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I came away with some of the same thoughts. I remember going to a DrupalCon (Drupal CMS conference) years ago and listening to Dries Buytaert talk about the social dynamics of open source development. One thing that stuck with me is that everyone has to sell. We don't all sell a product or service but we all sell something if we need to convince others. Most of us will have to sell ideas. At the time I was open to this but I recall being a young dev and just hating everything about sales because my view of it was the slizzy car salesmen. But that is one short sighted high time preference approach to sales. The kind of sales needed here is finding common ground. Finding ways to create wins for many groups and people. Building consensus to make a change. I think it is rare for a person to be good at this skill AND good and writing code. They exist and one can learn either skill but its not easy to do both well. I can see a place for what Peter described in his business experience. Stakeholders that keep devs on focus. I'm not sure that's what is needed but it seems like people that can build bridges and find win wins for larger groups of people would help. I hope the community figures this out.
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There was a great anecdote about this kind of thing in some Robert Greene book. I believe it contrasted a successful senator with an unsuccessful one. The successful one made the right kind of compromises and unsuccessful one refused to make any - not because they were stubborn but because they thought they were right.
I think Jermey operated in good faith and AFAICT he made a lot of compromises, so I'm curious what he missed. Did he not grease the right wheels?
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He may not have missed anything. It could be that those he was trying to work with were unwilling to accept compromise on their side. I'm speculating. But the point I'm making is that it can't be one sided. Just hearing about this individual's efforts make me wonder how long people like this can maintain the energy to see things through. My hope is that people will begin to see that no one wins when we approach collaboration with an adversarial mindset. We don't have to all agree but we can find common ground. But it can't be one sided. That's not common ground. That's submitting.
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If you have good faith people that are trying to solve problems but are stopped by others that are not behaving in good faith eventually those acting in bad faith will lose. As long as those acting in good faith do not fall for the trap of lowering themselves to bad actors. This is a low time preference behavior though and its hard for humans to do but is is very powerful. The high time preference thing is to lash out and stoop to becoming like your opposition.
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OP_CTVis simple and powerful but Ross Perot made great efforts too. The lesson for aspiring core devs is to get a better grasp of those social dynamics and learn how to win hearts in addition to minds.