Re: The importance of civil communication on the list (was Re: Fucked up gnustep-make)

[Jeff Teunissen]

Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf wrote:
> Am 15.02.2007 um 15:32 schrieb Jeff Teunissen:

[snip]

>> Why, why WHY in the name of all that is good should anyone in a  
>> Free Software
>> project act professional?
> 
> Because we want GNUstep to be successful? Because that means GNUstep  
> has to be used in professional environments for that? Because we  
> gain, given GNUstep is used professionally, better code review,  
> better stability, more applications developed using GNUstep, more  
> testing, lesser bugs.

Flat-out wrong. What is being referred to as "Professionalism" is something
that human beings do not do on their own. "Professionalism" is the bloodless
rote stupidity enforced in corporations from the top down, from a world where
the whole job is about not giving anyone something bad to say about you.

That's machinery, not people. Real boats rock.

>> It's not a company, it's a hobby.
> 
> That attitude of some currently shows in GNUstep. Some professional  
> developers I talked to regard GNUstep as a playtoy of grown up boys  
> because of the overall quality. If for instance the Apache guys had  
> the same attitude nobody would (and could) use Apache (professionally).

Wrong again. If the Apache guys weren't having fun, we'd all be using the NCSA
(or even the crappy CERN) httpd. If a certain Finnish grad student wasn't
having fun with his terminal program, we wouldn't have Linux...and whaddaya
know, he had some flame wars along the way. There are technical flame wars
aplenty in any healthy project, arguing (and often heatedly) about technical
differences of opinion. And guess what? The projects aren't successful
_despite_ this, but partially because of it.

The best way to destroy a project is to make it seem like a job.

-- 
| Jeff Teunissen -=- Pres., Dusk To Dawn Computing -=- deek at d2dc.net
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| Core developer, The QuakeForge Project     http://www.quakeforge.net/
| Specializing in Debian GNU/Linux           http://www.d2dc.net/~deek/