Community vs developers [LWN.net]

Community vs developers

Posted Feb 8, 2006 22:46 UTC (Wed) by elanthis (subscriber, #6227)
Parent article: Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth

The problem is that the "community" is almost entirely a bunch of whiny ungrateful clueless users who decide to mouth off on mailing lists and forums because they feel that they are somehow entitled to getting everything they want, because they're part of the "community."

The developers do the developing. Quit letting any random joe post his braindead opinion to the development lists. Quit having developers waste time debating with over-opinionated, under-clued dorks on the mailing lists. Quit letting the enthusiasm and energy get sapped out by the masses of Slashdot users who feel the need to degrade and argue over every project that they aren't a productive part of.

Dan is competely right that small groups do a lot better work when you don't have a bunch of whiny idiots trying to stop you for their inane reasons. The problem that Jeff has is largely due to the fact that the other developers are getting cut out along with the whiners.

I'd personally like to see lists in which developers can post, but others can only read. Possibly a multi-level affair, in which subscribers can choose to only receive posts from people who are at or above some member level (guest, trusted poster, developer, moderator).

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Community vs developers

Posted Feb 8, 2006 23:22 UTC (Wed) by elanthis (subscriber, #6227) [Link]

I'd also like to quickly add that I myself am one of the over-opinionated whiny users. Possibly one of the worst. ;-)

That's why I unsubscribed from all of the GNOME and FreeDesktop mailing lists a year or two back. I was doing a lot more mouthing off than I was doing real contributing, and I was part of the problem.

The real developers would get a lot more (good) work done if more of the non-developers would follow my lead and censor themselves.

Community vs developers

Posted Feb 9, 2006 0:19 UTC (Thu) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link]

I agree totally with your sentiment, but disagree with the mechanism.
There's no reason to have "read-only" mailing lists. What you need is a
strong community like LKML where badness is immediately and brutally
gunned down.

Be one hundred thousand percent blunt about every real point you make.
Don't beat around the bush. Don't whine, and then the people who choose
to whine will stand out from the crowd.

Often, LKML 'protocol violations' if you will only have to be dismissed
by one or two people. The rest of the developers just ignore it. This
comes from having a strong sense of "this is the way we do development".
If that's your attitude, who can argue?

What I was getting at elsewhere in the thread about Novell and XGL is
simply this. It's fine to ask questions and get upset when open source
development goes closed.

But you do that personally. When you're wearing your Linux dev hat, or
your GNOME dev hat, your approach to the problem is simply "I am
uninterested in development that doesn't take place at our pace. I am
grateful if they decide to come submit patches / join up, but if they do
that, they'll need to understand that there will need to be allowances
made for the way we do things around here."

So, in closing, have STRONG personalities like Torvalds. If a whiner
enters your list with some idea that is outright wrong, don't entertain
it for very long. The number one attitude to remember is "SHOW ME THE
CODE." Then your community won't be hostile to fast-paced development.

Community vs developers

Posted Feb 9, 2006 1:17 UTC (Thu) by elanthis (subscriber, #6227) [Link]

"So, in closing, have STRONG personalities like Torvalds."

Unfortunately, you can't really manufacturer people like that. ;-)