Where is FreeBSD going?

[Brad Knowles]

At 11:13 PM -0500 2004/01/06, Rahul Siddharthan wrote:

>  So Matt was easy with newbies and aggressive with other developers.

	There was much more fallout from that than you indicate.  Being 
pissy with other developers meant being pissy in general on the 
-current mailing list, and meant being pissy with a lot of other 
people.  As much good as he has done for FreeBSD in the past, he was 
doing more harm than good.

	When a child is in an abusive household, even if the abuse is not 
being personally directed at him, there is a highly negative effect 
on that child which can never be erased.  Just being in the vicinity 
of the abuse is enough.  Likewise with newbies in a project where 
there are frequent public thermonuclear exchanges between highly 
placed members of the project, in a constant environment of hatred, 
loathing, sniping, and general pissyness.

	For the good of the project, it was time for him to either grow 
up or leave.  He made his choice.


	That's not to say that he didn't make some fantastic 
contributions to FreeBSD, but in the end his personality problems 
outweighed his technical contributions.

	True, he wasn't alone in this kind of behaviour, but it does take 
two (at least two) to have an argument, and whether he instigated 
more of the arguments than anyone else, he was the one who most 
frequently made them worse.


	I had a problem with my temper when I was in school.  I remember 
being poked and prodded by the bullies, trying to get a reaction from 
me.  I remember being sent to the principal's office more often than 
just about anyone else.  I wasn't the direct cause of the fights, but 
I was allowing myself to be pushed to the point where I started 
swinging.  I learned to control my temper.

	I can't say whether or not the is the same kind of situation that 
Matt has found himself in, but for whatever reason, in the past he 
has not seemed like he had the ability or the willingness to control 
his temper.  Now, I haven't seen any outbursts from him recently, but 
then he's been off in his own corner doing his own thing, and hasn't 
been on these mailing lists very much.


	Personally, I would like very much to see Matt return to the 
FreeBSD project, but before I would be willing to let him come back, 
I would want to see strong evidence that he's been put in similar 
situations since he left and that he had the self-control necessary 
to not respond in the same manner that we know all too well.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

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