[nbobko]

Hehe, the classic rude and mean behavior from homebrew maintainers.

I get their motivation to remove the flag. In fact, it has always been better to run xattr in postinstall, this way the binary is free from quarantine even after updates.

But the way they communicate with people is unacceptable and just unnecessary.

[Vegenoid]

Reading that discussion, I was very surprised at MikeMcQuaid’s reaction to xtqqczze’s concerns, which were calm, brief, and valid. In response, Mike was a dick.

Maybe it’s totally understandable that being a maintainer for the biggest mac package manager conditions a knee-jerk asshole response in a person.

[mikemcquaid]

There's a misunderstanding here what the issue tracker is for in Homebrew. In some projects, it's for free-for-all discussion. That's great if those projects want to use it that way.

In this issue's case, you have someone in leadership (p-linnane) communicating that work needs to be done, a maintainer (carlocab) communicating what needs to be done to make this change. xtqqczze's attempt to get us to move backwards on an already made decision doesn't help anyone. We have a discussions forum (and, well, the rest of the internet) for discussion of the pros and cons of decisions made. There's no point maintaining the illusion that we're soliciting feedback or discussion on the issues tracker when we are not.

As to me being a dick: I've been maintaining Homebrew for 16 years. It's used by millions of people. My full-time job has never been doing so and I've never been paid a market rate for my work on it (not that I expect or perhaps even deserve so). My primary concern with Homebrew is keeping the project actually running. This primarily requires the time, energy and work of maintainers doing so in their free time. It also requires contributors who submit pull requests.

Go read through some merged pull requests some time and you will see moderately to very positive responses from me. That's because that's the work that keeps the project alive. It has almost died several times in the past and I've kept it going. You may think it hyperbolic but drive-by negativity by non-code-contributor users is the biggest existential risk to projects like Homebrew.

[Vegenoid]

Thanks for the response. Yes, I think some clarity about the purpose of the issue tracker would help someone unfamiliar with the project's maintenance better understand the conduct of the maintainers. If it is only for coordination of work tasks and not discussion of whether the work should be done, it would seem natural to have somewhere else where the discussion of the merits occurs.

> drive-by negativity by non-code-contributor users is the biggest existential threat

I do believe this, and it's what I was getting at with my "conditions a knee-jerk asshole response" comment. From the outside, I saw someone who wasn't being negative, but just seemed to have unaddressed concerns about the impact of the change. You, however, have been conditioned by hostile users over your many years of work to interpret this as negativity, because other, ruder people pile on to the valid concern in unhelpful ways, or the person with the concern wasn't willing to listen at all and just used a veneer of calm rationality to be a stick in the mud.

The point is, I get why you would be this way, but also that it doesn't look very good from the outside looking in. I know that you are doing unpaid labor and so nothing is owed, but still, both can be true.

I know some people don't like it, but I've always found discussions that are locked to collaborators only to be totally understandable for this reason. If you find yourself making "I know more about x than you ever will" comments to a person, you should probably instead just disregard them and carry on. Likewise, you do know more about x than I ever will, so you should probably just disregard me and carry on.

[MRtecno98]

> There's no point maintaining the illusion that we're soliciting feedback or discussion on the issues tracker when we are not.

You could have just said this (maybe you did when linking the code of conduct) instead of writing a paragraph of confrontational arguments and it would have looked way better imho.

> You may think it hyperbolic but drive-by negativity by non-code-contributor users is the biggest existential risk to projects like Homebrew.

If this was true every oss project would either be dead or be entirely comprised of dicks, neither of which are the case.

[mikemcquaid]

> You could have just said this

Yup, you're right, I should have. We will adjust the CONTRIBUTING.md accordingly.

> If this was true every oss project would either be dead or be entirely comprised of dicks, neither of which are the case.

I didn't say every OSS project, I said projects like Homebrew. I know that Homebrew would be dead without many of my personal interventions. You can believe me or not but, unless you're a Homebrew maintainer, it's unlikely your opinion about what happens behind the scenes is informed.

[usernamed7]

> As to me being a dick: I've been maintaining Homebrew for 16 years. It's used by millions of people. My full-time job has never been doing so and I've never been paid a market rate for my work on it (not that I expect or perhaps even deserve so). My primary concern with Homebrew is keeping the project actually running. This primarily requires the time, energy and work of maintainers doing so in their free time. It also requires contributors who submit pull requests.

your explanation did nothing to speak to being a dick, did not attempt to apologize, only tried to justify the poor behavior.

[mikemcquaid]

I don't think I am a dick, I guess that went without saying.

I'll take critique from other maintainers who have done as much or more open source work for similar returns over similar time periods. Funnily enough, I'm friends with many, and they are supportive the vast majority of the time instead of critical. Maybe that's because they can relate and you cannot.

[Mystery-Machine]

No one thinks they are a dick. But you are. At least in many instances as many of the comments here and elsewhere point out. I had similar experience trying to start a discussion about something in one of the Homebrew repositories.

The fact that you have many friends who confirm your bias of not being a dick...means exactly nothing. You have people telling you your words made them perceive your comment as being arrogant/blunt and your reply is: I'm successful open-source maintainer and have many friends who think I'm not arrogant and I only take critique from them. Have it your way. But in my eyes, you're being a dick. (Don't misinterpret this as my judgement of your engineering skills. I love Homebrew and it's an incredible feat. Congrats.)

[mikemcquaid]

If you love Homebrew, maybe you might want to consider if repeatedly calling me a dick or arrogant/blunt is a particularly nice way to treat someone who spends their spare time building software you rely on.

[usernamed7]

> Maybe that's because they can relate and you cannot.

Now you're deflecting. I passed no judgement i made an observation of your statement and you took it personally.

[knowitnone3]

they pretended to have a discussion so they look good.