Being a hypocrite
November 25th, 2006I’m going to be a bit of a hypocrite for a bit, as there’s something that I’ve noticed a few people do that I don’t personally approve of.
The part that comes in is the request for a scanner that works in linux on the adopt-a-dev site(which we need devs to ask for things again and users to look at what they could offer). I did struggle a good bit with asking for it, as I am of the personal opinion that I’m working on Gentoo because I want to; Knowing that there is nothing really to be made from becoming a part of the development of Gentoo. Although, that really isn’t entirely true as I know a few of us who’ve gotten jobs because of our involvement in the project. However, the shameless plugging of ones paypal or amazon wishlist steps over the line for me. Yes its always nice for your work to be appreciated verbally, and even more so financially, but I’ve lost respect in some ways for those who’ve asked for the money donations or items from their wishlist to be purchased to show that support.
I’m just curious why there have been people who have considered personal advancement so to speak over the community good. Maybe I’m too much of a idealist about people and their motives, not to mention a bit of a socialist in some respects…*shrugs*
November 26th, 2006 at 5:08 am
Personally I’m a happy Gentoo user who has actively encouraged a Gentoo developer to create and publish an Amazon wishlist, which he was initially very reluctant to do for similar concerns as yours, but eventually he did, and I’m grateful for it. I enjoy giving back, and sometimes I cannot do that with contributions of code or work for lack of time or expertise, and in those cases I like to donate, especially through a wish list - because it lets me choose an item, which makes it more personal and meaningful.
Thus here’s one side to consider: Giving people an outlet to reimburse people they feel they owe to is a form of being user-conscious, too.
November 26th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
If you’ve lost respect for those who request small donations, then I presume you _really_ have no respect for those ingrates who are actually paid full-time to work on FOSS. What losers — code for money is such slaveryware.
November 26th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
Ah just the response I expected from you Donnie, I knew on posting this that it would get your ire up. Suse and others are different from Gentoo..where there is a company backing it up and paying coders to work on a product that they in turn sell both the product and the support, thus allowing them to pay those people to work on. Various people in the project have attempted the latter half of that model with Gentoo, and have had various degree’s of success. Which I also have no problem with. I’d much prefer if the requests for donations were directly to the Gentoo foundation so that the cash could be used for hardware and other functions to help all the developers. That’s why I said I guess its an idealistic idea of the motives why we all do this. I wouldn’t of minded it as much either if it wasn’t a oh I’m going to pimp my items to to see if I can get some free stuff from people.
Course Donnie since the Xorg 7 stabilization request that was premature (1000 packages didn’t work with it at the point of the original start of that one) we’ve had differences of opinion and I’m sure rubbed each other the wrong way, more then once or twice. However, I’d like to think we still work well when it comes to the work.
November 27th, 2006 at 12:49 am
Following your own arguments, why should the Foundation give hardware to individual developers? They do it for the love of it; surely that love should extend to the personal sacrifice required to provide the hardware they need to do the work?
It’s not an argument I believe in, but I wonder why you don’t believe in it?
It’s not Socialism when the State hoovers up all the resources and is then responsible for doling them out in some misguided attempt to be egalitarian. Socialism is about _society_ providing for each other. Folks have to want to provide, and part of that is ensuring that they are free to provide to the folks that they want to help.
Having the Foundation doing all the providing for all Gentoo devs would be so unhealthy that it would put the long term survival of Gentoo itself at risk. Central handouts create low aspirations, low expectations, and a culture of dependency. We may all be created equal, but we don’t all apply ourselves in equal measure.
I don’t personally have a problem with folks pimping personal Paypal or Amazon wishlists. I wish it was done with some degree of class or style (and this is the one thing I do believe Donnie is particularly guilty of - a lack of class when doing so), but I don’t think the request itself is inherently bad. Quite the opposite - in a year when we’ve set up an (admittedly terrible) User Relations project because there’s this perceived gap between devs and users, giving users the opportunity to directly interact with devs can only be a good thing.
Best regards,
Stu
November 28th, 2006 at 10:56 am
I looked over the list, and what I found most interesting is most of the books had perfectly fine online equivelents.
I love holding paper in my hand, and it is a lot easer to read a book in bed, not to mention the advantage of keeping the book on your lap while typing instead of switching the window all the time. That said most of the programming documentation you need is online, and if you think you should be able to figure out the rest (maybe not the best way to do it, but one that gets the job done anyway). Even if you have a paper book, you still need the online documentation because computers advance so fast. You can count on any book you can buying to be out of date, while online documentation tends to be up to date. (Yes I know many websites are not updated, the good ones are)