Slashdot Mirror
Free Software Leadership
GroundBounce writes: "An article at Advogato uses the recent resignation of Christoph Pfister from the Fink project to analyze and highlight the ways in which the free software community often alienates its leaders, and the differences between the Mac shareware and the greater free software communities."
Recently, Christoph Pfister, founder of the Fink project, loudly and publicly resigned. There is a lively discussion of this on MacSlash and Slashdot. Advogato would like to use this event as an excuse to discuss some of the strengths and weaknesses of free software. It is very easy for this cat to sympathize with Christoph. It is the rule, rather than the exception, to put blood, sweat, and tears into a free software project (not to mention long hours), and get precious little in return. Even the satisfaction of knowing that you have given valuable software to many users is tempered by hearing them whine and complain. Even more frustrating is when other people get fame and fortune off the coattails of your work. The fact that all this effort is not rewarded with money is the major shortcoming of the free software process. There have been quite a number of attempts to fix this, but few have been successful, and of those that have, most don't seem to generalize. That said, these events display one of the strengths of free software, as well. Christoph has created something of value (a package management system for Mac OS X based on Debian's), and a community has formed around it. It's likely that this community has reached critical mass, so that it can continue to thrive even without Christoph's participation. This post from David Morrison points the way for how this might happen in the case of this particular project. There is great resilience in free software, not obvious to those who see only the surface of Linux business failures and public expressions of burnout. It would appear that a large part of Christoph's frustration are the leeches who sell CD's of the software, but do not adequately credit him or share any of the money. Part of this, no doubt, is the nature of the Mac shareware community, which does not place the same value on attribution as the free software community. However, this problem is certainly present in the Linux community as well. For a while, it was looking as if VC's and other investors in Linux companies would make billions of dollars, while those of us who actually did the work to make Linux so valuable continued to struggle to get paid at all for our efforts. This cat freely admits to Schadenfreude upon learning that these billions turned out not to be real money after all. There may not be as much money floating around, but the money that remains is, in general, far more equitably distributed. The evanescent rewards of free software are a major factor in the relatively high turnover in projects. This turnover has some advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, it brings new blood to projects. People who join a project bring their valuable perspectives and experience. Conversely, experience with a number of different free software projects is nourishing to people who work on them. However, in many cases the leaders of projects retain invaluable wisdom and experience. Where would Vorbis be if Monty left the project? It would probably hobble along, because it is so important, but it would be a crippling setback nonetheless. Free software is particularly hard on leaders. This cat believes that there are many who possess unique skills and talents, but who are turned off by the rough treatment that leaders are subjected to. (Not to be so audacious as to propose myself as an example, but it is true that cats have special talent when it comes to putting colored marks on pieces of paper, and this is an area where free software could really use some leadership). Instead of giving examples, I'll just call attention to the current drought of leaders. Many of the "big names" who would have been listed as leaders a couple of years ago are no longer very active in actual free software development, and there isn't much in the way of new blood. Thank God we've still got Linus. Mac OS X gives an excellent example of why leadership is so badly needed. Apple could easily have taken a leadership role, and presented a compelling vision of how software should be packaged for OS X. Instead, its own efforts are very weak. The included Installer.app sucks in many small ways and some large ones. In the latter category, it lacks many of the features you'd want from a real package manager, such as keeping track of dependencies, and offering a simple uninstall. In the former category, you have the bonehead decision to use the obscure pax format instead of tar, and the fact that you still need a directory of files rather than a tarball. As such, there's a nontrivial amount of software distributed as a binhex encoded StuffIt archive, containing a disk image of an "installation CD", which in turn contains a pkg directory, of which the meat is in a pax archive. Somebody in Cupertino must have been smoking the good crack. Apple also provides some links to Unix software, but as far as I can tell makes no effort to ensure that any of it is integrated nicely. Obviously, such major shortcomings create an opportunity for the free software to step in and do a good job. Indeed, we've accumulated quite a bit of knowledge and wisdom about how to do package management well (as well as quite a bit on how not to!). There are two such well-known projects: Fink and GNU/Darwin, which is based on the BSD ports system. Choice is good, but coherence is also good. What should a user do who simply wants Apache? Use the Apple-provided version, the Fink version, or the GNU/Darwin version? In many cases, they conflict. Will X applications designed for one distribution work well with an X server (and fonts, and libraries, etc.) built for another? A lot of people lose here. Mac OS X users are reinforced in their perception of Unix software being inaccessible, finicky to install, hard to learn, and generally having horrible usability problems. Developers of software wishing to port to OS X do not have clear guidelines on how to do so. Hopefully, the situation will get better, but it will take time. If someone had stepped up to the plate and led the effort, it would no doubt have happened a lot sooner. It might have been Christoph, but you can hardly blame him for not wanting to take on that responsibility, for so little reward. How to make things better? For one, take a little time to express your appreciation for those who do donate their leadership to the cause. Advogato would like to thank Christoph, and many others, for their contributions. It is through such humble public service, not flashy pronouncements, that true progress is made. Thank you.
