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Open Source Software

When Enthusiasm For Free Software Turns Ugly 177

Posted by Soulskill from the can't-we-all-just-get-along dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Bruce Byfield writes for Linux Magazine about the unfortunate side-effect of people being passionate about open source software: discussions about rival projects can get heated and turn ugly. "Why, for example, would I possibly to see OpenOffice humiliated? I prefer LibreOffice's releases, and — with some misgivings — the Free Software Foundation's philosophy and licensing over that of the Apache Foundation. I also question the efficiency of having two office suites so closely related to each other. Yet while exploring such issues may be news, I don't forget that, despite these differences, OpenOffice and the Apache Foundation still have the same general goals as LibreOffice or the Free Software Foundation. The same is true of other famous feuds. Why, because I have a personal preference for KDE, am I supposed to ignore GNOME's outstanding interface designs? Similarly, because I value Debian's stability and efforts at democracy, am I supposed to have a strong distaste for Ubuntu?"
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When Enthusiasm For Free Software Turns Ugly More

When Enthusiasm For Free Software Turns Ugly

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  • Why the surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @02:48AM (#49574961)

    Humans are pack animals. They need to gather according to shared traits and then see an enemy of everyone who does not fit. It happens with politics, religion, sports, cultural preferences, sexual preferences, computer platform choice and so on. The only thing going for nerd pack mentality is that slapfights and internet rage are funny. You want to get a good laugh at those losers flinging spitballs at each other over irrelevant minutiae. And then you want to twist their arms behind their backs and drown them in a toilet because they don't fit in.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      yeah why indeed should you have strong dislike for ubuntu when their pulseaudio shitfest resulted in rebootings and rebootings and tinkering when simply staying at a friends place and trying to listen music while partying!

      *srsly, I got a dislike for ubuntu from that and what they've been doing since has not made that dislike any less.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by TheCarp ( 96830 )

        Here is a nickle, kid, go tell someone who never had to go find another system to run a web browser on because the latest updated broke his XF86Config. (a version of which happened again recently when I wasn't paying attention and I allowed an update to uninstall the ati graphics driver packages....oops, always read those "to be removed" lists)

        Every distro out there has managed some type of update breakage at some point, and if you run a full desktop you pretty much can't avoid it.

        Though I did switch back t

        • Re:Why the surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @09:18AM (#49576697)

          The fundamental problem that Linux faces is the hardware platform. Two PCs are alike in the same way as two snowflakes. Accommodating these small differences is what made Windows so bloated and trouble-prone, and the same problem will at some point break any Linux version run on that platform.

          Now if only some wealthy company would define one PC configuration as being its standard, with a small number of options for disk and monitor size, and then tailor a Unix to run on this specific hardware...Oh, wait--

      • yeah why indeed should you have strong dislike for ubuntu when their pulseaudio shitfest resulted in rebootings and rebootings and tinkering when simply staying at a friends place and trying to listen music while partying!

        *srsly, I got a dislike for ubuntu from that and what they've been doing since has not made that dislike any less.

        the proof of the concept - yer doin' it right.

        In a world of options, which should allow you to simply choose what you like best, you choose instead to froth at the mouth

    • Re:Why the surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @08:31AM (#49576255) Homepage Journal

      Sorry I like all tech.
      Back in the dark ages I love my C64 but the Atari was cool and I so wished I had the software base and slots of the Apple II line.
      When I got my Amiga I still thought that Atari ST was cool and the Mac was interesting but out of my price range.
      PCs? I own a Macbook and love OS/X. I write Windows code for a living but I also work on Linux. BSD? Also interesting.

      Intel? ARM? AMD? MIPS? AVR? PIC? Yea it is all good.
      So much cool stuff and so little time. Why do people need pick and be nasty when there's so much cool stuff.

      • Really? My memory of the time is that I really wanted an Amiga but couldn't afford it. As it turned out, going with the Mac was a much better option long-term.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

          When was a Mac cheaper than the Amiga? Not in my memory. I have a Mac now and really like OS/X as I said I like all tech...

        • The Amiga was way cheaper than the Mac. Actually, it's worse than that: the Amiga with an Emplant board to hold Mac roms and give you Mac I/O ports was cheaper than the Mac! And it was faster — an Amiga 2500 '030 is faster at pretending to be a Macintosh IIci 2500 '030 than the Mac is at being one! I use this as an example because I had a 2500 and my mom (yeah, go on then) had a IIci.

          Average mac monitors spanked the typical Amiga monitor, but that was the time when the asian monitors started showing u

  • Why Indeed (Score:5, Funny)

    by Thanshin ( 1188877 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @02:56AM (#49574981)

    "Why, for example, would I possibly to see OpenOffice humiliated?

