Week 44, 2008: Don't Be Hatin'

There was a little bit of schadenfreude in my heart this week when I surfed over to the Linux Hater's blog and discovered that its author has decided to close up shop.

As a full-blown Linux supporter and user, I have to admit this was my initial reaction at seeing this announcement, because seeing someone give up on constantly critiquing Linux for what appears to be argument's sake can't be a bad thing, right? But when I tweeted my glee at the news, one of my friends in the business e-mailed me and said "In a way, I'll miss it. Overly negative? You bet, but often insightful."

And right there, I was forced to stop and think about it.

The author of the Linux Hater's (LH) blog, who to this day remains anonymous, did tend to use an over-the-top, in-your-face attitude to get his points across, laced with various expletives. I have a personal bias against language like that, especially in writing. I can understand the occasional four-letter word blurted out in the heat of the moment, but writing is something that takes some time, and care. If you have to use swearing to get your written point across, well then I think you've halfway lost the argument already.

This, assuredly, is my own personal bias. And I freely admit it clouded my opinion of the LH author. Maybe it did so too much, because I have to also admit that my friend has a point: tone aside, the LH author did indeed point out problems in the Linux development space. Often with surgical skill. This was no hyped-up outsider, looking to get his kicks beating up on Linux. The author clearly had experience in development, and seemed to be highlighting issues that he personally had run into.

Am I agreeing with everything he had to say? No, because his arguments were mostly one-sided. It is easy for one-sided arguments to cherry pick only the salient facts for proving the point of the argument and nothing else. Other facts get conveniently ignored. This "hater" of Linux was very good at finding flaws, but not so good at point out achievements. And, also telling, very poor at offering solutions.

I have a simple work ethic that I try to apply in my professional and personal life: if you have to tell someone about a problem, try to bring a solution to the table as well. It may not be the right answer, in the end, but at least you're trying to part of the solution and now just the problem. For me, that's the key thing that was missing (and is still missing) in a lot of these anti-Linux diatribes: sure, there may be something broken, but what do you suggest be done?

When presented with this question, most of the Linux-bashers will either (a) not reply or (b) say something along the lines of "it's not my job to fix your mess!" Path (a) indicates they were another in a long line of trolls. Path (b) could be indictative of that too, it might also represent people that don't think they could contribute anything useful, or it could be folks that could help but find it easier just to complain. You never know.

Trolls will always be trolls, and complainers will always complain. But the notion that someone can't contribute to Linux is silly. It's open source, for goodness' sake. If you can code, get in there and fix whatever problem you're seeing. No time? Fill out a bug report. No developer skills? Send an e-mail to the development team. Instead of saying "this sucks!" try "this sucks, but it would suck less if you could add this feature..."

The author of the Linux Hater blog was almost--not quite--but almost there. His critqiues were detailed enough, at least, that a few of the targets of his anger were able to make some adjustments of their own.

There will always be people who hate Linux, so the departure of the Linux Hater is not the beginning of a new age of love and harmony. As Linux becomes more pervasive and Microsoft increasingly loses its way, I'm sure there will more harsh words directed at my favorite operating system.

I'm just hoping more of those words are balanced with solutions.