I think one of the secrets of staying sane in Open Source is learning how to ignore people! Just ignore them, you're right, you have NO OBLIGATION TO THEM. You DON'T have to cater to everyone's silly little whim. Learn to use the D key when people are e-mailing you personally and not the support mailing lists and news groups like they should if they had 1/4 of a brain!
Man, if you can't ignore people you're in the wrong community. And if you're not writing the software for yourself... then what the hell are you doing?
Chris, thanks for all the hard work and all, but you'll hear no violins from me.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
I think he should have gone to FSF to complain...FSF or some other third party should step up and start monitoring and tracking GPL violations. What happen with Fisk, a great application,should be the responible of those who created the license not the project leaders.
I (being an alienated former project leader) have put together a mailing list I call OSS-Leaders.
I'm still trying to get it off the ground, but there are one or two guys you may have heard of on the list . . .
The idea is to provide a place for project leaders to exchange thoughts and ideas strictly with their peers. I hope to distill some of this discussion into some sort of "OSS Project Leadership HOWTO."
If you lead (or recently lead) an OSS project, check it out.
-Peter
Muuuuhhhaaaaahahahah.
Not to trivialize it, but from most accounts it sounded like the "Fink dude" was in a "Funk".
He needed a break, so for however long is needed;
"Run fast, run far" and return when you are ready.
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
The "cat" shit is really irritating. He needs to either get an editor or lose the "clever" shit.
1Alpha7
Live to be Moderated
interesting point the author makes.. smoking _good_ crack can lead to deficincies in software. who woulda thought...
(note to ms executives: start feeding the clans the _bad_ crack, not the _good_ crack)
There are an awful lot of small, dead, open source projects out there. I was looking today on Sourceforge for something and row after row of 0.0% project activity hits came up. Maybe this is to do with attention spans, or maybe for smaller projects it is tough putting GPL code out there.
A GPL-ed open source app that I wrote has so far had >1200 downloads in 2 months, yet only six people have fed anything back (five of them were complementary). Admittedly this is on Windows, where maybe there are cultural differences.
When you are charging for your work you can at least look at the cash and feel that you are doing a good job; if you are deliberately setting out to give your work away then all there is in the way of repayment is feedback or help. Maybe that makes people feel uncomfortable to the extent they might rather have paid for the software?
It only takes one stupid decision or one time where your development community has a good idea you try to repress for your community to decide they don't respect you anymore.
Bottom line? In OSS there are no leaders, there are only people more knowledgeable and experienced than others. If you try to lead and you fail then you suppress ideas, and that causes forking, and then your project is doomed.
-Evan
Ummmmm, it's already been established that OpenOSX was in no way in violation of the GPL. Cristoph just got his ego bruised when he realised that releasing his code under the GPL does not automatically guarantee that he'll be given credit.
Two problems with this.
1) If he wanted to be given credit for his work that badly, he should have done his homework, and perhaps released his code under a BSD license, which guarantees that he'll be mentioned as the original author. It's not OpenOSX's fault he didn't use his head.
2) If he's in it for the fame and popularity, and not for the idea that the GPL ( and the entire open source movement ) represents, Cristoph should find another line of work -- And apparently, he has.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
It's Pfister McGee!
> the Mac shareware and the greater free software communities
it is not clear to me what the Mac *shareware* community has to do with *free software*. Fink is certainly not shareware. Nor are its derivatives.
So what's the point in that sentence?
BTW: Fink rocks!
This guy and the bonehead who blames UPS for his shitty packaging job should get together and go bowling. After all, they both have exactly what the other wants. One has a working computer system, but no fame. The other has fame, but a dead computer system.
Sounds like a beautiful friendship if you ask me.
Bowie J. Poag
I am the pureset form of the Open Source movement.
