Discipline in Open Source Projects? 85
An anonymous reader asks: "I've recently been elected (with another project member) to lead an open source project that we helped start several years ago. One of our goals as project leads is to implement some way to discipline project members who are disruptive to the project. In the past, the project has been slowed by flames, trolls, and even filibustering. Everyone says they want to work together, but some refuse to accept majority opinion. This passive-aggressiveness, coupled with growing despair on the part of other members, would have caused the project to dissolve if a vote had not taken place to elect new leadership (which the project has been lacking for some time). As co-leads we want the project to continue and grow, and we welcome all opinions, but how can disruptive members be told 'enough is enough'? We've read Ubuntu's Code of Conduct, but how can it or something similar be enforced?"
Discipline (Score:3, Funny)
Dan East
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It's a video of a talk given by two guys from Google who founded the Subversion project. The video is titled "How to protect your Open Source project from poisonous people".
Daniel
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I must have a sick mind to think up this crap... (Score:2)
"I know you've been caught with your pants down using Windows XP. Naughty boys of open source call Mistress Richard now to receive your punishment. Strict discipline."
Next to this is a photo of Richard Stallman clad in PVC and leather, wearing high heels and wielding a whip.
I hear that Bill Gates already pays for this at least once a month.
There can be only 1. (Score:5, Insightful)
In a project, that means removing their ability to contribute. You can do this by either breaking their arms or removing their commit privileges.
Seriously, though, if someone is disruptive and filibustering, WHY are you letting them have important tasks? Either go on without the task or give it to someone else.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:There can be only 1. (Score:4, Informative)
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I was a Gentoo dev at the time ciaranm was first suspended, and I read the private gentoo-core list. I read many of the bugs with complaints about him. And you know, the only time I saw him get nasty (in chatlogs) was when there was mutual sparring involved. No, it wasn't a surprise that he was suspended, because certain people in devrel and infra obviously didn't like him. But he was anything b
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Not tooting my own horn, but this happened to me once, with very poor results. I was working on an open source game, and they wanted something implemented. I immediately saw in m
Kick them out. (Score:1, Insightful)
In the case of OpenBSD, Theo was ejected from the NetBSD project, and has gone on to create the most secure general-purpose operating system known to mankind. Matt Dillon will be doing something similar with the Dragonfly BSD
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"There's only 1 way that I know of: Remove their privileges."
Then you're a dumbass. (Offended? Good. Shows that if you don't know the person or the context, or how something is phrased, it may or may not be civil. In this case, I mean it literally, but you might also know that I say this regularly to posters I heavily disagree with.)
First, the project head needs a a simple needs assessment. What is the overall goal of your project? What is your major plan. Please note that "advance
Enforcement (Score:2, Interesting)
If someone starts creating problems, ban their account and reject all access. Block their e-mails and IM. Don't take their phone calls.
Or, alternatively, turn the "open source is a good thing for building your reputation" concept to your advantage: post a "hall of shame" page on your project's web page or in its release notes, that lists the names and all known contact information for people who have caused problems. Ammend your license terms to require tha
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If you follow this advice, there's a really good chance that you will get sued for libel. Since you could be harming a
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So don't post the text itself, post links to an archive, preferrably controlled by some completely independent party (say, Google for newsgroups).
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That depends on jurisdiction. There are some places where truth alone is not a defense against libel. In the US it's a defense (in fact substantial truth is all that's needed) but not everyone is in the US.
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wonderful.
as if open source isn't sufficiently burdened by a reputation for infantile Animal House frat-fights
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You've never heard, I take it, of slander or libel?
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Skill vs. Maturity... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the real issue, there are many ways to solve the same problem. The real problem is everyone wants THEIR VISION of what the program or implementation should be realized, that's really the issue... contests of will imho.
All too often open source software neglects usability, i.e. 'designed by programmers, made for programmers'. It may be programmed well but you have to remember who your end user is in the end: The end user, not a programmer.
Even if you have the best team and discipline it means nothing without perspective and proper understanding of the issues of usability, I don't care how amazing your program is if it is clunky and inefficient to use. This is one of the reasons the market to some degree works: You find the best people and you are forced to hunker down under the vision of leads, sometimes which are carefully chosen, othertimes not. At some point it doesn't matter and you just have to take the risk and get things done or nothing gets done at all, because you call can't commit to a unified vision.
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But what you think is a masterpiece might really be a total hunk of shit. Yet with some amount of work, it coud be repaired and brought to a point where it is useful.
