The Big Leagues

I haven't commented here in some time, because unfortunately I agree than the sphere LP inhabits is indeed a 'sick place'. But at the same time, something amazing built by many, that ought to be cherished, as I think Corbet was suggesting. I think it is very important not to lose sight of the yin and yang of both sides of the equation, as well as their relation to, and balance with one another. I wouldn't have bothered to comment, but I just skimmed pretty thoroughly 208 comments here, and my 'tinfoil hat' thoughts on this seem not represented. Thusly- my thesis today- "some of our open source communities are indeed a sick place, however I believe the genesis of the issue lies in their widening value to society". I.e. I believe it is only because of how much more important Torvalds, and Poettering's work are to the world at large here in 2014 (jesus years), versus what they were perceived as 10 or 20 years ago. 10 or 20 years ago, I think it would be reasonable to speak of Torvalds or Poettering's work and leadership abilities in the way the tone of this article and the 208 prior comments have. But I believe in the post-Snowden world, we have to realize that the roles Torvalds and Poettering are playing in is pretty serious and hard-core. When I hear a story about a half-joke or not campaign to assemble a bit-coin assassination attempt on Poettering, I don't think the right thing to talk about is why the mean person/people ought not to have done that. Rather I think the right thing to think about is- what is our community (FOSS and/or regional governments) able to do to ensure that these valued contributors can go on contributing, sleeping relatively peacefully at night, knowing that even if an organized crime syndicate with 100-1000x the monetary resources of this public probably-a-bad-joke campaign wanted to do the same thing, couldn't. It's like when I read the story of Miley Cyrus's house being robbed recently. I don't think it's useful to talk about the wrong choice the robbers made, I think it's more useful to talk about how her security was that lax. Is that blaming the victim? Or rational security consideration?

In a post-Snowden world, I'm glad the public is finally getting a whiff of the big stakes of cyber-security, and the people who are to varying degrees in that sphere. Torvalds and Poettering are pretty much in the center of that sphere. Which is why I would differingly agree with Corbet's conclusion that stories relating to them, are not really good evidence to discredit the general situation. Even outside T and P, I hope someday to be even further vindicated in my belief that fairly large swaths of software developers are already living in a universe that has factors that are extremely difficult to superficially analyze. Take the recent Snowden story, now barely a blip if that in the mainstream news, of NSA infiltrators in foreign (and domestic?) companies. On one hand, I can't say I'd be entirely up in arms if I personally knew some NSA agent who claimed to be doing that with the sole mission of making sure that any better funded assassination (or more likely, less obvious persuasion) campaigns against Poettering succeeded. Of course, I don't believe any such saintly motivation could be true on its own.

Bottom Line: this is a long way from a community of curious tinkerers. This is the big leagues.