How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People 241
CoolVibe writes "Two Subversion developers talk at Google about how to keep pests and malcontents out of your open source projects. From the abstract: 'Every open source project runs into people who are selfish, uncooperative, and disrespectful. These people can silently poison the atmosphere of a happy developer community. Come learn how to identify these people and peacefully de-fuse them before they derail your project. Told through a series of (often amusing) real-life anecdotes and experiences.'"
SVN Obliterate (Score:2, Interesting)
Not every "poisonous" person is easy to spot (Score:5, Interesting)
Those are easy to deal with. The problem is with people who, under the cover of "doing good to the project", make everybody hate everybody else. Those usually spread rumors around, go tell John that Jack, frankly, doesn't work enough, while at the same time telling Jack that John, really, isn't leading the project in the right direction, etc...
We've had plenty of those at the company. More often than not, those are what we usually called "software diva", people whom management think are indispensable, and therefore should be more or less allowed to do or say anything.
My way of dealing with these folks was usually simple: single them out at the weekley meeting, sum up the shit they've been spewing around, and tell them they're allowed to run free with whatever they thought was best on a local fork of the project for a week and prove they're right and/or better and/or more efficient than Jack or John. Failing to prove it, they'd be relegated to the line-pisser pool, otherwise they could take my place as team lead. Usually the result was the software diva leaving the meeting all offended, and half of the time resigning after a couple of days. Public shame and the threat of putting their supposed programming skills where their mouth is is a very efficient method of putting these people in their place.
Re:I'll tell you about this one guy (Score:4, Interesting)
My favourite one is the netfilter guy's response to Dan Kegel's patch on the horrible file name layout in the linux netfilter directory, where there are multiple h and c files with the same file name, differing only by case. 'ipt_TOS.c' has a different purpose than 'ipt_tos.c' - Is this elementary school programming style or what?
Lots of people wanting to cross-compile linux, or even just do an 'svn co/cvs co' of a project which includes linux source get hooped.
from: http://lists.netfilter.org/pipermail/netfilter-dev el/2004-October/017154.html [netfilter.org]
--jeffk++
Re:What I learned working on NetBSD (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't like the GNU project, not because of a distaste for free software, but because of a distaste for crufted-together bloatware that feels like the Microsoft of Unix. And have I done something? I'm actually working on getting the leaner, meaner, BSD stuff up on my system in place of gnuware. A lot of that comes from NetBSD and OpenBSD.
I mean seriously, when my own fully functional version of "echo" is 4116 bytes stripped, how come GNU's is 13880, and all it has mine doesn't is --help and --version? (Both are dynamically linked.)
-uso.
I believe they call it... (Score:5, Interesting)
...assassination in the journals. Quick, clean, and ensures they can't just be transferred to another department to create headaches for someone else.
A guy on P5Porters back in the day was like that (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You mean.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly, I'm getting tired of it. (Score:5, Interesting)
The final type of person, the one that bothers me perhaps the most, is the coder or contributor who simply doesn't answer bug reports or emails (whatever the appropriate method may be) at all, even after several weeks of waiting. Are you guys *trying* to turn your users away!?
People really do see those buggy programs, folks. They show up in lists of stuff at places like FM and SF. If you think your code is good and you want to release it, great! But if you won't consider bug fixes, keep the damn thing to yourself and/or contribute your code to an already-existing project instead.
I've been a programmer since 1986 on another platform, but stopped in around 2000 and haven't come back since (outdated platform anyway, so my "skillz" don't exactly translate to modern programming methods), and I have never once considered telling someone off like these examples. What went wrong? When did the F/OSS community start to gain this elitist attitude?
Mod me down if you want, I don't care. I've got the karma to burn.
What if the poisonous person is project leader? (Score:2, Interesting)
Fork?
Re:You mean.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you name a single Linux distribution that doesn't include at least two programs to which Eric S. Raymond has contributed code, EXCLUDING fetchmail?
698 packages on my Ubuntu system depend on libncurses5, which has Raymond code in it, for example.
Re:Seen it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Did you really watch the talk? Regarding the date-parser contributor, we talked diplomacy quite a lot, but the simple fact was that adding your name to the source code was not negotiable in our community. We never kicked the guy out--he left on his own accord when he realized that our rules weren't going to change to accommodate him.
The whole point of that anecdote was to illustrate the importance of not compromising your community ideals for one person, even if they come bearing code. Stand your ground, and if someone is not willing to play by your rules, then they'll leave.
