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Ben Noordhuis's Departure

blog.nodejs.org

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Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#221

Post by goldenkey »

ceol wrote: post #220
djur wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'm wondering about "fascluckery". I think Ben is being poorly served by his defenders, who are gleefully bringing in their MRA hobbyhorses.

HN has been invaded by MRAs from a certain subreddit ever since the "dongle" issue a few months ago. They very quickly latched on to this community because they realized all they had to do was make their comment verbose and it would appeal to the affluent, college-aged men here. Apparently they stuck around.

ceol, if you disagree with me, fine. But calling me a "massively wrong asshole" and claiming I came from a sewer-pipe on reddit, is just downright dirty.

My point about the white knighting, was that Cantrill from Joyent is pretty much taking an apologetic stance as if Ben committed a chauvinistic crime against women in programming. He's taking a steaming dump on Ben, in order to look 'politically correct', and defender of woman's rights, for him and his company. That's when white knighting is sick..when it stomps on the ideal of being a decent person in order to appeal to the hounds thirsty for banter and apologies and discourse about an issue that doesn't even exist.

First of all, Ben didn't have any intent, second of all, this whole fuss is just..politics..and purely distressing circumspection for those with too much time on their hands. Go back to coding...at least there's output...

Oh and have you seen this? http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/18/can-this-startup-steal-nod...

Could be why Cantrill has it out for Ben.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#222

Post by theorique »

abcd_f wrote: post #81
jonpaul wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting two key points: 1) Ben is not a native English speaker, so as stated by Ben, he didn't realize it was a big deal. 2) The committer didn't sign a CLA yet.

> Ben is not a native English speaker, so as stated by Ben, he didn't realize it was a big deal. But is it an actually big deal for native speakers? I realize that some people think it's important, but then some people also think that you can't swear in comments and can't use "retard" as a summary opinion about someone else. In live, non-corporate language would any native speaker in fact routinely use "they" instead…

Each person makes his own decision about this, but some prefer to use "they". To each his own.

Everyone has his own reason for choosing a particular pronoun. Some people do it because they think it is less sexist. Some people do it because they want to be part of the in-group, and they see others doing it. Some people are personally offended by the generic "he" and want to refer to both genders so they use the singular "they" or the awkward "he/she".

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#223

Post by benatkin »

drderidder wrote: post #176
malandrew wrote: post #112

Joyent, Please do the classy thing and have Isaac create a NodeJS organization on Github and move the project to that organization under his stewardship. With great power came great responsibility and using the Joyent corporate blog to excoriate one of the community's most valuable contributors is the path to the dark side. http://substack.net/images/coronation.png

When Ryan originally announced the transition to Joyent, someone asked if node would be moved to Joyent's github repo. Isaac replied: "I hope not". But now he asserts that Joyent owns node, and considers it a "cash cow".

I think this was between ry/node and joyent/node, not nodejs/node and joyent/node.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#224

Post by davidw »

pquerna wrote: post #169
davidw wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's say that we don't/can't do that, we'd have to create a new foundation. That's not cheap. Conservative estimates put it at around 1-2 million a year for legal, marketing, hiring a few developers to work on Node.js. BTW, I think the Apache Software Foundation gets by with much less than that. I agree that 'profit driven' is not a bad thing, though, in any event!

Yes, it highly depends on what your foundation "does". The ASF does not hire developers to work on projects -- it just provides the infrastructure for development to happen. Once you start hiring developers, budgets for foundations go up way too quickly, and once you do that you get into the whole fundraising trap. (Need to raise 2m? Better pay an ED $250,000 to do that, and then they are motivated to get it to $3m,…

Ok, but why does this hypothetical Node.js foundation need to hire developers? Joyent won't shell out the money for it any more if they are not see as "owning" an MIT-licensed open source project?

Their call, I guess, I am more of an Erlang guy than a Node.js guy, so I don't have a horse in this race.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#225

Post by yebyen »

chc wrote: post #195
yebyen wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distinctions like that are meaningful to the unemployment office and in a court of law. They actually said they were firing him, publicly, and he left the project. The fact (of law) is probably that he resigned, voluntarily. I actually came to say "I don't care" but after critical analysis, I think you're wrong. He was fired.

