The best people [LWN.net]

The best people

Posted Sep 26, 2007 15:55 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)
In reply to: Article lies - plain and simple. by khim
Parent article: My Fabulous Geek Career (O'ReillyNet)

The "best FOSS people" mentioned in the article are not necessarily the project leaders. And the Linux kernel is probably not a good example of Free software project, it is too peculiar in many respects.

To me it is related to professionalism. Good professionals in any field tend to be polite while bad ones are often rude, to customers and among themselves. There is no reason why software development should be different, or attract Asperger types any more often. And yet Free software development has a displeasing share of these antisocial behaviors and even people that defend them.

LWN is an excellent example of how developers (and users) can be polite with each other. Discussions here can also be curt and to the point but they are seldom rude. Maybe it is because the comment editor says, "Please try to be polite, respectful, and informative, and to provide a useful subject line", and the editorial style helps set this tone. So it can be done.

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The best people

Posted Sep 26, 2007 17:54 UTC (Wed) by peace (guest, #10016) [Link]

FLOSS is an amature's ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amature ) domain and may it never become the domain of the professional because it would be the end of it.

LWN tends to stay away from the sensational unlike some other geek news site that plays to breathless hyperbole and emotion. I bet thats what keeps the discourse at least slightly elevated.

Kind Regards

The best people

Posted Sep 26, 2007 21:23 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

No doubt you mean "amateur". Please do not confuse "amateur" as the opposite of "professional", it is not. In French it literally means "lover", as someone who performs an activity out of love (as opposed to "for profit"). During some time in the late 19th century it became a derogatory term, probably when well-intentioned members of the unoccupied classes out of boredom started performing activities formerly in the realm of the professional. E.g. Sherlock Holmes, the original "amateur sleuth", as a prototypical example.

In Free software it is different. Many amateurs keep a very high level of professionalism, enough to embarrass many a paid developer. And (perhaps most importantly) many professionals love their work as much as any amateur.

And Free software is, without a doubt, the domain of the professional. And of the amateur. And of anyone who cares to contribute. LWN publishes summaries for every kernel release, the one for 2.6.23 will be freely available quite soon, if you care to look.

The best people

Posted Sep 27, 2007 1:46 UTC (Thu) by peace (guest, #10016) [Link]

Curious that you would choose to lecturer me on the very information I presented you with in my post.

-peace

The best people

Posted Sep 26, 2007 20:43 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Being maximally picky and even more off topic (as a strong Aspergic whose
sister is a psychologist specializing in aspies gives me a bit of clue in
this area), there certainly *is* a reason why software development
attracts Aspergic types more often.

A major characteristic of most, perhaps all Aspergics is fear of change.
In many of us one of the ways this manifests is a sort of
control-freakery: that is, we avoid all change but that which we know will
happen well in advance, and that which we initiate ourselves and thus know
about, because being scared as hell is unpleasant. Computers are
incredibly controllable devices which you can interact with almost like
people except you control them and can model them sensibly (social
modelling of humans in realtime is hopeless, but computers are different).
So we *are* strongly attracted to computing, and within that we *are*
strongly attracted to software development.

But it is perfectly possible to be pleasant to people while being
Aspergic: it takes a lot of effort and a lot of lurking time, but it's
doable. Even if you've got Asperger's, there's no real excuse to be
actively nasty. (Social faux pas are another matter and probably
unavoidable, but apologising generally works to fix things then.)