This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
FOSS isn't supposed to be egalitarian and democratic. It's supposed to be viciously meritocratic. Unfortunately, as with anything that gets large enough to matter, it has become political.
Ah, but how do you decide who has the most merit? Its not always clear which code is best, like if it has a subtle vulnerability in it. The traditional method was "Stahlman and Linus decide" plus a handful of other greybeards with their special domains. Transitions are always a dangerous time fir monarchies.
The idea is that people can generally vote with their feet.
Everyone is free to build their own GNU/Linux distribution. Or fork Linux. Or gcc.
Of course, upstream is generally a good Schelling point, so a project has to have some serious issues before a fork succeeds. But in general, this is not a monarchy, but more like a wisdom of the crowds thing.
If anything, GNU/Linux is, itself, an example of voting with feet. There's a reason we're not running GNU Hurd for a full GNU stack.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Open source was always way more decentralized than you are portraying it. Even something like the GNU project is so vast that there's simply no way that one person could keep track of every patch. Forget about it for something like the Apache Foundation.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link