Re: Is it always like this?

[Sri Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com>]

> Recently, actually the day before the "testicles" release, I subscribed 

Hmm.  Yay, we can now called the whole thing testicle debacle/release. :-)

> to this list.  Being an entirely uninitiated list newbie, yet a big fan 
> of Mr. Lebowski, I wasn't shocked or awed by the title. 

I raised one eyebrow and  I don't know Mr. Lebowski.

> I'm what you could term " a business user/decision maker".  I joined 
> this list, to see what the Gnome community was all about.  I just wanted 
> to see what the people behind the scenes were like, how they thought, 
> what went into this platform, etc.

ooo..bad timing.  You should go back and look at the archives or read 
planet gnome.

> The recent messages/theme/testicle controversy really doesn't influence 
> me one way or the other from a business perspective.  But my question 
> is, "Is it alway like this?"  Did I just catch an out of the ordinary 
> flame war, or is this the norm.?

Most large open source projects have disagreements.  Sometimes they are 
resolved amicably other times it's a flame war.  For a lot of us GNOME and 
it's image can be emotional and we react accordingly, as anyone would when 
building something grand and complex that people are proud of.

This particular thread was really not about calling it testicles or other 
such nonsense, but it's about image and what it means to different people.  
Others do not want to see us "corporatized" and take ourselves too 
seriously.  The flip side is that we want to be taken seriously, not like 
a pack of juveniles who do bathroom jokes.  So thats what that whole thing 
was about.  In the end is that we've removed titles on development 
releases.  No longer calling them by a particular name but try to maintain 
our culture through individual releases.  Perhaps a compromise, but it 
does leave a bitter taste in some people's mouth.

That is the beauty about Open Source/Free Software project, it's not about
code while it is a big part of it, but I believe primarily it's about
people getting together and building something wonderful.  And thats what 
you're witnessing, passion from different perspectives.

So yeah, it's always like this and I'm glad.  The day we stop being 
passionate about GNOME, thats the day this project ends.  

sri