Let’s talk about the “great stuff from shitty people” phenomenon. It deserves a deeper discussion.
See also: Roman Polanski, Harvey Weinstein, R. Kelly. Shitty people sometimes produce great stuff.
We can argue whether a particular individual’s stuff is that great actually (hi Woody Allen). But I think we can agree that _some_ things that terrible people create are good.
We can argue whether a particular individual’s stuff is that great actually (hi Woody Allen). But I think we can agree that _some_ things that terrible people create are good.
The particular example prompting this thread is Richard Stallman (a terrible person, for reasons covered here among other places) and his creation of gcc, which many people regard as a significant contribution to computing.
There are many people who think gcc is _so important_ that it’s worth the downsides of having such a toxic person in the community.
This is a common logical error called “survivorship bias.” Human brains are engineered to, as Wikipedia says, concentrate on the people or things that “survived” some process, while overlooking those that didn't because of their lack of visibility. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors…
To put this into concrete terms: we overvalue gcc, because we don’t see what we could have had instead.
And what is it we could have had?
And what is it we could have had?
Well, Stallman alienated an entire generation of female developers (and probably other groups too) away from free software. Let’s be conservative, though, and say the number of people he alienated is in the hundreds.
So instead of hundreds of people’s contributions, many of whom would have been great, would have brought useful new perspectives to computing, and maybe introduced new paradigms, instead of all that output we got
gcc.
That’s it.
gcc.
That’s it.
Then there’s the follow-on effects - such as all the later generations of women who didn’t go into open source because there were no role models.
Instead of reflecting the number of women in computing in general (25-30%), the free/open source gender balance hung out at around 2% - basically a rounding error - until concerted efforts to address it started in the last 5-10 years.
You can thank RMS directly for that.
You can thank RMS directly for that.
Is gcc worth it?
No.
Pulp Fiction isn’t worth it either. Neither is Annie Hall. Like gcc, those things are good, but whatever usefulness they’ve had to us is VASTLY outweighed by the cost of tolerating bad behavior plus what we could have had instead.
No.
Pulp Fiction isn’t worth it either. Neither is Annie Hall. Like gcc, those things are good, but whatever usefulness they’ve had to us is VASTLY outweighed by the cost of tolerating bad behavior plus what we could have had instead.
So keep that in mind when you think “sure, since [X] started, all our women developers have quit...but his velocity is so high!”
Enabling toxicity is always a bad business decision.
Enabling toxicity is always a bad business decision.
Enjoy gcc and Pulp Fiction and Annie Hall and all the problematic art, if you want. But know that it’s problematic, own that, and live with the consequences - all the good people who will quit, and all the great contributors or candidates who will self-select out.
I will probably always avoid anything related to free software or copyleft. My energy goes elsewhere.
Projects & companies that don’t support problematic people are going to win. Because no matter how good that toxic dude is, he’ll never be better than what you could have had.
Projects & companies that don’t support problematic people are going to win. Because no matter how good that toxic dude is, he’ll never be better than what you could have had.
