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.


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Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 15:01:11 -0500
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Subject: Re: Winetools -> wine doors
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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.