gravityboy ([info]gravityboy) wrote,
@ 2006-03-17 00:30:00
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Politics
After listening to a lecture by the illustrious Dr. Gabriella ("biella") Coleman on the ethics of Free Software hackers yesterday, I read the expulsion thread on -devel. Hearing what biella talked about makes me think that Debian, as a culture, isn't ready to start expelling people based on their ability to get along with the rest of the project. It conflicts far too much with our ideals. On the other hand, drumming a person out so they feel so unwelcome that they choose to leave is pretty well Ok with us. If we're going to make interactions between developers more civil and friendly and less personally hostile then we need a different kind of stick. Maybe a carrot of sorts is in order too?

In other news, I've proposed a mechanism to "facilitate communication" so that the DPL candidates can stop repeating it every year. This mechanism is inherent in the constitution, and if we start expecting that the DPL assume this responsibility and exercise this right, it'll actually happen and the DPL will at least have some more concrete way in which to do some leading. Maybe it'll help the whole project gain some momentum and not get bogged down by some of the long-running debates that have plagued us in the past.

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[info]decklin
2006-03-17 10:35 pm UTC (link)
I don't know. I think that when people are rude and confrontational it detracts from those ideals too. Debian is cool on a technical level and all that, but that's not why I'm in it -- I want everyone's computers to be free. I think the cultural gap between us and my non-technical friends is not so much that they don't know how to program, it's that they don't enjoy bickering with strangers on the internet.

Obviously, trying to kick people out generates a lot of immediate friction, but in the long run I think we would be less of a soap opera and more of a "hey, that does neat things, I want to try it out" (does it exist because it's cool and fun, or because it gives us something to argue and stroke our egos about?) if people knew that after a certain point, wasting everyone's time with endless flamewars would not be tolerated. An armed society is a polite society, you know?

I appreciate that people who don't necessarily play nice with others still want to contribute somehow, but Debian is not the entire free software world -- they'd probably be better of as a lone upstream developer or something, and letting other people solve the problems of cooperating and integrating.

(And to people who want to join and do the cooperating part, we must seem hostile. I think that raises the bar unneccessarily.)

I think your message is good. I am not all together happy that none of the DPL candidates are running on an "I'm actually going to take the helm and decide things rather than herding cats" platform. Making a couple weak nods in that direction, but nothing ever happens. It's enough to make me think about doing it, but I **really** don't have that kind of leadership personality.

I think that's where we need to start -- a lot of people hate the idea that anyone might be forced to do something (i.e. leave) so that the project as a whole can do a better job. This is absolutely a cultural problem, but I think part of the problem is that no one acts as if they have the authority to do anything (which means no one uses that authority to accomplish something good), so whenever this happens, it's easy to say, "how dare you!" If people were used to making a little personal sacrifice, they might start to appreciate the value of getting something done besides personal vindication.

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