Re: A plea to worry about what matters, and not take ourselves too seriously
On 11/10/2014 02:13 AM, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> On Sun, 09 Nov 2014, John Goerzen wrote:
>> Debian is a making-the-world-better project, a caring for people
>> project, a freedom-spreading project. Free Software is our tool.
> [...]
>> My plea is that we each may get angry at what matters, and let go of the
>> smaller frustrations in life; that we may each find something more
>> important than init/systemd to derive enjoyment and meaning from. [5]
> Thank you for your message.
>
> It might not be what I was thinking when I joined Debian but over time
> it has became clear to me that there's more than just having fun building
> the best operating system, though this is still a core motivation
> and we should be very cautious to not destroy the fun others are having,
> even when when we don't share their opinions.
Thanks, Raphael.
This is a really important point that is easy to lose. I probably am
guilty of that from time to time myself.
Sometimes there is a cost to being right, or to convincing others to
follow what you want - the risk of taking the fun out of a volunteer
project, of alienating people that feel otherwise. It is hard to judge,
especially with a project made up of people that rarely see each other
in person.
When a bunch of technical people get together as volunteers to build
something, it takes both technical and social skill to complete the
job. We put the former on a high pedestal with good reason, but
sometimes neglect the latter.
We clearly have a lot of work to do, but we have also come a long way.
Some of us remember the days before an elected DPL, or before we took a
strong stance against poisonous people on our mailing lists, and I can
assure everyone that this project has made a lot of social changes that
we should be proud of.
And we have a lot more that needs to be done, too.
John
>
> To all the persons who are going to be disappointed, please follow John's
> advice or find a better way to channel your anger into something positive
> (either in Debian or somewhere else, it's not a big deal). Don't use it
> against other Debian contributors, because you would only contribute
> to destroy what we have built together.
>
> Cheers,
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