Essay on the GNU Community

Rowan writes "I've written a longish (but nice, I hope) publication about various matters in the GNU Software Community. It ends with describing how important conflicts are to learn and discover errors. It's meant to be the first in a row and I think they'll all be worth the read. "

Comments

Ermm ....

[williamc]

No disrespect to Rowan, but I think slashdot articles need to more concise, better written, better edited and better presented than this. If we want an unmoderated source of amateurish rambles then we still have Usenet.

Rowan: it has a certain charm and I accept that you may go on to say something interesting, but that's an awful lot of grey text to wade through before reaching it.

What is this flamebait?

[BlackHawk]

Alright, Rowan. You seem to have understood the basic tenet of facing conflict over issues: do so with grace. You might as well, since to do otherwise merely means you'll be stumbling around. Now, however, you'll get to practice what you preach.

First: Just because you're a hacker and spend time configuring the guts of your system doesn't cut you any slack when you're trying to communicate. A good bit of your text was rambling, pointless, poorly constructed and ungrammatical. It is no excuse that you're a hacker. If you want to say something to the larger community, learn to say it clearly and well. Judging by other comments, you nearly lost most of your readership before they got to your point.

Speaking of points, wasn't yours, "We need to be willing to gracefully concede a point to others, to compromise for the good of the movement"? Or did I miss that?

In case that was his point, tho, speaking to the rest of the community, I'll say I can agree. Being prepared to work for your ideals is critical, particularly in the face of opposition. But above all, being willing to work even when the credit doesn't come to you, even if it means "trying on" someone else's vision for a day. That will be where advances can be made. On the other hand, there comes a time when compromise is not possible. When Vision demands that you move this way. There are going to be collisions. Live with them! Conflict is not evil, but what is done in the name of "resolution" can be. When conflict rears its head, we would do well to look beyond the shouting, to the root cause, and strike there.

So back to you Rowan. You've thrown the gauntlet; I'll flip it back. Pick one conflict in the Open Source/Free Software movement, and recommend a solution. Demonstrate the skill we need more than temper-control: discretionary judgement.