4 ms·

I really love how we keep getting advice. Anyone want to suggest we hold a bake sale? It's funny to hear this sort of thing from someone trying to accrue $20k

I really love how we keep getting advice. Anyone want to suggest we hold a bake sale? It's funny to hear this sort of thing from someone trying to accrue $20k in donations. Yes, many people will give bad advice. No, you don't really get to complain about it when you are asking them for large sums of money.

doktrin 13y ago
It's kind of off-putting, to be honest. This quintessential open-source abrasiveness is fine and dandy until you start asking for cold hard cash.
- Fomite 13y ago
  This. Don't be a dick to people giving you money - customers or donors. If you can't turn it off, don't be donor facing.
  - vinceguidry 13y ago
    Sure, they should totally just get their PR person on it. Oh look, now they're asking for $40,000
    - Fomite 13y ago
      Is there no one at OpenBSD who can't not be a dick? The situation is more dire than I thought.
    - jethro_tell 13y ago
      From what I can tell the current mentality is: We don't need to accept feature requests or patches to get donors, we could just get more users and sell CDs "oh Look here's a poor idiot in the Mailing list that didn't become a UNIX expert before asking a question, let's flame the shit out of him." Alright Let's collect some money. Wanna know why? fuck you it! It just needs to be this way. Wanna help or suggest a solution? fuck you unless it's a check. How is this system not working?
      - vinceguidry 13y ago
        I'm sure they have their reasons and they've already carefully thought through all of the most common suggestions. The project's been around for awhile.
        doktrin 13y ago
        Frankly, that sounds a lot like an appeal to authority. "They probably are doing the right thing because they are who they are" isn't really a valid argument.
        vinceguidry 13y ago
        You must be a hoot at parties.
        jethro_tell 13y ago
        That's probably true, a simple, polite answer or even a no comment would be far less abrasive. Here's his answer to 'maybe we should evaluate the scope of the project and see if we still need to support VAX': >Now, If you don't realize this is the reason we try to run on the older platforms, I am sorry but you have really not tried to stay in the loop of what makes OpenBSD a vibrant ecosystem. If you aren't in the loop regarding this, then your mail comes off pretty darn preachy. >I really love how we keep getting advice. >Anyone want to suggest we hold a bake sale? A simple no answer would do. Or maybe just the actual reason he runs the VAX.
    - coolnow 13y ago
      You don't need a PR person; you just need someone who's not a dick.
      - vinceguidry 13y ago
        I daresay any of their developers would quickly turn into dicks having to deal with that kind of public exposure.
        jethro_tell 13y ago
        And that's where disenfranchising non dev types is a real problem. Theo talks about pulling devs to make shirts and stickers and how that's a waste of time, but there are people out there that aren't kernel hackers that love to contribute to something bigger than themselves. No one's good at everything and the OpenBSD persona of being for and including only experts has made them a very lopsided organization with loads of talent but no diversity of skills. Being nice to stupid people is as much of a skill as hacking up some kernel code.
        keithpeter 13y ago
        "Being nice to stupid people is as much of a skill as hacking up some kernel code." I'd rephrase that as 'finding simple tasks peripheral to the main effort that would allow non-expert people to contribute time to the project without detracting from the main work'.
        vinceguidry 13y ago
        I'm not saying you're wrong. But we have to get realistic here, OpenBSD is not going to turn into Canonical, not overnight, maybe not ever. I'm sure we would all love for it to suddenly sprout a bedside manner, but it probably won't, and you or me sitting around saying it needs one isn't helpful. What we can rely on it being is technologically awesome. What else can you say that about? If you try to change the culture of OpenBSD, assuming that's even possible, the quality will inevitably suffer. Could you honestly say you'd prefer OpenBSD to be more like Ubuntu?
    - transitionality 13y ago
      We need PR people to devote their time and expertise to open source projects, just as developers do. We wouldn't even need a very good one. I bet some kid still in school, studying PR, would do a better job than Theo.
toyg 13y ago
I guess you don't know Theo de Raadt ;) The guy is infamous for being one of the most aggressive, sarcastic and trollish OSS developers out there. He's been like that for 20+ years, he's not going to change just because they are 20 grand short. Part of the success OpenBSD has enjoyed is in fact due to this uncompromising attitude: Theo pushed hard against security-by-obscurity, binary blobs, undocumented proprietary hardware and poor development practices. With openSSH, they pretty much set the bar for security-related programs the wotld over. At the same time, Theo's personality routinely drives away a lot of very capable developers and users, which limited the overall popularity OpenBSD could ever reach.
- jethro_tell 13y ago
  >At the same time, Theo's personality routinely drives away a lot of very capable developers and users, which limited the overall popularity OpenBSD could ever reach. It would be nice if we could all work in an environment where we could be abrasive as we want and still get paid. But this is life and not many people have that opportunity. If Theo want's to put up a fight about blobs and proprietary hardware, he should do that. Talking down to people who genuinely agree about his goals and are trying to help is really self destructive.
  - andrewem 13y ago
    A couple relevant quotes from the justly famous talk "You and Your Research", by Richard Hamming: "If you chose to assert your ego in any number of ways, ``I am going to do it my way,'' you pay a small steady price throughout the whole of your professional career. And this, over a whole lifetime, adds up to an enormous amount of needless trouble." "I am not saying you shouldn't make gestures of reform. I am saying that my study of able people is that they don't get themselves committed to that kind of warfare. They play it a little bit and drop it and get on with their work. " http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    > where we could be abrasive as we want and still get paid If your code is wrong, I'll say it's wrong. I won't say you are an idiot, I won't make comments on your background and I won't judge you when I should be judging your arguments. I'll point what's wrong and why I think it's so and I'll welcome you if you prove me wrong and adjust my views accordingly. Excessive abrasiveness is not a good trait for a community leader.
lsc 13y ago
>No, you don't really get to complain about it when you are asking them for large sums of money. Attitudes like this are a big part of why I am far happier to run a for-profit business at near-breakeven than I am running a not-for-profit or cooperative enterprise. $20K is... rather less than what my RHEL bill would be if I was using RHEL and not CentOS. I mean, I'm a pretty small shop, and $20K is a lot of money for me (thus I'm using CentOS and not RHEL.) - but by the standards of a whole operating system? twenty grand is small potatoes. Hell, /my/ power bill is rather more than $20K a year.

