Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Goodbye to GNU Libreboot

lists.gnu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 100 posts

Re: Goodbye to GNU Libreboot

#91

Post by tbrownaw »

davexunit wrote: post #20
debatem1 wrote: post #19

So, is there any truth to the accusations of discrimination and harassment over at FSF? Either way this kind of drama would seem par for the course for people who view software development through political and philosophical lenses, but from a practical perspective it makes her mic drop seem a lot more noble if she's right.

>Either way this kind of drama would seem par for the course for people who view software development through political and philosophical lenses If you are a software developer and don't think about the social impact of what you do then you're being irresponsible.

If you are a software developer and don't think about the social impact of what you do then you're being irresponsible.

That seems a bit egotistical.

If I'm trying to make some in-house enterprisey thing run twice as fast, chances are there isn't much in the way of societal impact for me to think about.

If I'm building a sub-sub-component of some new system, chances are I don't have enough information to even start guessing at the overall effects of the complete system as it will eventually end up being used.

Re: Goodbye to GNU Libreboot

#93

Post by diaz »

I'm aware of the original problem and was reading before about it and even if this was all handled very badly publicly by some sides at least I read this email and all that is there is perfectly reasonable, is written in a good tone and leads to an acceptable conclusion. Stallman did what he could with this decision to stop the e-drama. I'm all happier for it.

Afterwards I read the comments here, people saying that Minifree is actually her job, which I find amazing because it provides things I care about and I want to see it growing up.

Finnaly I clicked on the link someone posted - https://libreboot.org/gnu/#leah-not-a-hero - and got surprised and kinda annoyed ( I may even say it pissed me off, when usually nothing I read on the interwebs provokes those kind of feelings in me ) by the fixed overlay currently there on the page:

"It took the GNU project 4 months to finally honour Libreboot's decisions, but on 5 January 2017, RMS formally acknowledged it - his reasoning is flawed. They should have immediately honoured Libreboot's decision to leave GNU, but instead they arrogantly resisted it for months, and the only reason they gave up was because they realized that all of Libreboot's core developers were OK with leaving GNU and still preferred to work with Leah Rowe. This page explains why no project should ever join GNU."

This is just so bad and putting more wood to the fire for no reason at all than e-drama. I was hoping people were a little more grown up, but as usual I got disappointed.

Re: Goodbye to GNU Libreboot

#94

Post by debatem1 »

davexunit wrote: post #20
debatem1 wrote: post #19

So, is there any truth to the accusations of discrimination and harassment over at FSF? Either way this kind of drama would seem par for the course for people who view software development through political and philosophical lenses, but from a practical perspective it makes her mic drop seem a lot more noble if she's right.

>Either way this kind of drama would seem par for the course for people who view software development through political and philosophical lenses If you are a software developer and don't think about the social impact of what you do then you're being irresponsible.

I can't tell if you're missing the point deliberately or not, so forgive me if I just politely assume that you were raised in a national park by a family of confused barn owls and have never encountered a group of humans before.

Being political and thinking about the consequences of your actions are not the same thing and frequently conflict. Being philosophical and making a positive change in the world are not the same thing and often conflict. Appearing philosophical as a means of being political is a common tactic, and often leads to the aforementioned conflicts.

All of which is a long winded way of telling you that sometimes people stir up drama not because it's the surest path to a good technical or social outcome but rather because they can't be bothered to put in an honest hour's work and would rather snipe from the sidelines about things that are neither here nor there but can be made to appear so if sufficiently determined.

Or, as your mother would have put it: hoot hoot hoot hoot hoot hoot hoot hoot HOOT.

Re: Goodbye to GNU Libreboot

#95

Post by tbrownaw »

debatem1 wrote: post #94
davexunit wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Either way this kind of drama would seem par for the course for people who view software development through political and philosophical lenses If you are a software developer and don't think about the social impact of what you do then you're being irresponsible.

I can't tell if you're missing the point deliberately or not, so forgive me if I just politely assume that you were raised in a national park by a family of confused barn owls and have never encountered a group of humans before. Being political and thinking about the consequences of your actions are not the same thing and frequently conflict. Being philosophical and making a positive change in the world are not the s…

...y'know, if you'd left off the gratuitous insults that would've been a good, insightful comment.

