The level of toxicity in the github issue's conversation is so astounding that I must say something. People on the internet are people. I hope that we don't talk to people in "real life" the same as we do when we make toxic comments online. Complain, write letters/emails to Docker, make your opinion heard, etc. But remember that you are dealing with a fellow human-being, who has their own life and own emotions. Treat them with the same respect you would like to be shown when people are unhappy with you.
The comments in that github issue reflect very poorly on us as a professional community to the point that I'm embarrassed.
I agree with you. BUT, even from a pure software hosted on github point of view, he didn't respond appropriately - The person who opened the issue had a legitimate concern - WHY.
The maintainer not only skipped addressing the core issue, which was that you need an auth-wall to download the setup files, he also closed the issue with a very dishonest answer without addressing the WHY. He even said the docs don't need to be changed. WHAT? It's gray area, but to me personally, it's an unethical move to not mention such a drastic change in the docs. Unless, they hoped that this would pass off either unnoticed as acceptable. But in this case, it didn't and the community held them accountable.
If you notice, most of the comments aren't personally attacking him, but rather suggesting alternatives or either just re-iterating the core issue once again.
But then, what I DO agree with you is the issue page slowly turning into a reddit thread, which I fear would lead to personal attacks, etc.
But, do you know what would have stopped all this? Just a simple apology/honest discussion about this change and perhaps, actually talking about a solution. That's all.
One person called the company "jerks" without singling anyone out. Another posted a rage meme to express their displeasure. The overwhelming majority of the hundreds of comments were even more restrained.
Perhaps I'm missing some of the more "choice" comments but as a whole I have far more of a problem with the official corporate-speak than the reactions too it.
Two wrongs don't make a right. "Jerks", as a comment, is purely subtractive. We're all adults. There are plenty of critiques to their action and their defense. Let's use our words to make reasoned arguments rather than just lashing back.
"Jerk" is a pretty mild word to express dissatisfaction.
I would maybe ascribe it to a mismatch in expected decorum, hardly call it toxic. Like, do you expect a church or an informal conversation among peers? Or if you will, a cathedral or a bazaar? :)
And it was just one comment .. "We're all adults" goes both ways, let's not fall all over ourselves because of a little mildly bad word. Personally I don't think that's very constructive either, in the sense that it lights the fire under something that distracts very much from the actual topic.
They called it an astounding level of toxicity. Whatever your thoughts on the expected level of decorum, that seems a tad hyperbolic to call out over usage of the word "jerk". Such hyperbole is definitely not helping, and in my personal opinion, actually more "subtractive" than generically calling a group of people that did something you don't like "jerks". For one thing, it's not astonishing. It just isn't.
> “Jerk” is a pretty mild word to express dissatisfaction.
I certainly wouldn’t defend it. It’s not toxic because “jerk” is a bad or particularly strong word by itself, it’s toxic because calling someone a jerk is a personal attack, and it’s a judgement call that is purely mean spirited and doesn’t address any concerns. It doesn’t explain the frustration, it’s escalating things in a negative way, and it’s an insult. That is not a socially acceptable way to express dissatisfaction.
It's not a personal attack if it is directed at a company or the actions of a company rather than at a person.
Its purpose is not to explain the frustration but to signal the intensity while clarifying the attribution: the person making the comment believes that Docker acted knowingly against their interest and does not buy the excuse that Docker put forward. I challenge you to express the same concepts with the same clarity in five times as many words.
I contest that name-calling is not an escalation over doublespeak.
Finally, whether or not something is socially acceptable is up to society, not to you.
> It's not a personal attack if it is directed at a company or the actions of a company rather than at a person.
Splitting hairs perhaps? “Jerks” is intended to be an insult no matter how many people you’re talking to or about.
> it’s purpose is not to explain the frustration but to signal the intensity
Sure, that’s a plausible assumption, but it doesn’t help the conversation, nor make it okay or socially acceptable to hurl insults. Are you certain that was the purpose? Have you clarified that with the author of the comment?
Perhaps a better way to signal intensity is to explain what material impact the decision has on their workflow and daily lives. What is the cost in terms or time or money, or something else?
> whether or not something is socially acceptable is up to society, not to you.
Yeah, that’s correct. Did I claim it was up to me? I stated a fact, not my personal opinion. Throwing insults around is not socially acceptable, according to society, not me.
Exactly, we are all adults, this kind of non-answer-marketing-speak: "we've made this change to make sure we can improve the Docker for Mac and Windows experience for users moving forward" is dishonest. I, as an adult, would definitely call someone who gives me this sideway kind of answer a jerk.
