Comment by solotronics
7 years ago
It comes across as elitist to keep code fixes in your own private repository to 'punish' those you don't agree with. The whole point is freedom and sharing code that transcends arbitrary human defined barriers.
What if linux was kept in a private repository to punish those he didn't agree with?
> The whole point is freedom and sharing code that transcends arbitrary human defined barriers.
Whose point is this?
It is not the point of the free software movement as seen by the FSF, which calls the APSL 1.x non-free because it requires you to publish changes https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/historical-apsl.html , nor of the (largely similar) free software movement as seen by Debian, which has a "dissident test" that explicitly requires you have the option of keeping changes among your trusted friends (assuming you trust them not to republish, of course) https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html . It is certainly not the point of the open-source movement nor the Linux Foundation, both of which are firmly supportive of companies making internal improvements and not publishing any of them.
If it is your point, I urge you to reconsider a position that focuses on individuals not publishing code instead of corporations not publishing code.
The motive isn't to "punish." It's much more basic than that: I just don't want to deal with the toxicity of the community, and the best way to accomplish that is to not engage. Once I engage, I will probably need to spend mental cycles dealing with it.
> The whole point is freedom and sharing code that transcends arbitrary human defined barriers.
I think this is both an admirable view but also a naive one. Code is built, maintained, modified, sold, bought, and used by humans, so at the end of the day code is a human endeavor, and that means you will never escape having to deal with other humans in the process of writing code. You might have more or less pleasant interactions, but (at least before the singularity) code doesn't exist outside the context of human interactions.
I've personally constantly sought ways to spend more time coding and less time dealing with people, but my efforts have only reinforced the bittersweet message that the code I write is both more effective and more useful when I engage with people more. So at some point I just embraced the human element of the craft. But that comes with managing my emotional and social energy, which also means avoiding communities I don't need to be a part of.
>It comes across as elitist to keep code fixes in your own private repository to 'punish' those you don't agree with.
Throughout my life I seem to have endless arguments about this. Many people seem to have a binary view of the world (positive/negative), and many others (like me) tend to have more of a ternary view (positive/neutral/negative).
No one is punishing anyone. Not helping is neutral. It is not a punishment.
If I dislike what you do and decide to withdraw support I had been providing, I am not punishing you. I am merely disengaging with you. My position is the same as that of someone who never helped you and continues not to help you.
And of course, as another person has pointed out. When someone gives you something with the explicit permission that you do not have to give back, it is petty to complain when they don't give back.
I think the point is, whenever I fork a piece of code, fix something, and push the fix back upstream, there’s a whole set of things I apparently didn’t do to the maintainers liking.
I don’t want to deal with that...
My favorite is when they demand you write tests for a three-line change to code that has no tests.
In their defence, deciding you're going to require new tests for all new additions in a pretty effective way to get out of the 'there are no tests' situation. I recently heard something along the lines of "don't bother adding new tests, this project barely has any tests anyway" about a project where I have been trying to increase test coverage whenever I have to make a change in recent months. With that attitude it's no surprise the project barely had any tests...
Naturally it is not a reasonable request when there is no existing testing infrastructure yet.
Except that sometimes "those you don't agree with" don't really care about the repo, they just want to push their political agenda.
Other times your conscience might feel cleaner just knowing that you aren't part of a group that does things you don't like, for example: discrimination based on race. Some big projects have partnered with programs like Outreachy, that decide who to help based on the ethnicity, gender, and sexuality of the applicant.
Would you feel comfortable working for a project that openly partners with the KKK to foster adoption of open source in the white supremacist community?. This is an extreme example, but I'm using it for the sake of the argument: Most of us wouldn't want to work for such a project, even though some people might be more malleable than others.
I doubt the motive is to punish, but is instead to avoid the unwanted drama of dealing with a "toxic" community.
It's not elitist, it's just not wanting to deal with assholes. I think that is pretty understandable. That doesn't punish them it just results in not dealing with them.
This is my take. I think this goes on at all levels. I know I definitely take some roundabout paths at work from time to time to avoid people with big egos because it's just a roadblock and a time suck. Ideally, we could work together and be more efficient, but some people just don't want to play nice or fair and there are only so many hours in the day.
If freedom to share code doesn't include freedom to not share code, it's not very free, is it?
The meta-point is that everybody's wringing their hands over "oh no, I can't say things I want to say and also contribute to Linux", and her point is that this is not new, lots of people have experienced this for a long time.
>> What if linux was kept in a private repository to punish those he didn't agree with?
What a wonderful world that would be.