Some people around Free Software tend to be too enthusiastic and very critical, both with themselves and with other people. Whenever Linux or Free Software appear in the media, people who wrote the articles are severely and merciless attacked, and the criticism is not always constructive.

It might be hard to properly talk about these topics in a non-technical magazine or newspaper targeted towards the mainstream population, not only because they have to explain it in an understandable way for non-initiated people, but also because they’re usually very limited in space. Thus, many times the articles are inaccurate or incomplete, not always being a journalist’s fault, but also of the conditions in which the article has to be published, as well as the time they have to develop it.

Someone, a journalist, told me this last weekend that she tries to avoid writing stuff about Linux herself due to the harsh attacks she’s subjected to from the Linux and Free Software activists as soon as she publishes anything on that topic. I kind of understand that. It might be the same than when you write a program and release it as Free Software, and then some people get too demanding and aggressive towards you for not having done a perfect program and submitting to their wishes, instead of thinking about the effort invested in what is done.

I seriously think that we might be losing a lot of power and strength if we attack so much the media that support us than they fear us enough to avoid these topics. We’re on the same team, and it wouldn’t be so bad to be a little understanding and supporting of them, and rely on constructive and friendly criticism instead of treating them as if they were the enemy. They also have feelings, you know.

I agree with you totally. Lately, I’ve seen so much of these types of “attacks”. And I feel that they not only waste their time, but everyone else’s as well. I can understand a person making a clarification of a point, or pointing out an error. But there is a right way, and a wrong way of doing this. Most of the responses I’ve seen, has been the wrong way. For a bunch of really bright people, we sure do some really STUPID things.

I think it’s time that we start growing up, and work more like what a community should be…

Regards,
Louis

Hey, this textbox is *way* too small!

I suspect your friend may be somewhat off-base. Who is laying in to her? Serious free software folks, or a bunch of slashdotters? If the former, then she probably wrote something exceptionally dumb. If the latter, she should learn to ignore them: they’re the kids in the playground shouting “fatty”.

BTW, it disturbs me to see a spam splogger comment gaining googlerank from your blog.

Thanks niq! I’ve deleted that comment. I wasn’t sure if it was spam or a ping back.

They’re more of the latter, slashdot kiddies. But even though they should definitely not be taken into account, they seem to make enough noise to scare people out of the Free Software World.

Well, journalists could try asking a few people to review their work if they’re not sure of the topic, instead of publishing assumptions and misunderstandings, but often deadlines and secrecy about who they’re actually writing for (a sort of pride?) get in the way.

Slashdotters are nothing – if you write about Wikipedia and get it wrong, your work may get criticised on prime-time BBC1… ow!

I think this mirrors the ‘internet men’/women & debian/debian-women divide. If all people would: be ‘grown up’, ‘consider feelings’, etc. Debian, the internet, etc. would be better. But the internet tends to make people shut-down emotionally and read text/posts in odd ways leading to responses that would never be said to a human in front of them. Not that everyone does this, but enough to lead to the ‘kathy sierra incident’ and -devel flamewars.

It also depends on the article, I was quite angry with this one http://www.elpais.com/articulo/paginas/alternativas/Windows/Vista/elpepusoceps/20070304elpepspag_13/Tes (sorry for non Spanish speakers, it’s only in Spanish).

Cheers.

Yeah Aloriel, you’re right. That article sucks

Some journalists do not have a clue, true. They don’t even have time to check their articles or learn things before writing about them. As people seem to be too emotional about Free Software, they seem to take those mistakes too personal, and thus attack back to the journalist quite aggressively, instead of trying to correct them in a more constructive way.

Sometimes it’s not a lack of knowledge on the journalist side, but a lack of space or time to properly explain everything, or that the target of the information has so low technical knowledge that it must be extremely simplified. The same as when history is explained to 8 year old kids. You must make it simple enough for them to understand, even at the cost of being inaccurate about some points. If you were so exact in the explanation, they probably wouldn’t get anything. It might be difficult to balance all that, somehow.

I’m a bit concerned about these aggressive attitudes driving journalists away from our side, whether or not they might deserve the criticism sometimes.

http://etbe.coker.com.au/2007/08/21/suggestions-and-thanks/

At the above URL I posted some suggestions on criticism of blog posts. I suspect that some of the ideas may apply to criticizing journalism but will have to consider it some more (and discuss it with a friendly journalist or two).

If Paul Graham’s idea “you’re on the right track when people complain that you’re unqualified, or that you’ve done something inappropriate” applies to journalism then it could explain a few things.

[...] A Planet test? Miriam Ruiz reports in her blog a journalist friend being frightened off writing about open source by a strong adverse reaction from the open source community (if I may, um, paraphrase). Her article is well worth a read, and generated quite a few comments. [...]

What i think is some journalists, when trying to talk about open-source, have their articles sensored (due on some molopolist lobbies?)

Here is a good example of a journalist never had any article about open-source and Linux published, but always talk about open-source and Linux on his blog: http://bitaites.org/ – he used to write articles on a journal used to say even less and less articles about Linux and open-source (i think something ‘weird’ is making this happening…) – no surprise the same journal used to be very ‘enthusiastic’ every time a Microsoft product appears in the market…