That's a simplification that might lead you to a mistaken conclusion. Some creative sorts thrive on strife, it's true; and these sorts look for people who oper

That's a simplification that might lead you to a mistaken conclusion. Some creative sorts thrive on strife, it's true; and these sorts look for people who operate the same way so they can thrust themselves at one another, grow heated, and still get work done. That is not the only way things get done, it is not an inescapable approach (many people use that as an excuse to avoid acting like grown-ups), and, most importantly, there is a time and a place for that and it's not at the center of an open community. Look, the idea of open source is this glorious idea that when people work together they can achieve things which no one person would have thought of on their own. My favorite open source works are the result of somebody having a crazy idea, getting support from various open source projects, and making something they'd have never made on their own. Having the sorts of misanthropic terrors that this guy's writing about in positions where they can alienate other participants undermines one of the clearest values of open source work. What's more, the Internet SUCKS at strife. Arguing is one thing where you can see and hear and intuit the person you're arguing with. You stay in lockstep with them, even if you're fighting them bitterly. Arguments on the Internet are much more commonly the result of people simply not understanding tone, or even who the shit's on the other side. They are rarely productive in the way you mean. When you've got an issue OF community bullying, they are practically never productive. If one person feels the need to start fight with masses of people, even if it's because they don't "understand" him, that person is pretty much in the wrong, and ruining things for those other people. To be honest it makes me sad that programmers and computer geeks, who are both smart enough and used enough to being ostracized and belittled, so often decide that the problem with their former persecution was simply that they weren't the ones getting to do the persecuting. And the strain of celebrity-worship that leads to other coders excusing the worst behavior simply because it comes from a well-known name is equally disappointing. We're not as different from mainstream culture as it's fun to pretend.