Stallman can lick me. The FSF can go straight to h3ll. NO constraints on my software. You don't even have to keep my name on it. I note how RMS has made a nice living for himself bitching about how software should be "free" - as long as it adheres to his rules.
I write my code. I give it away. That's it. (not that I have written anything very substantial, but the point stands.)
I don't GPL it. Or put any type of "L" on it.... if M$ wants to "pirate" it and make $100 million on it - they are free to do so. If some kid wants to submit it as her CS233 project - she can knock herself out!
I take others code as well. I ignore all licenses. Implied or explict. If it is code, and I need it... I use it. For anything I want.
Like I said... free. Not as in speech. Not as in beer. But as in "free for all!"
I say ignore these people - and co-op their code.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
In general, most successful open source developers have similar fairly similar strategies (point the clueless to documentation, ignore the worst offenders), and pet peeves (people who don't know th first thing about the system and ask idiotic questions about picky details, people who complain about a bug publicly but don't report it to the developer). My experience as a long-time clueless newbie has been that documentation in free software projects is almost impossible to understand, usually starts about half-way through, presuming a good deal of understanding of the system, instead of at the beginning. Documentation is especially a problem for Mac users who are used to getting the documentation through the help menu on the application itself rather than by using man or reading README. Also reporting bugs is very intimidating when the only way to report is often to send an email to the lead developer who is likely to ignore you if you don't use the right terminology. OSX Unix developers should post readmes and man pages very prominently on the dowload websites, and install bugzilla to make reporting bugs less traumatic.
Geeze, the slashcode guys trying to make a point?
For thise of you that missed this the first time... click here
This is not an issue that plagues OSS, it is one that has been present in every workplace in the world. Who has ever worked in an environment where everyone agreed all the time? I personally left a company after disagreeing with some of the stances taken by a manager of mine, and that was in the closed source, commercial world.
The only difference I see is that given the nature of OSS the players tend to have some very strong feelings about the subject material or they wouldn't have started the project to begin with. No one would undertake a project for zero pay, long hours, and constant hand (and brain) cramps just out of the good nature of their heart. They start they projects because they feel they need the tool at hand. When others join the cause, the goals of the project migrate with the masses; which is not always the exact direction the founder may have envisioned.
Given the founders original vision of the project, and the nature of OSS being so visable and publicized today, any falling out amoungst the developers is going to be louder than a closed source model.
But to sum it up; this happens everywhere, it is just that it is more visable for public projects!
Of course, mine was a fairly small project with less visibility, but I was still getting over 1000 downloads (as per the web logs) of each new version, so there were a significant number of users. Actually, the number of downloads helped give me a nice warm fuzzy feeling; "look at all these people using something I helped write!".
In the end, I passed control to the central XMMS team as I moved jobs and didn't have a SPARC at my desk. However, that was always my end goal, to have it in such a state that it could be integrated.
Another cause of this is, not to be offensive to anybody out there, the heterogenous nature of the talent in the open source community.
My experience has been that unless I knew the people that I tried to develop with something ahead of time (IE, someone I chatted with regularly on perlmonks or irc or something), the odds were that I would end up with a few really talented people and a lot of people with little talent (but much ego), and a rather precarious social situation.
In the end it comes down to a shutdown in progress so as not to bruise any egos. Eventually with everybody packing up and going home.
Also, since nobody closese, scraps, and deletes projects on sourceforge, there are a good number that are just out there for the web space that will never actually change again, or that failed long ago that were never removed.
Oh well, it's still a good system.
You're not alone. I want to produce goods.
I don't care to play games with lawyers.
"Intellectual property" is a ludicrous oxymoron.
Pretending otherwise just makes you a liar.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Its on http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-baza ar/homesteading/
Our cool "cat" needs to think through the whole issue of what OSS is about. The point of OSS is that its a gift. Usually you don't even know who you are giving it to. So why worry if some poor sap is trying to cover the cost of burning CSs by re-issuing your code. Provided you have the GPL, you have lost nothing. And really, how much money will the CD burner make, if any?
If you want nice feedback, stop wasting time coding and give people $10 bills. They always say thanks and never complain about the artwork.
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
umm, it wasn't a bad excuse. when you work till 4am and you are up at 8 it's a good excuse.
eat me.
funny thing is some other post w/the same fucking idea got modded up.
idiots.
