Well, that escalated quickly. However, this was handled quite poorly.
Moreover, there are not that many choices of decent browsers. Mozilla has their problems, Chrome/Chromium is a google project. It even gets worse when you think of how few browser engines there are.
In discussions about having more gender parity in programming, I sometimes hear people ask what benefits, specifically, it would provide to the projects themselves. Here's one possible example: if we had a more equitable gender ratio in open-source, we might have have fewer dick-waving contests like that thread. I don't even know what it's about, and I don't care: all the involved participants are just peacocking Internet Tough Guys. What a waste of time.
When considering a sufficiently zoomed-out view of all the different ways to be an asshole, I think you're right. But the particular form of asshole-ishness in this thread– swaggering in and immediately starting with demands ("You will revise your mozconfig..."), responding with passive-aggressive logical handwaving about how the person will never be listened to again ("you are dismissed from all further conversation on this matter...")– is strongly gendered, in my experience, and it's all too common in the open-source world.
The Atwood/Gruber Markdown spat, the Debian/XScreenSaver version warning, and the Bootstrap/JSMin semicolon debacle are all good previous examples of the same dynamic here. In all cases, there were no or very minor actual technical disagreements; all the sound and fury was just men digging in and refusing to give an inch of ground to another person who had very good points, while being as aggressive as possible to guarantee a real resolution couldn't be reached. We could use a lot less of that.
Again. I think you're drawing conclusions where there are none.
For the sake of better fitting your examples. I'll say ego isn't a gendered trait. Versus describing someone as an asshole
Having a massive ego is just a thing that some people have. It's human, and humans are flawed individuals.
Yes. There's a lot more men in computing. So there's a lot more examples of ego clashing from "men". But I'd suspect the dynamic not to change much if it was a true 50/50 split. Or even a complete reversal of the current gender bias (something like 90% men I'm told? it's hard to get accurate statistics)
For a specific citation against this theory (though I try to avoid mailing list fights). I'd point to the Libreboot project. Where the lead (and possibly only?) developer went on a personal crusade against the Free Software Foundation. Using the project as a spearhead to personally demean them for a perceived attack against someone else
One observation about diversity discussions: improved outcomes from diversity are credited to diversity. But worsened outcomes from diversity aren't blamed on diversity.
If you're going to tout problems in stereotypical male/male interactions as evidence in favor of more gender parity, I think you should be prepared to accept problems in stereotypical male/female interactions as evidence against more gender parity.
You didn't say anything about problems in stereotypical male/female interactions at all, so this objection technically doesn't apply to you. But I don't imagine that, had the interaction been a bad one between a male and a female in some stereotypical way, you would count it as an example of the drawbacks of more gender parity.
I am glad that tech is becoming a more welcoming place for women, and everyone benefits when men (or anyone) improve their communication and conflict resolution skills. But I find most discussions about the benefits of diversity to be disingenuous, because diversity is praised for desirable outcomes but escapes blame for undesirable outcomes.
2.
> What a waste of time.
Among the criticisms you could level here (and I agree this exchange warrants plenty of criticism) "waste of time" doesn't ring true to me. The participants resolved the dispute rapidly.
How bizarre. I can't say I've ever used Pale Moon or particularly care about it, but the behavior in that thread would have had me eject and find something different pretty much immediately.
Starting off with such forceful language and without a hint of wanting to deal with the issue in an amicable manner is nuts. The first guy comes across as an asshole, and no one wants to deal with assholes - it's perfectly reasonable to ask to talk with the rights holder and hope they're more reasonable.
Unfortunately, it turns out the rights holder isn't any more reasonable. An immediate 'I will not be as educational next time' is a clear threat, even though he tries to backpedal away from it later.
And then we find out that the person working on the port approached the Palemoon people days ago asking about the proper way to do things, etc.
So, in the end, we have a WIP repo that does not in any way show up in the official ports tree for OpenBSD, with someone trying to do things the Right Way, getting pushed around by two people being assholes.
Now, for the technical merit: Forcing people to use special bundled libraries instead of system libraries is dumb in the vast majority of cases, especially in something that will be running untrusted code as a basic function. Like, say, a web browser. It significantly increases the amount of work required to make sure you are running a system protected against known vulnerabilities. The reasoning seems to be that whatever they're doing in the browser seems to not play nice with the upstream libs, so they've instead started doing god know's what with libs they now bundle with it. Why don't the fix the issues in their own project? No idea. If they're actually flaws with the libs, why not submit upstream patches? Not only do you have to worry about them making sure they are quickly backporting any security related fixes, you also have to worry that whatever modifications they've made might open up new security bugs, or potentially nullify fixes from upstream.
The whole MPL style branding nonsense is also bizarre and something I think is incredibly counter to the spirit of the open source software movement. It was silly with Firefox and Iceweasel, it's silly now.
Questionable technical decisions, questionable behavior, questionable commitment to the spirit of open source software.
"but the behavior in that thread would have had me eject and find something different pretty much immediately."
Ditto. And I speak as a PaleMoon user as it's the browser of choice on all my machines. They could be right on principle, but the OP had no right to act as an ass that way.
