Wired on Bruce/Eric Meltdown

chrisd writes "Anyone folowing the blowtorches being wielded lately in the Linux community might want to check out this saturday Wired News article featuring some commentary on the latest from Eric and Bruce."

Comments

Not Surprising

[Aaron M. Renn]

Bruce Perens had a long history of blowups and angry exchanges prior to this. In fact, he once claimed on slashdot that he was through with free software forever. This history of instability did not appear to bother Eric Raymond until such time as Bruce split with him. Then all of sudden Raymond suddenly started noticing that Bruce has a tendency to go off half cocked.

My understanding of Eric Raymond is also that he has had numerous spats like this with people in the past. There's this, the trademark dispute with SPI, the ncurses affair, and more I hear.

Of course I'm in no position to complain. I've been in quite a few flame fests in my lifetime. People say things in the heat of anger that they regret later. Unfortunately, in the modern electronic world it is there for anyone to see forever. Most of us don't have our every electronic word or posting examined like these two guys do.

How about the two of them just let it drop. And make a committment to try to not take things personally in the future, even if they think it should be.

Sorry, Bruce, but no.

[Aaron M. Renn]

It only seems to be a breach of "netiquette" if someone decides later they are embarrassed by an email message they sent. At least that is only time I ever hear people complain. There are a number of people (Richard Stallman is one, for example), who have never bought into your definition of netiquette. I fundamentally don't believe someone can send me an email full of threats and flames and legitimately expect me to keep that private.

Douse the flames!

[gavinhall]

Posted by Mike@ABC:

Geez...can't these guys take an anger management course or something? This isn't just a highly public flame war between two people -- it's something that effects everyone who's a part of the open source community.

The suits -- the guys who eventually make decisions about implementing software -- are going to read this. They're going to say "Good Lord, this whole Linux thing is supported by gun-toting yahoos." And then they'll go run Solaris. Or Windows NT.

What I don't think the community understands is that all of this stuff is public now. There's no such thing as a private flame war any more. My own mom can read any of this stuff. So can CIOs. For the good of the community, these two need to take their little feud into a private mailing list. If they want open source to prosper, these public flames will NOT help. With the rest of the world watching nowadays, y'all can't afford this BS.

Again, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Hi folks

[Bruce Perens]

The mail was not private - Eric wrote it on a mailing list. But the point here is that threats are never OK. Neither is it OK to stomp on opposition or shut off debate. Read the APSL Open Letter that Eric was responding to. It is a polite and welcoming letter pointing out some technical problems, and hardly worthy of a threat in response.

I'd never been threatened before and really did not know how to react - I think I took it more seriously because of the .signature, which was some Jefferson quote about the pistol being the best form of exercise. That was the next sentence after "Watch your step". Of course Eric is smart enough that he won't ever do anything like this again.

Eric communicated, through Dan Quinlan who was attempting to mediate, that he did not mean violence. At that point, I publicly dropped the issue. Dan did use the words "character defamation" in relaying Eric's message. Of course, it's hard to drop an issue when it's already in a mailing list. Both Eric and I made it clear to Leander at Wired that this was a non-issue. Other journalists, who I guess had more to write about, did drop the story when requested, including ZDNet and all of the various webzines. It felt really ironic having Eric and Brucie had a fight as the top headline at Wired while bombs were falling on Yugoslavia.

I spent part of yesterday patching Electric Fence, there's a new beta on my site. My DSL has been running full out for days serving downloads of the Digital U.S. Street Map, which I hope will seed the development of many free mapping programs. All of this is much more important than any little fight with Eric.

Thanks

Bruce

Freedom of expression, eh?

[Kaa]

Please note that our two flamethrower-toting friends are free people and clearly have the right to say anything they want in any public forum. I hope nobody is really disputing this.

The real question thus becomes, was this public flamage a wise thing to do? Before your average Slashdot AC starts jumping up and down and shouting "Stupid! Stupid! Losers! Assholes!" I would like to point out that both Raymond and Perens are highly intelligent and articulate people. I am quite sure that they can decide on the wisdom of their actions without the help of more flamage directed at them. I really don't see the point of tsk-tsking at them.

Having said that, I would like to point out that my carefree attitude towards this spat is mostly based on my belief in social Darwinian evolution: the losers will die out (and, yes, I know, they breed faster). I do NOT think that the corporate attitude towards Open Source is going to be influenced by private disagreements, even if vocal and highly visible.

Kaa