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KWin Maintainer: Fanboys and Trolls Are the Cancer Killing Free Software
An anonymous reader writes "Martin Gräßlin, maintainer of the KWin window manager, writes an informative blog post about his experiences with the less favorable pockets of the Free Software community. Quoting: 'Years ago I had a clear political opinion. I was a civil-rights activist. I appreciated freedom and anything limiting freedom was a problem to me. Freedom of speech was one of the most important rights for me. I thought that democracy has to be able to survive radical or insulting opinions. In a democracy any opinion should have a right even if it's against democracy. I had been a member of the lawsuit against data preservation in Germany. I supported the German Pirate Party during the last election campaign because of a new censorship law. That I became a KDE developer is clearly linked to the fact that it is a free software community. But over the last years my opinion changed. Nowadays I think that not every opinion needs to be tolerated. I find it completely acceptable to censor certain comments and encourage others to censor, too. What was able to change my opinion in such a radical way? After all I still consider civil rights as extremely important. The answer is simple: Fanboys and trolls.'"
Democratic elections are also decided by "fanboys and trolls". Campaigning is the art of getting most of them on your side.
The idea of free speech is that the state can't outright ban certain kinds of speech. It does not mean that every bit of speech must be included in every possible discussion forum. In some, you might want to be as open as possible in order to allow the widest range of unmoderated discussion. That was the goal of many of the early discussion fora like the WELL. But in others, you might want to restrict discussion more narrowly. This could be based on topic: on some Usenet groups, mailing lists, and webforums, there are ranges of topics considered on-topic, and others considered off-topic. How narrow the on-topic range is varies, and how strictly it's enforced varies (do you politely ask off-topic discussions to knock it off, do you axe them outright, etc?). It also could be based on behavior standards: do you ban people for personal attacks, for aggressive behavior, for doxxing, or any range of other activities? It depends on the community and their goals.
But the point is that these are all tradeoffs that vary by community, and don't have much to do with civil rights. It is your right to publish a shitty book of poems, but that doesn't mean you have the same right to email every poem you write to the Linux Kernel Mailing List. This is a pretty basic distinction, no?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Censoring other people in your own domain IS A FORM OF SPEECH!
The Neo Nazis can go spout their nonsense, but it doesn't mean I have to let them do it in my own home. Neither does Martin censoring his own blog mean that he is against free speech. He is exercising his own free speech in his own domain by censoring trolls.
There are any number of reasons to censor people in your own domain that doesn't indicate that you think their ideas are dangerous in themselves. You simply are telling them to take their ideas somewhere else, which we all have a right to do.
There wasn't one rational reason stated why censorship is a good thing
Really? How about the idea that having a bunch of lame-ass mooches, trolls, and flamers causing nothing but drama increases the stress level of developers and causes them to abandon projects entirely?
That's a net loss for EVERYONE. The projects don't complete or get kicked way back on deadline waiting for someone else to pick them up, learn the code, learn to extend it, and finish it off. If they ever do, since those same lame-ass trolls and flamers are waiting to pounce again.
This guy needs to grow up and grow a pair.
OR, the lame-ass trolls need to grow up.
Look, I get it. You're 14, you live in your parents' basement, and to you swearing is only nominally less exciting than a furtive glimpse at a pair of tits. You think it makes you sound grown up. Used in moderation, it can. But there's a right way and a wrong way to phrase things, a right way and a wrong way to handle conflict, and a right and wrong way to deal with drama.
The problem with trolls, fanboys and flamers in this context is that they increase rather than decrease the drama levels and stress levels. Rather than putting out fires and being a little diplomatic, they throw gasoline on fires and expect the house to still be standing after the inferno.
Bad move. It destroys projects and drives people away from open source. Hell, the reason I never made the jump to using Linux on the desktop was my own experiences trying to set up a Mythbox in my living room; because I didn't have the exact hardware that one of the developers had, asked for some help, got shouted at "RTFM you fucking loser" over and over again when the documentation was crap and had no relevance to the situation I was asking about... screw it. I'm not going to try to navigate the 300:1 odds of finding someone helpful among that lame-ass crowd in order to try to use F/OSS and I can understand why it drives developers away too!
It's simple.
In the wake of the NSA scandals, you have all sorts of people who want to support their side (aka the good guys) and make sure the other side (aka the bad guys) don't score political points on them.
So you see all these new and interesting mental gymnastics: "I supported free speech, but honestly it's over-rated. It's no big deal really. Illegal search and seizure?It's been going on for a long time now and we're safer! People are happier with fewer rights!"
And then because these thoughts become a total mess in their minds, they start making arguments that make no sense - like TFA. If it's your server, feel free to say whatever you want and let speak whoever you want. You have a right to to say whatever you want - but you do not have the right to force yourself to be heard. If you say something dumb on another person's server, it is their property and they can expunge it. If you say something dumb on your server, feel free to do so - no one can stop you - but there's no one who will be forced to visit your site to actually read it.
