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> banishing contributors for wrongthink And now he is banished. Are you really arguing against this?
He is banished for being an ass, not for his exhaustive level-headed critique of known supermarxist coraline ada ehmke /s
I've read a bunch of ESR's writing, and I disagree with him on an awful lot of political and social issues. Chances are we wouldn't get along very well. Tone-policing, cancel culture, and identity politics are a real problem though, and it seems like they're getting out of hand. This is happening everywhere though - it's not unique to the open source world at all. I don't know what the right solution is. ESR and RMS…
Who is going to advocate for that now?
I don't think telling the truth, discussing divisive issues, and courtesy are mutually exclusive.
I don't think the people outraged over Stallman's comments are wrong. There are some issues that we, as a society, have not really figured out. A lot of this stuff have been a long time (centuries?) in coming. However, I don't think the rampage of the outrage machine is the way to go either. At some point, we're going to have to pick up the pieces.
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My message was based on his posts about the situation.
It sounds like that comment was implying the burden of proof is on you to justify that chx was "stabbed in the back" when from the sounds of it, even chx disagrees with that characterisation.
Oh, lots of ESR fanboys here today! Can someone of you please explain exactly what it is that makes ESR a great hacker/programmer?
Nothing, imho. He maintained the jargon file and some irrelevant old unix utilities for a while. His primary achievement was non-technical: taking the radical philosophy of free software and neutering it be acceptable to corporations. He also wrote a book[0] with a catchy title that many people referenced and few people read. I think ESR is a dabbler and popularizer who has built his personal brand around being a Man…
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> I have been banned from the Drupal project for Code Of Conduct violations in 2016. Out of curiosity, how long did they ban you for and will they give you any 'parole hearings' for good behavior? Or is this a lifetime ban without possibility of parole? In most countries somebody convicted of murder might hope to one day be declared rehabilitated, but it's not clear to me what role rehabilitation plays in CoC enforce…
> Out of curiosity, how long did they ban you for at the time, this was never clearly stated but I believe the shared understanding was indefinite > will they give you any 'parole hearings' for good behavior noone even thought of that > but it's not clear to me what role rehabilitation plays in CoC enforcement. This is not as simple as sitting on the bench for a time and then you are back and yay. I'd say the road to…
Neither are parole hearings. I wouldn't expect them to let you rejoin after a predetermined amount of time, but I would expect them to periodically reconsider the ban given the latest up to date evidence about your personality/character. If you came to understand the error in your ways and made demonstrable moves to improve the way you conduct yourself (it sounds like you have), surely that should be considered.
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> but nothing about this message strikes me as someone who's acting in good faith So you don't know who ESR is, and you're going to act like the man who has put his entire life into this effort as though he's not "acting in good faith". Wow. If anything, I'd question whether everyone else on the list even knows what 'good faith' is, as they voluntarily proceed to censor themselves.
I know exactly who ESR is, have read his blog off and on over the years, and agree with him on many political points. However, that's still a ridiculous email, and inappropriate for any context where grownups are trying to have a serious conversation about adult matters. First off, it's unprofessional. But even beyond that, the email is either intended to persuade through facts and reasoned argument, or bully though…
This isn't a profession. It's a volunteer effort. ESR has spent enough time talking about this now that expecting every single email he writes to include a total re-encapsulation of the entire effort is ridiculous. Of course, this is why arguing with these sorts of people is such a pain; they forget everything you've ever said, and any point ever admitted-to is forgotten the next day like as though no such admission had ever been made.
The way to stop this is to just disregard the contributions of those who’s asking price is everyone else’s slavish obedience to their standards of conduct.
I side with ESR, this is silly. What I think the moderators should have done in this circumstance is actually moderate . In cases like this where things are getting heated and you're obviously in an un-usual circumstance, schedule a real conversation to diffuse the situation. Slack, Zoom, Hangouts, phone call, whatever. Anything where tone and emotion can be effectively communicated. Can you do this always? No. Shoul…
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We also don't know what the movement would look like today if it weren't dominated by their personalities (and their personality conflicts) in its formative days. It's pretty clear that a lot of people were interested in the ideals behind their movements and contributed in massive ways to the success of the movements - it's not clear that either of them were needed to get the movement off the ground (see also, Great…
ESR probably wasn't personally needed. RMS may have been. Either way, to your statement about "the movement", I think it's important to keep in mind that a lot of what passes for hacker culture today is quite different from where those two hail from. How much overlap is there between the Tao of Programming and modern web development, for example? Whether that's good, bad, or just a value-neutral observation is pretty…
ESR talked up his role and theories about how open source worked, but his writing was the main thing that he contributed. His attempts at contributing actual code did not have nearly the same impact. Nor has his description of how open source worked actually had the same impact.
Even the OSI definition owes more to Ian Murdock (the "ian" in "debian") than it does to ESR.
However if RMS and Brian Fox had not single-handedly set about reimplementing the Unix toolsystem back in the mid-1980s, the world would today be different.
As much as RMS annoyed people by saying that Linux should be called GNU/Linux, he had a point. Linus contributed the kernel, but most of what people called Linux at the time was actually written by the FSF.
The open source community might want to think long and hard about ceding control to groups of people that proudly list their mental illnesses in their twitter bios (like actually, they really fucking do this). I predict a serious split in open source culture once people realize they have been played by narcissists seeking power.