    I don't often possibly to see.

    But when I do, I ask myself why would I.

    For example.

    • This reminds me about what Churchill said about Russia: it's a wrapped in a inside an.

      • This reminds me about what Churchill said about Russia: it's a wrapped in a inside an.

        Russia is wrapped in a chicken inside a duck.

        TurPutin

  • Can't we all just get along? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @02:56AM (#49574985)

    I think, if we can just be patient and take the time to learn a bit more about each other, we can—quite possibly—finally get along with one another. No more fighting. No more squabbling. No more arguing about who or what is better. We learn to coexist.

    Ya know, I think we may be on to something here. Before we lose this moment, let's just jot down those thoughts quickly...in emacs.

  • How a project is maintained (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jcdr ( 178250 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @03:05AM (#49575011)

    Can make a big difference between projects. For example LibreOffice was forked from OpenOffice because to much potential contributors was frustrated by the way the OpenOffice maintainers was with them in the past. The libav fork from libFFmpeg was also a way to solve different way of maintaining the project at some point in time. And I am certain that there is a lot of others examples.

    There nothing wrong with this process. Better having two peaceful projects than a single one with frustration against it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mwvdlee ( 775178 )

      I can understand the people directly involved with a project having an emotional stake in which of competing projects wins.

      But we're talking about a user here; just pick the one you like and change your pick if you want. I'm sure the investment in time learning to use your pick has some meaning to which one you'd like to succeed, but nowhere near as ridiculously teenage girl emotional at the author of TFA seems to be about it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tranzistors ( 1180307 )

      Hate between software camps is rarely fueled by the developers of the software itself. Forks might be driven by need, frustration or anything else, but once it is done, developers get on with their lives. When Canonical dumped GNOME panels (and Shell) to make unity, there was some bad blood for a month or so, Debian move to systemd was bit more brutal, but it all passed.

      This is nothing compared to the hatefest that slashdot harbours. Any news remotely related to GNOME or systemd will quickly summon rabid co

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jcdr ( 178250 )

        Agree. That said, I think that the situation you describes is not specific to ./.

        I learned that perception of the reality in only a single possibility among a large number of biased perceptions, and it's hard to have a complete and actuate perception anyway. So discussion is required to agree on a common perception, but some comments did not help going in that direction.

        • This phenomena is certainly not unique to /.

          The worst thing is that the hate radicalizes, it calls to pick a side and the more the fighting continues, the more emotional investment one has in the picked side. Every singe encounter breeds more frustration, which feeds the hate until the only prospect of any reconciliation is when everyone is tired of the fighting.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jcdr ( 178250 )

            Exactly. I wish that your sage way of thinking will find more place on the media.

      • I see the slashdot reactions as a bunch of old people violently opposed to kids coming along making new things that change our workflow. Nobody wants to have to learn a new thing, so there's a strong emotional investment in the status quo. This at least somewhat explains how angry people get at their favorite status quo being depreciated.

    • Yes but these gripes by *contributors*. You also see users behaving in this way. Users haven't shared these frustrations.

    • For example LibreOffice was forked from OpenOffice because to much potential contributors was frustrated by the way the OpenOffice maintainers was with them in the past.

      There's a lot more politics to it than that. LibreOffice started as Novell's Go-OO fork, which contained things covered by MS patents that could not be upstreamed because the indemnity only covered Novell. They managed to spin it very well about wanting to avoid Oracle being in control though...

    • I seem to remember the LibreOffice fork happening because Oracle owned OpenOffice, and nobody trusts Oracle. If Oracle had turned OpenOffice over to Apache earlier, we might never had the split.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jcdr ( 178250 )

        I once watched a talk from a leading LibreOffice maintainer. I remember how happy it was with the progress of LibreOffice compared to OpenOffice. He explained that it was hard for external contributors to get patches accepted on OpenOffice. LibreOffice unlocked the situation.

  • Competing for resources (Score:3)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @03:43AM (#49575119) Homepage

    At least when it comes to forks, a lot of what decides the winner is momentum. People who don't feel strongly either way about the divide who just want to work on their non-related part of the project and will eventually switch, but not until after the fact. That is why many dysfunctional projects and organizations keep on going, you might feel that your fork is the long term better way and you're just waiting for the old project to die and wither away so you can effectively get behind one rally flag again. From your perspective it's not so much a competition as the car ahead of you swerving all over the road to keep you behind him, so you get pissed. And sometimes there is a lot of sour grapes that you stole their thunder too.