If you take a group of true fruitcakes, say, the UFO Investigators, they basically "eat their own young" when it comes to competition, grandstanding, ego trips, etc.
Software developers are not so flakey, of course, although some folks would argue otherwise.
Many folks are rather ignorant of this sort of thing, and get blindsided by it. Of course, management books and courses sort of assume that every one is on the same team, and rarely look at the angle where there are competing interests, some of them sometimes rather juvenile.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
No industry is ever obligated to provide customer support for a product they give away for free. If they do provide it anyway, it is usually in the hope that the customer will eventually pay for the "full" product, or a related service. A legally binding customer support contract always costs money, whether it is factored into the base price of the product or sold seperately.
When it comes right down to it, the only support a customer can demand for a free product is a full refund of zero dollars.
Apparently you Linux types think "Hey, check out my L337 Hearts shareware for Windoze, a mere $117.85 and it's yours to play again after a 6 day trial" is what shareware is or should be.
Bullhockey. Shareware on the Mac, which, contrary to advogato's assertion, cares mightily about attribution and credit, to the point that they use, oh, I dunno...COPYRIGHT licenses to ensure they get credit.
Most of this shareware, and a boatload of freeware, some put out by commercial companies, is not time-limited and requires the Mac community to express appreciation in a way that apparently the Napsterites can't be bothered--you know, paying for it? You can use Graphic Converter (a tool that gives the GIMP a run for its money) without ever paying for it. However, I coughed up the $35 to the lone guy who maintains it because it's a damn useful program and has helped me out of spots where Photoshop has failed. In turn, he maintains a release schedule and responsiveness that puts the majority of open source projects I've seen to shame. Oh, and my license is good in perpetuity.
Do I get to see the code? With some freeware programs, yes. Others, no. But then, my coding skills lie more toward Web programming and Java, so I'm not sure I'd be able to do that much with the code, and here's a nasty little truth: neither do most people in the Linux community.
The communities are similar in many points: a small group of programmers do the bulk of the work. Most users don't know how to program and are frequently clueless. Most users tend to report bugs and nothing else. Most users tend not to contribute patches. Some offer to and are brushed away by the maintainer/programmer.
However there are some differences the Linux community might not like to think about. And as a 3-years plus Linux user, I can say that in general, Mac shareware is far less buggy and thousands of times more usable than its Free Software compatriots, despite the lack of peer review of the code. Mac users tend to show appreciation to these programmers in a way that Linux types tend to only show to Red Hat or some other distribution maintainer, not the project maintainers: paying for it. Not everybody, not even most people, but enough that some of these packages have been around over a decade and are still being developed despite relying on single person.
Am I saying the Mac shareware way is better? Not really--it's better at certain things, but has weaknesses that Free Software doesn't. But it has strenghts that Free Software doesn't, either. To see it mindlessly bashed by pots referring to the dark coloration of kettles has been irritating, to say the least.
The whole tone of this discussion has been characterized by ignorant flaming, starting with CP's note and emails and continuing with Slashdot's libelous headline. You really might try to understand the Mac way before you start whining...after all, you're still trying to copy our user interface quality after all these years--we might have something to bring to the table. We instinctively know good UI, something that the Windoze commuity, from which most of you come, does not.
You can learn from other cultures, or you can flame them. Guess which one you're becoming as guilty of as the users who whined without bug reports to CP?
Of course, by greater, Michael really meant to say larger. :)
I don't think you are very far from what RMS wants. It is just that he has found a way to get there more slowly, and I would say more cleverly. It's a long discussion, really.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I hope you don't write anything too good then. If you release and waive all your rights to it it could, for example, be claimed as Microsoft's IP. They could then stop you from ever using that code again.
Sure, you can get away with it now, but what sort of IP controls will exist in the future? Hardware that you must install on each machine to ensure copyrights are obeyed?
No, it's not about money. Those who think it is and try to squeeze money out of their neighbors by giving away booby traps are doomed to fail. Sorry, it's about sharing common tasks and making things that don't suck. Communities that are bassed on anything else will go the way of M$ eventually.
The evanescent rewards of free software are a major factor in the relatively high turnover in projects.
Not all projects have high turnover. I'll just call attention to the current drought of leaders. Many of the "big names" who would have been listed as leaders a couple of years ago are no longer very active in actual free software development, and there isn't much in the way of new blood. Thank God we've still got Linus.
