every day we allow abusive shitstains like richard matthew stallman or eric fucking raymond to stay around or, goddess forbid, direct our communities, we're losing talented people who are driven away by the acceptance of their behaviour.
“the standard you walk past is the standard you accept”
@mawhrin reading that Stallman report turned my stomach. Horrific that he should be anywhere near decision making.
@mawhrin I didn't know Eric Raymond, I read his bio on Wiki and I think you insulted shitstains in this comparison. Shitstains are just stinky, but they don't hurt anyone.
What the actual flamingo is wrong with these people?
@mawhrin the enablers get to stay, people who take a stand get pushed out.
Yes, we're the tech rebels fighting against "the man". Such rebellious, very activism, wow.
@mawhrin And (at least until fairly recently) Linus...
My defense of Linus
Linus isn't as bad as Stallman or Raymond to be fair.
He isn't a gun nut, he isn't a bigot, he isn't a person with weird opinions on child abuse.
Linus is merely an asshole. Also, he''s dialed it back a little bit.
re: My defense of Linus
@burnoutqueen @mawhrin Yes, he hasn't been as egregious as rms or esr in terms of his personal opinions and pushing them on people.
However, he's definitely pushed people away from the FOSS community with his behaviour in the past. Hopefully less so now.
re: My defense of Linus
@diffrentcolours @mawhrin im not denying the fact that Linus can sometimes be overly hostile. I don't condone that behavior
re: My defense of Linus
@burnoutqueen @diffrentcolours tbh i see this more like in jarlath regan's gobshite vs eejit skit [www.youtube.com]. linus is a massive arsehole, but he's not completely a lost cause. the other two can't be redeemed at all.
(but also – as someone stated elsewhere, and i'm paraphrasing – “having no criminal liabilities” is a terribly low bar for accepting someone as a leader. but i guess we're all agreeing on that.)
@mawhrin yes! also, sidenote ive been using "dog" instead of "god" but fuck me goddess is sooo muchhh betttter
@mawhrin @dave_cochran if you go to an event and there’s a Nazi, it’s a nazi event.
@hacks4pancakes @mawhrin Yep. Also, if you go to an event and there's a Nazi, it CAN be an impromptu stress-relief session, depending on ratios
@dave_cochran @hacks4pancakes @mawhrin Too many people having to wait their turn to punch the nazi might be a flashpoint all by itself
@mawhrin Lord Acton said, "Great men are almost always bad men." 1907. I believe Churchill used that quote as well.
We see this proven true in so many areas of our lives. I do want to point out the one exception that I know of: Jimmy Carter. How someone as decent as he ever rose to President is a mystery. Maybe it was the post-Nixon backlash. Having lived through the Carter Presidency, however, I always thought his decency was the main reason he wasn't able to accomplish his goals.
@agreeable_landfall consider this: we see very visible gobshites in positions of power not because they're intrinsically great, but because they're trampling everyone else on the way to the top and ruthlessly appropriate other people's work on their way.
(i also don't buy into the “solitary geniuses” hype; behind every solitary genius is an army of forgotten people.)
@mawhrin talented people have their place in other projects : their help will for sure be appreciated (e.g. on *BSD projects maybe ?).
@EnigmaRotor it rarely works that way; the most probable outcome is that they would have left the field entirely, burned out and disappointed.
(and let's be honest, this problem is not limited to linux communities, no matter how people would want to see it. for example: if you're using ntpsec [ntpsec.org], or funding it, you're helping eric bloody raymond to keep himself afloat in the floss ecosystem)