doktrin 13y ago

It's kind of off-putting, to be honest. This quintessential open-source abrasiveness is fine and dandy until you start asking for cold hard cash.

Fomite 13y ago
This. Don't be a dick to people giving you money - customers or donors. If you can't turn it off, don't be donor facing.
- vinceguidry 13y ago
  Sure, they should totally just get their PR person on it. Oh look, now they're asking for $40,000
  - Fomite 13y ago
    Is there no one at OpenBSD who can't not be a dick? The situation is more dire than I thought.
  - jethro_tell 13y ago
    From what I can tell the current mentality is: We don't need to accept feature requests or patches to get donors, we could just get more users and sell CDs "oh Look here's a poor idiot in the Mailing list that didn't become a UNIX expert before asking a question, let's flame the shit out of him." Alright Let's collect some money. Wanna know why? fuck you it! It just needs to be this way. Wanna help or suggest a solution? fuck you unless it's a check. How is this system not working?
    - vinceguidry 13y ago
      I'm sure they have their reasons and they've already carefully thought through all of the most common suggestions. The project's been around for awhile.
      - doktrin 13y ago
        Frankly, that sounds a lot like an appeal to authority. "They probably are doing the right thing because they are who they are" isn't really a valid argument.
        vinceguidry 13y ago
        You must be a hoot at parties.
      - jethro_tell 13y ago
        That's probably true, a simple, polite answer or even a no comment would be far less abrasive. Here's his answer to 'maybe we should evaluate the scope of the project and see if we still need to support VAX': >Now, If you don't realize this is the reason we try to run on the older platforms, I am sorry but you have really not tried to stay in the loop of what makes OpenBSD a vibrant ecosystem. If you aren't in the loop regarding this, then your mail comes off pretty darn preachy. >I really love how we keep getting advice. >Anyone want to suggest we hold a bake sale? A simple no answer would do. Or maybe just the actual reason he runs the VAX.
  - coolnow 13y ago
    You don't need a PR person; you just need someone who's not a dick.
    - vinceguidry 13y ago
      I daresay any of their developers would quickly turn into dicks having to deal with that kind of public exposure.
      - jethro_tell 13y ago
        And that's where disenfranchising non dev types is a real problem. Theo talks about pulling devs to make shirts and stickers and how that's a waste of time, but there are people out there that aren't kernel hackers that love to contribute to something bigger than themselves. No one's good at everything and the OpenBSD persona of being for and including only experts has made them a very lopsided organization with loads of talent but no diversity of skills. Being nice to stupid people is as much of a skill as hacking up some kernel code.
        keithpeter 13y ago
        "Being nice to stupid people is as much of a skill as hacking up some kernel code." I'd rephrase that as 'finding simple tasks peripheral to the main effort that would allow non-expert people to contribute time to the project without detracting from the main work'.
        vinceguidry 13y ago
        I'm not saying you're wrong. But we have to get realistic here, OpenBSD is not going to turn into Canonical, not overnight, maybe not ever. I'm sure we would all love for it to suddenly sprout a bedside manner, but it probably won't, and you or me sitting around saying it needs one isn't helpful. What we can rely on it being is technologically awesome. What else can you say that about? If you try to change the culture of OpenBSD, assuming that's even possible, the quality will inevitably suffer. Could you honestly say you'd prefer OpenBSD to be more like Ubuntu?
  - transitionality 13y ago
    We need PR people to devote their time and expertise to open source projects, just as developers do. We wouldn't even need a very good one. I bet some kid still in school, studying PR, would do a better job than Theo.

