OT: General behaviour of the community (from 'Why winetools is utterly useless, once and for all')

[Dr J A Gow]

I was interested to read several comments on this list in respect of such 
comments as 'IQ of zero'. Such comments were the final straw in leading me to 
take this action.

A few days ago I sent a comment to the list. Nothing really sinister, just an 
observation and an experience. Before long I had a particularly vicious and vile 
diatribe sent in reply to my comment - to my private email address. I have 
appended the lower headers and the bulk of the message I received at the end of 
this message (trimming the html from the bottom).

I thought long and hard before taking this action. It is not something I would 
normally do, but in this instance I was so incensed at this individual's 
behaviour that I felt that 'naming and shaming' was the only way forward. Not 
even so much as to the fact that he directed his comments to me, but more the 
fact that had I been a new prospective developer, the effect such diatribe would 
have would not in any way be positive. It certainly would taint their perception 
of the open-source community. Furthermore I sincerely doubt that I am the only 
one to experience this behaviour. Others may just suffer in silence.

I have worked with many smaller community projects, on OS/2 and latterly on 
Linux, and never been subjected to this kind of abuse from members of the 
community. I joined this list because I felt that there was something I could 
contribute to Wine, and in the instance it turned out that there was. I did not 
join it to receive unsolicited email of an abusive nature from members of the 
community.

Had he done this by telephone I could have had him prosecuted, at least in the 
UK. But he hides behind a gmail.com address and makes comments I seriously 
suspect he would not have the balls to say to my face.

No, I do not believe that we need a 'net police force'. Common decency between 
individuals, however, is essential. Diversity, discussion, criticism, 
expression, even annoyance are all valuable when driving a project forward. 
Blatant personal abuse is not tolerable. It is not tolerable in society, it 
should not be tolerated in the developer community. The community needs to 
police itself, rather than be policed, and individuals who bring the community 
into disrepute need to be dealt with by the community. That is why I bring this 
into the open.

How to prevent such actions? I do not think it that this is possible in its 
entirety. I can (and have) simply add this individual's address to my blocked 
list. However, I may have been a newcomer to open-source development who would 
not have been so tolerant, and whose opinions of the community may have been 
changed by this action. May I suggest that whoever is responsible for the 
hosting of the mailing list change the configuration so that email addresses are 
not placed in the header? (I am no expert on mailing-list software but it does 
not immediately seem to be impractical.) That way all replies have to go to the 
list and this would prevent such unsolicited email being sent.

This is my last word on this matter. Make of it what you will. I refuse to be 
prevented from contributing to vital projects such as Wine when I can by the 
antics of some depraved individual. It has left a sour taste in my mouth though, 
and like it or not, it does not portray Wine developers in a good light.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Disposition-Notification-To: Segin 
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:01:11 -0500
From: Segin 
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MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Dr J A Gow 
Subject: Re: Winetools -> wine doors
References:  

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Dr J A Gow wrote:
> > I've looked through the winetools code and it is a clusterf*ck of
> > nonsense. It appears to be in the final stages of code rot, however
>
> This "clusterf*ck of nonsense" helped me to get a microcontroller
> development suite running under Wine, which otherwise would not install

You're a fucking retard, RTFM! You'd learn you need to use DLLOverrides
in Winecfg.
> natively. After over ten years designing and developing embedded systems,
> there is one thing that stands out.

That you're a dumbfuck?
> Code that is 'nonsense' does not work
> at all.

That's 100% definitive of Winetools.
> Code that works may not be elegant, it may not be pretty and
> you may hate the style, but it _works_

Nope, wine doesn't do ~/.wine/config, which makes winetools COMPLETELY
useless. **WINETOOLS DOES NOT DO A DAMN REDEEMING THING FOR WINE USERS
THAT ARE UP TO DATE!!!!**
> and therefore it is not nonsense.

Yes, it is.
> This code works, is useful and serves a purpose. Just because you don't
> like the way it is written does not make it nonsense. Language, please!

No IT DOES NOT!
> John.

So you're saying that you don't know how to use dlloverrides on winecfg,
right? that's basically the same thing winetools does except that wine
now ignores the config file (makine winetools utterly useless, 100%, no
questions asked). please just install all the native DLLs that winetools
installs, and set a dlloverride in winecfg of * (native, builtin) for
your exe file. Please stop spouting your mis-infomation.

OT: General behaviour of the community (from 'Why winetools is utterly useless, once and for all')

[Jason Green]

On 3/29/06, Dr J A Gow  wrote:
> I was interested to read several comments on this list in respect of such
> comments as 'IQ of zero'. Such comments were the final straw in leading me to
> take this action.

Thank you.  It sometimes takes a thick skin to ignore the petty and
childish rants that are prevalent online.  Anonymity (or
pseudo-anonymity in this case) often leads to childishness, and has
done so since the beginnings of the Net.  It gives the impression to
potential new users and developers that the "community" is hostile and
unwelcoming.  I experienced a little bit of myself when asking my
first couple of [naive] questions in IRC at #winehq.

