11 ms·

I don't know why free software projects are so dominated by personnel issues, I wish they weren't.

vertex-four 10y ago
Groups of people in general are dominated by personnel issues, unless you're a small group of people with very similar backgrounds. Free software projects are communities first and foremost, with the software as an output of that community.
andrepd 10y ago
All things considered this sort of drama doesn't happen all that often in free software projects.
- infodroid 10y ago
  There was the Jacob Appelbaum drama not so long ago, which was quite ugly and really seemed to drag out.
  - CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
    That's still ongoing. I won't bring up any specifics here because it's a difficult topic to discuss without running afoul of the HN rules.
wiz21c 10y ago
much free software is done on spare time, so people are most often personally involved in their "babies". Creating an institution allows one to take some step back, but so may the motivation... I wonder things are really this way...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- simcop2387 10y ago
  I think a combination of that, and that with closed projects the drama like this doesn't tend to end up in public purview, sometimes not even among the workers in a company if HR does a good job of not letting it turn into a big issue. That's one kind of situation that companies tend to have an advantage in dealing with since they can more easily fire/remove a person causing problems from a project. That's a lot harder with a publicly developed open source project.
  - infodroid 10y ago
    Also, personal drama can have a negative effect on the rest of the team, and in a business environment, good HR would try to minimize that effect. But there is no such equivalent in the volunteer world.
  - CriticalSection 10y ago
    > end up in public purview, sometimes not even among the workers in a company I agree. The exact same thing happens on closed corporate projects, it just happens behind closed doors. You're right - sometimes a co-founder gets pushed out for political reasons, and even within the company most people don't know what the whole story is.
raziel2p 10y ago
In my experience, it's the same with any volunteer project that doesn't have a large amount of contributors and low barrier of entry for active contribution.
- gingerbread-man 10y ago
  At least with free software, when a project falls apart, the source code is out there, so someone else can pick it up and resurrect the project.
CriticalSection 10y ago
Having worked for corporate software projects and for free software projects, I can't say that free software projects are dominated by personnel issues any more than corporate software projects. The main difference is things tend to happen out in the open for free software projects, and things happen behind closed doors within corporations. So it just seems like there is more drama, because issues are hashed out in public, things are not swept under the rug.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- EduardoBautista 10y ago
  There is no reason for the personal stuff to be out in the open in open source.
  - geofft 10y ago
    I think it's a motivating factor to attract contributions. I was catching up on C++11/14/17 after spending a lot of time in Rust recently and I realized that I see the C++ standards committee as this nameless faceless void, and the Rust team as these friendly people on GitHub and IRC. There's this college kid who thinks using "pre-pooping your pants" as a technical term is a good plan, this Brooklyn hipster who really likes communism, etc. Whether or not I endorse their "personal stuff", I have a sense that there's a community of real people and not just names on a community, and that makes Rust as a language attractive. If I want to contribute something to the language, there are people I can talk to, and there's a clear way for me, as I am, to do that. I have no idea how to propose something to C++ without working for a company that has a seat on the standards committee. Maybe there is a way, but I'm certainly not under the impression that there is a way. Projects that are more able to attract contributions will be healthier, more technically productive, and more secure (via Linus' Law). It's meaningless to try to focus purely on the technical if you don't have the people to do the technical work.
    - smitherfield 10y ago
AceJohnny2 10y ago
Because they are often started by a small group (usually just one) of people who are passionate about the subject enough to work on it in their spare time, so they have stronger personal involvement. That provides the drive, but also the side-effect of personal drama when things go wrong. Larger institutions usually setup protections against just that kind of drama, but often with the side-effect of reducing motivation.
rectang 10y ago
Because the bulk of communication is text-only, making empathy failure easy.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
the_af 10y ago
In my experience in the software industry, I've seen enough feuds, ego-related fighting, insults, people having mental breakdowns and lashing angrily at everyone around them (this happened more than once, at different workplaces!), and rude team members demeaning others over their alleged lack of technical skills, that I think these things happen everywhere, regardless of whether the project is free or proprietary. It's just that it's easier to see in free software projects.
kakarot 10y ago
There's no boss to tell them to shut up and get back to work.
aub3bhat 10y ago
My theory is that the traditional idea of "ownership" does not translates to free software. In fact its one of the reason why I am hesitant to be involved with any type of open source "community". In a traditional corporation, you own shares or worse stock options but their are clear legal rights. In Open Source on the other hand you can start a very popular software spend years of your life toiling away and nurturing it, and then suddenly a bunch of activists make an issue out of a donation you made several years ago. Instantly you find yourself kicked out of the organization. Now if it were a company, sure you might still get kicked out the company but your shares will remain intact. These days with random unverifiable accusations, extreme political correctness, & activists going through history to dig up mud, open source community has become hazardous to ones career.

