Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, he shouldn't give people a day's notice. He doesn't owe it to you, he doesn't owe it to me. That makes two of us. Let's imagine we're not unusual in that regard. Who does he owe a warning, then? when you release open source code there's a kind of implied promise that you don't suddenly delete the master repo in a fit of internet pique. You're making a lot of assumptions, not least among them _why's motivations (s…
Well, look, everything you say is technically correct. But my reaction remains the same. It's not about "rights" - I agree I have no "right" whatsoever to continue to benefit from _why's beneficence in perpetuity. No, _why hasn't breached any laws or contracts, but he has breached social norms. For example, this site. I think all would agree that we have no "right" to its continued existence. None of us pay or contri…
_why is no more
181–190 of 421 posts
Re: _why is no more
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2009-05-0... why is awesome. he's one of the big reason I'm a ruby programmer. He's contributed so much to the community, and he doesn't owe anybody anything. If he deleted all his repos, sites, etc with no notice, then that was a dick move. It doesn't mean he's an asshole, it means he did one asshole thing. That doesn't mark him as an asshole, but it wouldn't change…
The elevator analogy doesn't really hold for me. It's more along the lines of one person in the office bringing in bagels every week for a few years, then one Monday morning they aren't there. The asshole isn't the one who stopped bringing in the bagels, it's the folks standing around the coffee machine empty handed, griping about not getting their weekly cinnamon crunch. "I wish Mike would've told us he wasn't going…
Re: _why is no more
#183Is it just me, or does Ruby tend have these "personalities" more than other communities? Seems like the Ruby community focuses a lot on the "rockstar" mentality. I don't spend any time in it to know for sure, though.
_Why is more like a fairy tale character than a rock star. What qualities of his persona do you consider to be rock star qualities?
Re: _why is no more
#184Re: _why is no more
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll call him.
As great as it is to have a community that cares about an individual, _why was very happy to stay anonymous, and a few comments here purport that his sudden disappearance resulted from someone penetrating that anonymity. If that's the case, calling him (assuming that number is accurate) could be counterproductive.
I don't know the guy, and am not involved in the Ruby community. Nonetheless, that someone would call to make sure he's OK speaks volumes to me of his presence on the Internet.
Re: _why is no more
#186Re: _why is no more
#187I just noticed that _why apparently deleted his twitter account. I then found that that wasn't all he deleted: http://twitter.com/_why http://github.com/why http://whytheluckystiff.net/ http://poignantguide.net/ http://hackety.org/ http://shoooes.net/ All disappeared... For those who don't know who I'm talking about: http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_the_lucky_stiff
Holy shit... _why is why I'm a Ruby developer to this day, especially the Poignant Guide. So very sad.
Why strikes me as the kind of person who would delete his online presence on a whim, just because it would be fun.
Re: _why is no more
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
--depth does have some benefits... one of my friends tried to do a 'git svn clone' of his work's svn repo... he gave up after the process had been running for a full 3 or 4 weeks. That said --depth doesn't have too much use when it comes to native git repos though. Unless you have a ton of binary files in the repo and don't want the full history of all of them...
None of _why's projects were that big, so in this case it's kind of a moot point.
Re: _why is no more
#189Re: _why is no more
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is why I love Zed Shaw's response: "Hmm, I think it's more possible that _why got hacked than he pulled a me." http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/3409334842
What, the fact that he managed to make this about him?
Sometimes people ask why it is that a lot of us dislike Zed Shaw, despite his being bright and talented and sharp. Stuff like this is why: For all that's good about him, he remains a douche who likes making assumptions about people, sticking to said assumptions, and then acting like the mandate of heaven shines down on him.
I got into a flamewar with him once. Used to be I thought he was a great guy, albeit a blowhard, who exposed people who did dumb things. Sometimes he is. The problem with him is he still hasn't learned to calm the fuck down, look at other people's perspectives, and understand that knowing how to write an insult doesn't make you a wise badass no matter how many people online respond positively to such viciousness.