7 ms·

Especially given Docker Inc.'s history of counterproductive Red Hat hostility.

andrewguenther 10y ago
This shouldn't be downvoted. Docker has been very openly history towards Red Hat in the past. To the point of openly mocking their developers at DockerCon.
- m-p-3 10y ago
  Very openly history?
  - nanodeath 10y ago
    Guessing "hostile" was intended.
  - JadeNB 10y ago
    > Very openly history? Given krakensden's posting (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13399853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13399853): > Especially given Docker Inc.'s history of counterproductive Red Hat hostility. I think that it is clear that andrewguenther meant 'hostile' instead of 'history' in (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13400383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13400383): > Docker has been very openly history towards Red Hat in the past. Let he who has never typed a passing thought rather than the word he meant cast the first stone.
- m-p-3 10y ago
  Very openly history?
- shykes 10y ago
  Hi, I'm the founder of Docker. It's not my place to say whether comments should be downvoted or not, and I don't want to ignite teenage-drama arguments over who was mean to whom at recess - we get enough of that level of discourse on the US political scene these days. But I think there is an interesting topic to address here, that we deal with a lot at Docker. The problem in a nutshell: if you choose to take the moral high ground and only promote your products with positive marketing (and that is our strategy at Docker - you will never see any Docker marketing content criticizing competitors), you are vulnerable to bullying and unfair criticism by competitors who don't mind hitting under the belt. Then the question is: do you allow yourself to respond and set the record straight? Or would that just legitimize the criticism by bringing more attention to it? On the other hand, not responding is also risky because it emboldens the trolls to take more and more liberties with facts and ethics. This dilemma becomes more and more pressing as you become more successful and more incumbents start considering you a possible threat to their business. Some of these incumbents have been defending their turf for decades by perfecting negative messaging. Like one competing executive once told me - "we eat startups like yours for breakfast". This situation can be bad for morale also, because your team sees their work and reputation dragged in the mud, and can interpret their employer's silence as a failure to stand up and defend them. The most perverse variation of this problem is when trolls start preemptively painting you as bullies. If that narrative sticks, then you're in trouble, because any attempt to set the record straight will be interpreted as hostility. Now you have two problems: defending yourself against the bullies AND defending yourself against unfair accusations of being a bully. The root cause of the problem, I think, is the diminishing importance of facts and critical reasoning in the tech community. We are all guilty of this: when was the last time you repeated a factoid about "X doesn't scale", "Y isn't secure", "I heard Z is really evil" without fact-checking it yourself? Be honest. Because of this collective failure to do our own thinking and researching, bullies have a huge first-mover advantage. I see an direct parallel between the problem of corporate bullying in tech and the problem of partisan bullying in politics. And I think in both cases, there is a big unresolved problem: how do you succeed and do the right thing? How do we collectively change the rules of the game to make bullying and negative communication a less attractive strategy? I tried really hard to make this a constructive post about a topic I care about. If you interpret any of this as hostile or defensive, that is not at all the intention.
  - otterley 10y ago
    Haters gonna hate, man. It's fine to correct misinformation, but in the long run -- and whether they say so or not -- there's much greater respect earned in taking the high ground and not dragging oneself down into the muck of name-calling, ascribing malicious intent to others, and other ill behaviors. If I were your counselor, I'd advise you to do nothing other than stick to the facts; make the best product you can; delight your customers; take pride in the great work you do; and apologize openly and honestly when you make avoidable mistakes. You can't make everyone happy, so focus on the people you can, and aim to exceed their expectations.
    - cookiecaper 10y ago
      >Haters gonna hate, man. It's fine to correct misinformation, but in the long run -- and whether they say so or not -- there's much greater respect earned in taking the high ground and not dragging oneself down into the muck of name-calling, ascribing malicious intent to others, and other ill behaviors. This is a naive perspective that doesn't bear out in the real world. It's important to know that by taking the "high road", you are putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage. Someday, those with fewer scruples may have to pay the piper and their dubiously-maintained prosperity may disintegrate ... but then again, maybe not. Most often, the truth is that large companies are pretty ruthless, and have consolidated such a huge amount of control that it's extremely difficult to do anything about anything they do or have done. They control the messaging, they have a reputation that supersedes any complaint an individual may make, etc. Those companies do slowly atrophy, but usually it's more because they've lost sight of the founder's vision that originally connected with the masses than that they're engaging in questionable tactics. If you're taking a position out of principle, that has to suffice for itself, because it probably will cost you in material terms.
