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Open Source Initiative bans co-founder, Eric S Raymond

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Re: Open Source Initiative bans co-founder, Eric S Raymond

#101

Post by NyxWulf »

tedivm wrote: post #67
NyxWulf wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the quote from Kick https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22539826 doesn't say that. It seems a bit off base to me, but so what? People aren't all good or all bad. They aren't an authority on everything they have an opinion on. That is what makes appeal to authority so dangerous. I don't think it's possible for any strong opinion to please everyone. To me the question really does boil down to whether freedom o…

I'm not aware of any organization that promotes "true freedom of speech" to that extreme. I don't want the government shutting ESR down, but I would never hire someone who has said what he says about race, gender, or sexuality. The OSI has their own rights as well, and part of their own freedom of speech is that they get to chose who does or doesn't use their platform for speech.

> I'm not aware of any organization that promotes "true freedom of speech" to that extreme. I don't want the government shutting ESR down, but I would never hire someone who has said what he says about race, gender, or sexuality.

Promoting something isn't the same thing as supporting or allowing it. Many mailing lists have allowed a self governing style of free speech. If you don't want to hear from someone, you add then to your banlist. The extreme and consistently offensive get marginalized by each person, rather than by a singular authority.

Your comment about never hiring someone who was said what ESR says about race, gender, or sexuality is a broad and unspecific brush. I've read the links provided, what specifically did he say, and when that would make him un-hireable forever?

Re: Open Source Initiative bans co-founder, Eric S Raymond

#102

Post by core-questions »

pjc50 wrote: post #73
derefr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Real jerks in f/oss are also a real problem. f/oss groups should ABSOLUTELY eject bullies: not for wrongthink, but for bullying. We must be kind. So, is it illegitimate, then, to have a FOSS project with an intentional/cultivated "culture of abuse", where the idea is that nobody is kind to anybody and that's how everybody likes it? Sort of a... "BSDM but we build something along the way" thing? (For example, pictur…

Maaybe , but you'd have to follow the "safe, sane and consensual" rules. Explain in advance that that's what you're doing. Ensure that everyone is on board. And not do it in public, because the public aren't consenting. And if it rose to public prominence while remaining a men only club, that would probably cease to be OK. (It remains unclear to me what the long term psychological effects of participating in a commun…

> but you'd have to follow the "safe, sane and consensual" rules.

Those rules are entirely arbitrary and were made up as part of this new Code of Conduct bullshit. They didn't used to exist and plenty of productive developers contributed plenty of useful code. You're arguing the rules matter from within the context of the rules; that's begging the question.

> long term psychological effects of participating in a community where "nobody is kind to anybody" are

99% of people toughen up and move on with their lives and learn to not be so serious.

1% of people don't manage to do this. Some subset of that 1% get mad about it, and now they're using this as a hammer against massive numbers of normal, volunteer developers who just wanted to happily code without having to acquiesce to a particular brand of American progressivist moral licensing.

Re: Open Source Initiative bans co-founder, Eric S Raymond

#104

Post by iron0013 »

kazinator wrote: post #54
zozbot234 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "toxic loonytoon" part, referencing a prominent candidate to the OSI board? I mean, surely we can all have our own opinions about any candidate, but the optics aren't that good.

That sort of language is normal in the parliament houses of the developed world, upon which our constitutional democracies are based. If there is some sort of evidence that the candidate in question is in fact a toxic loonytoon, by some sort of objective standard, then it's perfectly fine to use that language. At some point, you have to call a spade a spade, and a toxic loonytoon a toxic loonytoon.

Well okay, if you insist: Eric S. Raymond is a toxic loonytoon. And there’s plenty of evidence to support that assertion.

Re: Open Source Initiative bans co-founder, Eric S Raymond

#105

Post by motohagiography »

Making creators accountable to bureaucratic values using cynical techniques like whisper campaigns and deplatforming will destroy the culture and technologies it produced.

FOSS was started as a divergence from corporate bureaucratic software, and now political bureaucracy is coopting and subverting it.

An intolerant minority is poisoning the well of creativity in multiple disciplines by subverting the organizations that support it instead of producing the tools people want and use. It's the same crowd that is causing campus problems. These people aren't civil or "nice," they're nihilists who understand bureaucratic power and align with whatever meaningless words achieve their end.

