5 ms·

Someone has to say it: Zed shaw is a cock. He doesn't get the recognition he thinks he deserves _partly_ because of his rotten public image, which he carefully

by cortesi 17y ago

Someone has to say it: Zed shaw is a cock. He doesn't get the recognition he thinks he deserves _partly_ because of his rotten public image, which he carefully crafted himself: crass, erratic, unprofessional, needy and infantile. The last damn thing a startup would want to do is to say "Here's Zed Shaw - we use his software, isn't that great?". I say "partly", because the other half of the equation is that he doesn't deserve the reputation he thinks he deserves. He is high-profile due to controversy, but plenty of other people have done more for the Open Source community with less kudos.

kragen 17y ago
Other people said it, but you said it better: "his rotten public image, which he carefully crafted himself: crass, erratic, unprofessional, needy and infantile." But yeah, there are a lot of people who are little-known but who have written a lot of the software we use every day, and even successfully built communities around it. Ian Lance Taylor, Rob Savoye, tom lane, Lou Montulli (!), Jacob Kaplan-Moss, Raymond Hettinger, Margo Seltzer, D. Richard Hipp, Ben Tilly, a cast of thousands.
- cortesi 17y ago
  That's an excellent list! Anyone who doesn't recognise some of these names (I didn't) should google them immediately.
  - kragen 17y ago
    It's far from comprehensive; that's just a few people off the top of my head. We should make Free Software Hacker Trading Cards like baseball trading cards or something.
- luckystrike 17y ago
  Thanks for the list. And for people like me who don't know much about (some of) them, here is a primer: Ian Lance Taylor - gcc maintainer, creator of GNU UUCP Rob Savoye - primary developer of Gnash Tom Lane - member of the core PostgreSQL development team, standardization of JPEG Lou Montulli - co-authored Lynx, came up with HTTP Cookies and HTTP Proxying Jacob Kaplan-Moss - Django maintainer Raymond Hettinger - core developer for Python Margo Seltzer - Berkley DB architect D. Richard Hipp - architect and primary author of SQLite Ben Tilly - developed a bunch of Perl modules Edit: Added standardization of JPEG to Tom Lane's intro.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Isn't Tom Lane the guy behind JPEG or is that another Tom Lane ?
    - luckystrike 17y ago
      Yeah, he is the same guy.
  - petercooper 17y ago
    More on Lou Montulli from Wikipedia: He was also responsible for several browser innovations, such as HTTP cookies, the blink tag, server push and client pull, HTTP proxying, and encouraging the implementation of animated GIFs into the browser.
    - jacabado 17y ago
      haha, the blink tag!! He is the responsible!
  - kragen 17y ago
    Rob and Ian also did a lot of work on GDB, binutils, stuff like that.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
iamelgringo 17y ago
Please, avoid the ad hominem attacks. If you have something to say about the article, say it about the substance of the article, not the tone, or the character of the author. This is hacker news. http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html Zed makes some interesting points about the abuse of open source software in startups. If you read some of his other writings, and don't bite on the troll/flame bait, you can see that he's been pretty upset about the lack of contract work after releasing mongrel. I think that's a fair topic for a good rant. I'd be interested to hear the perspective of other devs of the django/rails crowd weigh in on this topic. How does your contribution to open source contribute to your bottom line?
- SwellJoe 17y ago
  I don't often agree with Zed wholeheartedly, but in this instance I do. I've said pretty much the same thing repeatedly on various license threads here at HN (and I work on projects under both BSD-like and GPL licenses, because the two licenses do result in very different results in the market of ideas and money). Regardless of whether we can name lots of people who've done more (there's always somebody better, no matter what the qualifications, and they're probably better than you and me, too), Zed is absolutely right in this case, and if fame and fortune is part of his motivation for doing this stuff, he should choose licenses that are amenable to that.
- zmimon 17y ago
  A major part of the content Zed's post is his own appraisal of himself and how wonderful he is and how he never gets any attention for what he does. When he makes it the topic himself it's a perfectly valid to discuss whether it's true or not. IMHO his attitude and public persona absolutely may have to do with what he experiences wrt his software. He's obviously brilliant and does great code, but I know I wouldn't hire him as even a temporary contractor because his personality is just incompatible with the needs of a sane business environment.
  - fogus 17y ago
    I'm not sure that you have an authority to make such judgments. The way he is on his personal website may have nothing to do with his professional behavior. We are wired in, so we see his rants and internalize them, but that doesn't mean that they present an accurate picture of reality.
axod 17y ago
I think a lot of his points have merit. Meebo is a multimillion dollar company (est $200m), built mainly off libpurple. I really don't understand how the libpurple developers can look at that situation and not feel hard done by. Tireless work reverse engineering protocols, which is then taken and silently used without real credit, to build multimillion dollar companies :/ I had a discussion about this with some hard core free software people, and they just said they thought libpurple would feel "proud". Well I'm sorry, but if someone was making millions from work I'd done, I wouldn't feed proud in the least. I'd feel like an idiot. (I'm not saying meebo is bad to do this at all. I'm more saying that I don't get how anyone could be motivated to work on an open source project like libpurple without some protection in place).
- DannoHung 17y ago
  I like how you're subtly calling the libpurple developers idiots. Some people can live with making enough money to have a pretty good life and not worrying about maximizing their revenue streams while just being happy that their work has meaning to others.
  - axod 17y ago
    :) That wasn't my intention. I said I would feel like an idiot. Everyone has different viewpoints, and maybe they're happy to donate their work both to end users, and to multimillion dollar companies. The issue I see is that in the case of Meebo for example, a large part of that $200m worth undoubtedly comes from their ability to work with IM protocols - which has been largely 'donated' to them, from open source folks. (Again, I'm not saying Meebo is bad for doing this, I'd do exactly the same). Lets suppose you reverse engineered skype. Would you open source it? Or seek to make at least a little money from it. If you chose to open source, it's likely many others would make money from it instead of you.
    - DannoHung 17y ago
      How on earth would I make money from reverse engineered Skype? I can't even fathom it, the amount of work it would take TO make money from a reverse engineered protocol for communicating with Skype servers. I would not even know where to start. Here's what I think: the $200MM going to Meebo has NOTHING to do with them using the libpurple library. My reasoning: Any other web based chat company would have the same capability to exploit libpurple in their strategy. Web companies don't get funding for their technology ever. They get funding for their eyeballs and stickiness. Finally, on the subject of backhanded insults: Imagine that you were physically speaking with a group of libpurple developers and said, "Boy, if I were in your shoes, I'd feel like a bunch of idiots!"
Quarrelsome 17y ago
unprofessional? Please, he's not a lawyer or a PR agent he's an engineer. An engineer that calls a spade a spade and speaks their mind has the right kind of attitude.
- sunir 17y ago
  This is the Internet age. Everyone with a Facebook, Twitter, or even email account are all in PR. Ask Zappos. A customer or a partner will hold the whole company responnsible for any interaction they have with any if their employees.
  - sunir 17y ago
    Normally I wouldn't reply to my own comment because it has been downvoted to death (that happens), but I'm watching the votes go up and down and that is interesting. I'm not casting judgment on Zed Shaw here, just the immediate comment I replied to. It's important to remember that everything we do or say in public on the Internet adds to or detracts from our reputations. If we are doing so on behalf of another company, then it is the company's reputation that benefits or loses. I took objection to the idea that engineers don't have a PR responsibility. Where I work, all employees do customer support, including developers. How they treat customers matters in how our company is perceived. We just had an interesting discussion on this at Hacker News, in fact: cf. "If You Want to Write Useful Software, You Have to Do Tech Support" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=701990 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=701990 So, I contend that being an engineer/developer does not give you a get out of jail free card. Learning how to engage the public is an important skill for all professionals in this day and age.

