Just for the record, the correct spelling of my name is "Tom Preston-Werner." If you're going to attack me, please take a moment to spell my name right. Thanks!
Tom, thanks for all your contributions to the open source community. I hope that one guy writing an immature article doesn't make you feel too negative.
I'm surprised that an article written with that tone made it to the top of HN.
Which part, exactly, is immature? Did I miss the part where he called Tom a "stupid fat head" or something? From what I read, the product does not work as advertised and in fact eventually causes itself to crash, yet the page begins with "monit except awesome". Hell, I loathe Ruby and I was even convinced it was a better alternative to monit!
I think anybody who releases open source software is to be commended; without it, most of us wouldn't have businesses. I have great respect for all contributors. That being said, just because you put something out there doesn't give you immunity against negative reviews. And it doesn't justify others, such as yourself, in berating those who give such reviews.
Most free software is forthcoming about its warts and issues. We're generally told when something should not be used for production. Instead, the pitch for god is that, well, it's God. I believe his tone was dead on for someone who felt betrayed by a piece of software that promised the world yet could not even maintain its own running state. After all that fighting, I'd be pissed too.
Well mostly the part where he rants about how much time he wasted, etc.
That's not a negative review, it's a slap in the face.
Also, it is somewhat disgusting to me that a wanna-be blogger would decide (to publicize his blog?) to rip on a guy who has been a great open source contributor AND has managed to bootstrap several successful startups (notably gravatar and github).
Tom is clearly busy and productive and is (in my opinion) a great role model for how to combine excellence in open source and entrepreneurship, and is the LAST person that anyone should be going out of their way to rip on.
Now you're attacking Brad for attacking Tom when he never personally attacked him. Brad isn't a "wanna-be blogger", at least as far as I know the man. He sent me a link to the post and said "I hope he changes some of the wording" -- he just wanted the god docs to accurately reflect the production status. That's all. Oh, and make millions of dollars off of all blog subscribers I'm sure he got as a result. That was sarcasm, by the way.
Brad never ripped on anything else Tom has done. He never even suggested that the state of the god docs reflected poorly on him as a developer or a person. He was merely supplying information and venting frustration over the previous six months he spent attempting to get Tom's product to work properly. Hell, he wasn't even mad that it was (for him) an incomplete, non-functioning product, he was just upset that it wasn't presented as such!
I didn't know who Tom Preston-Werner was before this post, but apparently he has indeed bootstrapped several successful startups and is a great open source contributor. Good for him, and I thank him for his contributions. One of the reasons I want to become financially secure is so that I can devote most of my time to OSS, so everyone who contributes largely to said software gets my utmost respect and admiration. I don't see how any of that has any bearing on the status of god's documentation, however.
It's tough to separate the creator from the product of the creative act. Why would Tom have created God if not because he was inspired to write something cool and useful.
To then sit around calling it names is an insult not just to Tom but to anyone who is engaged in productive, creative work. Also, this kind of thing will only discourage others from releasing their code to the community...
My sentiments exactly. Tom has contributed some wonderful things to OSS including Chronic and Grit. I've used Chronic on many projects and have been very happy with it because it works as advertised. Thats just not the case for God.
Am I using a different version of God than you guys or something? It's been nothing but awesome for me and the framework I built around it, which now has been running in production happily for months monitoring over 20 different ruby processes (http://www.github.com/jcapote/theman).
Also it deeply saddens me that an article as emotional as this makes it to the front page.
My hopes for this article is that I can shorten the evaluation for others who consider God. Consider this the "Monit (like god, only it works)" of "God (like monit, only awesome)" post.
You must not have read the forums. Some newer features of god require a linux kernel module that is not included in Ubuntu by default. You should probably have read the forums sometime during hour 1 of your experience.
