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From the article: > I cannot remember that I have ever been insulted in public, in fact I'm not used to getting insulted at all. And if people normally are abl

From the article: > I cannot remember that I have ever been insulted in public, in fact I'm not used to getting insulted at all. And if people normally are able to say sorry. I and many others asked Mark to withdraw his comment and post an apology instead. Ok, see here's the problem. The developer community, and especially the FOSS portion of the developer community, love to tout the fact that the community is a "meritocracy". But what does that mean? Certainly, insulting individuals (as opposed to their work product) is not in the spirit of a meritocracy. ...but neither is asking for an apology. Ubuntu/Canonical/Shuttleworth have made a technical decision. If the FOSS community is a meritocracy, the fate of their products will be determined by the merit of those decisions. That they also spilled so many vitriolic words in the direction of the "competition" should matter not at all. If the FOSS community is a meritocracy, then the appropriate reaction would be to continue making the best decisions possible, producing the best products possible, and ignoring anything anyone says that does not speak to the merits of those decisions or products. ...if this is a meritocracy. Perhaps it's high time we drop the charade of "meritocracy" and admit that software projects, FOSS or otherwise, are run by humans with human emotions and human reactions, and that for better or worse, the majority of the developer community makes decisions based more on emotion than on a dispassionate evaluation of a project's merits.

unfamiliar 13y ago
There's no reason it can't be a meritocracy run by humans with human emotions.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- jballanc 13y ago
  That would be true if the vast majority of people could have their emotional reactions but still make decisions based on pure merit. How many people do you know like that? Do you think this describes the majority of the people in the FOSS world?
- Nelson69 13y ago
  There sort of is. We're talking about a meritocracy regarding things that aren't done yet. X.org vs Wayland vs Mir... You tell me which one has better merits; other than X, I've only read blogs and seen some screenshots and block diagrams. You could maybe base the merit on the process, but I think they'd all lose.
- jasonwocky 13y ago
  Except that humans each have different and at times irreconcilable notions of "merit".
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
Dylan16807 13y ago
Meritocracy is orthogonal to politeness. I don't see the conflict you see.
- icarus127 13y ago
  One might say that being polite and not insulting people are traits of merit.
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    Ha. Those are definitely traits of merit, but individual traits still aren't organizational structure.
evmar 13y ago
It's a little ironic to see this guy complaining about people insulting him. In porting Google Chrome to Linux we encountered a bug running under kwin, and my colleagues tracked the issue down to a bug in kwin and even wrote a patch that fixed the bug only to be met by rudeness from him. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=15698#c37 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=15698#c3... (To be clear, it's fine with me if someone disagrees with some other software's UI decisions, but it's another thing to call those other people "stupid" when those decisions are to make use of an API you explicitly implemented, or call their code "broken" when the bug is demonstrably yours. Quoted words are his.)
- lucisferre 13y ago
  What are we supposed to be looking at. I've searched that entire thread for the word "stupid" and I can't find it. I also don't see the rudeness.
  - ikt 13y ago
    "Is there any valid reason to change the code except Chromium? In general I am against changing our code to fix broken applications and Chromium is broken. They should just use the system titlebars and not do their own stupid things." From: https://svn.reviewboard.kde.org/r/4396/ https://svn.reviewboard.kde.org/r/4396/
    - nknighthb 13y ago
      That is an attack on code, not people. It has no resemblance to Shuttleworth's remarks.
      - pygy_ 13y ago
        > "They should just use the system titlebars and not do their own stupid things." This is a personal insult.
        13y ago
skore 13y ago
> Perhaps it's high time we drop the charade of "meritocracy" and admit that software projects, FOSS or otherwise, are run by humans with human emotions and human reactions, and that for better or worse, the majority of the developer community makes decisions based more on emotion than on a dispassionate evaluation of a project's merits. A thousand times this. Being a participant in various FOSS things and other projects I have come to learn that the idea of a meritocracy is a thought terminating cliche. It is perpetuated by the nerd culture around FOSS that can program beautiful stuff day in and day out but has a chronic deficiency in social ability. I know it's kind of a worn-out point by now and I will probably gather downvotes for it, but that's the sad truth of the matter. As nerds, we like to reduce our reality to technicalities, those pesky old meat space constraints only hold us back! And that works well for a couple of years when one quarter of the community awakens to their social core, realizing the community around them in horror while another quarter of the community doubles down and goes borderline sociopathic. Then those two sides fight a bitter fight and the whole community suffers. To me, all this comes down to one problem: centralization. If you don't reduce your scope and humble your ambition, you will fall by it. Happens. Every. Time. Canonical always aspired to be the Linux distro but to achieve that, it had to accept a cost to the community in form of collateral damage. It's human constraints holding back FOSS. Ambition in the misguided few (sadly, mostly people who aspire to and assume leadership positions), carelessness and sheep behavior in the idealistic many. There is no technical solution to this and technical solutions is what the majority of FOSS participants come in for. Only to find that - surprise! - the FOSS community has the same meat space constraints as every other goddamn thing on this planet. Until we put more emphasis on not letting social skills atrophy in this atrophy-enabling climate, this history will simply keep on repeating itself.
dkuntz2 13y ago
No one said the Ubuntu community is a meritocracy.
- jballanc 13y ago
  Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon did: http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/ubuntu-meritocracy-not-democracy-695040 http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/ubu...
  - Flimm 13y ago
    I also recall Mark Shuttleworth saying so: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/light-themes/+bug/532633/comments/167 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/light-themes/+bug/...
zobzu 13y ago
Not sure how asking for apologies is linked to ask for a more "lead" position. Not sure how having feelings is related to meritocraty. And.. If anything Shuttleworth leads because he's rich.
- jballanc 13y ago
  Feelings don't preclude a meritocracy, but the snippet I quoted implies that Martin's decision to disavow Ubuntu is (at least in part) a reaction to the lack of an apology. That is, he has made a decision based not on the merits of any technology or decision, but rather based on emotion. Hence, not a meritocracy...
  - bkor 13y ago
    Why? He's kwin maintainer based on merit. He'll continue to make decisions the way he did before. What you're suggesting is that insults are acceptable. And if you read his posts correctly, he already explained that his decisions were based on technical merit. However, if the other side totally fails to be able to handle being judged on technical merit, then too bad for them. In brief this is what he's saying.
reidrac 13y ago
KDE and Ubuntu are different projects, with different objectives and managed by different people. Besides they have a very specific relationship: KDE is upstream and Ubuntu is downstream. I can't really see why there's a problem with meritocracy here as we're talking about different communities. To put it simple: Canonical proposed a patch for KWin and KWin didn't accept it. Now Canonical can maintain that patch or not. End of the story. That's why forks happen and that's one of the beautiful things of open source (if KWin doesn't meet Ubuntu needs: customize it!). I think this post is about communication between upstream and downstream. If you ask me, I wish there was more Jono and less Mark. Canonical is trying to influence some external projects and it doesn't look like things are working as smooth as they could. "Open Source Tea Party"? That's not how you make upstream accept your changes. At the end I think Canonical will maintain any patch that upstream can't or doesn't want to accept, say KWin, Intel, or whatever. Eventually, if MIR is the future of Linux desktop, upstream projects will include support for it.
return0 13y ago
My theory is that, with all the low hanging fruit already picked, technology gathering bigger crowds, innovation slowing down, the community is increasingly guided by politics. Maybe developers are tomorrow's lawyers.

