On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 13, 2014 13:43 UTC (Mon) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118)
In reply to: On the sickness of our community by nim-nim
Parent article: On the sickness of our community

Now Lennart is the archetypal example of coder prima dona who does not bother to be polite and will ruthlessly trample over other people feelings if he thinks he is technically right.

Please provide links to back this, it's an empty accusation.

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On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 13, 2014 16:12 UTC (Mon) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (8 responses)

journald, json as a configuration language in pulseaudio, etc

But, you already knew all that, and I have better ways to spend my time than arguing with a fan club. misc wrote a reasonable message, I answered it, that's enough as far as I am concerned.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 13, 2014 17:48 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (7 responses)

I am not sure how your reply addresses your claim. Technical choices for a configuration format has nothing to do with not being polite or trampling over other people's feelings.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 13, 2014 18:00 UTC (Mon) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (6 responses)

It was treated the usual I am RIGHT everyone else is WRONG LP way (with "look how cool LP is" bystanders). json is gone in systemd without any apology (but more abrasiveness on other format alternatives)

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 13, 2014 18:56 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (2 responses)

Well, if anyone didn't think their choices were right, they wouldn't be making the choices they do. I don't see why a change in configuration format in an entirely different software requires an apology or to whom. Sorry but I still don't have much of an idea what you consider a problem.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 13, 2014 19:01 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

> Well, if anyone didn't think their choices were right, they wouldn't be making the choices they do.

There's a difference between thinking that their choices were right and being unwilling to consider that they may be wrong.

good programmers, and especially good project leaders need to be open to the possibility that they may be wrong and listen to feedback.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 13, 2014 19:05 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

> There's a difference between thinking that their choices were right and being unwilling to consider that they may be wrong.

Sure and systemd has changed a lot based on external input. Abstract conversations OTOH don't accomplish much.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 13, 2014 19:52 UTC (Mon) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link] (2 responses)

The polypaudio/pulseaudio community needed a way to describe some digital audio properties in a fairly standard and extensible way that wouldn't need protocol updates in the future and they settled on JSON.

As far as I know it was not a sole decision made Lennart so it would be good if you could actually reference that discussion when he declares that.

You need to be a bit more spesific what you mean by "json is gone in systemd without any apology"

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 14, 2014 12:53 UTC (Tue) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] (1 responses)

I don't even see any JSON in /etc/pulse, ~/.config/pulse. Nor has, to my memory, systemd ever used JSON except as one of the export formats in journalctl.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 14, 2014 13:33 UTC (Tue) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link]

You should be directing these comments at nim-nim where I in the comment you responded to am asking nim-nim to clarify and reference to what he meant by Lennart solely deciding upon JSON in pulseaudio as well as what he meant by JSON being gone in systemd without any apology.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 16, 2014 20:11 UTC (Thu) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (3 responses)

I recall seeing a Gentoo package maintainer getting some quite nasty verbal abuse from LP and his lackeys in an IRC channel in response to legitimate technical questions, and I'd be happy to link the page if not for the fact said developer's blog archives seem to cut off at 2012.

There's evidently been no attempt to fix the underlying bad attitude in the few years that've passed. What surprises me is that it's taken this long for a major backlash to happen.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 16, 2014 20:16 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (2 responses)

Yet another unsubstantiated and unverifiable claim.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 17, 2014 17:06 UTC (Fri) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (1 responses)

I retract that claim; after several hours of digging through archive sites it wasn't LP who made that specific attack after all, but De Icaza and the Mono crowd. Their similarity must've confused me. Apologies go to those whom it's due.

On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 17, 2014 18:16 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

The retraction is a good first step. But I require more from you.

I require that you also affirm that you will defend "LP and his lackeys" as you call them in the future if you see anyone making a similar unsubstantiated claim of abuse and actively deflate the meme that "LP and his lackeys" are extraordinarily abusive. If you can't affirm to do that in the future and if you choose to stand silently by while the meme continues to spread you are still complicit in helping spread it with your mistake here. It's like lighting a fire and saying you're sorry, admitting you set the fire but still standing there watching it burn a house down. Time for you to pick up a bucket of water and do help put the fire out.

Oh and stop calling other developers lackeys. That'd be pretty good too.