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A call for kindness in open source

Jerod Santo on October 15, 2018

Brett Cannon – Python core developer and dev lead of the Python extension for VS Code – joins us on The Changelog podcast to discuss the human side...
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Lewis Menelaws

Love everything you and Adam do at the Changelog. Looking forward to hearing this one!

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Jerod Santo

Thanks Lewis! 💚

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tux0r

I have a reasonable fear that too many projects replace meritocracy by a "safe space", as if nice people automatically make better contributions...

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Anthony Bouvier

Nice people can be taught how to be better developers.

Mean people are rarely open to learning how to be better people.

People of true merit rise above only looking at people for one skill set (tech skills) and at the whole person.

For every over-enflated egomaniac "rockstar", I can find a dozen someones that are genuine and coachable and teach them tech skills.

I'm tired of seeing meritocracy held up as some sort of bastion of "the way it should be".

I instead choose to define merit as having skills beyond just technical skills. Hell, technical skills are becoming the easy side of the equation to fill out.

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Frederik 👨‍💻➡️🌐 Creemers

A true meritocracy is also unrealistic, because people have different opportunities.

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Jerod Santo

This is a false dichotomy. There is no such thing as "nice people" and "mean people". We can all be kind to one another, irrespective of our code's merit.