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I don't think you properly understood the article or FOSS in general. It is not about protecting a "sacred cow", it is about protecting the principles without w

I don't think you properly understood the article or FOSS in general. It is not about protecting a "sacred cow", it is about protecting the principles without which there will be no FOSS in the first place. We FOSS devs rightly care less about market share because market share is not, and never has been, what sustains the FOSS ecosystem. What sustains it is the code content that attracts developers from all over the globe to look at it, learn from it, be interested and inspired by it, and the principles of freedom enables them to contribute to it and sustain this cycle. (edit: downvotes are not for comments you disagree with. That's what responses are for. Stop abusing the system selfishly.)

privong 11y ago
> (edit: downvotes are not for comments you disagree with. That's what responses are for. Stop abusing the system selfishly.) I didn't downvote your post, but your statement about downvoting isn't true. It's certainly not in the guidelines[0]. And if one needs an appeal to the HN operators, as others have pointed out on separate occasions where your claim has been made, pg has previously said downvoting for disagreement is fine[1]: I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
- infinity0 11y ago
  I don't know what the effect was historically but right now if there's too many downvotes a comment gets greyed out. Furthermore you have to have over several hundred karma to be able to do it in the first place. In other words, the behaviour isn't symmetrical with upvoting, so I find it very uncomfortable, even for myself, to downvote merely for disagreement (i.e. the opposite of an upvote).
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Same here. I reserve downvoting for unhelpful comments. One litmus test for unhelpful commenting is, that the word 'you' is used. I try to keep it on topic, and the topic is never the other commenters.
    - smcl 11y ago
      There's gonna be tiny exceptions, but this is an excellent guideline for comments that I will try to follow in future
- throw12812 11y ago
  People quoting the guidelines won't change a thing. There'll always be threads like this one if downvoting is clearly abused. And hardly anyone cares about pg's opinion, especially in a thread about FOSS, to which he has contributed fairly little.
- jenscow 11y ago
  Well, I disagree with the guidelines. I beleive hiding text from others, just because you don't agree with it, is censorship. It discourages open discussion.
  - marincounty 11y ago
    I'm with you. History is filled with ideas, words that were originally laughed at/down-voted. I have never felt the need to down-vote. I hope I never turn into that guy. I inderstand moderation. I understand the up-vote. Why make a post unreadable? If needed--put a minus sign on the post, but don't make it difficult for people to read. These posts go onto Google forever. It's just un-American. That's been my only gripe with this site.
simula67 11y ago
Maybe that is what you value. I use software from free software ecosystem for the no bullshit, high quality software that it delivers. People like me would benefit from free software being more mainstream.
- qb45 11y ago
  > I use software from free software ecosystem for the no bullshit, high quality software that it delivers. People like me would benefit from free software being more mainstream. It isn't obvious that you benefit from this, there certainly is a kind of "eternal september" effect which makes popular software worse. For example, in the good old days googling for Linux driver related issues yielded useful posts explaining what's going on and how to make things work, but when Ubuntu gained popularity the results suddenly became flooded with posts by clueless Ubuntu noobs trying package up/downgrades, alternative repositories etc without any understanding what they are doing and why. I think it's getting better now, mainly thanks to sites like stackoverflow, but few years there was no way to get usable results without "-ubuntu".
slgeorge 11y ago
> We FOSS devs rightly care less about market share because market share [does not] sustain the FOSS ecosystem Here's a direct response. Telling someone they don't 'understand' something is abrasive and mean-spirited. Your paragraph on FOSS is your opinion, you don't represent FOSS or "the community". Not everyone thinks the same as you, and people are entitled to have different opinions. Personally, I care lots about FOSS being widely used, think market share does sustain the FOSS ecosytem (who pays developers?) and I'm damm sure I understand FOSS just fine thank you: again that's just my personal opinion and I don't go round giving it some higher moral equivalence to other peoples. As a FOSS developer what's not opinion is the license you use on your code. The license is real, the rest is heat and noise. By definition, people will take your code and use it (that was the point right), and sometimes that's going to mean they'll use it in ways you disagree with. Your entitled to have an opinion on how someone is using the license (as is anyone, all equally), but you either have to convince them to agree with you or take them to court.
- infinity0 11y ago
  > Telling someone they don't 'understand' something is abrasive and mean-spirited. It is no more abrasive, than to dismiss someone's concerns as "protecting a sacred cow". I don't think either was abrasive, worthy of a downvote at any rate. I did not downvote the OP, I only wrote to disagree. > I'm damm sure I understand FOSS just fine thank you Great, then write some more specific things about why I'm wrong instead of complaining that I'm not polite enough, without actually applying the same standards to the comments coming from the same viewpoint that you happen to agree with. > market share does sustain the FOSS ecosytem Sometimes market share does sustain the FOSS ecosystem indirectly. Many other ways of increasing market share do not sustain it at all. So growing a large user base for its own sake should not be one's primary goal or strategy. I'm quite happy to elaborate more but it's probably more suitable for an essay.
  - SeanDav 11y ago
    > "It is no more abrasive, than to dismiss someone's concerns as "protecting a sacred cow". " Since that comment is aimed at me I should probably chime in now and say that my comment about "sacred cows" has been misinterpreted. I was stating that I don't have any hidden agendas, I was not trying to imply that the author of the original article had any "sacred cows". In other words, I was emphasizing the fact that I am a reasonably independent outsider.
pessimizer 11y ago
It's long established on HN that downvotes are for whatever the downvoter wants them to be. If you have a reference that says something different, I'd appreciate a link.
ryao 11y ago
Exactly what are those principles? Mine are to avoid enacting barriers to having my code used on systems where failures mean people could die. The GPL is not an ideal license for that, but there are worse licenses. One example of why the GPL is not an ideal license for that is that US federal law prohibits the GPLv3 in automobiles because it mandates tivoization. If choices are between good code under the GPLv3 and bad code under a license the law permits, the bad code is used and then we get things like Toyota vehicles' drive by wire being able to live up to the saying, "Always moving forward". In this example, this also affects people outside the US whenever the engineering is reused and I doubt any automaker would design 1 drive by wire for the US and another for everyone else using GPL code that is well known to be superior to their embedded garbage. This is far from the only example and not all examples involve federal law. However, if you write something good that could have a mission critical application, it is good enough that the alternative code is more likely to kill people and your principles are to exclude anyone who does not do exactly what you want them to do with it, you can have your principles, but people might die as a result. If deaths occur and those dying from it include the principled person who could have saved them, having those principles would be what killed that person. Having the developer die too in such situations is improbable, but it is something I consider when I ask myself "what do I want a software license to do?".
- Steltek 11y ago
  Have manufacturers previously added dedicated countermeasures to prevent physical car modding and were those countermeasures legally mandated? What made software especially highlighted for protection? It seems like your counterexample simply highlights yet another discontinuity in US law.

