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I'm not really sure why the author is taking the behavior of this VCV guy so personally, is there some new community expectation that a single maintainer trying

I'm not really sure why the author is taking the behavior of this VCV guy so personally, is there some new community expectation that a single maintainer trying to survive running an open source software modular synth project is also supposed to e.g. gracefully answer misc technical questions on community support channels? All of the sections in this post describing some aspect of the toxic culture fail to deliver, and mostly just sound like entitlement to this specific maintainer's time, which sounds fairly limited. Also, unrelated but cool modules. I envy the artistic ability that goes into the theming the author did.

detaro 5y ago
That feels like quite a misrepresentation of the authors post. Especially criticizing (IMHO questionable) policies is not entitlement to this specific maintainer's time. Even the specific example, do you really think "is also supposed to e.g. gracefully answer misc technical questions on community support channels" is a good takeaway from > Contributors treated rudely. Contributors made to understand that their time is basically worthless. Nobody was treated like a contributor anyway, I felt treated as if I should be thankful to even be allowed to provide value to this company. You’d see people–people much more technically experienced than me–asking reasonable technical questions in the development channel of the project’s Discord, and Andrew Belt would tell them how much he charges per hour for consulting. What’s even the point of having such a channel then?
- busterarm 5y ago
  Since when do we elevate a difference of opinion to rudeness? Not every maintainer has the same objectives for their project being open source. Not every project maintainer gives their time or attention to (potential) contributors.
- malwrar 5y ago
  > do you really think ... is a good takeaway from ... Sure, I've seen that sort of response many times from technical communities with newbies who demand too much of someone's time. It's the only specific example in that entire section, and the author continues throughout the post to point out how valuable they believe contributors' time is. It seems to me like one of the core issues motivating this post is a mismatch in expectations about how valuable that time is, thus my conclusion The rest of the post isn't really substantial otherwise. The code of conduct section has no tangible or even hinted examples of selective enforcement, just the author stating they know any reports are going to Andrew, and that they don't trust Andrew to actually be fair. The section about inclusion of women is actually about a single provocative thread getting locked (new member doesn't see the "swells of women" they expected to see in the forum roster, assumes all the members are guys who are "bro-ing it up", then tells them to police themselves), with the author somehow concluding that as a sign women aren't welcome in the community. I'm not sure how the name re-registration policy is evidence of a toxic culture, but even if it was on-topic the author doesn't really seem too understanding of the problem it's intended to solve, and that the ethics policy they link indicates that the intent is for legitimate cases of theft to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The hostility to forking section seemed fishy, but by the time I got to that section honestly I felt like it was another case of the author crying wolf and didn't bother looking for the details the author should have included.
irjustin 5y ago
I know nothing of VCV community beyond what I read in this article, so - grain of salt. But I will agree with the author in one point, banning/squelching on dissenting views isn't a good way to deal with problems. > "Public challenges to moderator decisions may result in a ban/suspension." [0] When communities start controlling narratives through deletes, shadow banning, banning - clamping down on public dissent, it's the signs of toxic culture. Largely hiding behind the guise of safe space, it allows festering of same speak. Again, not saying it is happening 100% in VCV (not connected), but if it is happening like the author says, it pushes away contributors who are closely related to the space. [0] https://vcvrack.com/rules https://vcvrack.com/rules
pmoriarty 5y ago
"All of the sections in this post describing some aspect of the toxic culture fail to deliver, and mostly just sound like entitlement to this specific maintainer's time" How about this part? "Taking Over People's Real Names "The last straw concerned the policy about taking over inactive modules. About making it possible by default for someone to take over my very name, Aria Salvatrice, and releasing their own fork of my software under my name. "That's right: if I'm inactive for just one short little month, someone else can just go ahead and release software under my name, my name as a person, with no process in place for me to reclaim it later, even if their releases have low quality standards, even if they add ill-conceived features that work against my long-term plans. "I made it clear-as politely as I could, which was hard-that the policy was absolutely unreasonable. Absolutely no app store I ever heard of allows taking over names, much less taking over humans' first and last names. "And in the domain of synthesizers, it is common to name a machine after the lead engineer. Bob Moog, Don Buchla, Serge Tcherepnin, Roger Linn, Ray Kurzweil, to name a just few well known pioneers. Many modules in the VCV library are named after their author, I am far from being an exception, I'm following a time-honored tradition. "Open-source is no excuse. The code is open-souce, with a perfect understanding of what it entails. But my name isn't. That's why my logo is not directly drawn on the faceplate, but composited at runtime from a separate file: I'm trying to make it as easy as possible to modify my code. "And while VCV is happy to claim ownership over the names of amateur humans like me, its "Ethics Guidelines" are absolutely deferential towards the moral rights to the name and trade dress of commercial brands: after all, there aren't many eurorack hardware makers, so they would never allow ports of their modules to be offered in VCV's store if they had to compete against counterfeit knock-offs impersonating them. But humans, now that's fair game?" or this part: [VCV's code of conduct now] says "public challenges to moderator decisions may result in a ban/suspension" and: "There's MiRack, a fork of VCV for Mac OS and iPhone. Any mention of it within the VCV community is immediately deleted, and its author is banned..." To me none of this sounds like it has anything to do with "entitletment to this specific maintainer's time".
- malwrar 5y ago
  Fair, but even these aren't really substantive either. > That's right: if I'm inactive for just one short little month, someone else can just go ahead and release software under my name, my name as a person, with no process in place for me to reclaim it later Later they link an Ethics Guidelines document which indicates that stealing names won't go unpunished, not sure why the author doesn't think that'd extend to the collection of modules they made. > public challenges to moderator decisions may result in a ban/suspension That's pretty common on forums. I think it's still fair to critique, but like the first point it's based in a lack of faith in the maintainer which can't really be addressed by anybody. > ...Any mention of it within the VCV community is immediately deleted, and its author is banned What conclusion am I supposed to draw from this fact outside of the fact that some weird disagreement happened at some point between two people? Am I supposed to conclude the maintainer is the bad guy here? No smoking gun, no clear victims, no crime in my eyes.

