The forked elephant in the room

[Don Allen]

On Friday, 19 January 2024 at 15:01:21 UTC, Don Allen wrote:
> On Friday, 19 January 2024 at 09:50:06 UTC, Dukc wrote:
>> On Thursday, 18 January 2024 at 20:51:48 UTC, Paul Backus 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Yes, that's certainly true.
>>>
>>> My intent is not to focus on Adam Ruppe's case specifically, 
>>> but on the broader pattern that also includes former 
>>> contributors like Sebastian Wilzbach, Jonathan Marler, 
>>> ag0aep6g, Suleyman Sahmi (SSoulaimane), etc. When one 
>>> relationship fails, that's unfortunate. When a long string of 
>>> relationships fail in the same way, that's a sign of a deeper 
>>> problem.
>>>
>>> Even if we grant that there was nothing more to be done in 
>>> Adam's case, I think D's approach to contributor 
>>> relationships is leaving a lot of value on the table.
>>
>> I get the impression that these kinds of problems are more of 
>> a rule than an exception in succesful open-source projects 
>> though (by succesful I mean attracting dozens of contributors 
>> or more). Looking at the lobse.rs discussion Guillaume posted, 
>> Hacker news discussion about OpenD and considering what you 
>> hear about say Linus Torvalds or Theo de Raadt, strong 
>> enthusiasm to contribute seems to go hand in hand with a 
>> strong personality. I think keeping those kinds of 
>> contributors is simply hard. It might not be that hard for an 
>> average Joe were he leading, but I suspect the same qualities 
>> that make language creators succesful in the first place tend 
>> to make good leadership in these cases hard for them.
>>
>> I don't think D leadership is doing particulary badly - 
>> otherwise they would be developing the compiler alone by now. 
>> But sure it's still a critical thing that might well determine 
>> the future between stagnation and an explosion in popularity. 
>> Therefore you're right we ought to pay attention to it, 
>> however understandable the problems are.
>
> Again I agree with you.
>
> Another obvious factor that makes open-source projects 
> difficult to manage is that people are contributing 
> voluntarily. Their livelihood doesn't depend on toeing the 
> line, as it frequently does in paid employment. *And* they have 
> access to the source code. So when personal styles clash, as I 
> think was the case here, it's much easier for things like we've 
> just seen with this project to happen.
>
> I have personal experience with de Raadt (not good) and have 
> used OpenBSD on and off for years. OpenBSD is absolutely a cult 
> of personality, exactly as you said. But it takes a particular 
> kind of personality to be willing to drink the de Raadt 
> Kool-Aid. And recall that OpenBSD is a fork of NetBSD, the 
> result of some particularly nasty circumstances.
>
> So I think the right way forward is to learn what can be 
> learned from this kerfuffle, but don't over-react to it. You 
> certainly want to try to retain someone like Adam,  talented 
> and volatile, but sometimes it's just not possible. C'est la 
> vie.

I should add that I no longer use OpenBSD and will not, because 
de Raadt, brilliant though he is, is a nasty piece of work and 
his followers have, in many cases, taken on some of his 
personality characteristics. This is an example of organizations 
tending to behave like their leaders. I refuse to subject myself 
to that kind of aberrant behavior. The software is good but not 
good enough to put up with that.

Walter sets a very different tone for this project and I value 
that. The man behaves like a gentleman. Of course he's imperfect, 
just like the rest of us. But he tries to improve upon the 
imperfections. de Raadt? His way or the highway and that will 
never change.