Huh? What's a big name? While peer recognition is nice, once again, that's not what it's about. The folks making things like NE2000 drivers out at NASA are just as important to me as anyone else. I appreciate their efforts, but I have a small brain and I'll never be able to remember all the names. Why should I expect anything more of anyone else?
Mac OS X gives an excellent example of why leadership is so badly needed. Apple could easily have taken a leadership role, and presented a compelling vision of how software should be packaged for OS X. Instead, its own efforts are very weak. ... Apple also provides some links to Unix software, but as far as I can tell makes no effort to ensure that any of it is integrated nicely.
Apple does not seem to get it yet, and that is too bad. They have a great deal of tallent at work and they have produced some outstanding hardware. If they ever get what free sofware is all about they will sell much more of it. Perversly, by giving their users freedom they will save themselves from working for someone else, like Bill Gates. Propriatory junk never communicates well and will never "integrate". Apple is in a good position to do great things. I'm waiting for them to get it.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Perhaps the problem is that the de-facto leader of the project is the person who initiated it; they might be a good developer but maybe they don't have the organizational/managerial/basic people skills to keep things going smoothly. This is one area (IMO) in which the traditional "corporate" system of separate management and development teams (at least potentially) has an advantage on the OSS model.
Agvogato misspelled his name and then apologized
below in a comment to the article. Too bad they
didn't edit the actual article.
From reading the first bunch of posts here, one would get the impression that leading an Open-Source project is miserable work. In case anyone cares, I'd like to submit a success story
A while back I posted a little code on the net. It was a tiny driver for my Matrox Marvel video capture card. I figured there might be SOMEONE out there who'd find it useful. Well, people grabbed it, started working with it (I only have one video capture card, so there were apparently problems on other people's sysems) and improving it. We set up a CVS server and a mailing list and more people got involved.
After a while, I got kind of tired of the project. The driver has worked for me since day one, and I really didn't have much motivation to do any more coding or "lead" the project. Besides, several people that joined the project knew more about the code than me, so I figured I might as well quietly step away. The project's been going great and continues to grow. I still read the mailing list, but I haven't committed code in months.
I guess the moral of the story is: There may come a time where you are tired of heading up a project, and the best thing to do is to let go of it, and leave it to the more capable (and more enthusiastic) people on the mailing list.
The guy makes some "interesting" points, but its hard to take him seriously when he keeps referring to people as "Cats" like he's out of a bad 1920's Jazz movie.
Seriously, what kind of deek talks like this/
Sometimes I am wondering about the role of leadership in open source software. In a way, at least from my point of view, the leader is typically the chief developer. But isn't there a better way to do it?
You might disagree, which is understandable, but I really think that the open source community could gain a bit by looking some more at the coporate model. (Yes, it does have its flaws, I'll be the first to admit. But there are some good things.)
For example, you might want a project architect. His job isn't to write the code, but to establish the framework and overall direction of the project. The architect gives clear direction on which way the software is going and provides a blueprint for the design.
Or, for example, someone who represents the user community. In contrast to the architect, this representative speaks for the users in terms of what features are most desired, and what bugs need to be squashed the most. And it shields developers from the maddening and schizophrenic voices of the community.
An architect could take the requests of the users, and combine it into the overall vision of the project.
I'm kind of making this up as I go here, but I see some value in the role of a software architect (who understands programming but does not churn code), and a single representative of the user community to deal with developers.
Is this too insane, or niave?
If you take a closer look at those projects, you will find that a lot of the project descriptions tend to sound something like "this project will implement a brand-new, object-oriented, buzzword-compliant operating system with a really cool graphical user interface, all written in a new programming language that I haven't actually designed yet, but it should be really cool and object-oriented."
Annoying people with big ideas and no talent start these projects, and assume that everyone else on the internet is going to do all the real work for them so that they can take the credit.
No wonder they fail.
As for the vast majority of people who download your hard-written code and don't feed anything back, don't feel too bad about that. Most of them are morons, and couldn't give you a single useful suggestion if you put a gun to their head. Just be glad they don't pester you with their "ideas".
that a non-heirarchically managed project would tend to view "leaders" (in the traditional, managerial sense) as anathema. Meglomania is simply not needed, is a hindrance, and highly annoying.
This isn't nessecarily "open source" because some open source projects are very heirarchical (BSD for example) and some are not (debian). The "leaders" of the debian project are elected, and generally there isn't alot of resentment. Meglomaniacs should stick to proprietary software, where a non-democratic structure is assumed.
