“Triggered by recent examples of bad behavior and dissatisfaction among developers and users alike, the Gentoo Council has drafted a new Code of Conduct that will be enforced for both developers and users. The draft of the Code of Conduct is currently being discussed on the Gentoo-dev mailing list.”
…draft.
I hope it works for us – and one can always dream that it’ll bring back some (if not all) of the devs that have recently left us.
“””
I hope it works for us – and one can always dream that it’ll bring back some (if not all) of the devs that have recently left us.
“””
An office manager that my company had years ago… one that I worked with for 14 years… said something to me that I have always remembered. Her name was Bonnie Graham, and I miss her a lot.
She said:
Ten “Ataboys” is worth one “Oh Shit”. (That’s a quote.)
I’ve always remembered that.
And it is so true.
I honestly don’t see the need for a code of conduct here.
The fact remains that Gentoo users and developers, save for anyone who has had the best sense to abandon ship, have shown a lack of maturity that is resonating through the open source channels – and I’m quite sure Redmond is watching this one closely to use in some kind of PR move in the near future despite the localization of the problem.
If it requires a code of conduct just to bring everything, and everyone, under control and to squelch the throwing of sand in the schoolyard sandbox, then it’s not worth it to use.
What do I see the need for? Growing up – and that’s something just about anyone can do without anything written.
First Open source = communism, now open source = immaturity?
What next, open source = Martians?
twenex next is: Open source = developers’ fun, users’ nightmare.
Sad but it is true.
Edited 2007-03-14 00:50
twenex next is: Open source = developers’ fun, users’ nightmare.
Not if the user is a developer
I have to disagree. I couldn’t develop software to save my life. I have difficulty figuring out what icons I need to use to run spyware and virus checkers on Windows. I may have posted on the comedic effect it would have produced on anyone to see me eject a disc on a Mac the first time I did it. Yet I LOVE Linux.
“””
First Open source = communism,
now open source = immaturity?
What next, open source = Martians?
“””
Twenex,
Open Source = People.
That pretty much implies all the rest.
Except maybe Martians… 😉
and People = stupid.
Thus,
Open Source = stupid.
hrmmmm… telling, isn’t it?
“””and People = stupid.”””
Some are. Or at least they act as if they are. Our current US President, for example.
I could come up with some counter-examples. But I’ll quote Jean-Luc Picard rebutting Q’s assertions, instead. He, with a little help from Shakespeare, stated my position with far greater eloquence than I ever could. (I don’t think that even William Shatner ever did it so well.)
Look to the future, Bryan. We don’t always display our best qualities, in or out of the Open Source fishbowl, but they are there:
”’
No. I know Hamlet. And what he said with irony I prefer to say with conviction.
“What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty. In form, in moving, how express and admirable. In action, how like an angel. In apprehension, how like a god… ”
I see us one day becoming that, Q. Is that what concerns you?
”’
Your partially right. People are stupid. And the vast majority use windows, so that should give you a clue.
But seriously, Gentoo devs need to get some respect. I read the dev thread where Robbins quit (again) and all I got to say is DAMN! You let a developer of his caliber walk out over something stupid? I dont know the guy he had a beef with, and he may be a great developer. But you HAVE to give some respect to the guy who started the project. Regardless if you like him or not.
RMS vs the Martians
Coming to a theater near you soon.
“””
RMS vs the Martians
Coming to a theater near you soon.
“””
Is Mothra in that?
RMS vs the Martians
Coming to a theater near you soon.
[SPOILER BELOW]
The Martians are foced to type their demands in Emacs. They get so frustrated, they hop in their ship and go back to their planet (known as Nigel VI in their native tongue).
MSFT vs the Martians II
(AKA. Spaceballs 2, the Sequel)
[Plot Summary]
The Martians regroup, use their long-range-uber-sensitive radio receivers to download a pirate copy MS Windows/Office and set off again. After entering Earth’s atmosphere, WGA calls home to MS who dispatch the black helicopters. Upon landing, the entire Martian Army finds themselves badly outnumbered by Microsoft Lawyers who manage to file an injunction against the use of Ray guns before they are all wiped out. After a five-year court battle to decide whether “surrender demands can be accepted if written on pirated software”, the Martians settle the case by giving Microsoft exclusive distribution rights on Mars and subcontract out the ‘global domination’ bit to the newly formed Microsoft Defence division.
You have seen Steve Ballmer’s keynote speeches right? Talk about immaturity. Developers indeed.
If it requires a code of conduct just to bring everything, and everyone, under control and to squelch the throwing of sand in the schoolyard sandbox, then it’s not worth it to use.
So you’re saying that we should stop using Gentoo, one of the more unique distributions, just because some of the developers have some personality clashes?