Oh, and the whole point of the "Poisonous People" title was to a) get your attention and b) address a perceived shortcoming in many open source communities. If we had talked for an hour about "How to have a loving and happy community", everyone would have been asleep ten minutes in. ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Re:Video link (Score:2, Interesting)
I do understand that Ubuntu installed GRUB, but GRUB isn't Ubuntu.
there was no backup mechanism whatsoever that the instructions said to use and that this failure locked me out entirely, making me far worse off than if I had never heard of Linux.
Objectively: I've had the
Once the MS boot loader is dead, you have 0 help (unless you've got paid support from somewhere).
I managed to save a few systems using the recovery tools on Windows discs, but they're tosh in fairness.
The point is, the boot loader has to be on the booting drive (primary master, normally). So if you left it in, in order for the new OS to be an option on boot (which most people installing would automatically want), it has to edit the MBR on the primary disc.
The lessons you should have learnt from your experience is that a) leaving your only other bootable harddrive in when testing a new OS is a Bad ThingTM and that b) always having a bootable disc (CD, floppy, USB, whatever) available when messing with the part that makes your computer works is a Good ThingTM.
I'm not trying to preach to you, or call you an idiot; I work as a computer technician (among other things) and have seen loads of MBR issues - some of which I caused.
I've seen you post this thread around a few times, though, and I get the impression you're overly-passionate about the issue and need to realise that these things happen.
If your goal, however, is to promote caution and improved warnings for people trying out Linux for the first time, then I commend you.
I know it's annoying to lose your computer (physically or otherwise), God knows I've done it many times, but blaming and attacking a group of volunteers who tried to help you (yes, I know they asked you questions you'd already answered) is just low.
Re:Frankly, I'm getting tired of it. (Score:2, Interesting)
This is usually a synonym for "you have not provided me with enough information to reproduce the problem". Remember, coders hate admitting they don't know something, even if it's because you haven't told it them.
> why the hell did you release it to the world?
Altruism. Sometimes code from a new project that doesn't actually work is easier to read/fix/reuse than code from some enormous open source behemoth. q.v. Panda and xpdf.
> All you're doing then is giving open source a black mark.
How is releasing code giving open source a black mark? Admittedly it confuses those who think that open source software should work, but that's a whole different story.
> coder or contributor who simply doesn't answer bug reports or emails
Talking as someone whose job used to include answering such emails: If the answer was obvious from the documentation or had been answered on the list already, then I'd ignore it. Sometimes when it looks like other people are acting like asshats, it might actually be you.
Re:Video link (Score:3, Interesting)
For PDFs at least one has the option of a client-side stylesheet to inspect the ends of the href attributes of anchors for ".pdf" and generating text after the tag. There isn't a consistent naming scheme for video servers to hang a CSS rule from.
The OSS code of honour (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, there seems to be a sort of OSS code of honour which is: "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" (gesticulate idiotically like some rappers do.) How often did Ben and Brian say the word? If you see this as a management training video, why do they bother to educate already educated people? Isn't respect a matter of course?
In corporate interaction respect is implicit. Disrespect bares consequences.
Why is it that so many OSS developers require some 'hood protocol to communicate? I sometimes feel like in a movie where it's us against the bad guys in power and that therefore we do funny hand shakes to distinguish ourselves. (OK, I exaggerate a bit but understand what I mean.) It's so tyring and time consuming. In corporate coding you ask for stuff, get an answer and move on.
I remember one time when it took quite some while to get an answer from a developer for some trivial issue. I made a remark saying that the guy most likely had other more urgent things to attend to than my little issue. This is a compliment; It means I appreciate some horribly busy guy is willing to do some shitty work for me. The guy in question got mad and started to lecturing me. He of course never touched the fact although my issue was minor, he was horribly late in his reply. To set him at ease I had to spend time on explaining the remark. This is so tiring and puts me a bit off OSS coding. I nevertheless continue to contribute.
Message to the OSS prima-donnas: Read also books on communication and social techniques. They contain usefull stuff you need to know when communicating. See them as manuals on social behaviour.
Re:Video link (Score:2, Interesting)
Well... they recommended that you use a linux live CD or windows CD to fix it many many times.
And to quote you from another post...
[quote]Yes, I had a family member fix it, I think by using a Live CD or a Windows CD.[/quote]
So yeah, I'd say they gave you lots of helpful advice and you just decided not to follow it. Any of it.
On a side note, if I was complaining about how I'd been treated and everyone that I complained to told me that I should be apologizing, I might be rethinking my stance instead of deciding that everyone else is just too dense to see how badly I've been treated. But hey, maybe I'm just strange that way?