Comment by conceptpad
7 years ago
Rich Hickey has given so much to the world of software and systems design. The value exchange has most likely not been reciprocal. Nor has it been sufficiently respectful, based on this message. People like Rich that give so much are rare. And people that understand how to respectfully recognize that seem to be becoming more rare.
Of course, one can remember that life is not fair, and people are often shitty even without being conscious of it, and that Rich has freely chosen to pursue this path.
But this leads me to a few questions: If you agree with what I have written above, and what Rich has written in this message, then how can we tip the scales just a little bit further towards respect and reciprocation? What kind of gestures, gifts, and generosities do you think are appropriate? What improved efforts to educate consumers of open source software would be effective? Further still, what kind of culture do we want?
One that you can certainly do is to be one of the voices of positivity and gratitude.
If I enjoy or benefit from something someone has released into the world, I've started trying to send them an email of thanks.
Many times I've gotten responses back, and they are always really grateful for the support. As a hopeful creator with a small but growing following, I've gotten a few of these myself and they really are motivating.
I generally make it a point to never criticize anyone online, since they probably know everything they are doing wrong acutely well and don't need me to tell them again.
Python is currently adding a “thanks” command to their package installer pip. There are efforts to wire pip to monetary rewards. I believe that’s the right direction: identify where the rubber hits the road most of the time, and insert positivity and gratefulness.
This was actually an idea proposed by RMS probably 20 years ago, but I think he was talking about music. Essentially it's the busking model. The key is making that small donation extremely easy to give. And also to get big corporations to press that button.
It seems strange to me that you're so concerned with how we should try to be more respectful to Rich given the querulous and disdainful tone of his post.
He wrote the software, he gets to have whatever attitude and tone he feels like. If you don't like it, don't use his software.
I took what I see as a moderate position lightly criticizing his tone, but because you're going way farther than that and asserting that he can be as much of a jerk as he wants, let's address that argument.
I think it's nonsense. Rich is probably among the most brilliant software engineers on the planet but that has no bearing whatsoever on whether he needs to be polite and show human empathy and decency like everyone else does. You can be toxic and hostile and people will put up with it if you're useful enough (c.f. Linus) but we shouldn't be lining up, comment after comment after comment, to cheer that kind of behavior on.
Again, I don't think this is a big deal. I think that his rant is just a small indiscretion and we're all human, but I'm dismayed to see such an outpouring of support for exactly the position that you're putting forward. What I'm saying isn't "nauseating PC culture" as one GitHub commenter put it; it's just not being an asshole.
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Well, he and other 147 people, according to the GH contributors page. Though, granted, none with anywhere near the same level of contributions to the core.
That doesn’t excuse being rude.
I didn’t read disdain at all, so I’m interested in which parts tickled your disdain detector.
Mainly:
> As a user of something open source you are not thereby entitled to anything at all. You are not entitled to contribute. You are not entitled to features. You are not entitled to the attention of others. You are not entitled to having value attached to your complaints. You are not entitled to this explanation.
Also see my response on the gist itself:
https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba95...
Feel free to use my HN comment as an upvote/downvote proxy since gist doesn't support upthumbs/downthumbs on comments.
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If you want to send Rich a little bit of money, and get some swag, you can buy it here: https://clojure.org/community/swag
The far more important and long-reaching gestures would be: expressions of thanks, and standing up for creators whenever unwarranted demands are made upon them.
maybe a "c-list" amendment to the licence terms?
Like "everyone can freely use and modify this, except the people listed in appendix C, who are specifically prohibited from using any part of this code for any purpose whatsoever".
If you get too shitty at the maintainers, you get added to the C-list, and get to take your shitty attitude somewhere else...
Petty.
yeah, I get that. But in any other area of life, if someone is being a complete dick to you, then you can cut them out of your life. Why can't open source maintainer?
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