Kuhn: Busybox GPL enforcement concerns resolved

Posted Feb 23, 2012 20:40 UTC (Thu) by branden (guest, #7029)
In reply to: Kuhn: Busybox GPL enforcement concerns resolved by raven667
Parent article: Kuhn: Busybox GPL enforcement concerns resolved

"On a side note I also think its silly to avoid technologies just because you don't agree with the politics of the person who created them. If their software works then it doesn't matter if they are a loudmouthed a-hole and if their software doesn't work then their software doesn't work, regardless."

There are multiple problems with this statement.

Firstly, being a "loudmouthed a-hole" is constitutive of a person's politics (even if one tends notice an overwhelming number of such types when they hold a political ideology in conflict with one's own).

It is, instead, a personality issue.

And personality matters. If a copyright holder or software supplier is erratic, irrational, malicious, or even just prone to doing horribly embarrassing things with which one can end up associated, this *will* weigh on adoption decisions by people evaluating the code. Especially when the people doing the evaluation are not private individuals acting solely on their own behalf, but doing so for risk-conscious corporations.

Kuhn: Busybox GPL enforcement concerns resolved

Posted Feb 23, 2012 20:42 UTC (Thu) by branden (guest, #7029) [Link]

Sigh. s/constitutive/NOT &/

Kuhn: Busybox GPL enforcement concerns resolved

Posted Feb 24, 2012 1:21 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (2 responses)

Maybe politics wasn't the best word to use. The concept I was trying to communicate was that you shouldn't pre-judge a piece of software by criteria that are not relevant to software development. Race, gender, religion, politics, etc. are not valid criteria and the authors status in these categories doesn't "taint" a software package. I would also count personal unpleasantness in that category as well. There are plenty of successful software projects that are run by strong personalities that many people find unpleasant. If the software is buggy or doesn't work well it doesn't matter if the author is nice or not.

Kuhn: Busybox GPL enforcement concerns resolved

Posted Feb 24, 2012 1:59 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

but even if the software works and has few bugs, and unpleasant enough maintainer can effectively kill a project (or force a fork, if the project got popular enough)

being nice isn't nearly enough, but working code isn't nearly enough either.

Kuhn: Busybox GPL enforcement concerns resolved

Posted Feb 24, 2012 10:50 UTC (Fri) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

I have to disagree. While it doesn't matter if the author is nice, it really does matter if he is cooperative, responsive, and not abrasive. One has to work with him in case of problems, after all.