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The fight against sexism is not a free pass

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Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#4

Post by taspeotis »

When the original blog post showed up on HN, I couldn't understand why it was penned. As best I could tell, here's what happened:

* Party A submitted a pull request for a minor change to the libuv docs

* Party B (who can signoff on changes) declined it for being an extremely minor change

* Party C merged it after getting signoff from Party D (who can signoff on changes)

* Party B reversed the change under the impression than neither he nor Party D had signed off on it

* Joyent would fire Party B for this

It just so happens that the minor change was removing two masculine pronouns into favour of gender neutral ones.

I can't reconcile the blog post on Joyent with what actually happened.

Blog post [1]:

    Ben is not—and if he had been, he wouldn't be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent.
The pull request wasn't rejected on any pronoun principle [2]:

    Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that.
And again:

    Especially when that poor behavior transcended into the gobsmackingly inappropriate as Ben tried to revert Isaac's commit
The actual commit message [3]:

    @isaacs may have his commit bit but that does not mean he is at liberty to land patches at will.  All patches have to be signed off by either me or Bert.  Isaac, consider yourself chided.
Unless bnoordhuis was aware the patch had been signed off on (in which case reversing the commit is a dick move), all he's doing is following procedures.

[1] http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun

[2] https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538...

[3] https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d...

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#5

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

Nice job by Joyent. A lot of people will feel that this firing is an overreaction, but this is how civil rights movements work. You inconvenience the apathetic until they realize that apathy is as unacceptable as anything else.

This is the only way it can change the developer community. Don't be a sexist and you won't run into this problem.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#6

Post by taspeotis »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #5

Nice job by Joyent. A lot of people will feel that this firing is an overreaction, but this is how civil rights movements work. You inconvenience the apathetic until they realize that apathy is as unacceptable as anything else. This is the only way it can change the developer community. Don't be a sexist and you won't run into this problem.

    KaoruAoiShiho 0 minutes ago | link
    ... A lot of people will feel that this firing is an overreaction
No one was fired.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#7

Post by waterlion »

taspeotis wrote: post #4

When the original blog post showed up on HN, I couldn't understand why it was penned. As best I could tell, here's what happened: * Party A submitted a pull request for a minor change to the libuv docs * Party B (who can signoff on changes) declined it for being an extremely minor change * Party C merged it after getting signoff from Party D (who can signoff on changes) * Party B reversed the change under the impress…

That requires far too much, and far too nuanced thought. BURN THE WITCH.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#8

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

taspeotis wrote: post #6
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #5

Nice job by Joyent. A lot of people will feel that this firing is an overreaction, but this is how civil rights movements work. You inconvenience the apathetic until they realize that apathy is as unacceptable as anything else. This is the only way it can change the developer community. Don't be a sexist and you won't run into this problem.

KaoruAoiShiho 0 minutes ago | link ... A lot of people will feel that this firing is an overreaction No one was fired.

The statement of intent to fire if firing was possible?

Incredibly nitpicky.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#9

Post by sliverstorm »

taspeotis wrote: post #4

When the original blog post showed up on HN, I couldn't understand why it was penned. As best I could tell, here's what happened: * Party A submitted a pull request for a minor change to the libuv docs * Party B (who can signoff on changes) declined it for being an extremely minor change * Party C merged it after getting signoff from Party D (who can signoff on changes) * Party B reversed the change under the impress…

Minor detail: your summation makes it sound like Joyent would fire over reversing a change, when in fact Joyent appears to be saying they would fire over reversing the change because the change was removing two masculine pronouns.

It's a pretty extreme reaction by Joyent; I wonder how much further away "We would also fire whoever used the gendered pronouns in the first place" is.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#10

Post by goldenkey »

KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #5

Nice job by Joyent. A lot of people will feel that this firing is an overreaction, but this is how civil rights movements work. You inconvenience the apathetic until they realize that apathy is as unacceptable as anything else. This is the only way it can change the developer community. Don't be a sexist and you won't run into this problem.

Oh please. No one was sexist here. A diff of 3 characters on something wholly non-code or operations-related is hardly a change that requires attention.
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