On Mon, Mar 06, 2006 at 01:17:02AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 11:37:48AM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > > Secondly, I believe the "personality problems" thing is about a quote of > > mine on -private[1] > > Actually it wasn't really a quote at all; if anyone cared I was going > to point at Ted/Jonathan's platform with remarks like "Most of us are > disfunctional in various ways."
Ah. Heh, okay then. [...] > > The claim was not that you need to have certain personality > > problems to be a good Debian Developer; rather, that it takes a certain > > personality type to be at all _interested_ in being a Debian > > Developer---one that is not what most people think of when they think of > > "normal" people. > > You know, I might've said the same thing a year ago, but I think that's > actually really wrong. You have to explain it differently -- you can't > just say "free source makes programs easier to grok, and then you can > hack on it and make it shiny!!" but the principles there are actually > pretty universal: sharing, building better things, openness, cooperation, > friendly competition... You don't have to be remotely abnormal to like > those things. Indeed, you don't. Which, therefore, isn't what I was talking about; I was referring to Debian work specifically, rather than Free Software work in general. Anyway, since you apparently did _not_ refer to me in that context, the point is moot, really; and in the interest of not cluttering -vote more than it already is, I won't go into it any further. I don't feel all that strong about it anyway, so there isn't much to discuss. > > IME, once you have a Niceness Police, people either walk away from the > > police or from discussing altogether; that way, you throw away the kid > > with the bathwater. > > I should probably note I've had... not the opposite experience, but an > opposing one maybe; namely that without anyone being authoritative on > whether something's naughty, you get people arguing about it without > any resolution, with people then leaving due to the bickering about the > rules instead. That happens too; but as you've seen recently on Planet[0], having someone be authoritative on whether something's naughty doesn't always work, either. [0]http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/why_im_not_on_debian-tech-2006-02-28-23-30.html Yes, I read your reply too. IMHO, it doesn't change much; whatever happened after Joey left isn't all that important, since he left because he felt the rules were against him--which is precisely why I think such rules are (or can be) problematic. -- Fun will now commence -- Seven Of Nine, "Ashes to Ashes", stardate 53679.4 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]