Re: [dwm] Being not so elitist

On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 8:14 AM, Antoni Grzymala <antoni_AT_chopin.edu.pl> wrote:
> To sum up: I really cannot understand what's so cool in being a dick.
> And a rather softish one, too.

This may come as a huge shock, but not everyone is motivated by a need
to look cool on the internet.

> Being a non-dick is not equal to a social-networking hugfest, as Kurt is
> implying in his mail quoted above. That's no boolean, there are stages
> in between, which might come as a serious discovery to some of you here.
> Watch the coming years for similar revelations.

I can't figure out why you typed this except as an attack vector.
Maybe I'll meditate on it for years and experience a revelation. Are
you suggesting that the text "This keeps its userbase small and
elitist. No novices asking stupid questions." is being a dick? If so,
I disagree. "Being a dick" is relative. I don't think anyone here is
being a dick, but others might. Catering to either extreme of the
spectrum is a waste of everyone's time.

> Your mail is so grand, as if you wrote a large number of extremely
> elegant and useful operating systems. Heck, you just as well may have,
> but somehow I've never heard of Kurt H Maier, the great coder (no
> offense intended, just the sake of argument). On the other hand, I have
> heard of other people like, say, Paul Graham, who really are great
> coders, write great prose, and the last thing that would cross their
> minds would be calling themselves "elite". Even though, yeah, I do
> personally consider them "elite".

Fallacious. Argumentum ad verecundiam. I'm allowed to have opinions,
whether or not you've heard of me.

> You guys are fucking participating in a *simple wm* project. And to all
> the loudest "elitists", it's not even you who wrote the thing
> originally.

Yes, we are participating in a simple wm project, and the fewer idiots
we have marching onto this mailing list and demanding ridiculous
feature-creep and handholding, the longer it will *remain* a simple wm
project. dwm's the only window manager I can stand using any more,
and I'd rather not have to fork it because the gnometards show up and
try to integrate networkmanager into the status bar.

The text this thread describes was on the website the day *I* signed
up for this mailing list. Did it keep me out? No, because I haven't
developed a terminal case of thin-skin syndrome from sitting in front
of a hugbox terminal. That text is not keeping out anyone worth
having in. I'm not talking about programming proficiency, here; I'm
talking about keeping people out who have this inexplicable drive to
turn every software project into huge bloated crap. The userbase for
this wm is necessarily small. If that userbase were to grow large, it
would signify one of two things: either everyone has figured out they
don't need all the UI crap forced down their throats (unlikely), or
else dwm has changed into a mainstream window manager (terrifying).
Whether people change their UI needs we can't control, but if dwm
starts going mainstream, it will mean something is very wrong.

> Also, calling *oneself* elite is just ridiculous. Self proclaimed elite.
> Self proclaimed deity. Yeah, right. Go get some treatment.

You seem to be approaching the word "elite" from a
script-kiddie-braggadocio standpoint. Please stop. The phrasing in
question is "small and elitist." "Elitist" in this case means
"encouraging control by an elite minority." "Elite," before it was
ruined by BBS kids and usenet pseudohackers, meant "a member of a
privileged group." I submit to you that dwm users are privileged to
be so, and not having the mailing list flooded with requests for xft
support is a pretty nice thing to have.

So yeah, the userbase is small. And I'm glad. The userbase is
elitist. We want Anselm in control, and not some Debian Subcommittee
for Window Management and Interface Design. And novices don't
generally come here and ask stupid questions.

And that's the way I like it.

# Kurt H Maier
Received on Tue Jul 29 2008 - 13:41:09 UTC