Dealing With (Not Dealing With) the Open Source Assholes

And yet many projects reach the same equilibrium. Some of the biggest jerks are also the best contributors. And then you can't throw them out without making the project quality suffer.<p>Is being a jerk strongly correlated with skill of any kind?<p>Or are the jerky-but-competent driving away some nice-but-competent people?<p>Is jerkiness strongly correlated with being motivated to contribute to open source? Perhaps for these people, their lack of social skills means their career is somewhat stunted.<p>Is there something about bad behavior, exhibited by a skilled or high-status person, that is more infective of community values than good behavior? Thus the former tend to dominate, as everybody else adopts the asshole attitude? I've seen this in at least two OSS communities.

You could re-word the second sentence to:<p>"There’s something about open forums that encourages socially-inept jerks to deride people."<p>I'm into photography, I see the same behaviour on photography forums and mailing lists that you see on the open source lists and forums.<p>The three bullet points in the article can apply to just about any hobby, group activity etc.<p>1. Go to the right meetups. 2. Follow the right people. 3. Don’t let anyone cramp your style.<p>To these I would add, spend your time enjoying what you do.<p>Go take photos, go code some software, go build your app, instead of "listening" to the ranters :-) Be happy.

Greater Unified Fuckwad Theory suggests assholes are universal: <a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/" rel="nofollow">http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/</a>

Stuff like this makes me think of Ignaz Semmelweis: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_reaction_to_Ignaz_Semmelweis" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_reaction_to_Ignaz_...</a><p>Many of his contemporary obstetricians heard his criticisms of their practices, including his accusations that current obstetric practices amounted to mass murder, said, "seriously, I don’t need to hear that crap," ignored him, and went on murdering their patients by the hundreds of thousands for decades. Carl Levy published a paper on how Semmelweis's theory of infection was implausible. Semmelweis died in an asylum.<p>When you're <i>giving</i> criticism, it is of course of paramount importance to deliver it in a polite fashion, because most people will disregard the second sentence of this paragraph, and you don't want to be Semmelweis. When you're <i>receiving</i> criticism, it is of paramount importance to entirely ignore whether it is polite or not, because most people will disregard the first sentence of this paragraph, and you don't want to be Levy.<p>But if you had to be one or the other, it would be <i>much</i> better to be Semmelweis the jerk than Levy the defender of incompetence.

<i>"Jumping into the open source and js world"</i><p>I have a slight suspicion that the problem might be the latter part. The whole web frontend world is balkanized as hell, pretty young and mostly not too demanding. This is often reflected in the community and leads to some heated (and often rather silly) arguments…

Glad to see someone who wasn't put off by the unfriendliness that is sometimes encountered when first entering the world of FOSS.

Whenever I see posts like this, I have to ask the question: How can code be improved if nobody criticizes it? I can sense the ableist vibe of this blog post, but in general, the ability to say, frankly, that somebody's code is bad is <i>essential</i> for teaching that person how to write good code. I've seen far too many students get away with writing horrible code simply because there isn't a TA on the planet willing to directly point out what's wrong with their algorithms or logic.<p>In other disciplines, like music (something in which I have quite a bit of experience), criticism is essential. The best teachers I ever had were the ones who were unafraid to tell me exactly what I was doing wrong. One class was taught in a group setting, and the instructor told us at the beginning of class that he usually made people feel uncomfortable, and that thick skins would be required. He had a habit of pointing out what you were doing wrong in the middle of class, not for humiliation, but so that the entire class could learn from example. Best class I've ever taken in that department.