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Tribalism Is the Enemy Within, Says Shuttleworth

Posted by Soulskill on from the can't-we-all-just-get-along dept.

climenole points out a post from Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth about internal strife in the free software community. He wrote, "Tribalism is when one group of people start to think people from another group are 'wrong by default.' It's the great-granddaddy of racism and sexism. And the most dangerous kind of tribalism is completely invisible: it has nothing to do with someone's 'birth tribe' and everything to do with their affiliations: where they work, which sports team they support, which Linux distribution they love. ... Right now, for a number of reasons, there is a fever pitch of tribalism in plain sight in the free software world. It's sad. It's not constructive. It's ultimately going to be embarrassing for the people involved, because the Internet doesn't forget. It's certainly not helping us lift free software to the forefront of public expectations of what software can be."

8 of 655 comments (clear)

  1. Politics by dward90 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Tribalism is when one group of people start to think people from another group are 'wrong by default.'"

    This is 90% of what makes the American government unworkable.

    --
    My other sig is clever.
  2. Good luck with that! by Daetrin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you can figure out how to convince people to reject tribalism and operate in a completely rational manner then promoting free and open software will end up being small potatoes, you've probably got a nobel prize waiting for you.

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    This Space Intentionally Left Blank
    1. Re:Good luck with that! by BJ_Covert_Action · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...Or a bullet....

      --
      Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
    2. Re:Good luck with that! by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you can figure out how to convince people to reject tribalism and operate in a completely rational manner

      I've found the best method is to involve family. I've known people who were racist but once their brother or sister was dating someone of that race, they broadened their view a little bit. It's usually a slow process, but it helps them get past skin colour once they get to know the individual personally. Which tends to happen at a lot of family functions.

      So - Mister Shuttleworth, if you can get your sleek and graceful Ubuntu women to date some strong and burly Red hat men, you'll find this kind of tribalism slowly disappear.

  3. Re:So drop out and there will be one less "tribe" by dward90 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is a problem. Tribalism is different than debate, dissent, and competition. It's a state of being unable to engage in meaningful debate or to accept constructive criticism. There is (or should be) a middle ground between a "mono-culture" and the inability to accept new ideas from a member of an opposing group.

    --
    My other sig is clever.
  4. Ubuntu is about Ubuntu, not about Free Software. by c0l0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Strange how he speaks of "lifting Free Software to the forefront", whilst all he's _really_ doing is trying to lift Ubuntu to the forefront.

    Mr. Shuttleworth apparently knows that "the internet doesn't forget", yet he (I assume it was him who heralded the changes made) chose to tone down the role of Free (as in freedom) Software in the "Ubuntu Promise" over the years in a very silent yet continuous manner, and led Ubuntu to act against some of the principles of the early (think 2004 to 2006 or so) days of the project; principles that I happen to value. Getting into bed with vendors of proprietary software in a way that doesn't benefit others in the Free Software eco-system is something I despise, for example: Canonical is actually getting proprietary AMD/ATI graphics drivers before anyone else gets them, probably under NDA or whatnot. I also don't like their "partner"-repository that contains nothing but proprietary software, and is advertised and presented as a Really Great Thing(tm), not as a sometimes (probably) necessary evil. I don't like how Ubuntu's more and more about doing "their thing" without contributing back to the upstream projects they base their product on, and how they actually try to differentiate themselves from their competitors by making technically bad decisions in the wake of all this (think client-side window decorations, and putting window controls to the left because of that - just doesn't make any sense to me). There were many other occasions on which Mr. Shuttleworth and Ubuntu chose to somehow, somewhat upset parts of the Free Software community, either by what they stated or what they did. I just don't think Mr. Shuttleworth is entitled to put Ubuntu under the banner of Free Software, at least not as it stands today. If someone on identi.ca, or whereever else, is arguing against Ubuntu, it's just that: someone arguing against Ubuntu. It's certainly not an attack on Free Software.

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    :%s/Open Source/Free Software/g

    YTARY!
  5. What a hypocrite by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Mark doesn't like it that we don't just all cooperate in making him even more wealthy. We're not his unpaid employees, even if that's the way he treats us.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  6. Re:So drop out and there will be one less "tribe" by RoccamOccam · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This type of action by Bush was the reason his approval numbers were so low - he lost his conservative base. Conservatives were quite outspoken about this. That being said, the fiscal bailout was quite different from the "stimulus" package. The fiscal bailout was almost completely a set of loans and the large majority of those loans have been repaid. The "stimulus" package, on the other hand was mostly a giant boatload of pork-barrel spending.