say

In theory, maybe some way exists to encourage the enthusiasm that free software inspires while discouraging the ugliness of insularity.

Soylentils: Do you ever force yourself to step outside your comfort zone with your choices of free software? If so, how, and how often?

 
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @05:22PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @05:22PM (#178155)

    Sometimes you end up with someone in the group who is 'good' but for some reason takes it upon themselves to be a total dick. Then the group has the problem of how do they get rid of this disaster of an emotional wreck without killing the project.

    I dont mean the 'hey fix your crap' kind of dick.

    But a belittling sort of dick for tiny mistakes. 'how dare you use xyz instead of abc you should never fucking code again and should kill yourself for even thinking of doing it the wrong way'.

    I see it over and over in many projects. People look up to linus and think hey he is a dick and steve jobs was a dick so therefor I can be a dick.

    There is a difference. They motivated people. There is a fine line between being a bully and saying 'hey do better, I dont want half ass'. They are willing to toss out 3 years of work and try other things. Could they do it 'nicer', probably. But their is a difference between belittling and 'do better'.

    Instead of making this fun (which it totally can be). They make it somewhere you would rather they go away and never speak to you again. So you do not bother to contribute or find somewhere else to go.

    They mistake their superior knowledge in one field to be that they are good in others. In this case a sense that the decisions they made are the best ones evar!1! and everyone else is stupid neanderthals who couldnt rub two rocks together.

    It is a form of what the grumpyprogrammer was talking about in his last post. http://www.thegrumpyprogrammer.com/2015/04/rfids-encryption-and-stop-rules-oh-my.html [thegrumpyprogrammer.com] Bad decisions come from bad assumptions even though what is being made may be cool. Everything around it might be total crap.

    What is worse that some people are sorta in charge and the attitude become infectious. As it is easier to 'throw mud', 'cant be done' or 'the right way', etc. Than to deal with real issues (like poor performance or hard to understand code). So people start making wild assumptions. I remember back to the mid 90s and people saying emulation was impossible. Yet today we have things like cycle accurate NES, Amiga, and PC emulators. But in the early days of emulation it was pretty much everyone repeating what the same 'chosen few' had said 'it cant be done because its not perfect'. As the perceived group in charge were actually bullies who got a little power and abused the hell out of it. This has not changed. Sites like this even help feed the egos of people who do this. We even have at least 4 that I know of (I will not name names as we are well aware of who they are). They come in and make a proclamation on something. They eventually take on the air of 'in charge' because they post so much.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @07:47PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2015, @07:47PM (#178206)

    I remember back to the mid 90s and people saying emulation was impossible.

    ...Which is amusing. IBM used software emulation to provide backwards compatibility between newer computers and older software back in the 1960s. I'd think it would've been covered by the idea of Turing equivalence, anyhow. Or did you just mean that a lot of people thought emulation would be impractical?

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Katastic on Sunday May 03 2015, @11:23PM

    by Katastic (3340) on Sunday May 03 2015, @11:23PM (#178272)

    >But a belittling sort of dick for tiny mistakes. 'how dare you use xyz instead of abc you should never fucking code again and should kill yourself for even thinking of doing it the wrong way'.

    Are you my boss?