The point of the free speech amendment is make sure THE GOVERNMENT cannot decide that YOU will say whatever THEY want on YOUR servers.
There wasn't one rational reason stated why censorship is a good thing
That's because he doesn't understand that "censorship" is a vague term which he failed to properly define.
I am a civil rights activist. Your right to be free from government sponsored censorship is, IMHO, a fundamental pillar of Liberty. That is not at ALL the same as a non-government entity choosing what comments it wants to display. Don't get me wrong, in many cases I despise the way server and forum owners try to regulate discussions and information... but it's their right to choose what is said in their name, or hosted on their forums.
And if you're going to be hard-line like you seem to be, you'll browse slashdot at -1 and never rate comments.
Except he doesn't give two shits about trolls. He's worried about fanboys:
I can tolerate trolls as itâ(TM)s much easier to handle them. But fanboys are only there to harm you to diminish your work so that their world view doesnâ(TM)t break.
His point is that fanboys take as a given that their favorite software is perfect, and then engage in rabid apologetics to justify their position. In the face of change, they will quite literally invent reasons as to why their worldview is still correct.
Put another way: To someone who thinks "GNOME rocks => KDE sucks", nothing you can do to KDE will change their mind--it's still not GNOME, therefore it still sucks, and they'll create another justification as to why that is, forever and ever.
Since whatever purported problem isn't a real flaw, and fixing it won't make the fanboy happy, fretting over their posts is probably the worst thing you can do as a developer. And if listening to a fanboy can only do you harm, why let them derail all discussion and rob you of your chance to hear from those who can help you?
TL;DR--fanboys don't help discussion, and that's a problem if you depend on that discussion. It's not just butthurt.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Look, I get it. You're 14, you live in your parents' basement,
Way to improve the level of discourse.
On the other hand, you've pretty well proved your own point about trolls and moochers causing drama.
Well played sir.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
And if you're going to be hard-line like you seem to be, you'll browse slashdot at -1 and never rate comments.
I browse at -1 (damn that goat.cx bastard, that lame posting is over a decade old), but I use the mod points I receive. Just a few days ago in fact. I modded up 3 posts I don't agree and 1 I do agree with, because they all made good arguments for their position.
The fifth one was a mod down for a crap argument. I debated whether I should let it pass, but it was a really bad argument. I didn't mod it down just because I disagreeed, I modded it Overrated in the hope the writer will improve his rhetoric down the line.
Even for civil rights activists, I think rating comments is fine as long as you mod up or down based on the post itself, not on your own views.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
In the wake of the NSA scandals, you have all sorts of people who want to support their side (aka the good guys) and make sure the other side (aka the bad guys) don't score political points on them.
It's older than that: this is exactly how so many Obama supporters went from being pro-transparency, anti-wars, anti-Guantanamo, anti-torture, etc. to anti-transparency, pro-wars, pro-waterboarding. They have to support their "side" at all costs, even when it means reversing their opinions.
The point of the free speech amendment is make sure THE GOVERNMENT cannot decide that YOU will say whatever THEY want on YOUR servers.
Exactly. Free speech is something we should uphold, but it doesn't mean that any private party has a responsibility to provide a platform for someone they don't agree with. If I have a blog, I can say whatever the hell I want on it. If people make comments on it, and I agree with them, I'll let them stand. If some troll (or anyone else I disagree with) says something I don't like, I'm free to delete it, because it's my blog, not theirs. If they want to exercise their free speech, they can do it on their own blog. It's only censorship when the government prevents you from exercising your free speech rights.
Put another way: To someone who thinks "GNOME rocks => KDE sucks", nothing you can do to KDE will change their mind--it's still not GNOME, therefore it still sucks, and they'll create another justification as to why that is, forever and ever.
Actually it can be read exactly the opposite:
The fanboy, (often the developer, or the developer's hangers on) won't hear any criticism, because such people are trolls, and instead make up any excuse and call anyone names who dares complain about any change, or point out the the emperors new clothes lack certain key features. There then ensues a great shout down from the developers inflicted on their own user-base. The perfect storm of bad user relations.
Instead of saying,
ok, yeah we can see how that might be counter productive for your use case, so lets put in a switch that you can continue to use the rest of the new package but fall back to the old method till we get this new stuff up to your liking
the developer community ends up saying
hey, its free software, download it and fix it any way you want, otherwise STFU or go run Gnome or Windows
Even when they happen to take the latter approach with a coder capable of digging through the mountain of code and making the change, they will not accept and merge the outside coder's changes, and they will apply patches to their branch that render the coder's changes impossible in the future.
