On Friday, 19 January 2024 at 15:01:21 UTC, Don Allen wrote:
>On Friday, 19 January 2024 at 09:50:06 UTC, Dukc wrote:
>On Thursday, 18 January 2024 at 20:51:48 UTC, Paul Backus wrote:
>Yes, that's certainly true.
My intent is not to focus on Adam Ruppe's case specifically, but on the broader pattern that also includes former contributors like Sebastian Wilzbach, Jonathan Marler, ag0aep6g, Suleyman Sahmi (SSoulaimane), etc. When one relationship fails, that's unfortunate. When a long string of relationships fail in the same way, that's a sign of a deeper problem.
Even if we grant that there was nothing more to be done in Adam's case, I think D's approach to contributor relationships is leaving a lot of value on the table.
I get the impression that these kinds of problems are more of a rule than an exception in succesful open-source projects though (by succesful I mean attracting dozens of contributors or more). Looking at the lobse.rs discussion Guillaume posted, Hacker news discussion about OpenD and considering what you hear about say Linus Torvalds or Theo de Raadt, strong enthusiasm to contribute seems to go hand in hand with a strong personality. I think keeping those kinds of contributors is simply hard. It might not be that hard for an average Joe were he leading, but I suspect the same qualities that make language creators succesful in the first place tend to make good leadership in these cases hard for them.
I don't think D leadership is doing particulary badly - otherwise they would be developing the compiler alone by now. But sure it's still a critical thing that might well determine the future between stagnation and an explosion in popularity. Therefore you're right we ought to pay attention to it, however understandable the problems are.
Again I agree with you.
Another obvious factor that makes open-source projects difficult to manage is that people are contributing voluntarily. Their livelihood doesn't depend on toeing the line, as it frequently does in paid employment. And they have access to the source code. So when personal styles clash, as I think was the case here, it's much easier for things like we've just seen with this project to happen.
I have personal experience with de Raadt (not good) and have used OpenBSD on and off for years. OpenBSD is absolutely a cult of personality, exactly as you said. But it takes a particular kind of personality to be willing to drink the de Raadt Kool-Aid. And recall that OpenBSD is a fork of NetBSD, the result of some particularly nasty circumstances.
So I think the right way forward is to learn what can be learned from this kerfuffle, but don't over-react to it. You certainly want to try to retain someone like Adam, talented and volatile, but sometimes it's just not possible. C'est la vie.
I should add that I no longer use OpenBSD and will not, because de Raadt, brilliant though he is, is a nasty piece of work and his followers have, in many cases, taken on some of his personality characteristics. This is an example of organizations tending to behave like their leaders. I refuse to subject myself to that kind of aberrant behavior. The software is good but not good enough to put up with that.
Walter sets a very different tone for this project and I value that. The man behaves like a gentleman. Of course he's imperfect, just like the rest of us. But he tries to improve upon the imperfections. de Raadt? His way or the highway and that will never change.