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Comment by asadotzler | Hacker News Reader

It's my opinion that when you call a Thunderbird developer "some simian" and when you tell them to "Die die die die" and "Seriously, screw you" and you say things like "You know, every time I see a comment from [a specific Thunderbird developer] I just want to reach out through the intertubes and cut off his damned fingers to prevent him ever writing any code..." and when you're warned in a very civil tone with a clear explanation of why your approach is hurting rather than helping https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=579372#c3 and you still come back with more of that same approach, I think being banned from Bugzilla is a perfectly reasonable thing.

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OK, so I read this bug report. I think it says a lot that the focus from you (and, it looks like, the representative rest of Mozilla) is on the perceived "bullying" (it's not bullying) and the "incivility" (give me a break), and not on the actual problem being reported by the user.

You want us to consider context when talking about his most recent bug report being banned? OK, then we should also consider context when reading the "...every time I see a comment from [a specific Thunderbird developer]..." bug report too, because it's clear that this guy has had his objections and bug reports ignored a couple too many times.

Changing Command-F is broken ui. Period. You just don't do that. To an experienced, battle-weary developer, it's one of those blatantly obvious things that makes them want to scream at the sky.

Me? I would have just cussed at the software -- like I do every day at Firefox -- and then thrown my hands up, decided there wasn't much I could do because there isn't yet another option available, and gone on with my day. This guy is speaking for a ton of users who, like me, gave up the battle of communicating this kind of stuff over and over again.

I'm not writing this for you, though, because that would be a waste of my time. I'm writing it more as a caution to any other businesses that haven't yet fallen victim to this trap: listen to your customers, even when they're pissed off.

I wrote it here, too: http://robsheldon.com/ivorytower

Most other people here are discussing the degree to which he was/was not a bully. You've actually hit the nail on the head: this bug submitter is _absolutely right_ (old bug and new bug). Why not also remap ctrl-c to paste and ctrl-v to delete line?

I'm not sure if it is a sense of humor thing, but I don't get anger from his bugs at all. A bit of frustration, and colorful language. But that's not rage.

He's profoundly wasting his time by bothering to talk to Mozilla developers. I learned long ago that they are extremely cliquish, and don't care what you think. They will do whatever they feel like doing, whether or not it makes sense. Personally I quit using thunderbird when they pushed an updated, it broke the client, and their reply on the forum was more or less "too bad, sucker".

No one deleted his bug reports. This isn't about whether or not Thunderbird has bugs. The Thunderbird developers are not ignoring the substance of his reports (mostly duplicates which have already been reported by people spewing far less venom.)

This is about this particular individual and whether he was adding more value than he was taking from the project. The decision was made that he was hurting more than helping and so he was kicked out.

The comment you reference was made in July 2010. The bug report that triggered the banning was made a week ago, and just sounded petulant. It didn't make any personal statements about anyone.

Nursing a grudge against someone for a year, banning him for a grumpy bug report, then spamming discussion threads with hand-wringing about what a toxic abusive bully he was really seems like a waste of time to me. I guess you can "coordinate" your community however you like, though.

It was not simply two bug reports a year apart. There were many more reports and multiple warnings given. I highlighted some of the most egregious but it's not an exhaustive list.

In defense of the bully, at least he is completely clear about his feelings, and it is obvious that he is just insulting.

I know from experience that is is extremly frustrating and deeply insulting when a developer marks a valid bug report as "NOTABUG" or "WONTFIX", no matter how friendly he is while doing so. When somebody closes a bug report without taking any action whatsoever, without even acknowledging the problem, this feels to me just as if he said: "Shut the fuck up, we developers have better things to do than care about stupid users." It doesn't matter if the developer uses polite wording, I'm still insulted.

> It doesn't matter if the developer uses polite wording, I'm still insulted.

The drama you generate inside your own head is not the developer's responsibility.

Closing a bug as "NOTABUG" is not an insult. Closing a bug as "NOTABUG" means the developer does not think there is a bug. If you take it as an insult, then take responsibility for your own feelings. Don't blame the developer.

Yes, I take responsibility for my own feelings. I know what it's like from the other side too: as a software developer I can't accomodate every user request. It's difficult to tell a customer that I think they are wrong, or that their problem is not important enough in some grand scheme of things. And it is very easy to insult someone without using any expletives.

I'm not saying that a developer should leave bug reports open to avoid any possible offense. But they must be aware that the act of ignoring a perfectly valid issue reported by a passionate user can be demeaning in itself.

You're right, he is being a little abrasive there, but I'd take it in stride and enjoy; this sort of thing is normal on the Internet.

And besides, he's right. Why did they replace cmd-f like that?

Why should we accept unnecessarily abrasive behaviour as acceptable anywhere?

Because sometimes actually helpful bug reports come packaged with snarky people. I see little problem with that. There's guys like zedshaw who always flame and get flamed, yet still provide lots of value. Plus it livens things up a bit. Nothing wrong with a little sarcastic banter here and there. Some people have their panties in a tight knot sometimes over some silly things.

