www.nico.schottelius.org/blog/attitude-of-the-foss-community-a-matter-of-perspective.mdwn

[[!meta title="Attitude of the FOSS community - a matter of perspective"]]

It is a sunny day in the mountains, 
[Glarus](https://www.google.ch/maps/place/Glarus/@46.9998482,9.0581153,21037m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x4785318a3a76c851:0x823354d3ed5144b2?hl=en).
I am on the train, reading what is going on in the Internet.
Reading my private, self aggregated "newspaper".
[Lennart is complaining](https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13rdjryqyn1xlt3522sxpugoz3gujbhh04) 
about how bad the FOSS community is [to him], which made me feel sad 
for him. This blog post is devoted for him and everyone who
is feeling being traited unjust in the FOSS community.

## A short word about me

You may have not heard much about me, as I used to keep out of public 
discussions for a long time, especially when they are not 
[fruitful (2nd meaning)](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fruitful).

I am the maintainer or author of 
[[gpm|software/gpm]], an [[init system|software/cinit]],
a [[backup utility|software/ccollect]],
a [[configuration management system|software/cdist]] and
some [[more software|software]]. I am the CEO of
[[!ungleich]] and have been active in the FOSS community since 1998.

People who use my software have shining eyes, usually
contribute the software in form of ideas, code or even
better: in form of praise, which motivates any FOSS coder.

In short: I love the FOSS community, because they do good to me.

## The FOSS community 

In my opinion the FOSS community is very friendly, open minded
and helpful. It consists of many geeky people, 
introverted and extroverted, developers, sysadmins and 
also the users.

There are many great tools being developed, beer being drunken
and also heated discussions led, when it comes to 
**personal opinions**.

### How I experience the FOSS communit

I receive pull requests for the software I have written on a daily basis,
discuss how to integrate them, into which direction we should develop. 
(Virtual) friends pass interesting links to me, we compare software and 
find out which architecture is superior in which regards to another.

Questions from newbies are mostly answered by the community around
me and our newbies turn into gurus and begin to answer questions to
newbies (read [[!howtobecomeahacker]] and [[!howtoasksmartquestions]]
to understand how it works).

The alert reader may have noticed I am not talking about
the Linux community as Lennart does. Why not?
Because in my opinion there is **much more than just Linux** 
in the FOSS community.

## Linux is a small part of the existing FOSS

Linux is one successful FOSS project, but everyone being in the
FOSS community knows that there is much more than just Linux.
The BSDs are developing pretty cool architectures and great 
software (like [[!openssh]]) and in my opinion there is a 
great potential to work more closely together. I am not going to name
all great software here, however if you are coming from a Linux only world,
it may be helpful to know there are other worlds that form the FOSS community.

Everytime I develop software, I have take care of how to make it portable
to other Unices. I think it is rather closed minded to focus on Linux 
only software, especially when a great standard 
([[!posix]]) exists that allows us to easily write portable software.

So in short, if you consider Linux being the only plattform
to develop for and do not respect the work of others (there is
a reason for Posix), people may not respect you either.

## What goes around, comes around

You probably have heard of the idiom **What goes around, comes around**,
it is rather old (wikipedians: cite needed) and it means "the way
you behave towards other people will be reflected by them and it is how
they behave towards you".

So if you are yelling at someone, trying to force someone to do something
or rant about other's software, you are likely to experience this as well.

## A question of life and attitude

Dear reader, did you ever have a (car) accident? Or have you watched one?
Maybe you will have noticed that the two involved parties usually have a
completly different picture of what just happened. 
This is true for every situation in life, how you see a situation depends
on your point of view, on your situation. So a lot of how your world *is*
depends on your view.
It is also important to note that 
**there are two sides to every question** and it is about you, your
attitude and experience to see the right side.

## A pinch of spirituality and scout behaviour

I will not go into beliefs here, but if you have met spiritual people in
your life you may have noticed a lot of them being positively. You may
have asked yourself if it is it because of drugs or the way the live?

If you have been a scout, you may remember the maxim
**do a good deed every day** - imagine everyone does this, there is a high
chance somebody will do something good to you, every day.

## Summary and suggestions

So why do people love software I have written and don't collect money
for hitman to go after me? Maybe I am brilliant and they have fallen 
so deep in love with the software I wrote that they don't think about it - 
or maybe it is because I treat people with respect.
I think being able to to learn from critics is also very helpful and
to **expect the best, prepare for the worst** when you are communicating
can change your life to experience it very positively.

So anyone who is unhappy with how you are treated (by the FOSS community),
here are some suggestions for you:

 * Be friendly - and the echo will be the same
 * Have an opinion, but don't force it to someone else
 * Think twice about what you write, especially if it can be interpreted offensive
 * Don't be ignorant, treat people with respect

## Comments

If you want to add some suggestions or have other improvement ideas, 
you can either leave a comment on 
[hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8417176) or 
[[!twitter NicoSchottelius]].

[[!tag net foss unix]]