The good thing about open source is that people hold strong opinions... The bad thing about open source is that people hold strong opinions... I really wonder how many people involved in open source ever heard "plays well with others"?
The FSF only step in where copyright of the GPL software is assigned to them. There are legal reasons for doing this, because to bring an action you have to have 'standing' in the action i.e. you have to be an aggrieved party, not a bystander. There are good reasons for this; I understand in some countries (Germany) you can be a b**t**d and bring a case whether or not you have standing - witness Adobe and KIllustrator, and the bunch of ambulance chasers who brought the action.
I'm not entirely on Fisks side; my impression from his resignation letter is that he came up with a great idea for an Open Source project but was not very good at managing the project. I'm sure other Open Source developers get similar hassles but the better ones find some way of keeping the s**t at arms length by means of for example bug submission procedures, dividing the work amongst other developers etc. Most of his complaints in the letter were along those lines. If he managed it well, he could've had the exposure he (justly) deserved and stood mainly out of the firing line of c**p.
Funnily enough, the Advogato article has a letter from a manager offering to manage the project. I'm a little leery of real managers, viewing them in much the same way Scott Adams does in Dilbert! But it seems projects do require an engineer with a talent for organisation. I'm under the impression one reason KDE appears to be succeeding is that the organisation is much better than most Open Source Projects. [Maybe what we need is a group of Germans in charge of every project!]
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
worst article ever
And what I've noticed is that it's usually at commercial prices. Low-end commercial prices, to be sure, but it ain't cheap. And despite your implicit assertion to the contrary, freeware applications of any value are few and far between.
This has been one of my disappointments with my iBook. You can accuse me of being cheap, with some justification--but I look at it as being honest: I don't want to use unregistered shareware, so I'll certainly look for freeware first. And I usually won't find it. I usually won't even find up-to-date ports of common cross-platform applications like Vim and Emacs.
Granted, I've had other disappointments like the fact that MacOS 9 isn't much more advanced internally than System 7 was, that the iBook's battery design seems to be flamingly stupid, and that MacOS X is targeted to machines much faster than mine (note I didn't say that was a flaw, just a disappointment). But the Mac community as a whole seems to be less interested in the 'gift economy' than Windows programmers, much less Linux and BSD folks.
We're here for you J., should you ever be forced to have your head extracted from your .asp. Meanwhile, gaud help you.
Also, if you're not afraud, & need somewhere to hang your hack (see also: VA Larry lays cullame to EVERYBODY's work), while the GNU millennium kicks in, check out our web address giveaway. Includes a year's free hosting. We have some other options for those interested.
What... they are going to chop off my fingers?
I use what I want. When I want. However I want.
Let them try!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Leaders are, by definition, people who get others to do what is needed. Since, in the free software community, people do more or less what they want, leaders are completely unnecessary.
What free software needs are not leaders, but coordinators and administrators, people who keep things organized. And this means hard work, such as maintaning the CVS tree, keeping track of updates, making sure the project website has the right links, etc.
If you do all that work, and more, you are sure to be recognized as THE leader for the project. After all, who is it that puts people's names in the files?
Does Steve Ballmer, the "project leader" of Microsoft personally send them replies? Most likely, if the comments are crack-pot-ish enough "hey win0ws sucks, man!", he will just ignore them entirely. Sometimes, he might ignore them personally but offload it to the PR dep't or one of his secretaries or something (analogous to the OSS project leader ignoring someone, but letting someone else on the mailing list respond). Never will you see Steve Ballmer writing a note to some random Joe Blow saying "hey thanks for your nice comments. I agree: minesweeper *is* a fun game." Steve Ballmer, and all of Microsoft for that matter, have more important things to deal with. They would rather be dealing with Dell or Compaq (who are worth billions of dollars in sales) than with Joe Blow (who is worth tens of dollars in sales). And quite understandably so. Steve Ballmer does not have an obligation to hold the hand of every customer, and I see no reason why OSS project leaders should be held to a higher standard.
Attn moderators: when you moderate this, I'd prefer "troll" or "flamebait". Anything else (especially that retarded "overrated") is lame. TIA
I recently released a new version of the open source project I work on (TiMidity for OS/2, see web page). Dispite being a minor update that I didn't think many people would be interrested in I got quite a bit of feedback thanking me for my work. Much more then I ever got before.
