uolo

I don't think it is that irritating as such. But it's the principle. It much easier to convince people that they should be prudent than at which moments jokes are appropriate. I recently found out that some mplayer developer thought it was funny to include "Core dumped ;)" as the last line when you dump a stream. I'm sure that it was funny to them, but less so when you are just trying to figure out if it works after battling deceptive copyright protection, and learning all the settings of different tools, for a couple of hours. Now try and convince the developers that this, or other jokes, isn't funny.

Man is an UI for people.

Even the man page includes a couple of examples where it isn't.

Not that I think it has much relevance as an argument, but my employer pays for Ubuntu. Which in turn seems to be this developers employer. Presumably this is part of his job there, since the commit was made during the day.

As I said, not that I think it matters. But "no one pays for open source" frequently just isn't correct these days.

I don't think it is the professionalization of the industry that is making this culture feel less alive, quite the opposite. A lot of the "fun" of such features, or trivia, of past times is that it reflects the work that went into those projects. Today anyone can code up a small script with a clever name and adore it with funny messages and an edgy readme. The meaning of it all, the hard work, the culture and team behind it, the contrast between being serious and funny, and often the funny part itself is lost. Left is mostly a sort joking cargo cult type culture that might even be a hindrance to people trying to make new achievements that will potentially create new cultures, jokes and all.