Re:A Generation Lost in the Bazaar
by snogglethorpe on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @01:10AM
(#4411282)
> I always remember it as being a very open and egalitarian community
It definitely is, in my experience. Most importantly, despite the obvious presence of "celebrities," even completely unknown people can jump into the middle of a conversation on an important topic, and if they have their shit together, will be accorded pretty much instant respect and be treated as an equal. There's very little sense of "needing to pay one's dues."
But you definitely have to have your shit together. If you don't, you will be quickly eviscerated.
It's really rather nice, especially compared to many dev communities where there's often much more sense of entrenched factions.
While it's been years since I mucked about in Linux kernel space, I always remember it as being a very open and egalitarian community. Although I never made the attempt to contribute to any of the BSDs, I got the impression that they were much less open to newer contributors and divergences from "accepted wisdom" (this could be put more politely as being more discriminating (as in taste) and careful). That being said, the majority of decisions I was witness to on LKML appeared to be well-considered, and make no mistake that patches and design ideas were not just accepted willy-nilly. While Linux has stumbled across many missteps, I still personally prefer the wild possibilities and endless choices that eventually shake out a solution, at the same time keeping with a distribution (Debian stable) that filters out the issues for the end users (myself included).
I also find very interesting the parallels between this discussion and the "worse is better" essay, where UNIX was supposed to be in the "worse" camp, and now it's Linux.