RmDebArc_5Also likely why AI is everywhere
czardestructoC suites are now infested with a circle jerk of MBAs, business minded people who dont understand or care about the product or how its made. MBAs are a plague, let the engineers who know a damn thing sit at the table please…
RandelungEngineers: Hmm, maybe we should get someone with a bit of market knowledge to the table.
MBA: Shit, I have no clue what they’re talking about. I need someone who speaks my language.
MBA 2: Man, these engineers really have no clue what we’re talking about, huh.
Engineers: removed
Plenty of engineers struggle to care about the right things too though. You can witness this in Linux communities. The engineers will engage in passion-project rewrites of core systems any day of the week over fixing that one annoying UI bug that thousands of users complain endlessly about.
The key part there is that they’re not paid. So working on a passion project is all that matters.
As an aside though, those core system rewrites are often undertaken by businesses rather than the individuals. A lot of businesses view Linux as a tool rather than a consumer OS, so the core systems are the only part that matters.
The key part there is that they’re not paid. So working on a passion project is all that matters.
No, it isn’t. That’s not how it worked on the playground as little kids and it isn’t how it works in the open source community.
Think of it like this: if you’re playing by yourself in your own personal sandbox in the back yard of your house, you’re free to do whatever you want with the sandcastles you build. But, as soon as you invite all the neighbourhood kids to join you, it doesn’t matter if you built the biggest sandcastle before anyone else arrived: you’re now in a social environment where social rules and etiquette apply.
If the other kids politely critique the sandcastle and suggest improvements that you don’t agree with (or don’t think are important), then you’re faced with a dilemma: either compromise and work out a way forward that’s satisfactory (if not perfect) for everyone, or ignore them and face a potential breakup of the community as well as the ostracism which tends to follow. Even worse is something like deciding “no, this is my sandbox, everybody get out!”
Now, if you’ve got the foresight to post a sign by the sandbox which lays out all the rules and expectations for participation, then you have a lot better chance of getting everything to work out. But the idea that “this is my passion project” trumps everything else is not gonna fly in basically any community above a handful of people.
So you expect people to work for free on what you think is important, rather than on what they think is important?
A different analogy: I invite you over to a BBQ that I’m throwing. You show up and say you don’t want to eat what I’m preparing. You don’t want to bring anything or contribute because you can’t cook, and I invited you, so it’s rude to ask you to contribute and now I owe you food that you want that I’m not interested in making.
You don’t want a “community”, you want to be provided with high quality low cost software.
Even in your sandbox example: if I’m building a sand castle you don’t get to demand I build it the way you want just because I said you could play too. I don’t want to build that into the castle. If you want to add that bit, you can do it. I’m sharing by letting you play in my sandbox and that doesn’t entitle you to dictate how I play in the sandbox. We can play together, but that doesn’t mean I have to do what you want.
Remember that what you’re doing under the auspices of “community” is justifying telling other people how they should give you free stuff that takes a lot of work that they don’t want to do unpaid in their free time.
Let’s continue with the barbecue analogy. I come to your barbecue and you drop my steak on the ground and then just put it on my plate covered in dirt and tell me “it’s a free steak, if you don’t like dirt on it, then leave!”
See how it works? You don’t want a community, you just want an adoring fanbase for your passion project!
Yeah but that’s the thing. You don’t have to eat the steak. This isn’t just a 5 person bbq, there’s tens of thousands of people here that want to have my steak, and I’m the only person cooking in the whole town that isn’t burning the whole thing black . There’s plenty of food, sorry there’s some dirt on that one, but I’m not going to derail the whole event for you. Enjoy the barbecue. You don’t like it? Leave. But I don’t care about a little dirt on my steak because I still seared it the way I’m proud of and clearly it’s better than most of the other steaks around or you and everyone else wouldn’t be here.
I’m here to cook steaks because having a barbecue is what I like doing. If I feel like the dirt is a problem, I’ll fix it, but I’m trying to make the best steaks possible and to me that means focusing on the cooking, not the dirt that got on yours.
Don’t like it? Leave. Wanna bitch at me until I stop cooking? Fine by me. I’ll go inside and cook my steaks there.
Out of tens of thousands of people actually visiting, only 1% are actually taking the time to say anything about the dirty steaks. Everyone else is just quietly leaving after seeing the chef shout down a guy for complaining about the dirt, and then throwing his bbq tongs at them!
That’s not quite right because we’re all getting the exact same thing. I’m giving you a free steak and you’re complaining about the cut of meat. Everyone is getting the same cut, and I bought the steak that I’m giving away so I get to pick what I buy. If you don’t like it you’re more than welcome to bring your own steak and I’ll get it on the grill, or pay me to get you what you want, or hope that I remember to grab one for you the next time. You’re not entitled to a free steak though.
Even backing up and looking at your interpretation as you presented it: you’re complaining that your free steak got ruined and asking for a new one. You might not always get a new gift just because the one given to you went wrong.
Sorry you didn’t get a free steak. Do you want me to take one from someone else?
You don’t want a community, you just want an adoring fanbase for your passion project!
Here’s the thing though: so what if I do? If “I” get what I want, then you get something you like for free. At worst, you get nothing for the grand total of no cost.
You might be forced to go pay for some commercial software, where it’ll cost more and you’ll probably also not get your feature on demand.