privong 11y ago

> (edit: downvotes are not for comments you disagree with. That's what responses are for. Stop abusing the system selfishly.) I didn't downvote your post, but your statement about downvoting isn't true. It's certainly not in the guidelines[0]. And if one needs an appeal to the HN operators, as others have pointed out on separate occasions where your claim has been made, pg has previously said downvoting for disagreement is fine[1]: I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

infinity0 11y ago
I don't know what the effect was historically but right now if there's too many downvotes a comment gets greyed out. Furthermore you have to have over several hundred karma to be able to do it in the first place. In other words, the behaviour isn't symmetrical with upvoting, so I find it very uncomfortable, even for myself, to downvote merely for disagreement (i.e. the opposite of an upvote).
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Same here. I reserve downvoting for unhelpful comments. One litmus test for unhelpful commenting is, that the word 'you' is used. I try to keep it on topic, and the topic is never the other commenters.
  - smcl 11y ago
    There's gonna be tiny exceptions, but this is an excellent guideline for comments that I will try to follow in future
throw12812 11y ago
People quoting the guidelines won't change a thing. There'll always be threads like this one if downvoting is clearly abused. And hardly anyone cares about pg's opinion, especially in a thread about FOSS, to which he has contributed fairly little.
jenscow 11y ago
Well, I disagree with the guidelines. I beleive hiding text from others, just because you don't agree with it, is censorship. It discourages open discussion.
- marincounty 11y ago
  I'm with you. History is filled with ideas, words that were originally laughed at/down-voted. I have never felt the need to down-vote. I hope I never turn into that guy. I inderstand moderation. I understand the up-vote. Why make a post unreadable? If needed--put a minus sign on the post, but don't make it difficult for people to read. These posts go onto Google forever. It's just un-American. That's been my only gripe with this site.