Re: Goodbye to GNU Libreboot

#96

Post by josteink »

chickenfries wrote: post #87
josteink wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? FSF handled it 100% examplary from the get go. Leah Rowe however was the toxic and crazy drama queen who couldn't keep a civil tone, and even her initial email included the word "fuck". To top it off, she had zero proof for her allegations, and the person she claimed to represent specifically didn't want her to raise those allegations in her name. In the rest of the world, we refer that as…

I don't have much to add to this discussion... but historically the FOSS community loves sharing Linus' nastygrams... I find people having a problem with this developer's tone somewhat sexist and irrelevant.

There's a clear difference between a rant over clear incompetence or a specific technical issue and just saying "FSF and GNU can both go fuck themselves" over allegations which has no backing.

There was no "tact" involved here. Just childish outbursts from a clearly unstable person.

Re: Goodbye to GNU Libreboot

#97

Post by debatem1 »

tbrownaw wrote: post #95
debatem1 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if you're missing the point deliberately or not, so forgive me if I just politely assume that you were raised in a national park by a family of confused barn owls and have never encountered a group of humans before. Being political and thinking about the consequences of your actions are not the same thing and frequently conflict. Being philosophical and making a positive change in the world are not the s…

...y'know, if you'd left off the gratuitous insults that would've been a good, insightful comment.

I guess stirring up drama wasn't the surest path to a good technical or social outcome after all.

Re: Goodbye to GNU Libreboot

#98

Post by laumars »

_pfxa wrote: post #82
laumars wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In one of her latter posts she confesses that the person who was fired was a close friend of hers. So I think this is a case of her being too close to the subject matter to be objective. In fact I think she came to realise this herself but not until it was too late for her and the project: https://libreboot.org/gnu/#leah-not-a-hero

Well that does not justify any of this trouble she caused, indeed, it only makes it worse. Even the fired person herself has finished their frienship with her.

I wasn't justifying her actions but at the end of the day witch hunts like this happen all too frequently online. It's way to easy for people to overreact and to a wider audience than ever before. The smart thing we can do as 3rd party observers is just ignore the fighting rather than participating in the outrage. Let the offended individuals vent and then let the argument disappear into obscurity. The alternative is escalation and we've seen how badly that can turn out (remember the grim Adria Richards Python conference saga which resulting in multiple job terminations and threats of sexual assault and death?).

Re: Goodbye to GNU Libreboot

#99

Post by kstrauser »

tbrownaw wrote: post #91
davexunit wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Either way this kind of drama would seem par for the course for people who view software development through political and philosophical lenses If you are a software developer and don't think about the social impact of what you do then you're being irresponsible.

If you are a software developer and don't think about the social impact of what you do then you're being irresponsible. That seems a bit egotistical. If I'm trying to make some in-house enterprisey thing run twice as fast, chances are there isn't much in the way of societal impact for me to think about. If I'm building a sub-sub-component of some new system, chances are I don't have enough information to even start g…

I think you always have to consider the effect of what you do. There are many situations - like the ones you describe - where that might be as simple as thinking "huh, this doesn't affect anything" and getting to work. That's still a valuable exercise because it gets you in the habit of at least weighing it.

Re: Goodbye to GNU Libreboot

#100

Post by sctb »

debatem1 wrote: post #94
davexunit wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Either way this kind of drama would seem par for the course for people who view software development through political and philosophical lenses If you are a software developer and don't think about the social impact of what you do then you're being irresponsible.

I can't tell if you're missing the point deliberately or not, so forgive me if I just politely assume that you were raised in a national park by a family of confused barn owls and have never encountered a group of humans before. Being political and thinking about the consequences of your actions are not the same thing and frequently conflict. Being philosophical and making a positive change in the world are not the s…

Personal attacks (sarcastically illustrative or not) are not OK on Hacker News. No matter what sort of discussion we find ourselves in, we have the responsibility to treat each other as members of a community—which we are. This is even more important on divisive or controversial issues.
Post reply on HN