toyg 13y ago

I guess you don't know Theo de Raadt ;) The guy is infamous for being one of the most aggressive, sarcastic and trollish OSS developers out there. He's been like that for 20+ years, he's not going to change just because they are 20 grand short. Part of the success OpenBSD has enjoyed is in fact due to this uncompromising attitude: Theo pushed hard against security-by-obscurity, binary blobs, undocumented proprietary hardware and poor development practices. With openSSH, they pretty much set the bar for security-related programs the wotld over. At the same time, Theo's personality routinely drives away a lot of very capable developers and users, which limited the overall popularity OpenBSD could ever reach.

jethro_tell 13y ago
>At the same time, Theo's personality routinely drives away a lot of very capable developers and users, which limited the overall popularity OpenBSD could ever reach. It would be nice if we could all work in an environment where we could be abrasive as we want and still get paid. But this is life and not many people have that opportunity. If Theo want's to put up a fight about blobs and proprietary hardware, he should do that. Talking down to people who genuinely agree about his goals and are trying to help is really self destructive.
- andrewem 13y ago
  A couple relevant quotes from the justly famous talk "You and Your Research", by Richard Hamming: "If you chose to assert your ego in any number of ways, ``I am going to do it my way,'' you pay a small steady price throughout the whole of your professional career. And this, over a whole lifetime, adds up to an enormous amount of needless trouble." "I am not saying you shouldn't make gestures of reform. I am saying that my study of able people is that they don't get themselves committed to that kind of warfare. They play it a little bit and drop it and get on with their work. " http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
- rbanffy 13y ago
  > where we could be abrasive as we want and still get paid If your code is wrong, I'll say it's wrong. I won't say you are an idiot, I won't make comments on your background and I won't judge you when I should be judging your arguments. I'll point what's wrong and why I think it's so and I'll welcome you if you prove me wrong and adjust my views accordingly. Excessive abrasiveness is not a good trait for a community leader.

lsc 13y ago

>No, you don't really get to complain about it when you are asking them for large sums of money. Attitudes like this are a big part of why I am far happier to run a for-profit business at near-breakeven than I am running a not-for-profit or cooperative enterprise. $20K is... rather less than what my RHEL bill would be if I was using RHEL and not CentOS. I mean, I'm a pretty small shop, and $20K is a lot of money for me (thus I'm using CentOS and not RHEL.) - but by the standards of a whole operating system? twenty grand is small potatoes. Hell, /my/ power bill is rather more than $20K a year.