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I wonder if the "third movement" will take a similar form to that held by many Rust projects: openly available source + structure to encourage and maintain cont

by bmer 8y ago

I wonder if the "third movement" will take a similar form to that held by many Rust projects: openly available source + structure to encourage and maintain contributions (mentorship programs, openly available discussion of design possibilities, things like the Rust Code of Conduct which have learned from internet-based communities of the last 3 decades?). Would it be fair to argue that a flaw of the FSF is that it focuses on making free software (per FSF definition), but does not focus on how to encourage the maintenance and development of free software? It doesn't seem to focus on the creation of contributors: i.e. teaching new people how to fish, in the free software way, and thus it is a movement that is vulnerable to the ravages of time?

0815test 8y ago
This was THE major contribution of the "Open Source" movement to FLOSS dev practices: the open Bazaar vs. the Cathedral. FSF was Cathedral-like (shaped by the model of academia) and really struggled to adopt the more effective and more open dev methodologies that were first demonstrated by e.g. Linux and other net-driven projects - it's why the Hurd kernel is still not out today, after 30 years or so of development effort. Teaching newbies how to "fish" in the OSS community is also something that saw a lot of focus as soon as the issue became clear in the 1990s, as the microcomputer community started getting internet links and interacting with the pre-existing free-software and hacker communities. We see a summary of this viewpoint e.g. in ESR's "Hacker-HOWTO" http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
- chx 8y ago
  Be extremely careful with ESR's documents. This one links to How To Ask Smart Questions which I have "subscribed" to myself in the past but now I see very serious problems with it: > What we are, unapologetically, is hostile to people who seem to be unwilling to think or to do their own homework before asking questions. There's no reason to jump down a new user's throat. If you are annoyed by a question, move on, let others deal with it if they so want. Or improve it. You could adopt Sai Baba's philosophy: Before you speak, ask yourself: is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence? Or you can just go with Ellen Page's: This world would be a whole lot better if we just made an effort to be less horrible to one another. You could read https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/blog/2018/a-case-study-in-not-being-a-jerk-in-open-source https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/blog/2018/a-case-study-in... as well.
  - 0815test 8y ago
    > There's no reason to jump down a new user's throat. If you are annoyed by a question, move on, let others deal with it if they so want... If you read further in ESR's document, you'd find out that this is exactly what he predicts will happen! But let's not pretend that this isn't a sort of hostility towards those who ask questions in unhelpful ways. Even entirely non-violent, passive resistance is hostility - of a sort! This is what ESR is trying to fix here, by addressing the root problem that causes it.
  - thraway-burnout 8y ago
    > There's no reason to jump down a new user's throat. If you are annoyed by a question, move on, let others deal with it if they so want. Or improve it. But then you're keeping them ignorant. Letting them know they're expected to do their part is a net positive in the long run, for everyone involved.
steveklabnik 8y ago
I don't think that Rust has solved this, not by a long shot. I do think there are some things you're getting at that are aligned with my thinking, but that's for the next post :)

by bmer 8y ago

0815test 8y ago

This was THE major contribution of the "Open Source" movement to FLOSS dev practices: the open Bazaar vs. the Cathedral. FSF was Cathedral-like (shaped by the model of academia) and really struggled to adopt the more effective and more open dev methodologies that were first demonstrated by e.g. Linux and other net-driven projects - it's why the Hurd kernel is still not out today, after 30 years or so of development effort. Teaching newbies how to "fish" in the OSS community is also something that saw a lot of focus as soon as the issue became clear in the 1990s, as the microcomputer community started getting internet links and interacting with the pre-existing free-software and hacker communities. We see a summary of this viewpoint e.g. in ESR's "Hacker-HOWTO" http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

chx 8y ago
Be extremely careful with ESR's documents. This one links to How To Ask Smart Questions which I have "subscribed" to myself in the past but now I see very serious problems with it: > What we are, unapologetically, is hostile to people who seem to be unwilling to think or to do their own homework before asking questions. There's no reason to jump down a new user's throat. If you are annoyed by a question, move on, let others deal with it if they so want. Or improve it. You could adopt Sai Baba's philosophy: Before you speak, ask yourself: is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence? Or you can just go with Ellen Page's: This world would be a whole lot better if we just made an effort to be less horrible to one another. You could read https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/blog/2018/a-case-study-in-not-being-a-jerk-in-open-source https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/blog/2018/a-case-study-in... as well.
- 0815test 8y ago
  > There's no reason to jump down a new user's throat. If you are annoyed by a question, move on, let others deal with it if they so want... If you read further in ESR's document, you'd find out that this is exactly what he predicts will happen! But let's not pretend that this isn't a sort of hostility towards those who ask questions in unhelpful ways. Even entirely non-violent, passive resistance is hostility - of a sort! This is what ESR is trying to fix here, by addressing the root problem that causes it.
- thraway-burnout 8y ago
  > There's no reason to jump down a new user's throat. If you are annoyed by a question, move on, let others deal with it if they so want. Or improve it. But then you're keeping them ignorant. Letting them know they're expected to do their part is a net positive in the long run, for everyone involved.

steveklabnik 8y ago

I don't think that Rust has solved this, not by a long shot. I do think there are some things you're getting at that are aligned with my thinking, but that's for the next post :)