Josh Saddler

And now, on to the rest...I'm definitely pissed that there are still devs who lack social skills. Being blunt or straightforward is one thing, having a considered technical opinion is another, but being a complete asshole/dick/jerk online is something else. It bothers me when there are devs who are consistently rude in their treatment of other devs. No, beyond that -- there's something very wrong with you when you cannot treat another person as a human being. It seems that Stuart decided to retire because he could no longer endure or didn't want to endure this kind of treatment anymore from devs. Devs, nothing. Let's just think of ourselves as people here. Or if you can't think at this level, look at it another way -- if your boss saw you harassing your fellow coworkers day after day in full view of the public, do you think you'd keep your job for very long? Think in terms of customer service and good reputation. Do you have either? It'd be das boot for you.

Now, suppose you consider that telling someone off is the right thing to do in a given situation. Certainly Stuart could have done this; a final "F*** you" to the folks who'd done him harm. People like Ciaran McCreesh had been consistently rude, antagonistic, and abrasive to work with to him in particular. The records are available for the searching on gentoo-dev; I'm picking the latest in line. Would Stu have been justified in responding along the lines of "Go f*** yourself"? Very possibly. However, does this attitude ever help matters? Rarely.

I'm going to step out on a limb here and do some heart-sharing. I'm going to try and avoid telling people off, but rather calling people out on their bad behavior. What's the difference? It can be very slim, to say the least. The idea is not to name-drop, deliberately hurt another human being, or cause other damage to community, friends, etc. If you're going to reprimand someone for bad behavior, then you'd better have some alternatives for better behavior ready.

Really, Gentoo could be much better off if we weren't so afraid to police ourselves. Some of the worst people to work with in either the developer, community, or former developer groups are the most vocal, and are unafraid to be. They're the tiny minority, but they get what they want and say what they want (including harming others and the work we all do) because, well, they've always gotten away with it.

I've always been a pretty quiet guy. I make it my business to get along with just about anyone and everyone. There are some folks that consistently bother me because their actions consistently bother me. Everyone else, hey, join the fun. I've tried to be consistent in the last 18 months of helping out with Gentoo, and especially the last 9 months as a developer. I don't go out of my way to piss people off, I try to hear all sides of the issue, and I assume devs are capable workers until I see otherwise. I like to try to be friends with folks as much as possible online.

All that being said, I'm saddened that Stuart is retiring because to my mind, the final straw seems to be the words of Chris (and possibly to a lesser extent Ciaran). I don't have any particular problem with Chris; he's been great fun to talk and work with in the past. Unfortunately, he also has a tendency to be very hardheaded, to the point of "screw you and your ideas; do it your own damn way and I'll do it my own, and I know I'm right and you're an idiot; you don't understand the issue at all". Hey, at some point most people reach that attitude, or at least parts of it. But with Chris, it's been a growing trend, especially around the stress of release times. I noticed how he attacked the Seeds project, going so far as to say "you're wasting your time; your skills should (not could, should) be spent doing other things for Gentoo." Who started Seeds? Stuart. And Stu himself forgot this when he told Chris much the same thing a day ago in regards to versioning the Portage tree. At least he did later admit his statement was out of line.

So, now we have a dev who's retiring because of all the weight of all the bullcrap that's been ladled out on him over the years. We have a dev who has been part of the final straw. And yet, this is not unique. This has been repeating over and over for at least a year now -- developers retiring so that they don't have to face another day getting put down, shot at, and devalued. How can we fix things so the risk of this happening again is lessened? Well, by thinking of better ways to tell someone "You need to do some more research on the technical facts of the subject so that you can better understand the situation"...something besides words to the effect of "You're stupid, shut up, never speak again, you know jack". Yes, what I'm asking for is a nicer way of saying just that.

Why nicer? Because look where meanness, pettiness, spite, and malice have got the world today. Look where they've taken this community of people called "Gentoo developers." They've made us scared to blog about such topics and use actual names of people for fear of reprisals on IRC or nasty blog posts. They've made us afraid of working with other team members. They've hardened our hearts so that we don't want to have a f***ing thing to do with so and so or with team foo.

And it's killing me.

This is a general statement:

There's something very f***ed up beyond all recognition with your head and with who you are if you are unable or don't want to interact with people on a basic human level. Step down off your technocratic throne of knowledge, pull the stick out of your ass, the chip off your shoulder, and acknowledge that the person you're typing to is your brother, your sister, a human like yourself.

Because really, the spite, malice, envy, and all that stuff above that I just talked about? Those are really just facets of something more ancient, and just as deadly to yourself and to others: hate.

It's no wonder we can't make any progress on the technical front; we don't even have the people side down yet. If Gentoo is ever going to go anywhere, we've got to purge ourselves of all the hatred. If that means dismissing individuals who bring us down, then so be it. That's perhaps the final step -- long before then, I wish we could have the courage to pull a brother aside and chastise him. Admonish him. Show him a better way. I'm glad Jan Kundrat did that for me recently after a particularly crazy bug.

So, how do we stem the onslaught of bickering, petty squables, and antagonism?

It starts with you.