Pulling this kind of crap on customers also reflects poorly on us as a professional community. Which other profession steals so much personal data from others through manipulation and trickery?
So all in all it looks like we're all part of a low standars professional community that should be perpetually embarrassed of itself.
As a professional, you should realize that you are not a customer of Docker, you are a user that provides them no value.
They have little revenues and an over valuation to justify, while being attacked from all sides by competitors (Google, AWS, RedHat, Pivotal). Docker is in a bad position and they are desperate.
I took a quick look at the thread on github and did not see that much toxicity. Maybe I missed most of it, but IMO (which seems to be shared by others) Docker is seriously wrong here. Saying that login wall is a change to "improve user experience ... moving forward" is wrong. Whoever is saying this knows this is not true. Calling such an obvious case of BS when we see it is not treating people with disrespect.
On "write letters/emails to Docker" instead, no thank you. If I suspect the company of some dishonesty (as I now do based on the thread at github), public shaming may be more effective and do most good. This discussion needs to be public.
For the _most_ part I don't see what was so toxic about it.
But compare it with the corporate response. Doing this kind of thing without warning to loyal customers and then being dismissive about it is also very toxic.
I disagree with the decision, and I am a Docker user, but I'm not sure I agree with calling them "customers."
For the record, I skimmed the discussion too, and I don't understand "astounding level of toxicity" either.
What do you call a person who dismisses your valid concern and declines to respond to perfectly plain, honestly formulated questions in good faith? That's a jerk.
All the comments were aimed at the company not the people who work there. Corporations aren't people no matter what the Supreme Court says and they don't have feelings.
Lying, especially for company profits or personal gains, is easily one of the most toxic and despicable things to do and people who do it so casually don't deserve a lot of respect.
So yeah, my real life response to that would be very similar.
It appears that people on GitHub hate bullshit. And why wouldn't they? Most of them are engineering types. Docker added bullshit to the action chain of acquiring their only product. Then to really seal the deal, they lied about the reasoning with some marketing fluff bullshit. On GitHub of all places. Things that engineers appreciate: good data, transparent systems, no bullshit. Docker is 0 for 3.
They have badly misread their users, and they are paying for it. There's not much else to the story.
People react when they face an issue that affects them. Tone policing like this says nothing but that you value the appearance of civility more than you do the harm people are complaining about. This is a fairly trivial example. But this is the same mentality that goes into telling NFL players not to kneel, so it's worth calling out.
When you focus on style instead of substance you draw attention away from the core of an issue. It's an effective tactic when it's what you want to do, but anyone who wants to use it should stop and think about why they want to obscure the point instead of addressing it directly. If it's because you don't have a valid objection, perhaps you don't have a stake in the discussion and you should think twice about entering it. Digressions that address the civility of the participants always serve to defend the status quo. Is it a status quo worth defending?
I laugh when I got to the "guess I'll die" image and the commenter quoting Big Shaq though. You know something's controversial when the github issues thread devolves into image macros and memes.
Wow. The reaction to your completely reasonable comment shows just how susceptible the "smartest people in the world" are to joining an old fashioned pile-on, or at least justifying it.
> Treat them with the same respect you would like to be shown when people are unhappy with you.
Why do you think everyone deserves respect?
I prefer the brutal honesty of the internet rather than the fake civility you advocate for. It cuts through the static and gets to the core issue. My experience has been that people dislike harsh comments because many times it contains the truth and they don't want to be confronted by the truth.
Also, instead of crying that the world is harsh, why not toughen up? When did it become fashionable to be so soft and weakminded? Especially over something so silly as github comments?
Personally, I feel the people who are turning the internet into a toxic mess are people like you who attack speech. If you don't like harsh comments, don't read them. What's so hard about that?
Besides, everyone has different levels on what they consider toxic. I and nobody I know considers "jerks" a toxic word. Why should everyone lower themselves to your definition of toxic?
With all the complaining and name-calling, I'm quite surprised that nobody has proposed forking the project and maintaining a tracking-free version. Certainly, it would appear as if there's a demand for such a project.
What project? I'm assuming most of this commentary is regarding the Docker for Mac and Docker for Windows products which are an assembly of a significant number of open source projects: OCI's runc, CNCF containerd, CNCF Kubernetes, CNI provider, the docker/cli project as well as docker compose and kubectl binaries built for the host OS, the Docker CE engine built and packaged in a VM run by LinuxKit, xhyve, DataKit, VPNKit (all open source projects). I guess you could fork all those, but since many of them are not even controlled by Docker I'm not sure what the purpose would be.
