[FFmpeg-user] List members behaving badly

[Dennis Mungai]

On Fri, 12 Apr 2019 at 06:49, Phil Rhodes via ffmpeg-user <
ffmpeg-user at ffmpeg.org> wrote:

> People, please...
> I offer the following in the hope that it can be viewed as constructive
> criticism.
> The argument here is effectively one which has been raging for years -
> decades, even - and it is not helping anyone.
> The open source community is notorious for being poorly socialised and
> indulging in excessively pedantic or deliberately unhelpful behaviour. I
> have commented on this list about it many times and I stand by those
> comments. This is an example of that.
> This holds back open source software in all its forms. It serves to put
> off new users who might become useful contributors in time. It alienates
> people with useful expertise who are not software engineers. The problems
> caused by all of this are highly visible in open source software in
> general, and ffmpeg in particular.
> I don't know what the solution is, but it must necessarily involve
> everyone being nicer to each other, and not trying to jusify
> unprofessional, discourteous behaviour.
> I've been saying it for years and I'm going to keep saying it: FOSS could
> do so much better than it does, almost solely because of exactly this sort
> of bad behaviour.
> -P
>
>
We need to stop making *this* a justification for the toxicity the likes of
Reindl create in this mailing list.
This isn't about FOSS' tolerance for "bad behavior" as you put it in this
context, but rather this mailing list's willingness to overlook persistent
abuse by Harald.
A pattern of repeated harassment that mailing list mods overlook, either by
choice or omission, is the problem here.
It's become an echo chamber over time where dialogue is stymied , and put
bluntly, remains openly hostile to a majority of users who'd rather not
post here and get flamed in retaliation.

Until this course is corrected, Harald and his ilk will remain as the
persistent problem they are, unchecked like a cancerous tumor thriving on
necrotized septic toxicity.