[sjwright]

That’s not “better”, in fact it’s not really in the spirit of open source, where criticism comes in the form of patches and forks.

“Doing one better” would be patching and compiling from source yourself. Better still would be maintaining an up-to-date fork for the benefit of other like-minded people.

[krageon]

There's a whole lot of gatekeeping to be found in your comment and I don't think it'll help open source as a whole if things were actually as you describe. It's perfectly acceptable to call out bad behaviour and it always has been. If anything, the community became significantly more polite about it as open source software has become more popular, probably because the users are not exclusively militant programmers now.

[sjwright]

I really want to agree with you. But that assumes that the vendor/maintainer of open source software has a responsibility to not engage in "bad behaviour." I simply disagree. The only reason Linus Torvalds doesn't screw over everyone tomorrow is because he places value in the reputation of his code tree. (And also because his code tree sees so much sunlight that any such fuckery wouldn't go unnoticed.)

Clearly the maintainers of Atom don't place value in their reputation. Just be thankful that the maintainers have conveyed their true colours for all to see.

[catalogia]

> But that assumes that the vendor/maintainer of open source software has a responsibility to not engage in "bad behaviour."

> "it’s not really in the spirit of open source, where criticism comes in the form of patches and forks."

Everybody has an obligation to refrain from bad behavior whether or not they are an "open source" developer, and everybody has a right to criticize bad behavior whether or not they consume software, and whether or not the software they consume is "open source." That may not be what "open source" means to you, but in that case I want nothing to do with whatever it is that it means to you. I don't subscribe to any ideology that obligates me to hold my tongue when I see somebody doing something I think is morally wrong.

You'll just have to find a way to cope with people criticizing things or people you believe should be immune to criticism. The simple fact of the matter is you have neither the power nor authority to set the bounds for acceptable criticism. People will continue to criticize software they choose to not use, and there is nothing you can do to stop that. You certainly can't stop them by telling them to shut up or by trying to overload the definition of "open source" with your own inane pet philosophy [namely: "All criticism should be formatted as patches or forks."]

[sjwright]

You're responding to an argument that I didn't make. Your entire post appears to be a response to a fictional rewriting of my posts which doesn't exist.

For the record—:

• I didn't say (and I don't believe) that developers "should be immune to criticism"

• I didn't describe (and I do reject) an "ideology that obligates [anyone] to hold [their] tongue."

• I never defined any "bounds for acceptable criticism."

• I never said "All criticism should be formatted as patches or forks."

Nobody is obligated to act in accordance with anyone else's opinion of the spirit of a community. People are free to do whatever they wish as long as it's within the bounds of law and license conditions.

I have no problem with any form of criticism, although I do find it more worthy of one's attention when it's constructive. I do have a problem with the attitude of some people who get offended when their criticism is rejected or ignored.

What I reject is the assertion that the copyright holder of an open source software project is obligated to follow a certain mode of behaviour. By contrast, you're saying that "everybody has an obligation to refrain from bad behaviour." So in a surprise twist, it turns out the only person obligating a certain ideology upon others here is you.

[bathtub365]

Putting a restriction on the definition of open source that limits discussion to those with the time and ability to submit patches sounds, to me, like the opposite of openness. A piece of open source software being used by people outside the development group is a resounding endorsement of both the product itself and the model of open source development that led to the product being so accessible. Developers know that writing software is hard, and receiving criticism or feedback on software you worked on can be hard, too, but I think it’s ultimately to the benefit of the community of both developers and users that shortcomings (or unexpected behaviour) in the software are known. It helps people make informed decisions on what software they choose to use in their personal life, or even what software they trust to run their business on.

[sjwright]

It's not a restriction on the definition of open source. A truly open source marketplace has space for apps that do shitty things—and for forks that do fewer shitty things.

If anything is a restriction of open source, it's demanding that the developers of Atom implement a feature the way you want. If you don't like their code or their stewardship, badgering them on this one point doesn't fix the underlying difference in principles.

[sneak]

Ok, I'll bite.

Open source is a hacker thing. Hackers like open source because it avoids useless duplication of effort, which is toilsome and wasteful. Hackers don't like toil and unnecessary waste.

Forks are nothing but otherwise-unnecessary waste. They become necessary through asshattery like spying on users, but they are a last resort, because everything else about a fork is antithetical to most hackers: it's boring, wasteful, duplicated work, induced solely by an unreasonable upstream.

We try a lot of things before we fork, including naming and shaming.

[sjwright]

The imperative to fork generally stems from fundamental philosophical disagreements between the current maintainer and the user base. Concern over privacy seems pretty fundamental to me.

Badgering the maintainer doesn't fix the fundamental philosophical disagreement.

Forks don't matter if they don't succeed—it only wastes the time of people volunteering to have it wasted. But when they do succeed, sometimes amazing things happen. The history of open source is rife with hugely consequential forks.

[unityByFreedom]

> the spirit of open source, where criticism comes in the form of patches and forks

Criticism in the form of words is healthy, and this poster is beating a dead horse.