On the sickness of our community

> Mind if I ask for specifics on what sorts of online communities you're
> thinking of when you say this?

I too wonder a bit about what people are using as a basis of comparison.

I think many of the old timers around here, when making comparisons, are possibly going the whole way back to USENET and BBSes.

Back then the idea of finding another place, where you could discuss technical things with like minded people in a semi-anonymous way, was a great thing. It is true you had to put up with trolls, flame wars, and the endless Amiga/OS2 fanatics, but that was what killfiles were for.

When endless September arrived and the real world started leaking in things just never quite recovered.

It is true that with the corporate takeover of Linux and the ensuing attitude enforcement things will be much nicer for outsiders.

It's just once we get a world where Linus is always cheerful, Al Viro doesn't flame, and David Miller removes all strong language comments from the Sparc-Linux sources, I feel something will be lost. Maybe it is the destiny of everything to leave its wild-west roots. I always used Linux because it was fun; I feel like the push for universal blandness is just making things boring and I've found myself losing interest in Linux development, something I hadn't really thought was possible.