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Ben Noordhuis's Departure

blog.nodejs.org

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Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#2

Post by kirinan »

This is so sad on many different levels. A guy who clearly liked working on this module has to make a choice to walk (which is his choice) because people get offended by pronouns. I seriously don't like where all this is headed: where he, she, they are all NEEDED so people don't get offended. This is the whole christmas thing all over again, and it needs to be enforced by society that just because you don't like something and it "offends" you then it doesn't mean that people can't/won't do it. in this case, a very popular project loses a great contributor but how long before other things like this starts happening because people are "offended" by little things. Good job on Ben for standing on for whats right, and hope more people take his route and say enough is enough.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#5

Post by arunoda »

This is the same thing I'd do if I've faced something like this.

All I have to say is Node community is fool enough to lose a talent like Ben.

I've got $250 credits from Joyent as a gift for Node Knockout. I will never it and never suggest any of my clients to choose Joyent.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#7

Post by selmnoo »

For those who don't know what's going on: Joyent made a blogpost calling Ben, (one of _THE_ most prolific contributors to nodjs), an asshole (http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun) and said they'd fire him if he'd been working for them, because he refused to take a commit making language in some part of the code gender-neutral. Here's Ben's last response to the whole ordeal: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...

A lot of people speculated that this is part of a dance Joyent is doing to assert itself as a big cloud player. I don't know how much truth there is to that, but as a general spectator I feel like wanting to remark that Bryan Cantrill only fanned the fire here in all of this. And so perhaps there should be some weight given to the fact that a worker of a company that's a competitor to Joyent just quit, arguably due to Joyent's rough play -- if Joyent had approached the matter differently, carefully, sensitively, there likely would have been a different conclusion to this. But now it's done, and pretty much every participating party in this whole thing came out looking like a loser, Joycent, Strongloop, the whole nodejs scene. Here's hoping Ben now finds a workplace that appreciates him for his talents and respects him as a person.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#8

Post by rdtsc »

The last time this was discussed the story was buried pretty quickly.

My comment was pertinent to drama and the community, it sort of got reinforced a bit more now so I'll just repost. Sorry for anyone who already read it already.

---

My understanding of Node.JS and libuv community is as an outsider. I don't follow what's going on unless it is on the front page of HN once in a while and other forums.

But one impression I get from Node.JS and its surrounding community is arrogance and immaturity. This is from top to down -- companies sponsoring it (Joyent) and many of its vocal proponents. I see plenty of energy, enthusiasm, but mixed with immaturity. "We don't know what are doing, but darn it! we will be very vocal and do it with lots of enthusiasm".

One guy doesn't want to commit a trivial change. It blows up into a media shitstorm. Reverted commits. Joyent's reaction is what surprised me -- "While we would fire Ben over this". This guy doesn't even work for them. Hypothetically firing people, hmm, so committed to Women's Rights, they are hypothetically hiring, and firing this person on the spot. Have they talked to him in private? StrongLoop, a company I never heard of until this point, is a bit more mature, that's good to see, but even they couldn't resist the veiled threat.

What is sad, as a whole this episode just reinforced the (hopefully wrong) stereotype I have of the community. Joyent instead of helping the community (which I think they thought they did by writing that blog post), are hurting it. Buying into and spending time and money learning a platform/language is also an implicit buy in/participation in the community. So far it screams to me "stay away". Hopefully it will grow up at some point.

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Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#9

Post by Zikes »

Joyent called Ben an asshole and said they wanted to fire him over a minor grammatical preference. [1]

But let's "please respect [their] wishes to let this issue rest", because it's not like we need an apology or any sort of reassurance from the company that owns a rising star of technology that we're supposed to invest our time and money in.

Good luck finding a replacement.

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

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#10

Post by aabalkan »

For those who don't know the background of the story:

[1] http://werd.io/2013/gendered-pronouns-in-software-a-quick-pr...

[2] http://strongloop.com/strongblog/collaboration-not-derision-...

As said in [2]:

   If Ben can’t learn, we’ll fire him. [Edit: See comment
   below. This is not meant literally.]
that seems like the result.
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