Re: The importance of civil communication on the list (was Re: Fucked up gnustep-make)

[Gregory John Casamento]

Jeff,

My intention is not to "make it seem like a job", but only to point out that I 
believe that being respectful is important.   In my messages, no matter how 
pissed I am, except in very extreme circumstances, I try to be always measured 
in my response on the public mailing list.   I try to treat people with respect 
(even if I am sometimes a bit sarcastic), and I expect the same.   For 
instance, just as a completely hypothetical example, I would have gotten very 
insulted if the recent email regarding Gorm's menus said "Gorm is completely 
fucking screwed and a piece of shit" instead of clearly stating what the issue 
is.  My response, however, still would have been the same as it was, with, 
perhaps, an "it's too bad you feel this way" in there someplace.

When I look through a list, I, personally, tend to avoid messages whose headers 
contain profanity, since I assume that they are written by people who are 
unreasonable.  I would expect that many people, likely, do the same since they, 
similarly, don't wish to waste their time hearing/reading people bitch and moan 
about something.  

Your email appears to imply a correllation between success and a heated, 
passionate debate.   I don't dispute that.   What I disagree with is that being 
insulting or using profanity is necessary in order to have such a debate.    

I'm not making any hard and fast rules here, just explaining my philosophy. 

Later, GJC
--
Gregory Casamento


----- Original Message ----
From: Jeff Teunissen <spamtrap@d2dc.net>
To: discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2007 1:18:46 PM
Subject: Re: The importance of civil communication on the list (was Re: Fucked 
up gnustep-make)


Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf wrote:
> Am 15.02.2007 um 15:32 schrieb Jeff Teunissen:

[snip]

>> Why, why WHY in the name of all that is good should anyone in a  
>> Free Software
>> project act professional?
> 
> Because we want GNUstep to be successful? Because that means GNUstep  
> has to be used in professional environments for that? Because we  
> gain, given GNUstep is used professionally, better code review,  
> better stability, more applications developed using GNUstep, more  
> testing, lesser bugs.

Flat-out wrong. What is being referred to as "Professionalism" is something
that human beings do not do on their own. "Professionalism" is the bloodless
rote stupidity enforced in corporations from the top down, from a world where
the whole job is about not giving anyone something bad to say about you.

That's machinery, not people. Real boats rock.

>> It's not a company, it's a hobby.
> 
> That attitude of some currently shows in GNUstep. Some professional  
> developers I talked to regard GNUstep as a playtoy of grown up boys  
> because of the overall quality. If for instance the Apache guys had  
> the same attitude nobody would (and could) use Apache (professionally).

Wrong again. If the Apache guys weren't having fun, we'd all be using the NCSA
(or even the crappy CERN) httpd. If a certain Finnish grad student wasn't
having fun with his terminal program, we wouldn't have Linux...and whaddaya
know, he had some flame wars along the way. There are technical flame wars
aplenty in any healthy project, arguing (and often heatedly) about technical
differences of opinion. And guess what? The projects aren't successful
_despite_ this, but partially because of it.

The best way to destroy a project is to make it seem like a job.

-- 
| Jeff Teunissen -=- Pres., Dusk To Dawn Computing -=- deek at d2dc.net
| GPG: 1024D/9840105A 7102 808A 7733 C2F3 097B 161B 9222 DAB8 9840 105A
| Core developer, The QuakeForge Project     http://www.quakeforge.net/
| Specializing in Debian GNU/Linux           http://www.d2dc.net/~deek/
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