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Building healthy community

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Building healthy community Dave Neary 28 Jul 12:34
  Building healthy community Nathan Summers 30 Jul 19:05
  Building healthy community Mukund 31 Jul 19:22
   Building healthy community Florent Monnier 01 Aug 15:17
    Building healthy community Mukund 01 Aug 15:59
Dave Neary
2006-07-28 12:34:29 UTC (over 17 years ago)

Building healthy community

Hi,

http://www.oreillynet.com/conferences/blog/2006/07/oscon_how_open_source_projects.html

During OSCon, Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick of Subversion fame gave a talk which was apparently very interesting on how free software projects can survive poisonous people.

There's lots of good advice in there, including: * Document your community, decisions and processes * Have healthy collaboration practices * Avoid names in source code - use revision history for documenting who did what, to avoid ownership of code/modules

Anyway, it seems pertinent for the GIMP developers community, and perhaps a starting point for putting in place some better practices.

Cheers, Dave.

Nathan Summers
2006-07-30 19:05:30 UTC (over 17 years ago)

Building healthy community

On 7/28/06, Dave Neary wrote:

Hi,

http://www.oreillynet.com/conferences/blog/2006/07/oscon_how_open_source_projects.html

These seem like very good practices.

Rockwalrus

Mukund
2006-07-31 19:22:59 UTC (over 17 years ago)

Building healthy community

On Fri, 2006-07-28 at 12:34 +0200, Dave Neary wrote:

Hi,

http://www.oreillynet.com/conferences/blog/2006/07/oscon_how_open_source_projects.html

During OSCon, Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick of Subversion fame gave a talk which was apparently very interesting on how free software projects can survive poisonous people.

There's lots of good advice in there, including: * Document your community, decisions and processes * Have healthy collaboration practices * Avoid names in source code - use revision history for documenting who did what, to avoid ownership of code/modules

Anyway, it seems pertinent for the GIMP developers community, and perhaps a starting point for putting in place some better practices.

I want to add a note about a friendly attitude.

I was an early adopter of Subversion for office work and had to deal with its developers in its unstable days. I remember how gentle and friendly they were, especially Ben Collins-Sussman. I am talking from a user's perspective, but developers were also welcomed very well.

I think GIMP is average on that scale. Sometimes everyone is very friendly, sometimes not so friendly. But then the Subversion developers were paid by Collab.net to be full-time employees working on it and hence this wasn't cutting into their free time, to cause any frustrations, etc. Lots of factors are behind why people appear to be dorks. Maybe a nagging wife or husband.. maybe an unsatisfactory life.. maybe very little time... maybe some medical condition which shows up as frustration. Sometimes we're unfriendly because the person we're dealing with is rude. I've noticed though that any developer who's trying to write something for GIMP is appreciated and helped.

We can definitely be more friendlier. We certainly must try and not be rude to anyone. Also respect for co-developers and contributors means a LOT. If there's no respect, forget about succeeding.

Mukund

Florent Monnier
2006-08-01 15:17:45 UTC (over 17 years ago)

Building healthy community

Mukund a écrit :

On Fri, 2006-07-28 at 12:34 +0200, Dave Neary wrote:

Hi,

http://www.oreillynet.com/conferences/blog/2006/07/oscon_how_open_source_ projects.html

During OSCon, Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick of Subversion fame gave a talk which was apparently very interesting on how free software projects can survive poisonous people.

There's lots of good advice in there, including: * Document your community, decisions and processes * Have healthy collaboration practices * Avoid names in source code - use revision history for documenting who did what, to avoid ownership of code/modules

Anyway, it seems pertinent for the GIMP developers community, and perhaps a starting point for putting in place some better practices.

I want to add a note about a friendly attitude.

I was an early adopter of Subversion for office work and had to deal with its developers in its unstable days. I remember how gentle and friendly they were, especially Ben Collins-Sussman. I am talking from a user's perspective, but developers were also welcomed very well.

I think GIMP is average on that scale. Sometimes everyone is very friendly, sometimes not so friendly. But then the Subversion developers were paid by Collab.net to be full-time employees working on it and hence this wasn't cutting into their free time, to cause any frustrations, etc. Lots of factors are behind why people appear to be dorks. Maybe a nagging wife or husband.. maybe an unsatisfactory life.. maybe very little time... maybe some medical condition which shows up as

maybe sex abuse in the childhood.. maybe a so instable mind that you can't help flaming even if you try to be the kind person you would like to be.. seems like people feel you are not normal even if you try to hide your disorders, and they flee any relationship with you.. then you feel like an outcast and want to burn everything..

frustration. Sometimes we're unfriendly because the person we're dealing with is rude. I've noticed though that any developer who's trying to write something for GIMP is appreciated and helped.

We can definitely be more friendlier. We certainly must try and not be rude to anyone. Also respect for co-developers and contributors means a LOT. If there's no respect, forget about succeeding.

and what's succeeding? reach the goal, or what you live on the way?

Mukund

maybe we could dream that the free software community could be a shelter where tolerance and patience could wellcome asocial peoples who are treated as outcast in the real-life society?

or maybe not... humans are the same everywhere, and GNU is not a church dealing with social cares, just let's reject poisonous peoples to make these vital projects go on!

Mukund
2006-08-01 15:59:15 UTC (over 17 years ago)

Building healthy community

On Tue, 2006-08-01 at 15:17 +0200, Florent Monnier wrote:

We can definitely be more friendlier. We certainly must try and not be rude to anyone. Also respect for co-developers and contributors means a LOT. If there's no respect, forget about succeeding.

and what's succeeding? reach the goal, or what you live on the way?

We need to respect our co-developers to work together. This is what I meant to convey. Any relationship needs respect and trust. If developer A doesn't respect developer B, they can't work together.

I said this in the context of lack of respect which I had noticed (and made clear to the respective contributor of the GIMP project; unfortunately it doesn't seem to have helped).

maybe we could dream that the free software community could be a shelter where tolerance and patience could wellcome asocial peoples who are treated as outcast in the real-life society?

or maybe not... humans are the same everywhere, and GNU is not a church dealing with social cares, just let's reject poisonous peoples to make these vital projects go on!

This may be the most logical thing to do, and it perhaps is the most feasible action currently. But it becomes a problem when the person is someone you have known for sometime and who has contributed to the project. Then you try to see whether you can help, try to find out what exactly is causing the poison behaviour, instead of taking a knife to them. Unfortunately even this doesn't seem to have worked well.

Mukund