[kde-community] Plasmoids and Apps - was - Re: Applications in KDE Generation 5

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Thursday, January 16, 2014 12:12:47 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> The bottom line is that it would have been easy to *not* take this personal.

It’s not about taking this personally, it’s about creating an environment that 
is pleasant and collaborative, or alternatively negative and adversarial. When 
you defend “don’t shove this down my throat”, which is not a technical 
statement but a statement about other people in the community (technology does 
not “shove”,  people do), followed by assertions that are false about a KDE 
project by another KDE developer, you are selecting for negative and 
adversarial.

It is not easy to work with a smile on one’s face when that is the method of 
communication that is defended by others. I don’t need to take it personally 
to know that it is not an enjoyable atmosphere.

Personally, I’d like to be able to open my KDE email folders and not wonder 
who is going to say what unpleasant thing to me today. I’d like others to have 
the same assurance as well.

> > That particular statement has been used for years and I’ve
> > patiently corrected it time and again, and it is still used to justify
> > things like “don’t force this down our throat”. That is not fair play.
> 
> Just to point out the obvious, while it might be human to lose patience,
> it's not OK, and certainly not helpful.

After literally years of this, it is not a matter of “keeping one’s patience”. 
I have kept my patience and tried to work through these issues over the course 
of some 6 years now. I think that is reasonable beyond reasonable, and I 
resent you asking the person who says “This has made me feel uncomfortable” to 
sit on it. It’s rather close to the ”blame the victim” pattern.

> > It seems that CoC applies to me, while it’s cool for Albert to say things
> > like  “don’t force plasmoids down my throat”. Yay for double standards and
> > not having any sort of expectation of fair play.
> 
> That's not my impression at all. The CoC applies to everyone, and even if
> someone doesn't keep to it, that's not a justification for someone else to
> ignore it.

I was not justifying ignoring the CoC; I was addressing the matter of it not 
being applied it equally to all.

In this thread you jumped quickly to publicly correct me, but have offered 
nothing about the originally harshly worded email that was based on false 
assertion.

By contrast: if I say something that can be interpreted as not supportive of 
someone else’s work, I will not only get jumped all over it for it but people 
(including you Sebas) defend the people who react to the criticism even when 
their reaction is well over the top. I can point to the last thread on plasma-
devel I participated in as evidence for exactly that.

Martin Graesslin wrote: 'We all know Albert and we all know that his writing 
reads more harsh than he intents to.’ IOW: it’s OK for Albert, because we all 
know he’s gruff and we should accommodate that. Others are routinely granted 
clemency for one reason or another, but should I not respond in perfect pitch 
to every email I get a different response.

This approach may make KDE a wonderful place for some people, but it makes KDE 
a damn miserable experience for others such as myself and I do not think it is 
necessary nor does it align with the consensus understanding of community 
interactions within KDE.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo