Sad

[avevale_intelligencer]

On the Uru forums there is a topic entitled "How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People."

It turns out this is the title that a bunch of open source developers have given to a video they've done which is intended to educate prospective workers in open source about good practices.

Objecting to the title, inevitably, gets you called poisonous yourself, if only by implication, which proves the point of the objection. Not believing in poisonous people, not believing that the concept of poisonous people is a good thing, is obviously a sign of being poisonous. Where have we heard that kind of argument before?

Also, open source Uru seems to be as far away as it was at the beginning of the year and is not coming any closer. Must be all us poisonous people hanging around waiting for it. If only we'd all just go away...

Sometimes the human race makes me tired.

Comments

Have you seen the video?

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

It is at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4216011961522818645. I am not a programer but it looks to me to be an excellent guide on how to run an open source project. I don't follow Uru so I cannot say how the concept is being applied over there.

Re: Have you seen the video?

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't. I'm sure it's excellent of its kind and would do exactly what it said on the tin, if the tin said something like "How to Run an Open Source Project." What I am specifically objecting to is the title and the divisiveness it embodies. Which, apparently, makes me a bad person.

Re: Have you seen the video?

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

An open source project or any other volunteer run project is dependent on people wanting to give their time and effort in the hope that the project will produce something they want. One of the major causes of failure is people who are disruptive, not necessarily deliberately, but who don't fit in with what needs to be done.
Effectively a disruptive person is poisonous because they can cause a project to sicken and die by causing more productive people to misdirect their effort or drop out. Perhaps poisonous is not a tactful description but it is evocative.

[batyatoon]

I would never apply the label of "poisonous" to the people you describe here. "Poisonous" to my mind refers to people who are disruptive very deliberately and with malice.

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

And you are at liberty to apply the term however you wish to. The sense the makers of the video used was, in my opinion, if you swallow this into your project it will sicken and might die. I think they could have picked a better word but they didb't.

Re: Have you seen the video?

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Good video, and good principles espoused therein. Shame the title chosen is one that lends itself so readily to... shall we call it "intent drift"? =:o\ (i.e. into name-calling). The analogy with people who "poison the well" is appropriate though... Perhaps "poisoners" rather than "poisonous people" (focus on behaviour rather than implying inate identity) would work... but of course it's less catchy. =:o\ Or just "behaviour" for "people".

Perhaps it's a point you (or whoever) need to be making to the makers of the video, Zan, rather than in the Uru forum which is just picking up the title of an existing video. (I say this, of course, having not been a witness to any of the discussion.) OTOH, if people are taking the catch phrase from the title as an excuse for name-calling within the Uru forum, then that's something to address there.