While it's completely understandable that people will get tired of
seeing the same questions posted over and over again, there's no need
to get hostile about it unless the user asking the questions gets
hostile or demanding themselves (and even then, restraint or kick/ban
would be preferable).  If someone asks a "stupid question" (entirely
subjective, remember), just ignore it or point to a place where they
can learn the answer themselves.  Please don't be a jerk.

Thanks.

OT: General behaviour of the community (from 'Why winetools is utterly useless, once and for all')

[Tom Spear]

Totally agreed.  Segin needs to be not just kick/banned from the list, he
needs to be K-Lined, if not G-Lined from all things wine!  With respect to
his comments though, on behalf of everyone involved with the project, and
with the community as a whole, I sincerely apologize.

Tom

On 3/29/06, Jason Green  wrote:
> On 3/29/06, Dr J A Gow  wrote:
> > I was interested to read several comments on this list in respect of
>
> such
> > comments as 'IQ of zero'. Such comments were the final straw in leading
>
> me to
> > take this action.
>
> Thank you.  It sometimes takes a thick skin to ignore the petty and
> childish rants that are prevalent online.  Anonymity (or
> pseudo-anonymity in this case) often leads to childishness, and has
> done so since the beginnings of the Net.  It gives the impression to
> potential new users and developers that the "community" is hostile and
> unwelcoming.  I experienced a little bit of myself when asking my
> first couple of [naive] questions in IRC at #winehq.
>
> While it's completely understandable that people will get tired of
> seeing the same questions posted over and over again, there's no need
> to get hostile about it unless the user asking the questions gets
> hostile or demanding themselves (and even then, restraint or kick/ban
> would be preferable).  If someone asks a "stupid question" (entirely
> subjective, remember), just ignore it or point to a place where they
> can learn the answer themselves.  Please don't be a jerk.
>
> Thanks.

OT: General behaviour of the community (from 'Why winetools is utterly useless, once and for all')

[Chris Morgan]

I'm pretty sure people are capable of filtering their own email. 
Afaict the offending emails were between two individuals.  You may not
like them but that has no bearing on whether they should be allowed to
post to the mailing list given that those emails to the mailing list
are appropriate.

Chris

On 3/29/06, Tom Spear  wrote:
> Totally agreed.  Segin needs to be not just kick/banned from the list, he
> needs to be K-Lined, if not G-Lined from all things wine!  With respect to
> his comments though, on behalf of everyone involved with the project, and
> with the community as a whole, I sincerely apologize.
>
> Tom
>
> On 3/29/06, Jason Green  wrote:
> > On 3/29/06, Dr J A Gow  wrote:
> > > I was interested to read several comments on this list in respect of
>
> such
> > > comments as 'IQ of zero'. Such comments were the final straw in leading
>
> me to
> > > take this action.
> >
> > Thank you.  It sometimes takes a thick skin to ignore the petty and
> > childish rants that are prevalent online.  Anonymity (or
> > pseudo-anonymity in this case) often leads to childishness, and has
> > done so since the beginnings of the Net.  It gives the impression to
> > potential new users and developers that the "community" is hostile and
> > unwelcoming.  I experienced a little bit of myself when asking my
> > first couple of [naive] questions in IRC at #winehq.
> >
> > While it's completely understandable that people will get tired of
> > seeing the same questions posted over and over again, there's no need
> > to get hostile about it unless the user asking the questions gets
> > hostile or demanding themselves (and even then, restraint or kick/ban
> > would be preferable).  If someone asks a "stupid question" (entirely
> > subjective, remember), just ignore it or point to a place where they
> > can learn the answer themselves.  Please don't be a jerk.
> >
> > Thanks.

OT: General behaviour of the community (from 'Why winetools is utterly useless, once and for all')

[Tom Spear]

On 3/29/06, Chris Morgan  wrote:
> I'm pretty sure people are capable of filtering their own email.
> Afaict the offending emails were between two individuals.  You may not
> like them but that has no bearing on whether they should be allowed to
> post to the mailing list given that those emails to the mailing list
> are appropriate.
>
> Chris

Be that as it may, the person who made those comments made them as a direct
attack on someone who posted to the list.  Regardless of whether or not the
insults were posted to the list, he shouldn't have made them.  As the person
who reported the incident said, had it been a new developer interested in
helping wine (either directly by contributing code to the project, or
indirectly by writing a support app), he probably would have said screw
this, I'm not going to help out a project that has developers who verbally
attack me.  I know I would have.

Sure we all have to deal with someone who is annoyed at a stupid comment or
question every now and then, but those were not stupid (not in my opinion),
and had some very valid points.  If the "attacker" had done some research
instead of spouting off because he was tired of users complaining about
something not working and it turning out to be because of winetools, we
wouldnt be having this convo.

With all of that being said and trying to get back on topic, sure winetools
breaks a lot of things, but from what I can see, it also gets a lot of
things working.  If we have better documentation and if (here is the key)
the users took the time to read thru all of the docs, which I admittedly
don't, there wouldnt be any need for winetools.  Honestly, I think that
winetools should have been (from the beginning) something that creates a
second installation of wine, from source, and that plays with registry files
outside of the main wine install.