unfamiliar 13y ago

There's no reason it can't be a meritocracy run by humans with human emotions.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jballanc 13y ago
That would be true if the vast majority of people could have their emotional reactions but still make decisions based on pure merit. How many people do you know like that? Do you think this describes the majority of the people in the FOSS world?
Nelson69 13y ago
There sort of is. We're talking about a meritocracy regarding things that aren't done yet. X.org vs Wayland vs Mir... You tell me which one has better merits; other than X, I've only read blogs and seen some screenshots and block diagrams. You could maybe base the merit on the process, but I think they'd all lose.
jasonwocky 13y ago
Except that humans each have different and at times irreconcilable notions of "merit".
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

Dylan16807 13y ago

Meritocracy is orthogonal to politeness. I don't see the conflict you see.

icarus127 13y ago
One might say that being polite and not insulting people are traits of merit.
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  Ha. Those are definitely traits of merit, but individual traits still aren't organizational structure.

evmar 13y ago

It's a little ironic to see this guy complaining about people insulting him. In porting Google Chrome to Linux we encountered a bug running under kwin, and my colleagues tracked the issue down to a bug in kwin and even wrote a patch that fixed the bug only to be met by rudeness from him. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=15698#c37 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=15698#c3... (To be clear, it's fine with me if someone disagrees with some other software's UI decisions, but it's another thing to call those other people "stupid" when those decisions are to make use of an API you explicitly implemented, or call their code "broken" when the bug is demonstrably yours. Quoted words are his.)

