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Shuttleworth: Quality has a new nameShuttleworth: Quality has a new namePosted Apr 25, 2012 15:49 UTC (Wed) by ean5533 (subscriber, #69480)In reply to: Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name by HelloWorld Parent article: Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name
I'm going to make the naive assumption that you really don't understand what's going on. Spaetz isn't filtering you out so that he can ignore your comments and happily live in his own world (as you imply). He's filtering you out because you just confirmed that you think ad hominem reasoning is a valid way to argue. It is not.
You may have valid points, and you may have valid reasons to back them, but if people have to dig through your faulty arguments in order to find the good ones then it is hard to trust anything you say. At some point it becomes easier to just ignore you completely than to waste time trying to sort through the cruft. If you'd like to be taken more seriously, please take the time to make sure your arguments are all relevant and that you don't drift into personal attacks that contribute nothing to your point.
If you find yourself tempted to respond by calling me an idiot, please know that your response is already heading down the wrong path.
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Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:02 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
> I'm going to make the naive assumption that you really don't understand what's going on. Spaetz isn't filtering you out so that he can ignore your comments and happily live in his own world (as you imply). He's filtering you out because you just confirmed that you think ad hominem reasoning is a valid way to argue. It is not.
Oh yeah, right. So when someone speaks like a moron, behaves like a moron and at least appears to have the ideas of a moron, calling that person a moron is not a valid way to argue?
> You may have valid points, and you may have valid reasons to back them, but if people have to dig through your faulty arguments in order to find the good ones then it is hard to trust anything you say.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:07 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Calling people morons is not how we'd like people to argue on LWN, no. Save that for the schoolyard, please.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 18:04 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
> Calling people morons is not how we'd like people to argue on LWN,
Well, good thing I didn't do that then.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:13 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] calling that person a moron is not a valid way to argue? Precisely so. Instead, explain why the idea is stupid. Tread warily, though, lest you fall foul of the "arguing with idiots" effect.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:15 UTC (Wed) by ean5533 (subscriber, #69480) [Link]
Your original post listed several things that you believe Mark is doing wrong. Presumably the point of your argument is that Mark is detrimental to the Linux community, but you haven't explained why; you've only listed a bunch of things that you, personally, do not like. (Never mind that you provided no citations, and actually criticized someone who asked you for citations. Also never mind that you seem to believe every technical decision ever made by Canonical was made personally by Mark himself). Even if we ignore the flaws in your reasoning, and just accept your argument that Mark is detrimental to the Linux community, there is still zero justification for calling Mark an idiot, a moron, or someone who "needs a serious beating with a cluebat".
I am finished talking with you. Your negative attitude is caustic.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 18:24 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
> Your original post listed several things that you believe Mark is doing wrong. Presumably the point of your argument is that Mark is detrimental to the Linux community, but you haven't explained why;
Yes, precisely. I didn't explain it because it's obvious. For example there's a general agreement that improvements to software like the kernel, GTK+ or X.org should preferably be done upstream, and not in the distros. So why should I write down the reasons for that again when dozens of people have done that before me? And it's the same for all the other point's I've made.
> Never mind that you provided no citations, and actually criticized someone who asked you for citations.
> Also never mind that you seem to believe every technical decision ever made by Canonical was made personally by Mark himself.
So no, I don't see any serious flaws in my reasoning. And let me say it again: I'm not trying to write an academic paper here. I'm just giving *my personal opinion* about Shuttleworth, which is what comments are for.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 19:06 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> or example there's a general agreement that improvements to software like the kernel, GTK+ or X.org should preferably be done upstream, and not in the distros.
if you are going to start throwing rocks I'll point out that RedHat has probably the worst track record of any distro in terms of maintaining local patches to the kernel. They are far better than they were in the past (at one point the divergance was so large that there were major apps that would run only on the RedHat kernel), but they still maintain a fair number of them (as does almost every disto)
In fact, by this criteria, the least evil distro is Slackware (and even Slackware has a few local patches to the software it ships)
Your absolutist "Since they aren't perfect, they are evil" attitude is not productive. If you are trying to convince other people to agree with you, then insulting them doesn't help either, and if you aren't trying to convince people, what are you trying to do?
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 29, 2012 21:26 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"if you are going to start throwing rocks I'll point out that RedHat has probably the worst track record of any distro in terms of maintaining local patches to the kernel"
That isn't the same thing. Red Hat usually does all kernel work upstream and backports it to maintain compatibility for the enterprise releases. For Fedora, there isn't any history of major local patches that weren't upstream quickly because of the shorter release cycle. When people complain about vendor X not doing work upstream it is usually because that vendor hasn't made any efforts to push it upstream.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 29, 2012 22:12 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
Red Hat currently does much of it's kernel work upstream, but this has not always been the case. they have gotten much better in the last couple of years.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 29, 2012 22:22 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Feel free to be more specific. I would argue that what has changed is the 2.6 kernel development process.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 29, 2012 23:37 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
the 2.6 development process was changed to encourage Red Hat (and the other distributions) to cooperate more and work more upstream, and I think it's been a wonderful success in doing so.
