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- | ====== Dealing with Nothingburger-ism ====== | ||
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- | In [[nothingburger|the last segment]], I outlined the phenomenon of // | ||
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- | That you can diagnose an illness does not mean that you know how to treat it. If you really thought about // | ||
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- | //Even better than treatment would be prevention!// | ||
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- | Regardless, identifying the problem and having a name for it is a necessary initial step and hopefully, dear reader, we are on the same page on that. In that case, we would at least agree that // | ||
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- | - Real, i.e. not a figment of Revusky' | ||
- | - A real problem. Thus, there is some value in thinking seriously about how to deal with it. | ||
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- | Now, let me say here, up front, that I don't actually know what the remedy is when an open source project has reached some advanced state of // | ||
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- | I recall some anecdote that might (or might not) even be true. A prominent engineering firm in job interviews of recent engineering graduates would ask them the question: //Suppose you drop your car keys into the middle of the ocean? How do you solve this problem?// | ||
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- | Apparently, the correct answer is: // | ||
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- | It could well be that a similar answer applies to // | ||
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- | Though admittedly, not as absolutely impossible as retrieving one's car keys from the bottom of the ocean, when a once healthy project has lapsed into // | ||
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- | In any Psychology 101 course, one typically learns about the [[https:// | ||
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- | Though shocking in a way, the Milgram experiment does reflect my own casual observation. Not just in open source software by any means, I have been continually amazed at people' | ||
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- | In Hollywood movies there is frequently some pivotal moment in which an authority figure has some sort of breakdown and starts ranting, talking such such self-evidently deranged nonsense that he immediately loses all credibility. One example that comes to mind is the Captain Queeg character in the [[https:// | ||
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- | But that is Hollywood. I was pondering how frequently such things happen in real life and I came to the conclusion that this mostly just happens in movies. In the real world, it seems to be just about impossible for an authority figure to lose his authority this way. Just for example, I recall the president of the United States of some years back, one George W. Bush, arguing that it was necessary to invade Iraq because we had to //fight the terrorists **over there**// or we'd be fighting them //**over here**//. As I recall, nobody bothered to ask the president how said " | ||
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- | Now, I don't mean to say that these Captain Queeg moments //never// occur in real life. " | ||
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- | Self-observation is always difficult, but I believe that I myself, for whatever reasons, have somewhat less tendency than most people to accept illegitimate authority. However, I still made a very key mistake in that regard when I " | ||
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- | I would also add that if these people ever did have any real exclusive right to use of the name, they really forfeited that right when they refused to even review contributions. It simply makes no sense for people to be able to remain in a position indefinitely when they fail to carry out the most basic responsibilities that said position entails. Not only had these people not done any work on the codebase in five years, but when somebody eager to do something with it, and had already a significant contribution to make (not just proposals, talk, but work already done!) showed up and they refused to review it, one would think that only a very foolish person would accept that by just continuing the work elsewhere and calling it JavaCC, I was violating their " | ||
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- | That is my current position. I am satisfied that it is correct. However, I am perplexed, quite frankly, that it took me so many years to realize this. Well, I can be quite slow at times. | ||
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- | In the [[nothingburger3||next segment on nothingburgerism]] I shall make some more general observations about the phenomenon, and what counter-measures are possible. However, I will say up front that I don't have any definitive answers. In that sense, I write this essay more to open a much-needed discussion than anything else. | ||