Are you talking about the comment that closed the ticket [1]? Are we not seeing the same thing, because that's not a "top draw dick" I'm seeing.
He was perfectly reasonable. And I don't know if you've ever managed any popular open source projects, however it's best to close tickets fast instead of letting them linger on, especially when you have over 1000 opened issues and especially if, as a maintainer, you know that you won't change your mind about that issue.
Then he got accused of being funded by Google. He actually showed restraint.
> Are we not seeing the same thing, because that's not a "top draw dick" I'm seeing.
> He was perfectly reasonable.
The original complaint had the form "this default should be changed for reason X". Poettering's response was "our defaults are Y, and you can change them". That's not perfectly reasonable. It's a non sequitur. Poettering's response passively-aggressively ignores what the original complaint was all about, instead of simply issuing a direct rejection.
It isn't a non-sequitur, he offered a solution for users that would like different settings, while choosing not to engage in pointless arguments.
While professional courtesy is recommended, maintainers don't really owe an explanation for their work when provided for free. Put that man on a payroll and you might deserve a more detailed answer.
It is absolutely a non-sequitur to tell someone what the defaults are when they are complaining that they do not like what the defaults are. "Choosing not to engage in pointless arguments" would be not responding at all, rather than responding in a manner that is implicitly insulting. Poettering phrased his response as if he was answering a different issue than the one he was actually responding to. Deliberately misinterpreting someone's question instead of directly saying he didn't want to get into that matter is poor behavior.
He probably should have worded it better but the comment does not refer to the entire community. Unfortunately there absolutely is a collection of anti-systemd trolls within the community that have been egging him on for quite some time now and will gladly dog-pile on these github issues with insults and conspiracy theories. I honestly did not even know who he was before I saw lots of this type of toxic and hateful post being directed at him on reddit.
Something like: "we've discussed this a number of times, see #12345" closing now
would have closed the ticket and not made the front page.
By being a top draw dick about it (when the originator was at least being earnest) the debate rolls on.
He had given a full answer, he could have left it there, but chose not to.
its this kind of "rock star" and cheerleaders that give IT a bad smell.