Bonum Certa Men Certa

Fight Less, Collaborate More

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jul 29, 2024,
updated Jul 30, 2024

Pair of Boxing Gloves

Competition is OK, committing crimes is not OK

Public domain vintage poster of two men boxing for punch tobacco

In the context of sport, which I did a lot in the past (also competitively), people can try to beat the other person and they can still shake hands or hug at the end (homophobes dislike the latter; they see bromance in everything). Sportsmanship is about improving oneself and one another, pushing each other to the limits of the collective potential/capability.

In Free software, many projects compete, but as code can be shared (or collaborated upon) across projects, improvement in one project can improve the other/s too. For instance, when ODF support is improved in one office suite, this may mean other suites will inherit these improvements and even reciprocate a bit (bug fixes, optimisations, enhancements etc.) because that's how copyleft works.

Sadly there are people in the community who don't code, never coded, don't know how to code, and don't wish to learn how to code. So instead of offering something they're trying to cause racial strife (morbid cry for attention) and there are absolute lunatics committing crimes against us for years already. Nope, they're not Computer Scientists, they're just nasty and malicious trolls who try to tear down those who succeed and offer good work. Calling out those lunatics is essential; once flagged, projects can identify them and treat them accordingly. We're not talking about CoC "kkkops" but something miles worse.

Even in any fairly stable and amicable community they're looking for conflict or try to actively inflame one, sometimes create one from scratch.

Competition and disagreements are fine; vandalism is a whole different thing. Do not let vandals infiltrate your community. They're always insincere about their motivations.

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