I just see people giving Red Hat a free pass on anything that it does (or has ever done) while condemning Canonical and Ubuntu for doing similar things (and in my eyes, doing them to a less damaging degree)
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 29, 2012 23:50 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
"the 2.6 development process was changed to encourage Red Hat"
Citations needed. https://lwn.net/Articles/94386/ shows Alan Cox pushing for a six month release process and Andrew Morton suggesting the current process. Also I note, you didn't provide any specifics on which kernel features weren't pushed upstream by Red Hat earlier in the 2.4 kernel process.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:23 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
This is a technical forum.
It's acceptable to attack someone's code.
It's acceptable to attack someone's decisions.
It's acceptable to attack someone's reasoning.
It's acceptable to attack someone's track record.
It's acceptable to questions someone's mindset.
It's NOT acceptable to attack someone for who they are. This includes your opinion of their intelligence, their Gender, their race, how they dress, etc.
It's NOT acceptable to say that you wish a group of people would die.
One thing that you should keep in mind, is that there is no one perfect solution that solves every problem in existence. Everything involves trade-offs, and the importance of different aspects that are being traded off against each other is very subjective. What you consider critically important may not be so critical to someone else. And at the same time, what someone else considers critically important may not seem so critical to you.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:54 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
Validity.... is probably not the right word.
I would argue that calling someone a moron is... ineffective... if your goal is to influence or to persuade people to reconsider their position.
It's one of those things that falls into a class of emotive rhetoric. Emotive rhetoric (both positive and negative) is pretty much only useful for rabble rousing. Anytime you are speaking to people who already agree (or disagree) strongly with the general arguments you are making and you want to people to stop thinking and to start reacting emotional about something. You know propaganda.
If however the goal is to get people to think, then you'll avoid as much emotive language and rhetoric as you possibly can. I would hope that everyone's goal here... including yours... is to get other readers thinking rationally..instead of reacting emotionally.
And of course rational discourse is made entirely more difficult if you start writing (bah I want to say put pen to paper..but sadly this is becoming a lost phrase) in an emotional state. Because of the written medium, you have to anticipate that any emotional leakage you put into your own writing will be negatively amplified in the reaction. The less emotional rhetoric you can put into the writing, the better chance you stand of getting a reasonable response in return.
But if your goal was basically to just cause trouble....you nailed it.
-jef
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:41 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>He's filtering you out because you just confirmed that you think ad hominem reasoning is a valid way to argue.
Please go and learn what 'ad hominem' means.
Saying "your argument is wrong because you smell" is ad hominem.
Despite the prevailing LWN opinion, 'ad hominem' is a phrase which actually *has a meaning*. It can't simply be applied to any personal attack.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 16:50 UTC (Wed) by ean5533 (subscriber, #69480) [Link]
I understand that "ad hominem" typically refers to counter-arguing with irrelevant personal attacks. However, I believe it is also valid in this case. HelloWorld was (presumably) trying to make the point that Mark Shuttleworth's business decisions negatively impact the community. One way that HelloWorld justified his point was by calling Mark an idiot. Calling Mark an idiot doesn't explain why his decisions are bad, it's just an irrelevant personal attack.
Regardless, I realize that my usage of that term is non-standard is best and that it was probably the wrong term to use.
Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name Posted Apr 25, 2012 22:47 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] HelloWorld was (presumably) trying to make the point that Mark Shuttleworth's business decisions negatively impact the community. I think the point was made clearly enough. One way that HelloWorld justified his point was by calling Mark an idiot. Actually, the qualification was removed from someone else's assertion that Shuttleworth was being an idiot in a particular situation. Calling Mark an idiot doesn't explain why his decisions are bad, it's just an irrelevant personal attack. It would be if there were no other observations, but it looks to me like the presumed name-calling is merely a conclusion about the guy after considering those observations. Of course, one could come to a different conclusion - "Mark Shuttleworth is a stubborn visionary", for example - but that would also be based on the observations, not a random statement for the sake of argument. I don't think Shuttleworth is an idiot, nor do I think that statements claiming that Shuttleworth has done nothing sensible for open source software or that he is "worthless for the OSS community" have any credibility, but it is true to say that some of Canonical's moves have been very divisive. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Maybe that adage is being applied here, and we've all seen the other interpretation in other discussions, but some would argue that it isn't relevant as each of the observations can be refuted in some way. If so, claims of "ad hominem" are not the way to go about doing so.
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