Exactly. Hence it'd be better for everyone if the person/people who want the changes made can fork their own version of the software, and be rid of your 'vision' and meddling. If you're right, their project will likely sink. If they're right, your project will likely sink. Either way, the best project will come out on top. Survivial of the fittest. :)
Alternatively, you can all carry on all under the roof of the one project, with all the conflict, in-fighting, and procrastination that would likely
Google Tech Talk About OSS + People (Score:5, Informative)
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Your story comes across like this:
A bunch of imberb politicos (possibly lead by you, mr AC), who are fixated on being buddy-buddies and looking good in the eyes of the world managed to drive off at least two key participants in a FOSS project - of whom at least one is sufficiently mature and professional to know how to disengage peacefully and let your clique rot
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My advice would be to go with the benevolent dictator model (btw, 2 leaders is a recipe for disaster). But, b/c things have gotten sour, a
Anonymous? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why air the dirty laundry? (Score:3, Insightful)
What is this, kindergarten? (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to punish them is kind of futile. Unless you want to keep this person around and are trying to "reform" them, just add them to your killfile, ban them from your forum, and revoke their CVS access.
bad order of operations (Score:2, Insightful)
"just add them to your killfile, ban them from your forum, and revoke their CVS access"
reversing the order might be a good idea too.
Towing the party line isn't all uniformly good (Score:3, Insightful)
It also requires telling your own fanboys and groupies to stop defending the status quo on principle and to start thinking for themselves for a change. While theoretically on your side, fanboys are actually deadly to a project's interests in their total antagonism to any thinking outside of the box.
In other words, you need some disharmony in a project, or in time it will lose its novelty and interest and stagnate. Just seeking absence of heated argument as an important goal is not at all wise --- it's just too easy to throw away the baby with the bathwater.
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slowed by flames, trolls, and even filibustering
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And:
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This passive-aggressiveness, coupled with growing despair on the part of other members, would have caused the project to dissolve if a vote had not taken place to elect new leadership
"""
Clearly this is _not_ about silencing constructive criticism.
See what I mean...? (Score:2)
Remember the Catalyst debacle [perlmonks.org] a while back?
It's questions just like the one posted here on slashdot that made me question why that whole process was kept secret [perlmonks.org]. If every project deals with conflicts in a secretive fashion, how can anyone else benefit when they have to deal with problems of their own?
Here's a slightly pared down version of my Perlmonks post:
I can read between the lines like anyone else, but who can deny that some of the best, most enlightening discussions here on PerlMonks have been heated. Someone feels strongly about something and they end up providing great detail about their reasons. Regardless if you agree, you've probably learned something.
Catalyst has become a very significant project. Aren't we missing the benefit of how such a project is lead? Wouldn't we benefit from the technical details such as how changes impact other projects? Wouldn't we also benefit from seeing other's passion for their projects? At minimum, maybe it would expand our awareness of the community as a whole.
This is why it was kept secret (Score:1)
The main problem was one of mixed ownership permissions on the namespaces, it was possible with either side of the split to utterly destroy the project.
One of the terms that was insisted on by one of the parties involved was a gag order on the reasons for the split for a period of 1 year, to prevent bad-mouthing in blogs and such. Due to the sensitivity of the situation, these were felt to be best for everyone, particularly as there
Why do you have to have a majority? (Score:5, Interesting)
Whenever I bring this up in discussion forums, especially in "geek" forums, quite often I see strong reactions that it won't work and can't work and so on, but it has been working for close to 400 years. I've used it in special ed classrooms with emotionally disturbed students and they found they could work with it when they got used to it. I have seen it work in many groups. The principal ingredient, in most cases, is for the leaders to treat all with respect and to expect others to do the same.
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But, when it comes to tech stuff, there is a significant percentage of the geek community that is so stuck in there opinions that they won't even listen to the other side. Unfortunately, most communities aren't able to recognize this early enough and everything degrades into flame war. And once you are at the point of flame war, there's no return.
Your example of success in special ed classr
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You'd think that would be different, wouldn't it? I've seen tech/geek groups and Friend manage business. I've seen people in both be just as stubborn. I've seen it work well in both cases. Are you making a statement from theory, or have you observed both groups and seen the dynamics in both groups? I have, and I have watched both grou
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Are you making a statement from theory, or have you observed both groups and seen the dynamics in both groups?
"""
My experience is spends many hours with my girlfriend when she worked in an residential home with people with Downs Syndrome. Very emotional people. But, in the end, no matter what, they *always* yielded to authority. Typically in just minutes. I also visited her at an institution several times working with people that did not have Downs Syndrome.
My experience with regards to development (
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Not to make a contest, but hours observing in such a setting is quite different than working for years in such settings, with time spent in different groups with different situations. Downs Syndrome is also quite an exceptional situation, and I mean exceptional as in quite an exception to other situations. It's way past the 2 standard deviations from the mean or median. By your own
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Actually, I've been trained in debate and worked with logic and logical fallacies since the 1980s. What I find interesting is that I provided support for everything I said, while you, who doubt it, could only support one part of your arguments or statements with hours of observation, without any indication of professional training to go with it.