IOW a user who uses wine doors should have a directory structure like this

/
-wine-source
--all the uncompiled and unlinked files
-wine
--all the binaries and dll's, etc for a proper wine install (including
wineprefixcreate, the wine executable, etc)
-~/.wine
--all the files outside of binaries
-wine-doors
--all the binaries and dll's etc for a proper wine install (like wine-doors
instead of wine, and wineprefixcreate-doors, etc)
-~/.wine-doors
--all the files outside of binaries modified to work with different apps

Then a user can run ./wine-tools and it will present them a prompt saying

"Detecting app to be run... Internet Explorer"
"Merging changes to wine registry to allow running of internet explorer"
"Changes Merged"
"Running Internet Explorer"

Then boom.. Up pops IE..

That is what winetools should have done.  But since it doesn't, we are
working on wine doors.  A much more user friendly wine tool that will have
more features.  Of course, I'm not sure how it's going to look, and since I
don't speak fluently in C, I won't be contributing, but hopefully it will be
better than winetools without all of the problems of winetools...

Tom,

OT: General behaviour of the community (from 'Why winetools is utterly useless, once and for all')

[Chris Morgan]

> > I'm pretty sure people are capable of filtering their own email.
> > Afaict the offending emails were between two individuals.  You may not
> > like them but that has no bearing on whether they should be allowed to
> > post to the mailing list given that those emails to the mailing list
> > are appropriate.
> >
> > Chris
>
> Be that as it may, the person who made those comments made them as a direct
> attack on someone who posted to the list.  Regardless of whether or not the
> insults were posted to the list, he shouldn't have made them.  As the person
> who reported the incident said, had it been a new developer interested in
> helping wine (either directly by contributing code to the project, or
> indirectly by writing a support app), he probably would have said screw
> this, I'm not going to help out a project that has developers who verbally
> attack me.  I know I would have.

How do you propose we prevent people from emailing people that post to
wine-devel?  How do we choose who gets to email people directly and
who doesn't?  How do we filter the contents of their email?

Segin doesn't speak for the entire community and he isn't a lead on
the project.  If that were the case this would be a more serious
matter.  If people quit because of him then what are we to do?  Given
the lack of relationship between wine and Segin they might as well
have quit wine development because of some Nigerian money transfer
email or other spam.

My point is that the solution isn't trying to enforce censorship where
you simply cannot and where it doesn't impact the community.  As long
as he doesn't abuse his list membership we have no reason to become
involved in this issue.  You won't find me supporting any kind of
restrictions on what he says or which mailing lists he can belong to
at this point in time.

Chris

OT: General behaviour of the community (from 'Why winetools is utterly useless, once and for all')

[Tom Spear]

On 3/29/06, Chris Morgan  wrote:
> How do you propose we prevent people from emailing people that post to
> wine-devel?  How do we choose who gets to email people directly and
> who doesn't?  How do we filter the contents of their email?
>
> Segin doesn't speak for the entire community and he isn't a lead on
> the project.  If that were the case this would be a more serious
> matter.  If people quit because of him then what are we to do?  Given
> the lack of relationship between wine and Segin they might as well
> have quit wine development because of some Nigerian money transfer
> email or other spam.
>
> My point is that the solution isn't trying to enforce censorship where
> you simply cannot and where it doesn't impact the community.  As long
> as he doesn't abuse his list membership we have no reason to become
> involved in this issue.  You won't find me supporting any kind of
> restrictions on what he says or which mailing lists he can belong to
> at this point in time.
>
> Chris

Ok, but here is a point for you to chew on.  Say that I go on a business
trip for my company, and that while on this trip, I meet with some clients,
and we go out for a business dinner.  A few days later, while still out of
town, I run into those clients again, and we all decide to go to a
billiard.  While at said billiard we all start drinking.  No problems
there.  But if I continue drinking, eventually I am going to get drunk, and
need assistance getting back to my hotel room.  Mind you I am on a business
trip and with some clients, but I am not at a business meeting.  Even though
I am (at the time) not representing the company, it still looks bad for them
that an employee would do that in front of the client.  The same principle
applies here.  It looks bad on the wine project as a whole that someone who
participates in the devel list would email someone (even off list) and say
the things that were said.  Ordinarily I am against censorship myself, but I
do believe in moderation, and I believe that people should be held
accountable for their actions even if they are speaking only for themself,
if it makes other people or things look bad.

To answer your question, there isnt really a way, and I wasnt trying to say
that we should prevent him from emailing others directly, or filtering his
emails, I was saying that a lot of the things he does for the project should
be restricted.  AFAICT he has some high level permissions on bugzilla, and
the appdb.  Maybe those could (should?) be suspended temporarily, I dunno, I
will leave it up to the big wigs here to decide if he should be punished in
any way, and if so, what that punishment should be.  As I said though, it is
his opinion, and he is entitled to that opinion (at least in the US), but I
think he should have kept it to himself, or at least not used such strong
wording like "****ing dumb***"....