RE: the Linux community (was Re: URGENT: )

Gavin Thomas Nicol (gtn@eps.inso.com)
Tue, 13 Apr 1999 22:49:25 -0400


> I mean all of the politics, and all the emotional issue groupies.
> Basically, the general degeneration of a community into a quagmire of
> camps full of folks on soap boxes is what's stuck in my craw.
...
> I agree. The conflicts do have to happen; there's no momentum without
> conflict, etc, etc, blah bla, but I'd rather deal with the
> intricacies of making things work for people than with all the issues that

It doesn't really have to be this way... I remember the early Linux
community well, and a point of pride was that the community didn't suffer
from the infighting found in the *bsd community (what ever happened to
Bill Jolitz anyway... I heard of a death in the family, and then little
else).

What brought on the infighting was people with a vested interest, either
monitary or ego based. ESR is a fine example, as were some of the
developers of early commercial distributions... but even developers
get into the "us and them" mentality...