So, the question is, have you followed through on that feeling and dumped PaleMoon as a result? The only way they feel the pain of their behavior is if users leave due to that behavior.
After reading the whole threads both on github and Pale Moon forums, I believe the best option is to migrate everything back to Firefox and dump it. Unless they either sincerely and publicly apologize for being so rude or kick that guy off the project. But I'm not holding my breath for that.
22 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 61.9 ms ] threadhttps://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2018-Febru...
Moreover, there are not that many choices of decent browsers. Mozilla has their problems, Chrome/Chromium is a google project. It even gets worse when you think of how few browser engines there are.
That's obvious.
From my experience. Being an asshole is not a gendered trait
When considering a sufficiently zoomed-out view of all the different ways to be an asshole, I think you're right. But the particular form of asshole-ishness in this thread– swaggering in and immediately starting with demands ("You will revise your mozconfig..."), responding with passive-aggressive logical handwaving about how the person will never be listened to again ("you are dismissed from all further conversation on this matter...")– is strongly gendered, in my experience, and it's all too common in the open-source world.
The Atwood/Gruber Markdown spat, the Debian/XScreenSaver version warning, and the Bootstrap/JSMin semicolon debacle are all good previous examples of the same dynamic here. In all cases, there were no or very minor actual technical disagreements; all the sound and fury was just men digging in and refusing to give an inch of ground to another person who had very good points, while being as aggressive as possible to guarantee a real resolution couldn't be reached. We could use a lot less of that.
For the sake of better fitting your examples. I'll say ego isn't a gendered trait. Versus describing someone as an asshole
Having a massive ego is just a thing that some people have. It's human, and humans are flawed individuals.
Yes. There's a lot more men in computing. So there's a lot more examples of ego clashing from "men". But I'd suspect the dynamic not to change much if it was a true 50/50 split. Or even a complete reversal of the current gender bias (something like 90% men I'm told? it's hard to get accurate statistics)
For a specific citation against this theory (though I try to avoid mailing list fights). I'd point to the Libreboot project. Where the lead (and possibly only?) developer went on a personal crusade against the Free Software Foundation. Using the project as a spearhead to personally demean them for a perceived attack against someone else
One observation about diversity discussions: improved outcomes from diversity are credited to diversity. But worsened outcomes from diversity aren't blamed on diversity.
If you're going to tout problems in stereotypical male/male interactions as evidence in favor of more gender parity, I think you should be prepared to accept problems in stereotypical male/female interactions as evidence against more gender parity.
You didn't say anything about problems in stereotypical male/female interactions at all, so this objection technically doesn't apply to you. But I don't imagine that, had the interaction been a bad one between a male and a female in some stereotypical way, you would count it as an example of the drawbacks of more gender parity.
I am glad that tech is becoming a more welcoming place for women, and everyone benefits when men (or anyone) improve their communication and conflict resolution skills. But I find most discussions about the benefits of diversity to be disingenuous, because diversity is praised for desirable outcomes but escapes blame for undesirable outcomes.
2.
> What a waste of time.
Among the criticisms you could level here (and I agree this exchange warrants plenty of criticism) "waste of time" doesn't ring true to me. The participants resolved the dispute rapidly.
Starting off with such forceful language and without a hint of wanting to deal with the issue in an amicable manner is nuts. The first guy comes across as an asshole, and no one wants to deal with assholes - it's perfectly reasonable to ask to talk with the rights holder and hope they're more reasonable.
Unfortunately, it turns out the rights holder isn't any more reasonable. An immediate 'I will not be as educational next time' is a clear threat, even though he tries to backpedal away from it later.
And then we find out that the person working on the port approached the Palemoon people days ago asking about the proper way to do things, etc.
So, in the end, we have a WIP repo that does not in any way show up in the official ports tree for OpenBSD, with someone trying to do things the Right Way, getting pushed around by two people being assholes.
Now, for the technical merit: Forcing people to use special bundled libraries instead of system libraries is dumb in the vast majority of cases, especially in something that will be running untrusted code as a basic function. Like, say, a web browser. It significantly increases the amount of work required to make sure you are running a system protected against known vulnerabilities. The reasoning seems to be that whatever they're doing in the browser seems to not play nice with the upstream libs, so they've instead started doing god know's what with libs they now bundle with it. Why don't the fix the issues in their own project? No idea. If they're actually flaws with the libs, why not submit upstream patches? Not only do you have to worry about them making sure they are quickly backporting any security related fixes, you also have to worry that whatever modifications they've made might open up new security bugs, or potentially nullify fixes from upstream.
The whole MPL style branding nonsense is also bizarre and something I think is incredibly counter to the spirit of the open source software movement. It was silly with Firefox and Iceweasel, it's silly now.
Questionable technical decisions, questionable behavior, questionable commitment to the spirit of open source software.
I'll pass.
Ditto. And I speak as a PaleMoon user as it's the browser of choice on all my machines. They could be right on principle, but the OP had no right to act as an ass that way.
(edit: posted by mistake on top thread)
I dumped Pale Moon a while ago because it was generally terrible, and have had better luck with Waterfox.