  • To paraphrase the "Life of Brian" (Score:3)

    by Chrisq ( 894406 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @04:43AM (#49575261)
    To paraphrase the "Life of Brian":

    BRIAN: Brothers! Brothers! We should be struggling together!

    FRANCIS: We are! Ohh.

    BRIAN: We mustn't fight each other! Surely we should be united against the common enemy!

    EVERYONE: The KOffice Project?!

    BRIAN: No, no! Microsoft Office!

    EVERYONE: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

  • Gnome's outstanding interface design? (Score:5, Funny)

    by lars_stefan_axelsson ( 236283 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @05:02AM (#49575309) Homepage

    "am I supposed to ignore GNOME's outstanding interface designs?"

    Uhh? What? Where's this outstanding interface design, and why haven't they told anyone about it?

    Look, we're not ignoring it. They just haven't shown it to us! Please, why keep that a secret and release Gnome 3 shell instead?

  • Tribalism (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jpkunst ( 612360 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @05:13AM (#49575327)

    Tribalism a.k.a. "us" versus "them" is one of the oldest and deepest-seated human instincts (chimpanzees are also very tribal, which suggests that the instinct goes back to the common ancestor of humans and chimps).

    The overwhelming instinct is to choose a group to belong to and to want to see competing groups humiliated. Breaking out of this is very uncomfortable, as the effort will not be appreciated by your "tribe mates", who will consider you a traitor.

    • OSS communities, by nature, don't lend themselves well to large top-down designs. Unfortunately, that's the most common way humans have been able to successfully organize authority, showing itself in government and business alike. The result resembles feudalism - a bunch of small OSS lords ruling their small fiefdoms with a tribal mentality for anything against their cause. It is a very caustic environment, and in my opinion, the number one reason Free Software remains marginal. Decisions around OSS are

      • WTF are you talking about, "marginal"?

        Tell me, what is the #1 most popular OS in the world right now? Most likely, it's Android. Where does Android get its kernel? Linux, an OSS project. Everyone and his brother has an Android phone now (iOS usage has gone down in recent years, thanks to Apple being too expensive and also screwing up a lot, such as with the Apple Maps fiasco), and there's lots of Android tablets out there. In addition to that, countless devices have embedded Linux (which means a full L

    • And this is what makes the U.S.A. better than any other country.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @05:37AM (#49575387)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Skub.

  • I'll tell you why (Score:5, Funny)

    by wonkey_monkey ( 2592601 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @06:25AM (#49575541) Homepage

    Why, for example, would I possibly to see OpenOffice humiliated?

    Because it never tells you when you accidentally a word, that's why.

  • It's humanity (Score:3)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @06:32AM (#49575563) Journal

    ...Tribalism is a thing.
    If we don't have nationalism (or patriotism as it's sometimes termed) we get irate and defensive over our favorite football team, or whether we liked the Partridge Family more than the Brady Bunch.

    We're chimps, that's it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Twinbee ( 767046 )
      Or is it?

      For example, in a manner of speaking, I belong to the 'tribe' which promotes EVs over fuel-cell vehicles. I choose that position not because I want to 'belong' to a an arbitrary tribe, but because there are many distinct advantages with EVs, and relatively few advantages of fuel-cell cars. Do I gain pleasure by seeing the other side 'humiliated' or 'defeated'? Well, one of the greatest sources of humour is in imperfection. If those imperfections are true, then a certain amount of satisfaction at

    • The Bunchers hunted down and killed the last Familista years ago. There is no argument any more.

  • Sadly it's a fact in open source. Outside criticism of a project, even valid criticism is often seen as an attack on the people who use it and it provokes some irrational responses. Or when some beloved piece of software is replaced in a dist by something else (usually demonstrably better) and supporters of the old software freak out. Happens all the time.

  • "Why, because I have a personal preference for KDE, am I supposed to ignore GNOME's outstanding interface designs?"

    Because there is no such thing as "GNOME's outstanding interface designs". But the rest of your argument makes sense :)

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The Gnome keyring is nice for SSH keys and GPG keys is nice.

      The rest of it is a direct violation of every one of Eric Raymond's guidelines in "The Luxury of Ignorance" essay about open source interfaces.

      http://www.catb.org/esr/writin... [catb.org]

      systemd has much of the same problem. Lots of "ooohh, shiny!!" and not much "let's make this clear to ordinary humans".

  • You are being sarcastic (Score:3)

    by rlk ( 1089 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @07:52AM (#49575913)

    about "GNOME" and "excellent interface design", aren't you?

  • A little competition between and among projects is a good thing that pushes the overall level of the projects higher.