Companies don’t close up shop because some of their employees don’t get along, they try to fix them problem. Why should a community group be any different?
The fact remains that Gentoo users and developers, save for anyone who has had the best sense to abandon ship, have shown a lack of maturity that is resonating through the open source channels
Eh? That’s a pretty abrupt shift from the specific to the general.
Geez what a load of hysterical horse shit. Damn those gentoo using bastards, doing linux right and ruining open source for everyone. Oh stop it you kids, Redmond is watching, yeah, like somebody gives a flying f–k and that could actually matter outside of that paranoid delusion.
You put down ground rules and enforce them equally so nobody feels left out, squelched or favoritism, it’s what keeps fights from breaking out in the schoolyard and yes, surprisingly in society at large. You know, those law things. It’s what grown-ups do in and out of the sand box all over the entire planet.
*sigh*
true +1
If it requires a code of conduct just to bring everything, and everyone, under control and to squelch the throwing of sand in the schoolyard sandbox, then it’s not worth it to use.
I don’t agree. It’s unfortunate but any time you get together so many people with differing viewpoints these things are bound to happen. This is why every school, job, and club out there has some kind of code of conduct and the ones that don’t usually end up having serious personnel problems.
Yes, I’m sure that Microsoft doesn’t have anything like a code of conduct; they’re all sufficiently grown-up that they can be trusted to interact smoothly without anything written.
There are immature people everywhere. They must be denied entry or managed.
Who says that Microsoft( I mean big established software companies in general) do not have infightings. They have and have lots of it, however, they do not have a dev mailing list through which the fights ( very strong difference of opinion) is made public. The corporate culture is like this. I can say this as I am part of this culture. If you have a difference with your peer, or even your manager and it is known to the HR, they make sure that one of you is shifted to a different department so that you don’t face each other.
Its the old theory, Out of sight out of mind.
They simply do not wash dirty linen in public.
Ofcourse, this decent arrangement happens when both the parties are willing for such a settlement.
Sadly there is no such thing possible in opensource.
The mailing lists reveal all and reveal to all.
Due to this big difference, I believe we should have a code of conduct in opensource world.
You can bet your bottom dollar that Microsoft *does* have a corporate code of conduct. Good corporate management means making sure your employees follow the standards of behavior (mostly aimed at sexual harassment, conflict of interest, compliance with applicable laws and regulations, etc).
As far as petty conflicts are concerned, I think any manager worth their salt would fire the instigators involved (unless they’re CEO, of course).
“Good corporate management means making sure your employees follow the standards of behavior”
“As far as petty conflicts are concerned, I think any manager worth their salt would fire the instigators involved”
You’ve never actually worked in a real company of size, have you?
Office politics, intrigues and petty conflicts is the order of the day.
1) Money is a very strong motivator (contrary to what OSS zealots tell you – everybody has a price). Pay people to code – RMS has said money and open source are very compatible.
2) If you don’t have money to pay then try something like this: Pay to play – you pay Gentoo.org $10,000 for the privilege of coding (if you love coding for freesoftware) and if you f*** up you forfeit that money. If you play by the rules, you get get your money back when you want to quit.
PS: Thinking about it some more #2 is actually a pretty cool idea – it helps Gentoo.org with keeping the lights on and the ftp servers humming.
Edited 2007-03-14 00:53
However – it has nothing to do with the issue at stake. It’s not about how to motivate people to develop – it’s about how to make people treat eachother right. Money doesn’t matter here.
Why the need? Because if you don’t have a code of conduct that devs have pledged to abide by, then you have no means to toss their ass out when they misbehave. In small groups, it’s easy to maintain an atmosphere of general respect and common curtosy. But the larger a group becomes, the more it becomes like a mob and rules like this have to be created. Gentoo has outgrown the rules by which it was origionally set up, and must adjust to deal with the changes.
Personally, I think Gentoo devs should watch this video: http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=-4216011961522818645
Yes, granted, it must change, but if you don’t have mature people in the group that grows to begin with, it won’t grow in the right direction.
I think the fact remains that there are some in the different groups of Gentoo which just simply need to be kicked out without question or debate – those who have caused problems by name calling or flaming – the children, if you will.
I really enjoyed that video. Thanks for the great link!
I read about Gentoo’s problems just after watching the Google Speaker series video by two of the Subversion project leaders:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4216011961522818645
As they point out, this is not confined to Open Source projects. It happens in corporate software development, too, out of public sight. It’s not confined to software, either. All groups deal with people who make trouble: church groups, sports leagues, schools, all kinds of groups. Even web sites 😉
A defined Code of Conduct helps, and should be backed up with documented procedures.
Thanks for the link!
The video is rather long but the guys make some interesting points and illustrate their ideas with examples of real world projects.
