From an outsider's perspective, both RMS and Chris are genuinely interested in supporting truly free models of sharing and communication and I applaud them for their efforts.

However, when RMS says free software shouldn't depend on Mono, he gives a very good explanation for it: http://www.fsf.org/news/dont-depend-on-mono

On the other hand, after my friend and I spent 10 sleepless nights developing the original version of Sched.org in 2008, we woke up to read this: http://www.iminta.com/intas/show/214894

Think about it from the developer's point of view. How do you think we felt? While everyone from Wired to aviary.com teams were loving Sched, here is someone saying we deserve to be in a hall of shame for making a free, unique product that helps people manage their schedules. Is a negative post like that supposed to encourage me to stay up two more nights to support OpenID? You know what would have worked?

> Hey guys, cool app! Thought about adding OpenID support? Lot of people can benefit from it... More info on implementation here: http://example.org - Chris

A co-worker has made this same mistake for the last couple of years working at our company. He complains about everything and doesn't try to fix anything himself. He's a smart guy, though. He's bitter about some treatment he's received but still...complaining is what he does.

Now he is being pushed out of our group by the original management from before when we got acquired. Not sure where he's going now but he's out. He'll never advance and I'm sure this is somehow noted in his performance reviews; technically he got bumped down a notch. He's probably really bitter now.

A good article pointing out an error that many of us make (myself included) on a regular basis. Conversely, I would say that HN commenters are often much better about avoiding the negativity trap than commenters on other tech sites.

i wonder if that's because we're a smaller community, so there's a shame factor in being downvoted?

I think it's because when people come into the community with a different attitude, they often get heavily downmodded, ignored, flagged, etc. Anti-social behavior is so actively discouraged that people either leave or shape up. Listen to the first few minutes of this podcast for the outsider's view: http://techzinglive.com/?p=70

I'm oftentimes glad that, as a simple nobody, I can express my opinion without worrying about who I offend or projecting the wrong image over a group I'm associated with.

Yes. Even outside of the internet, Chris has random people shouting stuff at him.