[_delirium]

It wasn't intended as a comment on anyone's personal worth as a human being, or what they're like in person. I have spent a good amount of time following OpenBSD-related mailing lists, though, and I'd say "polite and collegial" is not the prevailing tone--- hyperbolically trashing other people's work and calling them stupid monkeys is more par for the course. Admittedly, they don't have a monopoly on that; plenty of GNU mailing lists are similar (esp. anything RMS or Ulrich Drepper regularly posts to).

[jcroberts]

The majority of open source projects, OpenBSD included, have difficulty differentiating between attacking a problem and attacking a person.

If you read the recent HN article: "How to keep someone with you forever" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1677013

And ponder it a bit, you'll see how it applies to open source projects, and interactions on mailing lists, or as the case may be, a homepage article by an open source developer.

For me at least, the more fascinating question is why open source projects eventually degrade into "sick systems" of interaction? --I wish I had an answer, but the only speculation I have is it's the result of frustration.

[16s]

"Welcome to OpenBSD" is customarily spoken as "Fuck you moron" or "SMP is for retards and jackasses like you" or "Threads are for idiots and no, we don't care."

I love OpenBSD though. Use it everyday. They don't pretend. What you see is what you get.

[there]

the monkeys reference may (or may not) be in response to linus talking about openbsd developers:

"I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of masturbating monkeys"

http://news.cnet.com/Torvalds-attacks-IT-industry-security-c...

[cpr]

My favorite is the well-known flame by someone at the MIT AI Lab back in its heyday (early Lisp Machine development time)--I'm pretty sure it was RMS: "I've deleted all your <bleeping> code and also erased all the backups" (paraphrased).