Case in point: The Dolphin file manager in KDE4 couldn't begin to match all of the powerful feature of Konqueror of KDE3.5. Early KDE4 adopters were opting to still use Konqueror file manager (as well as bitching vocally). So the developers, instead of spending their time bringing Dolphin up to Kong's capabilities, went in and gutted Kong, and piped it over Dolphin wearing Kong's clothing. Rather than admit Dolphin wasn't ready for prime time, they maliciously removed any ability to make a comparison, any bridge that would keep the users happy. Sabotage! Utterly childish, utterly unnecessary.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I don't get it. What does free speech have to do with censoring comments on a website? He seemed to be talking about government censorship being bad, and then he said that.
If you believe that censorship is fundamentally wrong then you have two choices: 1) Be a hypocrite and pretend it's different when you do it, or 2) don't censor content on your own Web site either. This KWin maintainer is choosing the first option. What he doesn't seem to appreciate is easy enough to understand: if the trolls can cause him to abandon one of his core beliefs and make a hypocrite of himself, then that's a victory for the trolls and a defeat for himself. It reminds me of how certain nations respond to terrorism by eliminating freedoms -- if the terrorists want to do as much lasting harm as possible, then they must be delighted by that.
.. government!" discussion every single time censorship is mentioned regardless of context. It's a nearly indestructible meme it would seem. You will probably be fired if you tell your boss to go fuck himself and that, too, is a form of censorship. Anyway, this is like a GPL vs. BSD license discussion -- check the Slashdot archives and you'll find that every conceivable point and counterpoint has already been debated ad nauseum.
This near-obsession with treating government as a special case even when the discussion is about abstract principles is why you were confused. Government is only a special case when the discussion is about censorship via the legal system, because government is the only entity legally allowed to use force or threat of force to achieve its goals. A Web site operator isn't going to arrest a troll and throw him in jail so that just doesn't apply here. Said operator might, however, delete certain posts or ban certain users to effect censorship.
I think our society in general is losing the ability to think in terms of abstract principles (part of why privacy is eroding). This is why we have to rehash the same old "but but
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
If you have some system like Slashdot's which moves junk comments to lower rating positions, this isn't a problem. Everybody should get to blither, but nobody should have to read or listen to their blithering.
Wrong attitude. One may grow a thick skin naturally due to the harshness of the environment, however it should never be a requirement to grow a thick skin to get on the internet, or join a video game's forums, or to become a free software developer. And why should being a free software develooper be such a difficult job when you don't need to grow a thick skin to be a proprietary software developer? If someone wants to spend their own time and their own money to make a product better why should they have to grow a thick skin first? If someone wants to go to a conference and learn more about some computing technology they shouldn't have to grow a thick skin first.
And why aren't pansies allowed to be free software developers? I'm not saying Martin is, but we shouldn't restrict people from contributing or scaring them away because they're too nice. Everyone body should be joining in here, not just just the rude people and those with swagger.
The very premise of "grow a skin" or "grow a pair" is wrong headed.
This isn't censorship anyway. It's his personal blog. Censorship is something that someone in power does, like governments or corporate bosses, or people who act as gatekeepers of information, such as letters to the editor of a newspaper. The trolling opinions are not being squelched, they can be spoken loudly and clearly on their own blog if they like, or on KDE mailing lists, and so forth.
You are free to express any opinion, but may not do so with "hateful" language. "Fighting words" are forbidden in public forums. In addition, advocating illegal action is not the same as expressing an opinion. Saying something like "The bums in Congress should be removed from office, one and all" is okay, whereas "grab your gun, we march tonight" is not.
That's almost entirely wrong. Hateful speech is perfectly legal, as it should be. "Fighting words" only apply where immediate physical violence is a reasonable result to expect, which is hard to see happening over a web forum (but I guess it's possible). Advocating illegal action is illegal if it becomes conspiracy, but there's not prior restraint there - it's the overt action that makes it illegal, not the speech by itself (IANAL, etc).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Its just an open, and free form of censorship. The only way to make it more open would be to say who modded you up and down and why. But this might lead to reprisal voting and politics so as far as I'm concerned peer censorship works.
Additionally the -1 comments are still there, they are just out of the way and can be read if you want to have a laugh about goatse and frosty piss.
Why is it ok to be extremely rude on the internet, but not ok to react to the extreme rudeness by deleting people's comments?
It takes a certain amount of maturity to express differing opinions on a public and largely anonymous forum in a constructive and polite matter, but I think that maturity should be expected - and people who fail to show it should be censured appropriately. Having your comments removed from someone's personal blog because they are rude and immature is perfectly acceptable.
I noticed at least one person in the linked comments owning up to their rudeness and apologising. That is the short of behaviour that should be encouraged, not the development of a 'thick skin'.
In my experience it was the developers of FOSS software who yell at you and tell you that they are not going to fix the documentation because they do not have to.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.