Is it possible you are one of those very people you mention that would rather object to everything and block progress? Is it just possible you are one of thos
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It's also fine to say you won't respond. It's quite clear you viewed this as a win/lose issue, and not an exploration of the facts. Your terms and c
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Read my other responses and see what kind of people I've worked with and seen consensus work with. With appropriate guidance, it can work with people many others consider "unreasonable."
It also leads to horrible compromises.
Not in my experience, and I've been dealing with this since the early 1990s, including with emotionally disturbed teens, a group anyone who has worked with can tell you is one of the most "unreasonable" groups you can work with. Actually,
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vi vs emacs, Linux vs BSD, Islam vs anything else, US style conservative Christianity vs anything else, 4 space tabs vs 8 space tabs,
where you have people simply saying "my way or the highway". The more diverse a culture, the more compromises you have to make to get a consensus.
Do you think you can get a working consensus on human rights between Europe, China, Saudi Arabia and the US?
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I don't think we'll see a working consensus like you suggest for a long time, and a large part of that is because there is no consensus within those groups to start with. How can the US come to agreement and work with others to
Why post as AC, Ian? (Score:1, Funny)
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Encourage positive conflict (Score:2, Insightful)
First of all, be grateful that you have people who are willing to go to such lengths to make their voices heard in this group. It means that people are thinking and are interested enough to make their ideas heard. I assume that these people are making their time available for free. You can tell them that their help is no longer wanted, but that's about all the group can and should do if they are truly disruptive. Otherwise, appreciate the effort they are putting into trying to make the group's work bett
Thoughts on leading volunteers (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, this is from a different context, but I'm talking about a non-profit organisation of which I was elected president for two years, leading a committee of 40 or so volunteers organising things for thousands of people.
One of the harsh realities you discover when you take on such a role is that sometimes leadership and executive decision-making have a place, but at the same time, most people contributing their time and/or resources to your project aren't the leader and still want to have their views taken into consideration.
The bottom line is that if people are volunteering for an effort you lead, you have nothing on them but the support you inspire and any vested interest they have in supporting/influencing your project. If they do not feel sufficiently involved, they will leave.
On the other hand, if you let them remain involved but they are incompetent (or otherwise unwelcome), they may actually be damaging to your project. There comes a point where someone's contribution is a net loss, and you have to ask them (or, if necessary, force them) to step down.
There really isn't much of a middle-ground by default, and it's very hard to create one. If you want their input you have little choice but to permit their actions and respect their opinions to some extent, even if you do not agree with them all the time. The best I could ever do was try to keep people focused on the areas where their main interests lay, which at least tended to keep them motivated, happy/courteous, and at least somewhat useful.
FWIW, I usually found that being positive with people about what they did well worked better for keeping that focus than being critical of what people did badly. Put another way, IME you're asking the wrong question, or at least looking for the wrong answer. But this really varies from person to person and your mileage most certainly will vary.
Make them put their money where their mouth is. (Score:1)
Systems engineering problem (Score:2)
Start with establishing a gate review process for evaluating and accepting change requests to any of your roadmaps and requirements. If someone can't get their feature through the peer review,
Simple: Do Not Feed Trolls. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me say it again.
Do NOT Feed Trolls
Honest; it's a simple as that.
As a further protection take away their posting
rights to the SCM system you use, and be sure to keep offline
backups because poisonous people can get very nasty.
2 leaders? (Score:2, Insightful)
Democratic hierarchy (Score:2)
1) Flamewars slows the project.
The only way that is possible is if the
project depend on the result of the flamewar to make a decision.
So, make sure that the decision process is flame prove.
See my suggestion further down.
2) Some refuse to accept majority options.
The 2 extreme cases for this is.
a) The majority is wrong. He is an expert.
b) The majority is right. He is an agent.
The first option is that he is an expert on the subject and
know that the majorities solution is wron
Missing Option (Score:2)
How about option C, he thinks is an expert, he thinks the majority is wrong. That's far more common in my experience. Besides, some of the most vicious flame wars I have ever seen are over issues
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Yes, in between there is many possibilities.
It might be he is a little of both.
He might have or know of special needs therefore a little piece of expert.
he is working for his own needs and not the projects and therefor
a little piece of agent.
Remember Freedows (Score:2)
Remember Freedows, the primary discipline problem for us was Reece Sellin, the project lead/owner/overlord.
The Answer is Obvious (Score:1)
FREE COMPUTER EQUIPMENT
First come first serve; btw, my front door is sticky so you may have to lean into it...
Presentation about opensource and poisonous people (Score:2)