I mean, if the Gentoo community wants to eat their own, then let them. There’s way too many Linux distros anyway, and it’s time there was some consolidation of the effort in order to more effectively challenge MS.
Who needs another vanity distro?
I’m a gentoo user, and so far no other distribution has kept me so satisfied as gentoo.
OTOH there is no crisis for gentoo ATM despite some blog coverage. This is especially true for the community. You should see the many posts in gentoo-user about this. yup.. 0 posts… nada. That’s so much this crisis is. Nada.
If we were talking about another repackaged Ubuntu, glossier Debian or localised Fedora I’d agree wholeheartedly.
I’m not a Gentoo user but appreciate its uniqueness amongst a sea of Deb/RH clone distros. Definitely one worth saving!
mean, if the Gentoo community wants to eat their own, then let them. There’s way too many Linux distros anyway, and it’s time there was some consolidation
A contradiction, squabbles lead to forking which leads to ever more distributions, not less.
I’m not even going to bother trying to counter the “There are too many Linux distributions, we need One Linux Distribution To Bind Them All” argument.
Instead, I’m going to ask: When (not if) those putting forth the argument are proven wrong, will you FINALLY eat humble pie?
I’m not betting on it.
A code of conduct for users? This isn’t rocket science, just dump rude posters from the mailing lists. It’s what nearly every other community does.
A code of conduct is a very good idea. I was recently part of a special cross departmental task force at work. At times the conduct of people that were otherwise very nice was terrible (think forming, storming, norming…). We agreed a code of conduct to ensure that disagreements would be more civil.
This is good practice.
it seems open source projects are starting to attract ‘leadership’ types who spend more time on politics rather than coding (not coding of conduct, the other kind).
they need a structure that discourages people with ambitions to management and politics.
Do you think any large, successful open source project would’ve got anywhere without decent leadership?
The linux kernel itself owes a lot to Linus’s leadership as well as his (and the other developers’) coding skills.
Poor conduct is a symptom of poor management.
so you should still adhere to
http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html
One would imagine so
A code of conduct may be a good idea, moderation in general is good.
But hypocrisy, particulary online, is a big problem. I don’t think you’ll find a good code of conduct, until your thoughts on moderation, reach that of a prophet, gnostic, saint, or Islamic mystic. (Knower of God).
And until then you should conform to their knowledge. (muslim).
### SARCASM BEGIN ###
Yeah sure – that would solve everything.
### SARCASM END ###
Vet du hvad, Ove? Lægg fanatismen din fra dig. Det er aldeles upassende i dette forum. Fortsæt stilen din og du får en tegning mere.
Sarcasm, infidelity and queers = ? Ten points to the one who can guess.
Code 1: All members of the Gentoo development team must act older than 2.
Done.
The first rule in the Gentoo Code of Conduct is:
Nobody talks about the Gentoo Code of Conduct.
@twenex:
“I’m not even going to bother trying to counter the “There are too many Linux distributions, we need One Linux Distribution To Bind Them All” argument.
Instead, I’m going to ask: When (not if) those putting forth the argument are proven wrong, will you FINALLY eat humble pie? ”
See, you need to take your head out of the sand long enough to read this week’s news:
Dell Computer is *toying* with the idea of offering Linux pre-installed on its products, but is hesitant to do so because it cannot yet figure out *which* Linux.
The business consideration here is that Dell can’t reasonably offer support for more than a very few Linux distros, if indeed more than one. And, when they asked the Linux community which Linux distro to go with, guess how many answers they got?
So you see, in the REAL world, hardware makers are hesitant to offer Linux-based products because of the proliferation of Linux flavors.
YOU might think that having over a hundred distros is healthy for Linux, but if it slows the adoption and hardware support of Linux, I sure can’t see that it’s a very healthy situation.
And, by the way, I have no intention of eating humble pie anytime soon, but if I may, can I pass you a napkin?
I’m afraid it is you who do not understand, specifically the Linux kernel. There could be 1 billion Linux distros out there, they still all use the same base, the Linux kernel. If a machine has support for one distribution, it will have support for all.
Even though any distribution may change, add or remove certain elements, the fact remains that any additions to the kernel must be released as GPL software and therefore will eventually be absorbed into the kernel proper.
Dell are only interested in what most people would like to see on they’re machine. They know that one size fits all.
I think it’s time you took that napkin out of the washing machine, ironed it and tucked it in.
> I’m afraid it is you who do not understand, specifically the Linux kernel.
> There could be 1 billion Linux distros out there, they still all use the
> same base, the Linux kernel. If a machine has support for one
> distribution, it will have support for all.
There is a huge difference between a machine that works together with a distro, and a machine that comes preloaded with a distro and with support.
But yeah, go ahead and tell Dell that they are stupid if you think that solves the problem.