Irreal

Do you know the story of brown M&Ms? It’s one of my favorite stories both because of the cleverness it reveals but also because of—at least according to conventional wisdom—the unexpected source of that cleverness. The short version of the story was that the rock band Van Halen used to put in their concert contracts that they must be provided with M&Ms backstage but that no brown M&Ms were permitted. The typical reaction from the band when they found brown M&Ms was to trash the dressing room and possibly cancel the concert.

Most people put that down to spoiled rock star misconduct and dismissed it as typical behavior from the breed. The thing is, all this was purposeful behavior meant to solve a serious problem. Van Halen was one of the first bands to stage elaborate shows with huge amounts of complicated gear. Some of the venues they played at couldn’t accommodate that gear so their contract spelled out precisely what was required. Many venues didn’t bother reading the contract, though, so dangerous things like collapsing stages occurred. The prohibition of brown M&Ms was a test to see if the concert organizers had, in fact, read the contract. If the band arrived to find brown M&Ms, they knew they could expect other problems.

Over at Effectiviology they have a great article on the brown M&Ms story. They give more details on the Van Halen aspect but also consider how the concept can be applied to situations Irreal readers are probably more familiar with than being a rock star. It’s an entertaining and informative read and very much worth a few minutes of your time to read.

I’ve written things like this before but apparently the right people weren’t paying attention. The free/open software movement depends substantially on volunteers. Yes, some companies contribute by paying their employees to work on projects they’re interested in and, of course, there are companies like Red Hat that make significant contributions. But without those volunteers, open source would die and we’d all be suffering under Windows and complaining about how much we hate Word.

That’s especially true of the maintainers who not only contribute code but take on a significant managerial role as well. As any manager will tell you, any decision they make will annoy someone. Sometimes the annoyed will complain vigorously. That’s not necessarily bad. You see it a lot on the Emacs devel list but by and large the discussions are polite and largely restricted to the matter at hand.

But not always. Sometimes a certain type of people can come to feel entitled and complain that the maintainers are not doing what they want. Often, as in the discussion I linked, the complainant doesn’t really understand the situation or know what’s going on. I pay only casual attention to the Emacs devel list but even I know that Eli, far from “not feeling like it,” was actually working behind the scenes to resolve some real problems with merging gccemacs to the main branch and that the process of merging is ongoing.

Eli and the others ARE VOLUNTEERS. They contribute their efforts and even though most of us know them only as maintainers, they have lives, families, and real jobs to attend to. They deserve our gratitude, not our abuse. Note that I’m explicitly not talking about people like Andrea and Yuuki. They’re making their own contributions and are entitle to query the maintainers on why those contributions aren’t being merged as fast as they like. Also note that their posts were polite and constructive.

I get that not having things move as fast as you’d like can be frustrating but all of us need to remember that guys like Eli are doing a great job for free and they deserve our gratitude. If we’re not going to pay them, at least we can throw an attaboy or two their way.