What I hope is relevant from the long list of projects that I just mentioned is that a company has spent a significant # of engineering years assembling, packaging, and supporting that combination in a way that makes it dead simple to do container-based development on non-Linux systems; mostly focused on developer laptops. No one else has that capability. It is a wide open field if anyone else wants to spend that same effort and time assembling a popular and free product that makes all that work together seamlessly on a Mac or Windows system.
I am not saying I don't have an opinion on whether it's good or bad to make people sign in to download this free product. That is a company's prerogative who controls that product, and market forces will determine whether people will deal with such additions/changes. I of course would love to see direct downloads not impeded by such a change, but that's just my opinion. The silliness of HN is revealed when people start listing a bunch of other totally unrelated projects (cri-o, rkt, containerd) which don't provide any of the functionality of Docker for Mac or Docker for Windows. I say that as a huge proponent and maintainer of containerd. Again, if there is any other offering that makes that possible out of the box for Mac and Windows-based developers, then people are free to get behind that. To me, the only alternatives are to throw a VM together with Docker, Kubernetes, and whatever else you want and hack together the scripting and updating to make it work for you, and Docker nor anyone else are preventing or impeding anyone from doing just that.
The pressure to fork Docker went away over the last year with the development of podman[1] and buildah[2].
There's some interest in the idea of wrapping podman/buildah into something that can be consumed by Windows and Mac users in a similar fashion to how Docker is right now. But it'll take some time to pull that off.
How do you generate profit if you built something wonderful but the competition already built everything around it that you wanted to sell later (Kubernetes & Co)? User data.
Well, yes and no. They've said why they've done this:
> we've made this change to make sure we can improve the Docker for Mac and Windows experience for users moving forward.
but at the same time, that explanation is clearly bollocks. Something I realised and find very helpful to remember is this:
> If someone gives a reason for something, and the reason is clearly bullshit, then it means the person giving the reason has a hidden agenda which is likely to be negative for the explainee. - "Will's law of corporate bullshit"
Here's how it works. People do stuff for a reason, for instance I ate lunch because I was hungry. I have opened the windows because it is hot and I like the breeze.
It is usually easy to match the action with the reason given, there is no suspicion here, there is no cognitive dissonance.
So let's take the example in question, Docker moving downloads of their software behind a login. Without attempting to guess at their motivations it seems clear that this is a very inconvenient thing to do for end users. As someone has pointed out, the steps to download the software are nearly doubled, and there are fears of getting corporate spam.
So OK, that's the action, what's the reason given?
> we've made this change to make sure we can improve the Docker for Mac and Windows experience for users moving forward.
Well, that's clearly bullshit, right? It isn't possible to match the reason given with the action. It's not going to allow for a better experience for end users.
Let's apply the logic. Company does something -> Reason given is bullshit -> there is likely a hidden agenda that is bad for the explainee.
So we have arrived at a situation where we are pretty sure that the hidden reason for Docker to make this change is negative. We don't know exactly what yet (we can speculate), but we are pretty sure it's negative.
So you are right, "We don't know why Docker did this", but we can be fairly certain it's not going to be for the benefit of us end users.
> > we've made this change to make sure we can improve the Docker for Mac and Windows experience for users moving forward.
> but at the same time, that explanation is clearly bollocks
Whenever a corporation/someone explains their decision is to "improve the experience for our users" as the major reason, without explaining how exactly the decision relates to an improved experience, it's usually disingenuous[0].
I'm actually curious if there's counterexamples against this rule.
It really is annoying to need to be able to login to download the binaries and being dishonest with the user base is not a good approach in order to build great company-customer relations.
But all this hate and frustration being channeled on the docker team/this issue is like people just bandwagoning on a issue where somebody addressed a issue in a respectful manner and they see it as an invitation to just shit on people, like "oh they fucked up, lets give em hell until the people responsible for this curse the day they were born".
It is a really poor behaviour. I don't believe any of them haters would approach people like this when being confronted with them face to face.
The level of toxicity in the github issue's conversation is so astounding that I must say something. People on the internet are people. I hope that we don't talk to people in "real life" the same as we do when we make toxic comments online. Complain, write letters/emails to Docker, make your opinion heard, etc. But remember that you are dealing with a fellow human-being, who has their own life and own emotions. Treat them with the same respect you would like to be shown when people are unhappy with you.
The comments in that github issue reflect very poorly on us as a professional community to the point that I'm embarrassed.