It's not just right/left either, this particular flavor of bureaucracy affects progressivism, but it's a wave of the same force that hollows out creative endeavors and turns them into hosts for bureaucratic governance.

The only way to defeat it is individual competence and peer recognition of the excellence of their work, which people who exploit bureaucracy are necessarily incapable.

Rant over, but this issue is crucial to everything from net neutrality, crypto policy and backdoors, and software freedom everywhere. It cannot be allowed to be shut down.

Re: Open Source Initiative bans co-founder, Eric S Raymond

#106

Post by monksy »

joe_the_user wrote: post #74
monksy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, he has his own opinion. What is wrong with that? IMO: His opinion has a lot of weight here. He founded the project. Without his philosphy in the start you wouldn't be where it is today.

I'm pretty the point is that OSI already laid down guidelines that asked for civil communication - and name calling is epitome of uncivil communication. Indeed, his comment is basically contesting those guidelines. So this was clearly one of those no recovery situations. Either guidelines for civil behavior or "show me the code" meritocracy wins but it's hard to see "agreeing to disagree" being possible here.

Being a prior mod of a city sub.. "toxic loonytoon" is a rather light thing to be called.

My concern is if you're drawing the line over this what you're communicating to people is that you cannot negatively sum up another individual, even when it's warranted. A productive conversation can be had on the merits of the label. Are you trying to incentivize long posts about all of the non-sensical policies that the individual is pushing?

Re: Open Source Initiative bans co-founder, Eric S Raymond

#107

Post by core-questions »

Tomte wrote: post #63
derefr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Real jerks in f/oss are also a real problem. f/oss groups should ABSOLUTELY eject bullies: not for wrongthink, but for bullying. We must be kind. So, is it illegitimate, then, to have a FOSS project with an intentional/cultivated "culture of abuse", where the idea is that nobody is kind to anybody and that's how everybody likes it? Sort of a... "BSDM but we build something along the way" thing? (For example, pictur…

I doubt OSI has stated a "culture of abuse" as their goal, their CoC even indicates the opposite. If someone and his three friends want to be politically incorrect, great, let them. If they open up their little club to the world at large, without any indication that their club is "special", then I guess the world is right to assume some standards of behaviour.

Why does opening up your rude little club imply anything of the sort? Why would you join a club that you don't enjoy the discourse within? I don't understand how people can't see that participation in all of this is 100% voluntary. This isn't like inclusion and diversity efforts in corporate enterprise, this is a different beast, and over-corporatizing it defeats the reasons why many people moved to working in / on open source stuff to start with.

Re: Open Source Initiative bans co-founder, Eric S Raymond

#108

Post by rvz »

Once again, another person has been arrested and unfortunately cancelled by those who disagree with him over wrong-think. The OSI isn't really doing anyone favours over banning people like ESR because they have an opposing view over changing the organisation's policy, they just make the whole argument a one-sided echo-chamber which isn't healthy for any org if one is concerned about some changes like ESR was.

The cancel-culture attitude over people who you disagree with is so dangerous to any organisation. It's like it has become a crime on the internet these days. If someone was to say an opposing opinion with evidence towards a PC crowd, they will be locked up in the dungeon, charged with high treason and banished forever.

Re: Open Source Initiative bans co-founder, Eric S Raymond

#110

Post by NyxWulf »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #44
silverreads wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only nutters were attracted to this work in the 80s and 90s. My point stands. We're kicking out the people that thought differently enough to make the world we now live in. Honestly I refuse to blame someone for believing propaganda when it was so strongly pressed upon them. Remember, gay content only recently became acceptable to advertisers and corporate america. Anyone with the old anti-gay viewpoints will be purg…

It's not about him no being an ally I'm the 70. It's about him conflating homosexuality with pedophilia _today_. I'm thankful for his work, but today people like him are driving away people from open source. And this is not a Linus Torvalds sometimes uses rude language kind of thing. It's about a person spewing hatred and toxic lies.

Without sources and specific primary citations, I find it hard not to read this comment as spewing hatred and toxic lies.
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