detaro 5y ago

That feels like quite a misrepresentation of the authors post. Especially criticizing (IMHO questionable) policies is not entitlement to this specific maintainer's time. Even the specific example, do you really think "is also supposed to e.g. gracefully answer misc technical questions on community support channels" is a good takeaway from > Contributors treated rudely. Contributors made to understand that their time is basically worthless. Nobody was treated like a contributor anyway, I felt treated as if I should be thankful to even be allowed to provide value to this company. You’d see people–people much more technically experienced than me–asking reasonable technical questions in the development channel of the project’s Discord, and Andrew Belt would tell them how much he charges per hour for consulting. What’s even the point of having such a channel then?

busterarm 5y ago
Since when do we elevate a difference of opinion to rudeness? Not every maintainer has the same objectives for their project being open source. Not every project maintainer gives their time or attention to (potential) contributors.
malwrar 5y ago
> do you really think ... is a good takeaway from ... Sure, I've seen that sort of response many times from technical communities with newbies who demand too much of someone's time. It's the only specific example in that entire section, and the author continues throughout the post to point out how valuable they believe contributors' time is. It seems to me like one of the core issues motivating this post is a mismatch in expectations about how valuable that time is, thus my conclusion The rest of the post isn't really substantial otherwise. The code of conduct section has no tangible or even hinted examples of selective enforcement, just the author stating they know any reports are going to Andrew, and that they don't trust Andrew to actually be fair. The section about inclusion of women is actually about a single provocative thread getting locked (new member doesn't see the "swells of women" they expected to see in the forum roster, assumes all the members are guys who are "bro-ing it up", then tells them to police themselves), with the author somehow concluding that as a sign women aren't welcome in the community. I'm not sure how the name re-registration policy is evidence of a toxic culture, but even if it was on-topic the author doesn't really seem too understanding of the problem it's intended to solve, and that the ethics policy they link indicates that the intent is for legitimate cases of theft to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The hostility to forking section seemed fishy, but by the time I got to that section honestly I felt like it was another case of the author crying wolf and didn't bother looking for the details the author should have included.

