Hot geeky water

There may be no better way to start a blog than with some controversy. To that end, I submit the following message that got me in a bit of hot water over at the "Solaris x86" mailing list at yahoogroups. I didn't mean for it to be that controversial, but evidently it was. You be the judge -- comment here, they don't want it on the mailing list.

Links were not in the original, but are provided here for non-list-member context.

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Hi all,

A mostly-non-technical, minorly-humorous, "can't we all just get
along" tirade is approaching, delete at will...

Maybe this stuff struck me only because I sat down and read 7 digests
worth of messages all in one sitting after not reading mail all
weekend, who knows.  (if I had a blog, this would go there.  Again,
please delete at will...)

In a recent spate of several messages, Alan DuBoff spake thusly:

(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisx86/message/20184)

> No, I believe you're wrong. Sun has encouraged the engineers to get out and
> help, and for most that help, this is not a part of their job title in any
> way. Sun is also encouraging the engineers to blog, opposed to some other
> companies that are telling them they may place themself at risk for doing so.
> Maybe Sun will change their view, but I don't see that happening.

An excellent defense of Sun's rightly-highly-regarded policy toward
community development.  Oh, but then Alan, in a brilliant effort at
community building, effused:

(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisx86/message/20189)
> Look, Bob is partially blowin' air up your @$$, and to make matters worse,
> you're bending over and dropping your pants...

Delightfully colorful!  Would've had a bit more "oomph" without the
self censorship of "ass", but we can't have it all.  Next, slightly
backing down from his more enthusiastic comment above, Alan then
proceeds with the following:

(all the rest of Alan's quotes from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisx86/message/20193)
[snip]
> Agreed, but to imply that this list has better support is misleading. This
> list has better expertise in only the hardware are of x86/x64, and partially
> it's due to the involvement of Sun's engineers. But Solaris is Solaris is
> Solaris, and Sun does provide decent Solaris support.

A nice positive step of giving props to the non-Sun folks on the list
with good x86 hardware knowledge, excellent.  Also a good defense of
the Sun support folks (I personally have had nothing but good
experiences with them), and also a good plug that a big reason this
community is so successful is the participation of Sun engineers.

[snip]

> There are Sun customers that would laugh in your face if you told them to go
> get support from yahoogroups. This is not to dis this list at all, I feel it
> is a decent place to get help, but many of Sun's customers just cannot put
> their business on the line to use yahoogroups as their sole support backbone.

Creative use of the "dissing while not dissing" defense, I like it.
But, now this community is simply a "decent place to get help" -- not
really a ringing endorsement, but not all that bad.  I agree that
relying on this community as a sole support provider would be silly
for many commercial enterprises.  I think the "laugh in your face"
comment was a bit over the top though, especially given the "better
expertise in hardware" comment above.

[snip]

> And I really don't think it matters much for Sun to do public relations for
> this list specific, I want to see them make it known to the world, however
> that may be.

Now Sun's involvement with our piece of the community is disparaged,
putting forth "the world" as more important.  A bit of a confusing
conflict -- I am under the impression that it is easier to take the
world by storm if you get a good mob going first.

[snip]

> You wouldn't believe how many engineers don't read this list because they
> feel that too many people whine all the time. If this list had better
> manners, more engineers would hang out here. Most of them could care less to
> read the latest in politics, so that turns them off also. This list is what
> it is, nothing more, nothing less. It's certainly not panacea.
>
> -- Alan DuBoff Software Orchestration
> GPG: 1024D/B7A9EBEE 5E00 57CD 5336 5E0B 288B 4126 0D49 0D99 B7A9 EBEE

Here we find out that the list is what it is, which is then defined
only as *not* being a panacea.  *I* think the list is a
technically-themed community, and agree that it isn't a panacea, but
Mr. DuBoff doesn't explain what he thinks the list is, only what it
isn't.  If we take this recent group of postings, we get the
impression that he thinks it's a group of generally annoying folks,
with an occasional gem of x86 hardware experience, tied together by
some whiners, too few engineers, and bad manners.  (I think we may be
able to agree to extrapolate that last bit all the way out the the
whole Internet ;-)

I have no personal relationship, either good or bad, with Mr. DuBoff,
and I generally greatly appreciate his efforts here.  With that said,
there are several conflicting messages in the above snippets, which
indicate that Alan seems to have a love-hate relationship with this
community.  Note that I've been using the word "community"
specifically, because it has become a key buzzword in the blogs of
many of the uppity-ups at Sun (see e.g. Jim Grisanzio recently) with
regard to OpenSolaris.

Although there are some more vocal, yes even whiney, members of our
community of yahoo(group)s, Alan (i.e. Sun) best come to grips with
the occasional "bad apple" and/or "whiner" -- if history is any guide,
they aren't going away unless the community dies.  As much as we may
hate the next-door neighbor with all the dead cars in his yard, we'd
probably really like to have him as an ally if somebody tries to put a
hideous strip mall in the neighborhood.

Let's *all* try to continue building our community, not the
"non-whining Sun engineers only" Solaris x86 community, but "The
Solaris x86 Community" -- we're all in it together.

Thanks, and again, sorry for the diversion,

Sean

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I really didn't think it'd be that big of a deal, although I was concerned enough about it that I did wait quite a while before hitting "send" on my mailer (unlike some posters on the mailing list, I might add). It was really meant as a general, and humorous, "can't we all just get along" post, to relax a bit of the tension.

Live and learn. I should've just waited and built this blog and posted it here. Now I know.

So, comment away: Was it too controversial for the "technical" Solaris x86 mailing list? Does it matter that I was commenting on an already long string of mostly non-technical posts? Does it make it worse? Was it even remotely funny? Do you think that Sun employees might take it the wrong way? Is a controversy really the best way to start a blog? Bonus points for predicting the types of mail I've received on the topic, and for guessing the paragraph that caused the most violent reaction (so far).

Next up: How should corporations influence the communities that form around their products?

Sean