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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?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by theluggage on Sunday May 03 2015, @06:08PM
But often these feelings have an ugly side.
I think one thing that contributes to this is that free software communities are held together by electronic communications. When you're typing an email or forum post its very easy to forget that you are ultimately communicating with flesh and blood people, there's no body language to communicate how serious or angry you really are and there's the temptation to reply immediately, without time to reflect and cool off. Its very easy to send off an email or post that, on reflection, comes over as a lot more aggressive or critical than intended - I suspect most people have sent and received a few of those in their time. Add to that the grain of truth in the stereotype of programmers tending towards Sheldon Cooper Syndrome, and you have a recipe for flamewars.
Then you have the tension that software developers want to work with the newest, trendy technologies. Maintaining old-tech systems to keep the paying customers happy is boring in any business, so when the customers aren't paying its completely understandable that developers don't have much patience.
YouTube had the right idea when they actually implemented the XKCD proposal [xkcd.com] - I'd propose an enhancement whereby (a) the message was read back by Nicholas Briggs [wikipedia.org] doing his best Dalek, and (b) for good measure, any references to gender, race, religion, age, political affiliation or text editor of choice was inverted.