The reason was that there was a bug that prevented the program from reading the configuration file properly and they where asking about it. I've put up an update I haven't got any feedback since.
I'm tired of developers taking criticism so damn personally and not seeing it for what it is when they really shouldn't. (not to sound harsh, but really enough of the silly "artiste" type rants). If you're getting a lot of heat and you can't take it, it's probably best to step back quietly.
While I agree that a certain amount of backbone with regards to criticism is necessary to grow as a creative type, there are some people who are so unschooled at constructive criticism that if I were a developer, and all the feedback I was getting was "this suxors" or whatnot, I'd probably leave in a fury, too.
In a parallel to this, in creative writing workshops (and before people say anything about writing being artsy and coding being analytical, there is a HUGE amount of craft that goes into writing), the best criticism doesn't try to figure out whether or not something is good or bad, but instead tries to figure out what it IS, and what the developer has in mind, and what steps need to be taken to get from where it is now to where the developer wants to go with it.
That's not to say that end-user criticism isn't necessary -- of course it is. But that's an entirely different level of criticism that developers need, and usually, that's not helpful in the design stages. Usually, in an attempt to sound open-minded about their work, a person will welcome any and all criticism, and that's a bit of a mistake if the person doesn't know what sorts of grains of salt to take with every bit of advice they get. You have to try to meet them halfway.
This is just general stuff I've picked up, probably not applicable to this particular situation.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
I have read the source material (Christoph's resignation, his email exchanges with other folks).
He responds with overt hostility and sarcasm to every attempt at sincere communication. He gives away his software and then blames the world for taking it. He goes out of his way to display self-righteous fury in response to clueless lusers who would benefit from an auto-responder pointing them to a FAQ.
Larry Wall is a leader. Richard Stallman, in his own infuriating and dogmatic way, is a leader. Christoph Pfister, in spite of his gifts as a programmer, is no leader.
Idiot Mac User
That's redundant.
The thing is, it takes a certain type of person to run a project which is big, but offers little tangible reward beyond knowing you did it. That type of person is first and foremost enthusiastic. They also tend to have an unusually high level of skill and/or talent in the area concerned. And they also tend to be people who care about doing a good job.
Such people will automatically take some responsibility for the project they oversee. When people slam the project, or worse yet, slam the volunteer running it with personal criticisms, it hurts. You can say "it shouldn't" or "ignore it" all you like, it still hurts. People capable of ignoring such criticism completely are rarely enthusiastic or skilled enough to be there in the first place.
Sometimes, inevitably, it gets too much. After months of putting effort in, without a drop of credit, these people crack and leave. What do you expect? The least you could do is respect their wish to have their say, just once, as they bow out. They've earned that right, and you have no right to have a go at them for it.
I've been in a similar situation, though not in a software context. I know how this guy feels. I'm betting you haven't, and you'd look at things a whole lot differently if you had. As you say, it's a thankless job. Maybe that's because people like you are too busy having a go to say "thank you".
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Hmm.. Interesting that all it takes is enough people to bitch, whine and moan to developers to get them to quit projects..
One could wonder if some large corporation with tons of cash and no sense of ethics could hire people to just bitch and whine about software projects all day to its developers. Naaa.. We'd never see anything like that now, would we?
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Just because a program has the name shareware attached to it, doesn't mean you need to cough up money $$$$$.
Most "shareware" programs just have a simple screen (a minor annoyance) that allows the coder to announce who wrote it. Nothing more. And then states that if you want the registered version, with out the minor annoyance then please cough up $5.00 or somthing like that.
An excellent example is WinZip for Mircosoft OS computers.
You can download it for free and use it as much as you want. But there is a minor annoyance screen that asks if you wish the register it. That's all. That is a shareware program.
I see it as a way for a developer to still live by his / her "software should be free" ideas but also a way to maybe make a little money for his / her time. And we should all take heed... If you like and use a program... Pay the few bucks and honor the coder.
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
And
Free Software Leadership and
Linux Business
are oxymoronic. When you add in whatever new word Katz makes up for the week, you can really drive a good sales meeting.
When I was (along with some other people, but mostly me) running CVS development, our most popular download was the Windows client (command line at the time, although WinCVS later got popular). Yet very little of the mailing list traffic, submitted patches, and the like were for Windows. I suppose one could point to reasons like whether people had the right compilers for Windows (cygwin wasn't as mature then as it is now, so we had both cygwin and Visual C++ ports). But I still would vote for the cultural explanation. The model of Windows freeware or shareware is basically a gift from the author to the user, whereas Unix free software is more often seen as a (potential) collaboration in which the users contribute.
personally, I hate cats, so I was really disappointed with that link to feline art. What is the deal with this cat?
