In my experience perhaps the only way of dealing with characters like David Marks is by completely ignoring their contributions.
He does, I agree, almost have a point. However, his lack of respect for those who spend time and energy contributing to these projects could (and will likely) drive away many useful contributors. "Feeding the trolls" is a dangerous game, much more so than avoiding the advice of a few David Marks.
The problem with this strategy lies in the fact that most open-source projects are large, open communities, where experts in a particular area useful to that project are likely not to be ignored. John Resig's response to the situation (in which he condemns the entire comp.lang.javascript usenet group) seems an extreme (but perhaps appropriate) response to this -- he's sending a very strong message to those who contribute to jQuery: "no more feeding David Mark".
He does, I agree, almost have a point. However, his lack of respect for those who spend time and energy contributing to these projects could (and will likely) drive away many useful contributors. "Feeding the trolls" is a dangerous game, much more so than avoiding the advice of a few David Marks.
The problem with this strategy lies in the fact that most open-source projects are large, open communities, where experts in a particular area useful to that project are likely not to be ignored. John Resig's response to the situation (in which he condemns the entire comp.lang.javascript usenet group) seems an extreme (but perhaps appropriate) response to this -- he's sending a very strong message to those who contribute to jQuery: "no more feeding David Mark".
(I would also agree that this Matt Kruse fellow seems to be going about things in an excellent sort of way. His response to Resig < http://groups.google.com/group/jquery-dev/msg/e93f9484cd5246... > was, in my opinion, spot on)