lucisferre 13y ago
What are we supposed to be looking at. I've searched that entire thread for the word "stupid" and I can't find it. I also don't see the rudeness.
- ikt 13y ago
  "Is there any valid reason to change the code except Chromium? In general I am against changing our code to fix broken applications and Chromium is broken. They should just use the system titlebars and not do their own stupid things." From: https://svn.reviewboard.kde.org/r/4396/ https://svn.reviewboard.kde.org/r/4396/
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    That is an attack on code, not people. It has no resemblance to Shuttleworth's remarks.
    - pygy_ 13y ago
      > "They should just use the system titlebars and not do their own stupid things." This is a personal insult.
      - 13y ago

skore 13y ago

> Perhaps it's high time we drop the charade of "meritocracy" and admit that software projects, FOSS or otherwise, are run by humans with human emotions and human reactions, and that for better or worse, the majority of the developer community makes decisions based more on emotion than on a dispassionate evaluation of a project's merits. A thousand times this. Being a participant in various FOSS things and other projects I have come to learn that the idea of a meritocracy is a thought terminating cliche. It is perpetuated by the nerd culture around FOSS that can program beautiful stuff day in and day out but has a chronic deficiency in social ability. I know it's kind of a worn-out point by now and I will probably gather downvotes for it, but that's the sad truth of the matter. As nerds, we like to reduce our reality to technicalities, those pesky old meat space constraints only hold us back! And that works well for a couple of years when one quarter of the community awakens to their social core, realizing the community around them in horror while another quarter of the community doubles down and goes borderline sociopathic. Then those two sides fight a bitter fight and the whole community suffers. To me, all this comes down to one problem: centralization. If you don't reduce your scope and humble your ambition, you will fall by it. Happens. Every. Time. Canonical always aspired to be the Linux distro but to achieve that, it had to accept a cost to the community in form of collateral damage. It's human constraints holding back FOSS. Ambition in the misguided few (sadly, mostly people who aspire to and assume leadership positions), carelessness and sheep behavior in the idealistic many. There is no technical solution to this and technical solutions is what the majority of FOSS participants come in for. Only to find that - surprise! - the FOSS community has the same meat space constraints as every other goddamn thing on this planet. Until we put more emphasis on not letting social skills atrophy in this atrophy-enabling climate, this history will simply keep on repeating itself.

dkuntz2 13y ago

No one said the Ubuntu community is a meritocracy.

jballanc 13y ago
Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon did: http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/ubuntu-meritocracy-not-democracy-695040 http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/ubu...
- Flimm 13y ago
  I also recall Mark Shuttleworth saying so: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/light-themes/+bug/532633/comments/167 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/light-themes/+bug/...

zobzu 13y ago

Not sure how asking for apologies is linked to ask for a more "lead" position. Not sure how having feelings is related to meritocraty. And.. If anything Shuttleworth leads because he's rich.

jballanc 13y ago
Feelings don't preclude a meritocracy, but the snippet I quoted implies that Martin's decision to disavow Ubuntu is (at least in part) a reaction to the lack of an apology. That is, he has made a decision based not on the merits of any technology or decision, but rather based on emotion. Hence, not a meritocracy...
- bkor 13y ago
  Why? He's kwin maintainer based on merit. He'll continue to make decisions the way he did before. What you're suggesting is that insults are acceptable. And if you read his posts correctly, he already explained that his decisions were based on technical merit. However, if the other side totally fails to be able to handle being judged on technical merit, then too bad for them. In brief this is what he's saying.

reidrac 13y ago

KDE and Ubuntu are different projects, with different objectives and managed by different people. Besides they have a very specific relationship: KDE is upstream and Ubuntu is downstream. I can't really see why there's a problem with meritocracy here as we're talking about different communities. To put it simple: Canonical proposed a patch for KWin and KWin didn't accept it. Now Canonical can maintain that patch or not. End of the story. That's why forks happen and that's one of the beautiful things of open source (if KWin doesn't meet Ubuntu needs: customize it!). I think this post is about communication between upstream and downstream. If you ask me, I wish there was more Jono and less Mark. Canonical is trying to influence some external projects and it doesn't look like things are working as smooth as they could. "Open Source Tea Party"? That's not how you make upstream accept your changes. At the end I think Canonical will maintain any patch that upstream can't or doesn't want to accept, say KWin, Intel, or whatever. Eventually, if MIR is the future of Linux desktop, upstream projects will include support for it.

return0 13y ago

My theory is that, with all the low hanging fruit already picked, technology gathering bigger crowds, innovation slowing down, the community is increasingly guided by politics. Maybe developers are tomorrow's lawyers.