StrongLoop did not say they were firing him. They actually said they opposite — that they wanted to keep him on because they benefit from his contributions to the Node and libuv projects. They explicitly noted that the "we will fire him" was a far-future hypothetical situation that they didn't believe would happen. The reason they mentioned firing was because they were responding to Joyent's suggestion that he should…

I understand that StrongLoop did not fire him, but the project has more stake-holding companies than just his employer.

Hopefully you can understand how even if Joyent was not his direct employer, their publicly stating that he "should be fired" was the main impetus leading up to his departure.

This is why I said that legally he was not fired. You can't be fired by some random collaborator or Joe off the street. It's your employer's job to pay your salary, and to fire you if that's what's needed too. That is not what I'm talking about.

Consider that you can be "fired" from an open source project where you don't receive a salary and like your coworkers, you are providing labor on a volunteer basis. That's not what happened here, but if you take the StrongLoop and the salary out of the picture, it's exactly what happened. Joyent (and the rest of us who are not part owners of StrongLoop) are not getting his labor on an unpaid basis anymore.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#226

Post by jcromartie »

md224 wrote: post #95
abcd_f wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ben is not a native English speaker, so as stated by Ben, he didn't realize it was a big deal. But is it an actually big deal for native speakers? I realize that some people think it's important, but then some people also think that you can't swear in comments and can't use "retard" as a summary opinion about someone else. In live, non-corporate language would any native speaker in fact routinely use "they" instead…

If you're male (or anyone else reading this), consider this cognitive frame: instead of thinking about "they" vs. "he", ask yourself if you would prefer "they" over "she". Do you feel any sort of preference for one over the other? (Honestly don't know what your answer will be, I just think it's a good way to approach the issue.) Also: not passing any judgement on Ben's actions here, just talking about the gender poli…

I'm male, and I will choose he or she or they pretty much arbitrarily. Usually it's "they". I believe that at some point in the recent past, people preferred "she" for an anonymous pronoun for some kinds of writing.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#227

Post by jcromartie »

DanBC wrote: post #86
adamnemecek wrote: post #3

'Donglegate' 2.0. Also this submission will not be on the front page in less than 30 minutes.

Because threads like these are tainted by hateful mra idiots who joined HN in droves about 8 months ago.

> hateful mra idiots

They're just the expected outcome of Jezebel/Tumblr Internet feminism. I'm not agreeing with them, but I can see how they may feel like they've been backed into a corner.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#228

Post by wpietri »

Lazare wrote: post #210
malandrew wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Also, you can't blame the shitstorm on the person submitting the pull request." Why not? You can't unilaterally decide that that person cannot be to blame here. They could have made a contribution of utility (bugfix or feature for example) and included that minor comment change within that pull request, instead of using a pull request as their own personal soapbox. Github issues and pull requests are not forums for…

Or as an alternative, he could have privately emailed an existing contributor, discussed the change, and got support. If it had come from Isaac or Bert to start with, it would have sailed through without objection. I really feel like a pull request was the wrong vehicle for what the original submitter was trying to accomplish.

I see what you're saying, but I disagree.

If open-source projects adopt an "email first before pull request" approach, I think that's a big mistake. That will mean a lot of dialog with people who aren't actually going to do the work, and a lot of missed patch opportunities from people who have done or will do the work but are put off by the uncertainty of a policy like that.

Regardless, if a pull request is the wrong vehicle, then the correct response isn't, "Request rejected! Go away." It's "Let's talk about this more." It was a two-line change that made the project better. (At least, nobody has so far claimed that the gender-exclusive language was better.) I think that's enough of a positive signal to be worth following up on, and certainly not the dire insult that some believe it to be.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#230

Post by Lazare »

wpietri wrote: post #228
Lazare wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or as an alternative, he could have privately emailed an existing contributor, discussed the change, and got support. If it had come from Isaac or Bert to start with, it would have sailed through without objection. I really feel like a pull request was the wrong vehicle for what the original submitter was trying to accomplish.

I see what you're saying, but I disagree. If open-source projects adopt an "email first before pull request" approach, I think that's a big mistake. That will mean a lot of dialog with people who aren't actually going to do the work, and a lot of missed patch opportunities from people who have done or will do the work but are put off by the uncertainty of a policy like that. Regardless, if a pull request is the wrong…

I see your point, but I'm not suggesting a general "email first before pull request" policy, which I agree would be a big mistake.

I feel like this was actually a very unusual situation.

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