by cortesi 17y ago

kragen 17y ago

Other people said it, but you said it better: "his rotten public image, which he carefully crafted himself: crass, erratic, unprofessional, needy and infantile." But yeah, there are a lot of people who are little-known but who have written a lot of the software we use every day, and even successfully built communities around it. Ian Lance Taylor, Rob Savoye, tom lane, Lou Montulli (!), Jacob Kaplan-Moss, Raymond Hettinger, Margo Seltzer, D. Richard Hipp, Ben Tilly, a cast of thousands.

cortesi 17y ago
That's an excellent list! Anyone who doesn't recognise some of these names (I didn't) should google them immediately.
- kragen 17y ago
  It's far from comprehensive; that's just a few people off the top of my head. We should make Free Software Hacker Trading Cards like baseball trading cards or something.
luckystrike 17y ago
Thanks for the list. And for people like me who don't know much about (some of) them, here is a primer: Ian Lance Taylor - gcc maintainer, creator of GNU UUCP Rob Savoye - primary developer of Gnash Tom Lane - member of the core PostgreSQL development team, standardization of JPEG Lou Montulli - co-authored Lynx, came up with HTTP Cookies and HTTP Proxying Jacob Kaplan-Moss - Django maintainer Raymond Hettinger - core developer for Python Margo Seltzer - Berkley DB architect D. Richard Hipp - architect and primary author of SQLite Ben Tilly - developed a bunch of Perl modules Edit: Added standardization of JPEG to Tom Lane's intro.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Isn't Tom Lane the guy behind JPEG or is that another Tom Lane ?
  - luckystrike 17y ago
    Yeah, he is the same guy.
- petercooper 17y ago
  More on Lou Montulli from Wikipedia: He was also responsible for several browser innovations, such as HTTP cookies, the blink tag, server push and client pull, HTTP proxying, and encouraging the implementation of animated GIFs into the browser.
  - jacabado 17y ago
    haha, the blink tag!! He is the responsible!
- kragen 17y ago
  Rob and Ian also did a lot of work on GDB, binutils, stuff like that.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

iamelgringo 17y ago

Please, avoid the ad hominem attacks. If you have something to say about the article, say it about the substance of the article, not the tone, or the character of the author. This is hacker news. http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html Zed makes some interesting points about the abuse of open source software in startups. If you read some of his other writings, and don't bite on the troll/flame bait, you can see that he's been pretty upset about the lack of contract work after releasing mongrel. I think that's a fair topic for a good rant. I'd be interested to hear the perspective of other devs of the django/rails crowd weigh in on this topic. How does your contribution to open source contribute to your bottom line?

