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> I was floored at that unprofessional behavior. Profession - "A professional is a member of a profession or any person who earns a living from a specified pro

> I was floored at that unprofessional behavior. Profession - "A professional is a member of a profession or any person who earns a living from a specified professional activity. " If you want professional behavior, pay the person. If you want free, you get whatever the person wants to give you for free.

morpheuskafka 5y ago
The term professional is clearly applicable to software engineers working on open source projects, just as it is for lawyers doing pro bono work, and just like a plumber fixing his neighbors' sink for free is still performing his trade and expected to do work that upholds its standards. No one is required to do any work for an open source project, but they are expected to behave in a professional manner and plenty of people have been rightly criticized here when they acted inappropriately as part of an open source team. Its debatable whether OP is right, but there's at least a case to be made that taking down documentation that was not costing any money to host for the sole purpose of making an unrelated statement (not one targeted at their customers, just society in general) does damage the professional reputation of the team and its product.
- frumper 5y ago
  I would agree that doing stunts is likely to damage a teams reputation, but I think you cast way too large a net to say that software engineers working on open source projects are professional, or even acting as professionals. The OSS ecosystem is filled with everything from large well run organizations to kids posting simple tools that are filled with bugs and vulnerabilities. There are no good expectations beyond use at your own risk. Even large professional organizations kill projects and leave people hanging.
oauea 5y ago
If you want people to use your stuff, which you probably do because you put it out there, be professional. If you don't care, then do whatever the hell you want of course.
rdiddly 5y ago
How 'bout if I go one commit back, and get what they wanted to give me for free one commit ago? Anyway, if we ignore for now the circularity of that definition of "professional" and take it at face value, then swapping out your open-source docs for a political message would fail the definition of professional, not just based on the "earn a living" part, but also on the "specified professional activity" part. Assuming we're using their repo because it's, like, for programming computers and shit, we might be surprised to find out they had changed their profession from computer-programmer and computer-program-explainer, to worked-up self-important opinion-haver. Which even fewer people would pay money for, by the way.

morpheuskafka 5y ago

The term professional is clearly applicable to software engineers working on open source projects, just as it is for lawyers doing pro bono work, and just like a plumber fixing his neighbors' sink for free is still performing his trade and expected to do work that upholds its standards. No one is required to do any work for an open source project, but they are expected to behave in a professional manner and plenty of people have been rightly criticized here when they acted inappropriately as part of an open source team. Its debatable whether OP is right, but there's at least a case to be made that taking down documentation that was not costing any money to host for the sole purpose of making an unrelated statement (not one targeted at their customers, just society in general) does damage the professional reputation of the team and its product.

frumper 5y ago
I would agree that doing stunts is likely to damage a teams reputation, but I think you cast way too large a net to say that software engineers working on open source projects are professional, or even acting as professionals. The OSS ecosystem is filled with everything from large well run organizations to kids posting simple tools that are filled with bugs and vulnerabilities. There are no good expectations beyond use at your own risk. Even large professional organizations kill projects and leave people hanging.

oauea 5y ago

If you want people to use your stuff, which you probably do because you put it out there, be professional. If you don't care, then do whatever the hell you want of course.

rdiddly 5y ago

How 'bout if I go one commit back, and get what they wanted to give me for free one commit ago? Anyway, if we ignore for now the circularity of that definition of "professional" and take it at face value, then swapping out your open-source docs for a political message would fail the definition of professional, not just based on the "earn a living" part, but also on the "specified professional activity" part. Assuming we're using their repo because it's, like, for programming computers and shit, we might be surprised to find out they had changed their profession from computer-programmer and computer-program-explainer, to worked-up self-important opinion-haver. Which even fewer people would pay money for, by the way.