Perl Doesn't Need Toxic Attitudes Like Yours

[chromatic]

The "actual contributors" I listed deserve my thanks; you, not so much.

I don't care if I get your thanks. I care if the Perl community is full of toxic attitudes such as yours. I don't want that.

Go on. Keep insinuating that people are money and attention grubbing whores. Go on and question the sincerity of volunteers. Follow them around wherever they post and complain (anonymously and otherwise) that they haven't fallen all over themselves doing exactly what you think they should do, and complain that when they write about what they do and what they find important, that you think they should be off writing code.

You can look at every public commit I've ever made to Perl or Parrot. I dare you. Really go through them. Look through every one of my posts to this site, or every message I've sent to a mailing list, or every talk I've given, or every article I've written, or every book I've written or edited or reviewed. Tell me that I haven't helped out other people. Tell me that I haven't made their lives easier. Tell me I haven't helped them solve their problems.

You go off and do that, and then tell me with a straight face that I haven't earned the right to write about my opinions on Perl and software development.

I don't care about your gratitude, but I stand by what I've done and I stand by what I've written. Tell me exactly how many opinions I can share based on how much work I've done. I'm curious. I'd really like to know how long you're going to whine about how other people spend their time.

But even so, that doesn't really matter.

You brought up Rafael and so did one of the anonymous monks. I don't care if he wrote Perl 5.10 singlehandledly (he didn't) -- when he called me a fraud and a liar and a manipulator and an attention whore trying to destroy Perl merely to sell books, he was out of line. He'd have been out of line if he'd never made a commit to Perl 5. He was just as out of line as a pumpking. He'd have been out of line saying that to you as much as he was saying it to me. (As I'm sure plenty of other people remember, I was out of line getting on Audrey's case for a decision she made with Pugs.)

I don't want to be a part of a community where people talk to each other that way over something as trivial as software. As far as I'm concerned, the Perl community doesn't need your attitude. No software community does. Shame on you.

[Anonymous Monk]

When you point a finger, four point back at you, and then a baby penguin dies. We're all ordinary people.