> if the author's rant truly reflects the attitude of the community, it's sounds pretty toxic.
There's been a lot of external hostility and conflict over the years. Which unsurprisingly affects community culture.
And the reverse too. I recall encountering surprising "yikes!" even early on, from excursions from professionalism, tone-deafness, and groupthink. Which didn't help with external harmony.
It might be interesting to explore sometime, what might have been done differently long-term, to perhaps have gotten different dynamics. For instance, if replacing X11 had been envisioned as first a broadening of alternatives, and only then a narrowing to a new standard. Open source often uses forking and competing projects to defuse hostility and keep people engaged and productive. Coping gracefully with "lots of diverse everyone trapped on the same boat" isn't its strength.
There's been a lot of external hostility and conflict over the years. Which unsurprisingly affects community culture.
And the reverse too. I recall encountering surprising "yikes!" even early on, from excursions from professionalism, tone-deafness, and groupthink. Which didn't help with external harmony.
It might be interesting to explore sometime, what might have been done differently long-term, to perhaps have gotten different dynamics. For instance, if replacing X11 had been envisioned as first a broadening of alternatives, and only then a narrowing to a new standard. Open source often uses forking and competing projects to defuse hostility and keep people engaged and productive. Coping gracefully with "lots of diverse everyone trapped on the same boat" isn't its strength.