irjustin 5y ago

I know nothing of VCV community beyond what I read in this article, so - grain of salt. But I will agree with the author in one point, banning/squelching on dissenting views isn't a good way to deal with problems. > "Public challenges to moderator decisions may result in a ban/suspension." [0] When communities start controlling narratives through deletes, shadow banning, banning - clamping down on public dissent, it's the signs of toxic culture. Largely hiding behind the guise of safe space, it allows festering of same speak. Again, not saying it is happening 100% in VCV (not connected), but if it is happening like the author says, it pushes away contributors who are closely related to the space. [0] https://vcvrack.com/rules https://vcvrack.com/rules

pmoriarty 5y ago

"All of the sections in this post describing some aspect of the toxic culture fail to deliver, and mostly just sound like entitlement to this specific maintainer's time" How about this part? "Taking Over People's Real Names "The last straw concerned the policy about taking over inactive modules. About making it possible by default for someone to take over my very name, Aria Salvatrice, and releasing their own fork of my software under my name. "That's right: if I'm inactive for just one short little month, someone else can just go ahead and release software under my name, my name as a person, with no process in place for me to reclaim it later, even if their releases have low quality standards, even if they add ill-conceived features that work against my long-term plans. "I made it clear-as politely as I could, which was hard-that the policy was absolutely unreasonable. Absolutely no app store I ever heard of allows taking over names, much less taking over humans' first and last names. "And in the domain of synthesizers, it is common to name a machine after the lead engineer. Bob Moog, Don Buchla, Serge Tcherepnin, Roger Linn, Ray Kurzweil, to name a just few well known pioneers. Many modules in the VCV library are named after their author, I am far from being an exception, I'm following a time-honored tradition. "Open-source is no excuse. The code is open-souce, with a perfect understanding of what it entails. But my name isn't. That's why my logo is not directly drawn on the faceplate, but composited at runtime from a separate file: I'm trying to make it as easy as possible to modify my code. "And while VCV is happy to claim ownership over the names of amateur humans like me, its "Ethics Guidelines" are absolutely deferential towards the moral rights to the name and trade dress of commercial brands: after all, there aren't many eurorack hardware makers, so they would never allow ports of their modules to be offered in VCV's store if they had to compete against counterfeit knock-offs impersonating them. But humans, now that's fair game?" or this part: [VCV's code of conduct now] says "public challenges to moderator decisions may result in a ban/suspension" and: "There's MiRack, a fork of VCV for Mac OS and iPhone. Any mention of it within the VCV community is immediately deleted, and its author is banned..." To me none of this sounds like it has anything to do with "entitletment to this specific maintainer's time".

malwrar 5y ago
Fair, but even these aren't really substantive either. > That's right: if I'm inactive for just one short little month, someone else can just go ahead and release software under my name, my name as a person, with no process in place for me to reclaim it later Later they link an Ethics Guidelines document which indicates that stealing names won't go unpunished, not sure why the author doesn't think that'd extend to the collection of modules they made. > public challenges to moderator decisions may result in a ban/suspension That's pretty common on forums. I think it's still fair to critique, but like the first point it's based in a lack of faith in the maintainer which can't really be addressed by anybody. > ...Any mention of it within the VCV community is immediately deleted, and its author is banned What conclusion am I supposed to draw from this fact outside of the fact that some weird disagreement happened at some point between two people? Am I supposed to conclude the maintainer is the bad guy here? No smoking gun, no clear victims, no crime in my eyes.