Jack J. Woehr wrote:
Well, no, you may. The problem is when two people sling poop on each
other,
sooner or later it ends, and then all you've got is two guys standing
there looking
sheepish, all covered with poop.
How is this my fault?
It's not your fault. You're still standing there waiting for more poop to
be flung on you though.
Richard slagged our efforts. In the public space.
Over the 1/4 century of flamefests I've seen online, the truth of the
proposition under debate was obvious from the first few lines. The
rest is gratuitous verbal violence.
Flamewars do have benefits.. they get slashdot/kerneltrap publicity and
developers can be attracted to the operating system if they see things
in the flamewars that define where the projects are headed. OpenBSD is
headed for open code. GNU is headed for fighting for freedom. People can
see this from the flamewar and choose an OS that suits them.
True, flamewars can also detract developers who are sensitive and weak
and cannot accept a little beating.
(p.s. I submitted the flamewar to slashdot a day ago. Go to firehose.pl
script and vote it in if you want. So far it has been ignored, yet it
made it to kernaltrap already.. hmm.)
For about 5 years now I've been looking for an operating system that
doesn't have the whole freedom of speech attached to it, since I don't
fall for that. This recent flamewar simply helped confirm my instinct
that openbsd is not about some idealistic freedom of speech. So the
flamewar has positive points, because I confirmed that it's the
operating system I am installing on a few servers of mine that host over
5 million pages.
On the other hand, wimps can say 'blah, OpenBSD people are mean, I'd
never use that OS (The OpenBSD Cliche).
I will repeat some previous quotes I brought up once:
"A philosopher who did not hurt anyone's feelings was not doing his job."
--Plato (source: Wikipedia)
"A programmer who did not hurt anyone's feelings was not doing his job."
--L505 (source: Z505)
One has to speak up and stick up for his programming/philosophy
practices sometimes, otherwise he won't be heard. The guy who spoke up
about earth not being flat was ridiculed, flamed, and arrested.
If you just give in and back down in a flamewar, you may not refresh and
define your true goals in a project. You may not attract more developers
who have similar beliefs. You may not gain publicity. Bad publicity can
be good publicity.
ALL PROGRAMMERS are aggressive online. Every time you fix a bug, you are
being aggressive to the computer. All security experts are aggressive
online.. how do you think we aggressively find exploits and bugs? That
doesn't mean they are bad people in person and as a whole. Every time
you make a sign with the word ENEMY OF YOUR FREEDOM on it you are being
unfriendly too. Blah, who cares. Judge an operating system by its open
code and open attitude.. not some random occasional fun flamewar.
Flamewars are natural and sometimes they can actually help define a
projects goals and weed out some of the weaker folk who just can't take
a fun flamewar.
L505