SwellJoe 17y ago
I don't often agree with Zed wholeheartedly, but in this instance I do. I've said pretty much the same thing repeatedly on various license threads here at HN (and I work on projects under both BSD-like and GPL licenses, because the two licenses do result in very different results in the market of ideas and money). Regardless of whether we can name lots of people who've done more (there's always somebody better, no matter what the qualifications, and they're probably better than you and me, too), Zed is absolutely right in this case, and if fame and fortune is part of his motivation for doing this stuff, he should choose licenses that are amenable to that.
zmimon 17y ago
A major part of the content Zed's post is his own appraisal of himself and how wonderful he is and how he never gets any attention for what he does. When he makes it the topic himself it's a perfectly valid to discuss whether it's true or not. IMHO his attitude and public persona absolutely may have to do with what he experiences wrt his software. He's obviously brilliant and does great code, but I know I wouldn't hire him as even a temporary contractor because his personality is just incompatible with the needs of a sane business environment.
- fogus 17y ago
  I'm not sure that you have an authority to make such judgments. The way he is on his personal website may have nothing to do with his professional behavior. We are wired in, so we see his rants and internalize them, but that doesn't mean that they present an accurate picture of reality.

axod 17y ago

I think a lot of his points have merit. Meebo is a multimillion dollar company (est $200m), built mainly off libpurple. I really don't understand how the libpurple developers can look at that situation and not feel hard done by. Tireless work reverse engineering protocols, which is then taken and silently used without real credit, to build multimillion dollar companies :/ I had a discussion about this with some hard core free software people, and they just said they thought libpurple would feel "proud". Well I'm sorry, but if someone was making millions from work I'd done, I wouldn't feed proud in the least. I'd feel like an idiot. (I'm not saying meebo is bad to do this at all. I'm more saying that I don't get how anyone could be motivated to work on an open source project like libpurple without some protection in place).

DannoHung 17y ago
I like how you're subtly calling the libpurple developers idiots. Some people can live with making enough money to have a pretty good life and not worrying about maximizing their revenue streams while just being happy that their work has meaning to others.
- axod 17y ago
  :) That wasn't my intention. I said I would feel like an idiot. Everyone has different viewpoints, and maybe they're happy to donate their work both to end users, and to multimillion dollar companies. The issue I see is that in the case of Meebo for example, a large part of that $200m worth undoubtedly comes from their ability to work with IM protocols - which has been largely 'donated' to them, from open source folks. (Again, I'm not saying Meebo is bad for doing this, I'd do exactly the same). Lets suppose you reverse engineered skype. Would you open source it? Or seek to make at least a little money from it. If you chose to open source, it's likely many others would make money from it instead of you.
  - DannoHung 17y ago
    How on earth would I make money from reverse engineered Skype? I can't even fathom it, the amount of work it would take TO make money from a reverse engineered protocol for communicating with Skype servers. I would not even know where to start. Here's what I think: the $200MM going to Meebo has NOTHING to do with them using the libpurple library. My reasoning: Any other web based chat company would have the same capability to exploit libpurple in their strategy. Web companies don't get funding for their technology ever. They get funding for their eyeballs and stickiness. Finally, on the subject of backhanded insults: Imagine that you were physically speaking with a group of libpurple developers and said, "Boy, if I were in your shoes, I'd feel like a bunch of idiots!"

Quarrelsome 17y ago

unprofessional? Please, he's not a lawyer or a PR agent he's an engineer. An engineer that calls a spade a spade and speaks their mind has the right kind of attitude.

sunir 17y ago
This is the Internet age. Everyone with a Facebook, Twitter, or even email account are all in PR. Ask Zappos. A customer or a partner will hold the whole company responnsible for any interaction they have with any if their employees.
- sunir 17y ago
  Normally I wouldn't reply to my own comment because it has been downvoted to death (that happens), but I'm watching the votes go up and down and that is interesting. I'm not casting judgment on Zed Shaw here, just the immediate comment I replied to. It's important to remember that everything we do or say in public on the Internet adds to or detracts from our reputations. If we are doing so on behalf of another company, then it is the company's reputation that benefits or loses. I took objection to the idea that engineers don't have a PR responsibility. Where I work, all employees do customer support, including developers. How they treat customers matters in how our company is perceived. We just had an interesting discussion on this at Hacker News, in fact: cf. "If You Want to Write Useful Software, You Have to Do Tech Support" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=701990 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=701990 So, I contend that being an engineer/developer does not give you a get out of jail free card. Learning how to engage the public is an important skill for all professionals in this day and age.