Not everything has to be so srs bznss all the time folks.

From this banning, Mozilla has just lost a useful bug reporter and one of the founding fathers of GNU.

Being a founding father of GNU does not give you the right to be a bully. Telling a developer that you want to cut off his hands so he can't program is not helpful and people who behave like that are not useful bug reporters. They are bullies and they are toxic to an open source project. No project should tolerate personal attacks like that.

If you let people treat you this way because they also happen to provide some value, then you're enabling them and encouraging the behaviour. People who behave in this manner should be ostracised.

Be careful about who you may have just ostracized. To play devil's advocate, do you have any idea where we would be without Linus Torvalds, Theo De Raadt, and Ulrich Drepper?

They are somewhat known for their public moments sounding just like this guy.

Personalities are complex. We can't just cherry pick the attributes of a person and separate those from those which we perceive to deviate from the ideal.

Whether this particular guy is a net gain for the community isn't for me to decide (though I do love emacs, and use a lot of core GNU software), but if colorful language is the price I have to pay for their contributions to society, that value proposition is still a no brainer.

Anecdote: many of the brilliant developers I've worked near (the major outliers, 100x productivity types) have some kind of quirk. This could be that they snap sometimes, or that they don't shower, or that they neglect their paperwork. Give them some feedback, grow a thick skin, but don't ostracize them.

"do you have any idea where we would be without Linus Torvalds, Theo De Raadt, and Ulrich Drepper?"

I'm not suggesting they'd disappear. I'm suggesting that they'd be forced into behaving in a more respectful manner to people.

People stop acting like tools when other people stop putting up with it.

" if colorful language is the price I have to pay for their contributions to society, that value proposition is still a no brainer."

Except that you're not paying any price at all. It's the Thunderbird community paying that price and there is no reason for them to do so. If your list of his accomplishments included making Thunderbird a great piece of software, we might be having a slightly different conversation. Also, kicking him out of Mozilla's bug system very likely has zero impact on your emacs and core GNU software.

IMO, being a hero on one project does not give you the right to be a bully on another.

How many brilliant developers have you not worked with, because they looked at that kind of comment, and decided that they would rather spend their spare time working on a project where they _wouldn't_ get told that their fingers should be cut off to prevent them ever writing any code?

I've been a participant in GNU since 1990. I've been a maintainer of GNU Emacs, GDB, Guile, and (briefly) EGLIBC, but many others have contributed a lot more than I have. Mlynarik's contributions to GNU are relatively minor. Calling him a "founding father of GNU" is a bit rich; it was pretty gratuitous of him to bring it up.

Note that Mlynarik could have made every single one of his contributions without verbally abusing anyone. It's not like you have to swear at someone to explain why you think something is a bug. He freely chose to add the abuse to his technical content. Since the abuse is utterly inessential, there's no reason to put up with it.

The abuse doesn't even express depth of feeling. He's always written like that, to pretty much everyone, in all circumstances. It's noise in his signal.

I think Mozilla is absolutely right to ban him from its sites. As someone said, "Sure, you have the right to be a jerk --- just not on my web site."

I'm amazed that HN readers are so backwards on this.

Because God is a crazy woman and his name is Eris.

You're right, he is being a little abrasive there, but I'd take it in stride and enjoy; this sort of thing is normal on the Internet.

That doesn't mean it needs to be tolerated. While such behaviour might be common on places like Xbox Live, I haven't seen anything like that on HN, for instance.

Yes, abrasive behavior exists. That does not mean that any project has to tolerate people who bring it regularly. Normal on the Internet is not the standard by which I want the projects I work on to be managed.

Dear Asa,

You complain about Mlynarik being a bully, and yet here you are, with your comments on this one post at about 18 now, all saying what a horrible person Mlynarik is, and how you think no developer should have to put up with him, and yet, I don't believe you've disclosed your role, or why you have such a dog in this race....

I haven't read each of your posts, so maybe I missed where you told everyone what your role is in this.

Anyway, I do see Richard, a user, being blunt and creative and passionate in the bug reports he gives to the developers. But I do not see how a user bug report should actually offend or bother a developer.... At all.

And I do see you wandering around this post making sure everyone understands your point of view, that Richard's behavior is intolerable anywhere, and you can confidently say that since you are such a tolerant guy. I guess you're passionate too, but I think it's borderline speech policing and gate-keeping behaviors.

Boo hoo, a user calls the developers simians. I actually thought that was pretty funny, along with the imagery of Richard reaching through the computer.

I hadn't realized that the Firefox developers, developers of one of the utmost free speech tools of the 20th and 21st centuries were such wilted flowers that they could not handle the frankly amusing, sarcastic, accurate, precise, correct bug reports from one of their more knowledgeable users.

But now I know.

> all saying what a horrible person Mlynarik is

There's a big difference between saying someone is a "horrible person" and calling out specific incidents of inappropriate behaviour.

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