  - jwildeboer 10y ago
    When the top comment is a claim that we at Red Hat post incorrect information and that we at Red Hat are expected to delete said supposedly incorrect information without any technical explanation on why said information is incorrect, I do wonder who is the bully in your opinion. I posted this entry and I work at Red Hat.
- nul_byte 10y ago
  That whole thing with the docker developer smugly wearing a name badge with 'I reject red hat patches' was just sad.
  - cpuguy83 10y ago
    This isn't even true. The badge, which was a joke btw, said "I say no to systemd specific PRs."
  - veidr 10y ago
    That's a funny comment, because you are "taking liberties with facts" exactly as lamented by shykes above. You start with a grain of truth — something that actually happened in reality. In this case, it was a joke protesting systemd hegemony. Perhaps you thought that joke was in poor taste. But lets leave that aside for now. So you start with an actual fact. Then, you exaggerate/falsify it, changing the details pretty wildly, and present this story of something that supposedly happened. In fact, nothing like that happened... but it sort of feels like something that might have happened. It vaguely resembles the actual event that did happen (in that, a Docker employee did wear a badge with an opinionated phrase on it at a conference). The key thing, though, is that what you describe is completely and utterly different from the thing that actually happened in reality world[1]. You might not even be the person who changed the details to make the story more compelling (and false). Maybe you got this information from a post shared on Facebook, or from an email forwarded by your uncle. Either way, though, the impact of your comment is to pollute the body of discussion and degrade the collective understanding of this topic. (If this process feels familiar, it's because it is exactly the process that eventually caused the failure of the American democracy... just at a much smaller scale). Personally I don't have any stake in the Docker/RedHat relationship and I don't care about it. I only looked up what actually happened[1] because the idea of a Docker employee wearing an official badge that says "I reject red hat patches" seemed so unlikely to have occurred that it sent my bullshitometer into the red. Suggestion: when something smells like bullshit, don't eat it without conducting a bit of research. [1]: https://www.facebook.com/hackerspace.budapest/photos/a.407034809350059.105001.360688243984716/975141302539404/?type=3&theater https://www.facebook.com/hackerspace.budapest/photos/a.40703...

This shouldn't be downvoted. Docker has been very openly history towards Red Hat in the past. To the point of openly mocking their developers at DockerCon.

m-p-3 10y ago
Very openly history?
- nanodeath 10y ago
  Guessing "hostile" was intended.
- JadeNB 10y ago
  > Very openly history? Given krakensden's posting (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13399853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13399853): > Especially given Docker Inc.'s history of counterproductive Red Hat hostility. I think that it is clear that andrewguenther meant 'hostile' instead of 'history' in (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13400383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13400383): > Docker has been very openly history towards Red Hat in the past. Let he who has never typed a passing thought rather than the word he meant cast the first stone.
m-p-3 10y ago
Very openly history?
shykes 10y ago
Hi, I'm the founder of Docker. It's not my place to say whether comments should be downvoted or not, and I don't want to ignite teenage-drama arguments over who was mean to whom at recess - we get enough of that level of discourse on the US political scene these days. But I think there is an interesting topic to address here, that we deal with a lot at Docker. The problem in a nutshell: if you choose to take the moral high ground and only promote your products with positive marketing (and that is our strategy at Docker - you will never see any Docker marketing content criticizing competitors), you are vulnerable to bullying and unfair criticism by competitors who don't mind hitting under the belt. Then the question is: do you allow yourself to respond and set the record straight? Or would that just legitimize the criticism by bringing more attention to it? On the other hand, not responding is also risky because it emboldens the trolls to take more and more liberties with facts and ethics. This dilemma becomes more and more pressing as you become more successful and more incumbents start considering you a possible threat to their business. Some of these incumbents have been defending their turf for decades by perfecting negative messaging. Like one competing executive once told me - "we eat startups like yours for breakfast". This situation can be bad for morale also, because your team sees their work and reputation dragged in the mud, and can interpret their employer's silence as a failure to stand up and defend them. The most perverse variation of this problem is when trolls start preemptively painting you as bullies. If that narrative sticks, then you're in trouble, because any attempt to set the record straight will be interpreted as hostility. Now you have two problems: defending yourself against the bullies AND defending yourself against unfair accusations of being a bully. The root cause of the problem, I think, is the diminishing importance of facts and critical reasoning in the tech community. We are all guilty of this: when was the last time you repeated a factoid about "X doesn't scale", "Y isn't secure", "I heard Z is really evil" without fact-checking it yourself? Be honest. Because of this collective failure to do our own thinking and researching, bullies have a huge first-mover advantage. I see an direct parallel between the problem of corporate bullying in tech and the problem of partisan bullying in politics. And I think in both cases, there is a big unresolved problem: how do you succeed and do the right thing? How do we collectively change the rules of the game to make bullying and negative communication a less attractive strategy? I tried really hard to make this a constructive post about a topic I care about. If you interpret any of this as hostile or defensive, that is not at all the intention.