    .
    However, when the sports fan "my team is going to crush your team" mentality starts to creep into the competition, things can, and do, turn ugly.

    So the question is, how do the project leaders keep that sports fan mentality out of the project, how do the project leaders keep participants focused upon the goals of the project and not on beating out the other projects?

  • The politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small.

  • I think the rivalry between vi and emacs pre-date Linux.

    Besides, what's so "ugly" about it? Not as if people are rioting in the streets. Just juvenile posts back and forth.

  • The summary appears to totally misrepresent what Bruce actually wrote about.

    (SUMMARY) Last week, I wrote an article about the decline of Apache OpenOffice, and how its attitude towards other projects might be part of its problem. "No one wants to see OpenOffice humiliated," ...
    Why, for example, would I possibly [sic] to see OpenOffice humiliated?

    Why indeed? Bruce never said he would want to see OpenOffice humiliated. He followed with:

    (BRUCE)
    I prefer LibreOffice's releases, and -- with some misgivings -- the Free Software Foundation's philosophy and licensing over that of the Apache Foundation. I also question the efficiency of having two office suites so closely related to each other. Yet while exploring such issues may be news, I don't forget that, despite these differences, OpenOffice and the Apache Foundation still have the same general goals as LibreOffice or the Free Software Foundation.

    So, he has a preference, personal ideals (or ethics, or something else, I don't know). So what? The thing is he prefers LibreOffice. Big deal; that's his right.

    (SUMMARY)
    The same is true of other famous feuds. Why, because I have a personal preference for KDE, am I supposed to ignore GNOME's outstanding interface designs?

    *gasp*. He has a preference! This cannot be tolerated! The real information:

    (BRUCE)
    To me, a personal preference is no excuse for a rabid hate. I may dislike the direction certain projects are going, and even consider them misguided, but that is very different from condemning them wholesale.

    (SUMMARY>
    Similarly, because I value Debian's stability and efforts at democracy, am I supposed to have a strong distaste for Ubuntu?"

    I don't know. I wonder what Bruce thinks. Hey! He answers the almost rhetorical question in his fucking articl

    • Follow up. So why don't some of you folk follow Bruce's pretty good advice:

      a) A personal preference is no excuse for a rabid hate
      b) [You] may dislike the direction certain projects are going, and even consider them misguided, but that is very different from condemning them wholesale

  • I'm the only guy using Ubuntu in a couple of startup projects. It's interesting how people react to that. Windows users thinks I'm a communist. Other "True Linuxer(TM)" distro users thinks I'm like the typical image they associate to Mac users (a fancy guy that don't know about the existence of shell, etc, because a "True Linuxer(TM)" compile everything). And Mac users thinks I'm a smelly hacker.

  • That's a concern of dictators and managers.

    Free Software is free of those, too. If I'm doing what I'm doing because I want to do it, I don't give a metric ratfuck about your ideas of efficiency.

    Thanks. I work in a bondage-and-domination efficiency-driven profit-based business culture for my meager pay. Don't try to "improve" my free time that way too.

  • Its root cause is "Because Oracle, Larry Ellison is the Antichrist", a point of view that I am not exactly unsympathetic with. Libre Office was forked from the "Before engulfed by Oracle" open-source code, and many of the OO developers jumped ship for LibreOffice.

    So, Oracle ended up donating Open Office to the Apache Foundation, but the fork had already happened. Rationally, the two should merge, but The Great Schism is a done deal, there's competing hair-splitting in the various forms of free-as-in-speec

  • Why, because I have a personal preference for KDE, am I supposed to ignore GNOME's outstanding interface designs?

    What outstanding interface designs?

  • Ubuntu's sins of commission (Score:3)

    by epine ( 68316 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2015 @11:09PM (#49583087)

    Canonical earned their black eye in spades by giving no advance guidance to their dual-head power users while knowingly ruining the dual head experience in the service of a reconceived user interface which might or might not be all for the best in the long run.

    It was their blasted refusal to honestly inform their dual head power users that the dual head power user experience would be unavailable in Ubuntu for several releases so that we could plan accordingly that caused me to set the Canonical bit in my bozo register.

  • The OpenOffice / LibreOffice split can be mostly blamed on Oracle. When Oracle bought Sun, OpenOffice became one of their properties, but they really didn't have a clue how to handle it properly. The development process became largely closed off to outside open source developers - sure they could download the code and change it, but Oracle wasn't doing anything useful with their code submissions. The result was that a group of people forked the code and created LibreOffice. Many users and most Linux distrib

  • It's called tribalism. Tribalism is very alive and well, thank you for asking.

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