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I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

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Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#151

Post by outime »

CarelessExpert wrote: post #136
outime wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are NGOs that don't take public stances, you just have to look out for them (depends on your country as well I guess?). It's fine if you want to accept everyone is corrupt and will have hidden causes ("that's naive") but I don't and other people share this. >Or do you want them to share your political alignment, and in that way be non-controversial? Please stop these kind of assumptions - it just feels childish…

> Please stop these kind of assumptions - it just feels childish. It was a genuine question, not an assumption. I was just challenging the way you were positioning your opinion. I thought my comment was phrased in a way that was polite and direct. I don't see how that warranted an insult. I won't address the rest of your comment as I think bccdee did a fine job of saying what I would've said.

>I thought my comment was phrased in a way that was polite and direct.

Well, I said I wouldn't want a NGO to use my money to take any stance unrelated to their original apolitical goal and your follow-up questions is along the lines of "oh so would you be ok if they aligned with your political stance?". Don't say thay's a genuine question because it's not, it just feels like a bait.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#152

Post by marcinzm »

therouwboat wrote: post #147
marcinzm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>high salaried non-technical CEO Competent people who can manage an organization that brings in $500 million in revenue per year aren't going to be cheap.

I was wondering about this, what else do they do than just go to Google and sell the search spot?

They oversee how to spend the $500 million which involves managing a lot of people, projects, etc. Which includes preventing people from funneling the money to their friends.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#153

Post by outime »

tehwebguy wrote: post #107
outime wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not OP but I think you're reading between the lines. I feel OP though - I'd donate to a cause if my money doesn't go towards political alignments of any kind. I'm tired of NGOs or similar entities taking stances over stuff I didn't ask for. I just want them to do one thing, who gave you permission to use my donation to do a completely different thing, even if well intentioned?

the entire concept of Firefox is exactly a political stance...

It's a good example. I'm happy to donate to Mozilla for the goal of an open web, nothing else. And since I don't agree with everything else that they do and sell as within their mission I simply stopped donating long time ago.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#154

Post by monksy »

dang wrote: post #134
gambler wrote: post #6

>Are you willing to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year to keep MDN afloat? Yes, as long as there is a guarantee that my money will go towards actually paying people who update the documentation rather than CEO salary, degenerate activism or doomed web startups. >Create an independent entity like Fronteers, but then international, get members to pay 50-100 euros/dollars per year, and use that money to fund MDN or its s…

> degenerate That breaks the site guidelines against flamebait calling names in arguments. Casual bomb-throwing leads to flamewars, and you started numerous flames with just that one word. We're trying to avoid that here, so please don't. You don't need that to make your point, so please stick to the rules. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I completely agree where you're coming from however, in the case of Mozilla I believe that the reference is relevant.

If you see that the company is producing a good product that you're donating to support. Would the "customers" (supporters) want to support the time and cost associated with kicking out the CEO over personal+(believed to be) private activities? (Context: Brandon Eich donated 1k of his personal money to a conservative/anti-gay org, and an activist within mozilla found+escalated this and claimed hostile work environment, eventually got him removed)

If I was donating, I would be pissed to know that valuable time was wasted about that and the loss of talent of personal politics and disagreement.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#155

Post by PenguinCoder »

bccdee wrote: post #113

> I Love MDN hinges on the expectation on the part of web developers that this sort of information ought to come for free — the expectation we’re entitled to this sort of free ride. I think people should be entitled to a free ride. Important infrastructure can, paradoxically, be both free and expensive. We've committed, for instance, to spending a whole lot of money on maintaining all of our roads, but access to the…

>street is still free for everyday pedestrians

No it's not. Taxes pay for this. Business taxes, property taxes, local taxes, gas tax, etc. It is decisively not free for pedestrians or commuters.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#156

