(Originally posted at
In the past couple of days, I've seen some counterproductive social behaviors that help scare away community members and lead to boring monoculture: Taking a public dump on the projects of others when they do not directly affect you. It's rude, it discourages future risk taking in everyone, it goes against the very nature of open source that has brought us here today, and it leads to monoculture. I'd like people to stop.
Gerard Goossen recently released kurila, a fork of Perl 5 that includes some speedups and tweaks that seem to scratch Gerard's itches, as well as bundling extra modules. I'm right now trying to get an interview with him to find out more about his project and the reasons behind it, because there are probably some interesting lessons in there. However, the disapproval on the Perl 5 Ports list was swift and severe.
All forking based on the Perl 5 syntax and code base, throwing away CPAN compatibility, seems to me to be a complete worthless waste of time.
So what? Who is anyone to say how Gerard is to use his time? Is there any harm here? No? Then leave the guy alone, please.
Eric Wilhelm released lambda, a distribution that lets you use the Greek character lambda (λ) as an alias for sub {...}, apparently as a nod to Python's lambda keyword for anonymous functions. Immediately people jumped on him saying that the module should go into the Acme:: namespace, as if the namespaces of CPAN mean anything in 2007. There was also this cluck-cluck from someone I figured would be more encouraging (and later apologized, as it turns out):
Well, if you want to use it in your own code and your work's code, that's fine (because I'm sure you find typing CONTROL-SHIFT-EL so much easier than "sub {}" :) but if it shows up in your CPAN modules, you might get a few complaints since this sugar, while a really nifty hack, adds nothing complex but does screw up older editors and will confuse the heck out of a lot of maintenance programmers.
Personally, I figure that if someone's a smart enough programmer to do a hack like the lambda module, he or she is also smart enough to figure out potential downsides. And so what if he doesn't? What's the harm here?
Perlbuzz itself has always come under this umbrella of disapproval. Even before we announced the site, Skud and I have fended off the comments saying "We already have use.perl.org, we don't need Perlbuzz." Maybe not, but why do you care if we start the site? Why does it bother you? And why do you find it necessary to tell us that we're embarking on a waste of time?
I hope that in the past few months, the work that Skud and I have done have shown you, the reader, that Perlbuzz is a worthwhile addition to the Perl community, and a valuable news source that overlaps other news sources while not being a subset. What if Skud and I had listened to the tsk tsk of the doubters? Perl would be right where we it was before, with nothing new.
Why are we so quick to take a dump on the projects of others? The only way anything interesting happens is that people try weird, new things and see what sticks. What if Larry had listened to those way back when who said "Ah, we've got Awk and shell tools, we don't need Perl?"
I fear our tendency to monoculture. I want crazy new projects to thrive, not get squashed at their very infancy. Next time someone comes out with a project that you think is silly, congratulate the person rather than scoffing at it. Who knows what it might lead to?
(And a big thank you to Jim Brandt for the "Evolution requires mutation" idea.)
Andy hates freedom
petdance on 2007-10-12T18:17:55
For anyone else reading this, if you take any of brian's assertions seriously and are concerned about them, please let me know and I'll refute each. Otherwise, I'll let this lie.Re:Andy hates freedom
Aristotle on 2007-10-12T19:19:53
I’d just like links to the relevant archived message so I can form my own opinion.
Re:Andy hates freedom
brian_d_foy on 2007-10-12T19:49:57
Someone sent me a chat transcript from August 26, although I asked Pudge about this today and he says the suggestion was never that serious:michaelschwern: One proposition was for someone to propose to take over maintenance of use.perl from pudge.
Andy Lester: But all this gets back to my original premise
Andy Lester: of where are people to do shit?
michaelschwern: ?
Andy Lester: OK, so say we in this room says "Let's overhaul use.perl.org"
Andy Lester: Who's going to do it?
As for the other thing I mentioned starts with a thread started by Andy on the Chicago.pm list. Basically, Andy's stil upset that we started Windy City Perl Mongers, and likes to "take a dump" on it from time to time.
So, refute away Andy, or be a man and admit that you dump on things as much as anyone else does.Re:Andy hates freedom
sigzero on 2007-10-12T21:14:35
I read the whole thread. Andy's first post was terse but I would not call it a dump and it did foster other talk of which Andy took part and did not dump. I don't see the point here. Not being involved in the Chicago.pm, I would agree with Andy's posts. Especially when you read the second one was created because "Perl lunch" notices were bouncing. After that Andy gave another good suggestion of creating a "social" list for things of that sort under Chicago.pm.
I read it all and I didn't see dumping.
Caveat:
I don't know Andy
I don't know if there is a history of dumping
Re:Andy hates freedom
Ovid on 2007-10-15T07:32:14
OK, I'm very confused. I know and like both you and Andy, so perhaps that doesn't help, but I read that thread and I didn't see any dumping. You have two lists for the Chicago area. Andy doesn't think that makes sense and others disagree. Of course, your definition of "dumping" could be considerably different from my own and even if our definitions were the same, the criteria could be subjective enough that we still couldn't agree.
Re:Judge not lest you be judged
sigzero on 2007-10-12T21:02:14
However "dumping" and exchanging ideas on something are totally different things.
"I am not sure why you did this could you fill me in?" is much better than "You did what? That sucks and you are stupid for doing it!". Even if after you get the explanation and don't agree you can still say "I see what you did but I don't think it will work."
So the Perl community should foster an exchange of ideas and polite discourse and discourage "dumping".
I don't know any of the "background" issues that caused the article to be written but I think the premise is a good one.Re:Judge not lest you be judged
Qiang on 2007-10-14T01:21:54
I agree with you. same goes to lines like:
"why do you write this module when there are dozen of them on CPAN do the same thing. stop wasting your time."
that's the sorta thing discourages people to innovate and invent something better.
Your filibustering is getting old.
Hasn’t it occured to you that making a habit of loudly berating the critics might just be a tad counterproductive if a friendlier Perl community is what you want to achieve? “Beatings will continue until morale improves!”
Don’t you think it might, f.ex., be more effective to dispense a few friendly encouraging words where you perceive undue stop energy, instead of telling everyone else that they are doing it wrong, days after the fact? If you didn’t try to avert the problem when it happened, what point is there in castigating the perpetrators after the fact? Do you seriously think that is an effective way to ever get anything whatsoever fixed? Are you trying to be part of the solution?
You are not the community’s daddy. Lead by example.
Re:It depends how much damage will occur...
sigzero on 2007-10-15T11:39:06
Sure there is a big difference but that doesn't mean you can't explain that to the person instead of dumping. "You did what? That sucks!" is never really acceptable.
