On the sickness of our community

To be fair, it's quite easy to find some Lennart bashing threads on the net. They are literally everywhere. You might even find some on LWN - and if you really want to read stupid user comments, you can give a look to Phoronix (apologies ; I don't mean that Phoronix is bad, just that some users are repeatedly crossing the line ; but hey, any mention of Lennart in a news is generating 100+ stupid comments).

To be even fairer, a large part of Lennart defense - either by him or by some (why do they even exist) fanboy is a simple argument: "you do not criticize <INSERT PRODUCT NAME> because it's technically bad, you criticize it because you dislike Lennart". Which is as abusive as criticizing Lennart in the first place (this is and the too classical "you don't understand <INSERT PRODUCT NAME>, so shut up" or the "You're just a user, you don't have any word to say. Only coders do" which is also kind of wicked (software tend to be used by... well, users I think)).

Some people in the community need to learn how to communicate with other people in a constructive way. Some people need to learn how to listen other people. That's how we're supposed to build both a community and the software this community uses.

Regarding Lennart, and while I don't want to play the victim blaming game, I believe he needs to both learn how to communicate and how to listen others. Part of the bashing he receives (and I agree that it goes far beyond what is acceptable) has roots in his own attitude ; he made himself a very polarizing person - so a good way to help correcting this is also to work on his own behavior if it's not too late.

(I really hope I wrote this correctly ; it's a fine line I'm walking, and I have to say that I don't want to be neither inflamatory nor disrecpectful.)