Post by dang »

monksy wrote: post #154
dang wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> degenerate That breaks the site guidelines against flamebait calling names in arguments. Casual bomb-throwing leads to flamewars, and you started numerous flames with just that one word. We're trying to avoid that here, so please don't. You don't need that to make your point, so please stick to the rules. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I completely agree where you're coming from however, in the case of Mozilla I believe that the reference is relevant. If you see that the company is producing a good product that you're donating to support. Would the "customers" (supporters) want to support the time and cost associated with kicking out the CEO over personal+(believed to be) private activities? (Context: Brandon Eich donated 1k of his personal money t…

I'm responding to the word "degenerate", which was name-calling and flamebait. I don't see any problem with the comment otherwise. I've taken out the word "activism" in my GP comment to make that clearer.

Edit: "don't see any problem" does not mean I agree with the comment. It means I don't see any other place that it broke the site guidelines.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#157

Post by dang »

thomasz wrote: post #131
tdeck wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's odd to see people unselfconsciously use the term "degenerate" these days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art

This was a dogwhistle, not unselfconscious use of a loaded term.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24160874

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#158

Post by zo1 »

shirakawasuna wrote: post #108
nwsm wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>degenerate activism What's this in reference to, specifically?

Bigoted dog whistle borrowed from literal Nazis. Edit: interesting that there are so many downvotes. Consider yourself lucky that this seems absurd to you, because it's borrowed directly from Nazi "degenerate art" and "degenerate music" and used like this almost exclusively in modern alt-right contexts to mean those falling outside of their ideal (bigoted) worldview.

That's quite a stretch, even though it has historic tie points.

Right now on the right, it's used to refer to behavior and culture that is really abhorrent. That's at least my take on it, and how I use the term personally. 99% of the time the usage of the term is definitely not about race and eugenics which is what you're implying with the Nazi reference. I leave 1% because I don't preclude possibility of the rare existence of real race-supremacists in the world.

E.g. Misogynistic & violence-promoting "gangster rap" music, tik-tok trends that sexualize minors, and a bunch of other related things. These are things that if we take a step back and think about it, we realize that they're actually move society backward instead of forward. And we're all collectively jumping through mental hoops to claim otherwise because it's uncomfortable, unpalatable and scary to call out such bad behavior in a public forum.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#159

Post by _qulr »

I think the fundamental problem is that the web has no clear organizational structure. Although the internet itself is decentralized, it has a fairly clear organization structure, where each part of the internet has ownership, and there are explicit relationships, and expectations, and modes of cooperation between the various parties.

In the past, the W3C was at least nominally "in charge" of the web. They were the natural providers of documentation. But then 2 big things happened: (1) vehement disagreement between the W3C and the browser vendors over the successor to HTML4, and (2) the "mobile revolution", which changed the landscape of the whole tech industry.

To a significant extent, W3C has been sidelined by WHATWG. So now, WHATWG would be the natural providers of documentation for the web. However, WHATWG is dominated by Google/Apple/Microsoft, and nobody really trusts those BigCos to run the web, even if they do actually run the web by virtue of their market share dominance. And each of those BigCos has their own agenda which is not necessarily beneficial for the open web.

Thus, we're left with a leadership vacuum. We can try to "crowdsource" documentation, but that ultimately seems doomed to failure IMO, as most crowdsourcing efforts are. (The well known "tragedy of the commons".) I don't have a solution to these problems myself, to be sure. Sorry! I do agree that the solution needs to be permanent organizational funding of professional writers, but I don't know who that organization should be.

Re: I Love MDN, or the cult of the free in action

#160

Post by gowld »

bccdee wrote: post #113

> I Love MDN hinges on the expectation on the part of web developers that this sort of information ought to come for free — the expectation we’re entitled to this sort of free ride. I think people should be entitled to a free ride. Important infrastructure can, paradoxically, be both free and expensive. We've committed, for instance, to spending a whole lot of money on maintaining all of our roads, but access to the…

> street is still free for everyday pedestrians

No it's not. It's governed by free motor vehicle law. Pedestrians are often punished by law for walking in the street.

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