A few weeks ago my work project made an unpopular announcement.

If you are not already familiar with the Linux landscape, and CentOS in particular, you will find that I am unable to explain the announcement to you without a 20 minute history lesson. Even with colleagues who are in the software industry, but are unfamiliar with the Linux distro landscape, it has been challenging to explain 1) what changed and 2) why people are angry.

The details of how operating systems are made are mostly boring, and you *want* them to be boring. If your operating system is getting your attention, it’s almost never for a good reason.

But they are angry, and their reasons are (mostly) good ones. That said, this announcement was an announcement, not a discussion. Which is to say, it’s the new reality, and people need to adjust to this change. Which is fine to say, but rather harder in practice.

This morning I sent out the monthly newsletter for the project, as I do every month. Except, this month, I’m getting a stream of hate mail, vitriol, snarky comments, and so on, from people who have evidently not read what I wrote, or who still feel that, somehow, their anger justifies them being terrible humans.

Look, I get that folks are angry. And I even agree with their reasons. But lashing out at *me* because you’re angry about a decision for which I’m the spokesperson doesn’t make any sense. Not only will it not change the decision, but it makes me less sympathetic to your complaints.