simula67 11y ago

Maybe that is what you value. I use software from free software ecosystem for the no bullshit, high quality software that it delivers. People like me would benefit from free software being more mainstream.

qb45 11y ago
> I use software from free software ecosystem for the no bullshit, high quality software that it delivers. People like me would benefit from free software being more mainstream. It isn't obvious that you benefit from this, there certainly is a kind of "eternal september" effect which makes popular software worse. For example, in the good old days googling for Linux driver related issues yielded useful posts explaining what's going on and how to make things work, but when Ubuntu gained popularity the results suddenly became flooded with posts by clueless Ubuntu noobs trying package up/downgrades, alternative repositories etc without any understanding what they are doing and why. I think it's getting better now, mainly thanks to sites like stackoverflow, but few years there was no way to get usable results without "-ubuntu".

slgeorge 11y ago

> We FOSS devs rightly care less about market share because market share [does not] sustain the FOSS ecosystem Here's a direct response. Telling someone they don't 'understand' something is abrasive and mean-spirited. Your paragraph on FOSS is your opinion, you don't represent FOSS or "the community". Not everyone thinks the same as you, and people are entitled to have different opinions. Personally, I care lots about FOSS being widely used, think market share does sustain the FOSS ecosytem (who pays developers?) and I'm damm sure I understand FOSS just fine thank you: again that's just my personal opinion and I don't go round giving it some higher moral equivalence to other peoples. As a FOSS developer what's not opinion is the license you use on your code. The license is real, the rest is heat and noise. By definition, people will take your code and use it (that was the point right), and sometimes that's going to mean they'll use it in ways you disagree with. Your entitled to have an opinion on how someone is using the license (as is anyone, all equally), but you either have to convince them to agree with you or take them to court.

infinity0 11y ago
> Telling someone they don't 'understand' something is abrasive and mean-spirited. It is no more abrasive, than to dismiss someone's concerns as "protecting a sacred cow". I don't think either was abrasive, worthy of a downvote at any rate. I did not downvote the OP, I only wrote to disagree. > I'm damm sure I understand FOSS just fine thank you Great, then write some more specific things about why I'm wrong instead of complaining that I'm not polite enough, without actually applying the same standards to the comments coming from the same viewpoint that you happen to agree with. > market share does sustain the FOSS ecosytem Sometimes market share does sustain the FOSS ecosystem indirectly. Many other ways of increasing market share do not sustain it at all. So growing a large user base for its own sake should not be one's primary goal or strategy. I'm quite happy to elaborate more but it's probably more suitable for an essay.
- SeanDav 11y ago
  > "It is no more abrasive, than to dismiss someone's concerns as "protecting a sacred cow". " Since that comment is aimed at me I should probably chime in now and say that my comment about "sacred cows" has been misinterpreted. I was stating that I don't have any hidden agendas, I was not trying to imply that the author of the original article had any "sacred cows". In other words, I was emphasizing the fact that I am a reasonably independent outsider.

pessimizer 11y ago

It's long established on HN that downvotes are for whatever the downvoter wants them to be. If you have a reference that says something different, I'd appreciate a link.

ryao 11y ago

Exactly what are those principles? Mine are to avoid enacting barriers to having my code used on systems where failures mean people could die. The GPL is not an ideal license for that, but there are worse licenses. One example of why the GPL is not an ideal license for that is that US federal law prohibits the GPLv3 in automobiles because it mandates tivoization. If choices are between good code under the GPLv3 and bad code under a license the law permits, the bad code is used and then we get things like Toyota vehicles' drive by wire being able to live up to the saying, "Always moving forward". In this example, this also affects people outside the US whenever the engineering is reused and I doubt any automaker would design 1 drive by wire for the US and another for everyone else using GPL code that is well known to be superior to their embedded garbage. This is far from the only example and not all examples involve federal law. However, if you write something good that could have a mission critical application, it is good enough that the alternative code is more likely to kill people and your principles are to exclude anyone who does not do exactly what you want them to do with it, you can have your principles, but people might die as a result. If deaths occur and those dying from it include the principled person who could have saved them, having those principles would be what killed that person. Having the developer die too in such situations is improbable, but it is something I consider when I ask myself "what do I want a software license to do?".

Steltek 11y ago
Have manufacturers previously added dedicated countermeasures to prevent physical car modding and were those countermeasures legally mandated? What made software especially highlighted for protection? It seems like your counterexample simply highlights yet another discontinuity in US law.