Groups of people in general are dominated by personnel issues, unless you're a small group of people with very similar backgrounds. Free software projects are communities first and foremost, with the software as an output of that community.

andrepd 10y ago

All things considered this sort of drama doesn't happen all that often in free software projects.

infodroid 10y ago
There was the Jacob Appelbaum drama not so long ago, which was quite ugly and really seemed to drag out.
- CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
  That's still ongoing. I won't bring up any specifics here because it's a difficult topic to discuss without running afoul of the HN rules.

wiz21c 10y ago

much free software is done on spare time, so people are most often personally involved in their "babies". Creating an institution allows one to take some step back, but so may the motivation... I wonder things are really this way...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
simcop2387 10y ago
I think a combination of that, and that with closed projects the drama like this doesn't tend to end up in public purview, sometimes not even among the workers in a company if HR does a good job of not letting it turn into a big issue. That's one kind of situation that companies tend to have an advantage in dealing with since they can more easily fire/remove a person causing problems from a project. That's a lot harder with a publicly developed open source project.
- infodroid 10y ago
  Also, personal drama can have a negative effect on the rest of the team, and in a business environment, good HR would try to minimize that effect. But there is no such equivalent in the volunteer world.
- CriticalSection 10y ago
  > end up in public purview, sometimes not even among the workers in a company I agree. The exact same thing happens on closed corporate projects, it just happens behind closed doors. You're right - sometimes a co-founder gets pushed out for political reasons, and even within the company most people don't know what the whole story is.

raziel2p 10y ago

In my experience, it's the same with any volunteer project that doesn't have a large amount of contributors and low barrier of entry for active contribution.

gingerbread-man 10y ago
At least with free software, when a project falls apart, the source code is out there, so someone else can pick it up and resurrect the project.

CriticalSection 10y ago

Having worked for corporate software projects and for free software projects, I can't say that free software projects are dominated by personnel issues any more than corporate software projects. The main difference is things tend to happen out in the open for free software projects, and things happen behind closed doors within corporations. So it just seems like there is more drama, because issues are hashed out in public, things are not swept under the rug.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
EduardoBautista 10y ago
There is no reason for the personal stuff to be out in the open in open source.
- geofft 10y ago
  I think it's a motivating factor to attract contributions. I was catching up on C++11/14/17 after spending a lot of time in Rust recently and I realized that I see the C++ standards committee as this nameless faceless void, and the Rust team as these friendly people on GitHub and IRC. There's this college kid who thinks using "pre-pooping your pants" as a technical term is a good plan, this Brooklyn hipster who really likes communism, etc. Whether or not I endorse their "personal stuff", I have a sense that there's a community of real people and not just names on a community, and that makes Rust as a language attractive. If I want to contribute something to the language, there are people I can talk to, and there's a clear way for me, as I am, to do that. I have no idea how to propose something to C++ without working for a company that has a seat on the standards committee. Maybe there is a way, but I'm certainly not under the impression that there is a way. Projects that are more able to attract contributions will be healthier, more technically productive, and more secure (via Linus' Law). It's meaningless to try to focus purely on the technical if you don't have the people to do the technical work.
  - smitherfield 10y ago

AceJohnny2 10y ago

Because they are often started by a small group (usually just one) of people who are passionate about the subject enough to work on it in their spare time, so they have stronger personal involvement. That provides the drive, but also the side-effect of personal drama when things go wrong. Larger institutions usually setup protections against just that kind of drama, but often with the side-effect of reducing motivation.

rectang 10y ago

Because the bulk of communication is text-only, making empathy failure easy.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

the_af 10y ago

In my experience in the software industry, I've seen enough feuds, ego-related fighting, insults, people having mental breakdowns and lashing angrily at everyone around them (this happened more than once, at different workplaces!), and rude team members demeaning others over their alleged lack of technical skills, that I think these things happen everywhere, regardless of whether the project is free or proprietary. It's just that it's easier to see in free software projects.

kakarot 10y ago

There's no boss to tell them to shut up and get back to work.

aub3bhat 10y ago

My theory is that the traditional idea of "ownership" does not translates to free software. In fact its one of the reason why I am hesitant to be involved with any type of open source "community". In a traditional corporation, you own shares or worse stock options but their are clear legal rights. In Open Source on the other hand you can start a very popular software spend years of your life toiling away and nurturing it, and then suddenly a bunch of activists make an issue out of a donation you made several years ago. Instantly you find yourself kicked out of the organization. Now if it were a company, sure you might still get kicked out the company but your shares will remain intact. These days with random unverifiable accusations, extreme political correctness, & activists going through history to dig up mud, open source community has become hazardous to ones career.