The Daily Malice

By: Daniel Hinderink

Suffering from mistaken goodwill is the fate of the open source believer - tales from the throne of agony

The open source universe is full of well-meaning people. Unfortunately even the most well-meaning can become extraordinarily mean. how so? First off they are often unsuspecting of technical (think security) and organisational (think legal) pitfalls of their generosity. What's adding to the toxic mix is their self-image as benevolent white hats. As Winston Churchill once said, "it very important to be honest, but it is also important to be right", one could add "it is very nice to be nice, but it is more important to know what you are doing".

 

One typical example is that of certain TYPO3-"promotion" sites that spring to life every now and then. While they might be made with good intentions the question remains, what other reasons but self-interest could lead to their decision to "do their own thing" rather than participating in improving typo3.org.

Of course this question is relevant to each and every initiative outside of the common collaborative effort. What strikes me personally is the question why this way of doing things is so typical for TYPO3 and much less wide spread in other projects. In this particular case it also dumps a load of legal questions on themselves and everybody involved: The association, the consultancies and the customers.

May be it is time to remember Hanlon's Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

May be, and this seems more attractive, the TYPO3 community will improve it's collaboration skills, saving everybodies nerves, time and money and pooling instead of drawing from our combined force. As most people in voluntary organisations know, benevolence is an extremely complicated business and good intentions are never enough when actually doing good is the goal.

 

NOTE: This post was updated, because I was mailed about my remarks regarding the GPL were spreading doubt, instead of making a proper statement about the points I am criticizing. I have thus deleted that part of my post.

 

NOTE2: The commenting system on buzz.typo3.org seems to have been deactivated due to spamming problems. Sorry to those who tried to comment.

---