I've been swashdotted -- Elmer Fudd
thats what 'leaders' always say to the users.
'quit whining, its open source, change it yourself.'
well you quit fucking whining, and stop trying
to be the leader. really, most 'leaders' have
an extremely inflated ego and sense of their
importance to a project, when in fact
alot of them are the reason a project is
stagnating or buggy, because they are control freaks.
so if you cant tak the heat, get the hell
out of the kitchen, we dont need your assholeness
leading us, there are plenty of great leaders
who do not try to piss all over their troops
and bitch about them and how 'hard' it is
to be a leader.
It really seems to have been a fad, and now it is collapsing in the face of economic realities. It kind of reminds me of the Berlin Wall falling: the end of an era... the failure of a radical social experiment.
Mac users are cockmasters.
Sheesh, are the authors missing the point ...
The fact that all this effort is not rewarded with money is the major shortcoming of the free software process.
While I no doubt share in their point regarding credibility, they must also understand the nature of free software. Simply releasing code alone is not sufficient enough an effort to reap monetary rewards. Free software has no such major shortcoming, you are confusing two completely different software-business models. Besides, if money from software is your end goal, why in the hell are you developing free software expecting that to be your motivational drive??
If you can't handle the dirty words, don't use them.
No one is forcing you to change the word "shit" to "s**t".
Alienation of the leaders ... yeah. I can see that happen, and have. Now, how about when the 'leaders' alienate the projects? Eric S. Raymond recently started slinging flames at the Pennmush folks, citing their lack of a GPL license as reason to threaten the developers with OSS community sanctions (which were never voted on by the OSI board, btw), because they were using the words 'open' and 'source' in their license. A definition did follow. It read "meaning that the source is freely available and you can modify it however you like". But this wasn't good enough. I don't know if the OSI folks realize what ESR did when he sent that Nastygram(tm), but I'm more than willing to point out a portion of the damage done.
Many developers decided not to support the OSI once they heard about this. I'm one of them. It's not worth our time or effort to stand behind a project that, while espousing lofty goals, stoops to such politically motiviated activities as attempting to hijack a common phrase (anyone else remember the Pilsbury vs whoever over 'bake-off' thing? I do).
Ego? Maybe. I have no idea what sort of bug got into his pants. But this was really, really WRONG. Perhaps if ESR had sent an email asking for some sort of clarification of the license, instead of threatening sanctions against the Pennmush project right from the word go, things might have gone better. But, as it stands, the OSI now has an image very similar to that of any other corporate entity that starts any correspondence with threats and bullying tactics. I'm sure this is the sort of thing Micro$oft and other corporations love to see, and expected and hoped for, you know. Open Source eating its own young, biting its own tail off, that sort of thing.
I feel I must pause to applaud. [golf clap] Way to go Mr.Raymond. Just let me know when I should start calling you Mr.Gates, OK?
By the way, I think an open apology might be in order, from the entire OSI board, since ESR wrote his threats with the big Open Source Intimidation label all over them. Take responsibility, even if you won't accept blame.
In case you're wondering, yes, this annoys me slightly. Cope.
I suppose it would be really easy to turn a freeware into a shareware and start collecting money, but what are the legal issues that have to be dealt with when collecting money? Just a curiosity, just in case I become a shareware developer in the future: do shareware developers collect money and get away with not paying taxes? Is there a process one must go through to have a legally abiding shareware business?
From the article:
Can anyone take this guy's side for a minute? Play devil's advocate, and tell me what basis there is for his comment? Apart from Jamie & Mozilla, I haven't seen a lot of high-profile dropouts. ESR and tons -- tons -- of other leaders/developers appear to be moving forward en masse and full steam ahead. There's Miguel, Alan & the new 2.4 maintainer (remember when the only kernel guy was Linus? Nowadays it seems like Linus could be hit by a train and Linux would survive.), Bruce (at HP now, right?), even Rob, etc.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Oh my got its the grammar police!
Read the message and grow up. If you know what the words are I'm sure you can convert asterisks to real letters. If you don't then mummy won't complain that you've been picking up rude words....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon