The movers and shakers in the OSS community seem to be people with strong opinions. They feel strongly enough about a software paradigm to speak out about it and develop some software package or library that goes along with said paradigm. Often, these people also tend to not be very friendly. They have an agenda. They think that they are right, and if you think otherwise, you are wrong and/or ugly and/or stupid.

This is why OSS sometimes chafes me. I am a people pleaser. It’s just my personality. Sometimes I disagree with something one of the big guys is doing. But when it comes down to it, I really don’t have the chutzpah to express an adverse opinion openly. I’m confident in my programming abilities, but I question myself when it comes to these sort of situations.

It’s sort of like road rage. I can get quite angry at someone who is driving poorly in front of me, but if I were face to face with them, that anger would disappear. In fact, I would feel bad about being angry in the first place. Part of it has to do with my personality, and part of it has to do with the unapproachability of these software giants.

This is one of the reasons why I was so impressed with Matz, the creator of Ruby. This guy has the most right in the Ruby community to boast, but the man is one of the most humble. When I heard his keynote at last year’s RubyConf, I was blown away. It was like a breath of fresh air. Many of the American (and non-American) programmers seem quite arrogant. I’m not blameless, either. We can all learn from Matz and his attitude.