Lack of proper shame
Some time ago, someone posted to a development mailing list about a piece of code, Cc:ing some people who had modified the code in recent past. Within hours, the original author replied to complain about not being Cc'd.
Several thoughts went through my mind:
- Is this man a walking colostomy bag?
- Why is this clown proud of his code? It is sloppy and riddled with bugs, and half of the changes made to it by other people have been obvious fixes.
- Why did his parents not raise him better? Doesn't he realize that demanding recognition in this way makes him a bad person?
This is Free Software, and people are motivated by all kinds of factors. Some bad reasons include
- Recognition, praise, or other Community ego-stroking
- Gaining a competitive advantage for one's for-profit business
- Line items on one's CV
- Finding a husband
- Accumulating increased influence in other communities
Looking at it through an Open Source lens, all these bad reasons are good reasons. For whatever motives, people are getting work done and accomplishing things. Of course, there are always an irritating number of hangers-on, and people who do not actually achieve much but are filled with such self-importance that they believe they deserve to be highly influential through sheer force of will, and the majority of the Community will concede this influence to them due to a variety of flaws in the Human Condition, but I digress.
It would be nice if everyone had motives that were pure and good, especially since at least 90% of problems in Free Software projects are due to ego issues, but when the world works, the world works. So I am happy to get code contributions for whatever reason (assuming there are no strings attached). The problem I have is when people insist that their bad reasons are legitimate and should be catered to and accommodated by others.