attitude of the foss community
Signed-off-by: Nico Schottelius <nico@freiheit.schottelius.org>
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blog/attitude-of-the-foss-community-a-matter-of-perspective.mdwn
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[[!meta title="Attitude of the FOSS community - a matter of perspective"]]
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It is a sunny day in the mountains,
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[Glarus](https://www.google.ch/maps/place/Glarus/@46.9998482,9.0581153,21037m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x4785318a3a76c851:0x823354d3ed5144b2?hl=en).
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I am on the train, reading what is going on in the Internet,
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reading my private, self aggregated "newspaper".
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[Lennart is complaining](https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13rdjryqyn1xlt3522sxpugoz3gujbhh04)
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about how bad the FOSS community is [to him], which made me feel sad
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for him. This blog post is devoted for him and everyone who
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is feeling being traited unjust in the FOSS community.
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## A short word about me
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You may have not heard much about me, as I used to keep out of public
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discussions so far, especially when they are not
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[fruitful (2nd meaning)](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fruitful).
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I am the maintainer (co-author) of
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[[gpm|software/gpm]], an [[init system|software/cinit]],
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a [[backup utility|software/ccollect]],
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a [[configuration management system|software/cdist]] and
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some [[more software|software]]. I am the CEO of
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[[!ungleich]] and have been active in the FOSS community since 1998.
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People who use my software have shining eyes, usually
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contribute the software in form of ideas, code or even
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better: in form of praise, which motivates any FOSS coder.
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In short: I love the FOSS community, because they do good to me.
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## The FOSS community
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The FOSS community in my opinion is very friendly, open minded
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and helpful. Very geeky, sometimes a more active, sometimes less.
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There are many great tools being developed, beer being drunken
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and also heated discussions led, when it comes to
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**personal opinions**.
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I receive pull requests for the software I have written on a daily basis,
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discuss how to integrate them, into which direction we should develop.
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(Virtual) friends pass interesting links to me, we compare software and
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find out which architecture is superior in which regards to another.
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Questions from newbies are mostly answered by the community around
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me and our newbies turn into gurus and begin to answer questions to
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newbies (read [[!howtobecomeahacker]] and [[!howtoasksmartquestions]]
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to understand how it works).
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The alert reader may have noticed I am not talking about
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the Linux community as Lennart does. Why not?
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Because there is **much more than just Linux** in the FOSS community.
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## Linux is a small part of the existing FOSS
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Linux is **one** successful FOSS project, but everyone being in the
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FOSS community knows that there is much more than just Linux.
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The BSDs are developing pretty cool architectures and great
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software (like [[!openssh]]) and in my opinion there is a
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great potential to work more closely together. I am not going to name
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all great software here, however if you are coming from a Linux only world,
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it may be helpful to know there are other worlds that form the FOSS community.
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Everytime I develop software, I have take care of how to make it portable
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to other Unices. I think it is rather closed minded to focus on Linux
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only software, especially when a great (I mean it) standard
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([[!posix]]) exists that allows us to easily write portable software.
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## What goes around, comes around
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You probably have heard of the idiom **What goes around, comes around**,
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it is rather old (wikipedians: cite needed) and it means "the way
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you behave towards other people will be reflected by them and it is how
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they behave towards you".
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So if you are yelling at someone, trying to force someone to do something
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or rant about other's software, you are likely to experience this as well.
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## A question of life and attitude
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Dear reader, did you ever have a (car) accident? Or have you watched one?
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Maybe you will have noticed that the two involved parties usually have a
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completly different picture of what just happened.
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This is true for every situation in life, how you see a situation depends
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on your point of view, on your situation. So a lot of how your world *is*
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depends on your view.
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It is also important to note that
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**there are two sides to every question** and it is about you how you interpret
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it.
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## A pinch of spirituality and scout behaviour
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I will not go into beliefs here, but if you have met spiritual people in
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your life you may have noticed a lot of them being positively. You may
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have asked yourself if it is it because of drugs or the way the live?
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If you have been a scout, you may remember the maxim
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**do a good deed every day** - imagine everyone does this, there is a high
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chance somebody will do something good to you, every day.
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## Summary and suggestions
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So why do people love software I have written and don't collect money
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for hitman to go after me? Maybe I am brilliant and they felt so deep in love
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with the design that they don't think about it - maybe it is because I do not
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(try to) force anyone to use it.
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I am happy to learn from critics and the way I am, I attract positively thinking people.
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So anyone who is unhappy with how you are treated (by the FOSS community),
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here are some suggestions for you:
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* Be friendly - and the echo will be the same
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* Have an opinion, but don't force it to someone else
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* Think twice about what you write, especially if it can be interpreted offensive
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* Don't be ignorant, treat people with respect
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## Comments
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As usual, please leave your comments on hackernews.
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[[!tag net foss unix]]
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@ -26,3 +26,7 @@
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* [[!shortcut name=dry desc="DRY principle" url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_repeat_yourself"]]
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* [[!shortcut name=xaccel desc="X-Accel" url="http://wiki.nginx.org/X-accel"]]
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* [[!shortcut name=rails desc="Ruby on Rails" url="http://rubyonrails.org/"]]
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* [[!shortcut name=howtobecomeahacker decs="How To Become A Hacker (esr)" url="http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html"]]
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* [[!shortcut name=howtoasksmartquestions decs="How To Ask Questions The Smart Way (esr)" url="http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html"]]
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* [[!shortcut name=openssh decs="OpenSSH" url="http://www.openssh.com/"]]
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* [[!shortcut name=posix decs="The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7" url="http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/"]]
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