- otterley 10y ago
  Haters gonna hate, man. It's fine to correct misinformation, but in the long run -- and whether they say so or not -- there's much greater respect earned in taking the high ground and not dragging oneself down into the muck of name-calling, ascribing malicious intent to others, and other ill behaviors. If I were your counselor, I'd advise you to do nothing other than stick to the facts; make the best product you can; delight your customers; take pride in the great work you do; and apologize openly and honestly when you make avoidable mistakes. You can't make everyone happy, so focus on the people you can, and aim to exceed their expectations.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    >Haters gonna hate, man. It's fine to correct misinformation, but in the long run -- and whether they say so or not -- there's much greater respect earned in taking the high ground and not dragging oneself down into the muck of name-calling, ascribing malicious intent to others, and other ill behaviors. This is a naive perspective that doesn't bear out in the real world. It's important to know that by taking the "high road", you are putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage. Someday, those with fewer scruples may have to pay the piper and their dubiously-maintained prosperity may disintegrate ... but then again, maybe not. Most often, the truth is that large companies are pretty ruthless, and have consolidated such a huge amount of control that it's extremely difficult to do anything about anything they do or have done. They control the messaging, they have a reputation that supersedes any complaint an individual may make, etc. Those companies do slowly atrophy, but usually it's more because they've lost sight of the founder's vision that originally connected with the masses than that they're engaging in questionable tactics. If you're taking a position out of principle, that has to suffice for itself, because it probably will cost you in material terms.
- jwildeboer 10y ago
  When the top comment is a claim that we at Red Hat post incorrect information and that we at Red Hat are expected to delete said supposedly incorrect information without any technical explanation on why said information is incorrect, I do wonder who is the bully in your opinion. I posted this entry and I work at Red Hat.
nul_byte 10y ago
That whole thing with the docker developer smugly wearing a name badge with 'I reject red hat patches' was just sad.
- cpuguy83 10y ago
  This isn't even true. The badge, which was a joke btw, said "I say no to systemd specific PRs."
- veidr 10y ago
  That's a funny comment, because you are "taking liberties with facts" exactly as lamented by shykes above. You start with a grain of truth — something that actually happened in reality. In this case, it was a joke protesting systemd hegemony. Perhaps you thought that joke was in poor taste. But lets leave that aside for now. So you start with an actual fact. Then, you exaggerate/falsify it, changing the details pretty wildly, and present this story of something that supposedly happened. In fact, nothing like that happened... but it sort of feels like something that might have happened. It vaguely resembles the actual event that did happen (in that, a Docker employee did wear a badge with an opinionated phrase on it at a conference). The key thing, though, is that what you describe is completely and utterly different from the thing that actually happened in reality world[1]. You might not even be the person who changed the details to make the story more compelling (and false). Maybe you got this information from a post shared on Facebook, or from an email forwarded by your uncle. Either way, though, the impact of your comment is to pollute the body of discussion and degrade the collective understanding of this topic. (If this process feels familiar, it's because it is exactly the process that eventually caused the failure of the American democracy... just at a much smaller scale). Personally I don't have any stake in the Docker/RedHat relationship and I don't care about it. I only looked up what actually happened[1] because the idea of a Docker employee wearing an official badge that says "I reject red hat patches" seemed so unlikely to have occurred that it sent my bullshitometer into the red. Suggestion: when something smells like bullshit, don't eat it without conducting a bit of research. [1]: https://www.facebook.com/hackerspace.budapest/photos/a.407034809350059.105001.360688243984716/975141302539404/?type=3&theater https://www.facebook.com/hackerspace.budapest/photos/a.40703...