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I'm sorry

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Re: I'm sorry

#71

Post by [deleted] »

Zababa wrote: post #31
bovermyer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember the old adage - never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Hanlon's Razor, I believe it was. And here, by "stupidity," I just mean the author didn't think about that. Too often people are willing to attribute sinister meaning to what, in reality, was just a mistake.

Assuming good intentions is a good way to get abused by people exploiting the fact that you assume good intentions. The person in question did a PR, someone informed her that she should follow the rules, she didn't, merged her PR, more people complained. Right now the PR is still merged. She wrote that whole text, and the PR is still merged. Since I can't read people's mind, a good trick that I learned is to derive i…

[deleted]

Re: I'm sorry

#72

Post by shijie »

burnished wrote: post #57

What is with the comments calling this a non-appology? Do they need a hair shirt to make sure the sinners really suffer? Hyperbole aside its kind of jarring reading a frank apology and ownership of actions (what they did, how it impacted others, why it was bad) that then gets dismissed entirely. I wonder what those people would consider to be sufficient? It does not seem like there is any point to a public apology. Y…

I was also struck with commenter’s swift label of her apology a “non-apology.” I’ve seen this on Twitter and elsewhere. It’s basically a proxy for “I don’t think you’ve suffered enough to be forgiven.” And that strikes me as honestly a little bit terrifying.

Re: I'm sorry

#73

Post by jeffparsons »

bovermyer wrote: post #21
Zababa wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I wanted to interpret this in a paranoiac way, I would say that's because the author of the PR isn't apologetic at all, and in fact is quite fine with forcing a PR through the maintainers without their consent.

Remember the old adage - never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Hanlon's Razor, I believe it was. And here, by "stupidity," I just mean the author didn't think about that. Too often people are willing to attribute sinister meaning to what, in reality, was just a mistake.

Sometimes Hanlon's razor is in tension with Occam's. If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, maybe it is actually a bad actor. Or something like that.

Either way, I think the idea of "the banality of evil" is more useful here than Hanlon's Razor. Claire Novotny may well have simply not thought about her actions. Is she still responsible for them? Should we care that she meant well if she continued her bad behaviour after it was pointed out to her?

And what if somebody makes a habit of not thinking about their actions despite having it pointed out to them repeatedly that their actions cause harm to others? (It sure seems to be an effective way to climb the ladder.) Can they still hide behind the defense of "meaning well"? By analogy, what if somebody makes a habit of getting behind the wheel while intoxicated. If they hit a pedestrian, how much do you care that the drunk driver meant well?

Re: I'm sorry

#74

Post by carrolldunham »

sneak wrote: post #53
Aaronontheweb wrote: post #24

Context: https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/38

It's so ridiculously annoying when an apology or PR statement assumes complete and total familiarity with the existing goings-on. There's even a whole language of euphemism around it. "Recent events involving the community", et c. So lame!

Well, except why someone be reading it if they were not?

Re: I'm sorry

#75

Post by computerdork »

pwdisswordfish0 wrote: post #10

holy fuck, does every little mistake need a solemn 4000 word apology these days? that’s already not a world i want to live in, but then even the apology gets shit on and invalidated. people need to take everything much less seriously, especially shit that happens on the internet. this whole thing should have been able to be a new PR with “sorry about the merge before, i screwed up and it won’t happen again” at the en…

Yeah, it's very hard to see the context, and maybe this really is management being horrible, but yeah, don't know, seems like small stuff to me: A PR that got pushed through, and moving to Github enterprise. Obviously, there was a breakdown in process and communication, but I'm sure Linus has done much worse with Linux.

Yeah, from an outsiders perspective, the apology felt pretty heartfelt (and humbling too, especially for issues that seem somewhat routine), but as mentioned, maybe there are other details we're not hearing?

... btw, these roles on community foundations/boards can be hell, because the community begins to vent at every mistake (and there will always be mistakes). Devs of .net, maybe give the person a break? She's a person.

Re: I'm sorry

#76

Post by bingohbangoh »

initplus wrote: post #68
Macha wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare the Linux foundation's treatment of projects: Node: Neither the OpenJS foundation, nor its parent the Linux foundation claims owner ship of Node: https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/LICENSE Linux: No copyright assignment, just a compatible license required: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin... The CNCF and the kubernetes system does do a CLA, so it's not a concept the Linux f…

Others in the space do ask for copyright assignment though, eg. FSF.

It didn’t sound like the .NET foundation did so ahead of time

Re: I'm sorry

#77

Post by wk_end »

bmy78 wrote: post #69

Actions speak louder than words. If she were truly sorry, she would’ve reverted the PR and have it go through the normal process. Instead she wrote a really long message about how the .NET Foundation owns your project.

The commit was reverted (see https://github.com/reactiveui/splat/pull/779)

Re: I'm sorry

#78

Post by haswell »

burnished wrote: post #57

What is with the comments calling this a non-appology? Do they need a hair shirt to make sure the sinners really suffer? Hyperbole aside its kind of jarring reading a frank apology and ownership of actions (what they did, how it impacted others, why it was bad) that then gets dismissed entirely. I wonder what those people would consider to be sufficient? It does not seem like there is any point to a public apology. Y…

If you read the entire post, it quickly becomes apparent why people are reacting poorly.

The opening paragraph is an apology. Other parts of the post undo any goodwill that might have been garnered from the apology itself.

One example:

> There is a pattern that needs to be resolved. Projects might not fully understand what joining the .NET Foundation means. We share a checklist with project maintainers on project changes they accept as part of becoming part of the .NET Foundation. That’s obviously not sufficient. We will post a new document that describes what you can expect when your project joins the .NET Foundation...

To me, this says "sooo, even though I screwed up, I'm technically allowed to do what I did and you probably should have already expected that based on the agreement you signed, but we'll make our materials even clearer so you don't make that mistake again".

It turns the problem back around on the community. I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with the rest of the post after the apology...if it was posted separately. When included in the same post, it's hard not to take it as "sorry, but I still wasn't technically wrong".

I do think the whole culture around public apologies and the hair-splitting and analysis that comes after is concerning and often unhelpful. But I think the backlash here is understandable.

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