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Ben Noordhuis's Departure

blog.nodejs.org

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Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#231

Post by jacalata »

malandrew wrote: post #215
jacalata wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is allowed to be ignorant, the problem is people who are not ignorant but simply dismiss issues as "unimportant" because they are unaffected. It is not the original committers fault that you and so many other people don't care about (or in some cases object to) gender neutral language, and bikeshedding is best stopped not by leaving the bikeshed unpainted but by you and others who fjnd it unimportant shuttin…

I'm not bikeshedding on the topic of gender. I couldn't care less about that topic. That's not my battle[0], which is why I keep focusing on other aspects of all this that are important to libuv and open-source. I'm defending an unjustly persecuted person of great value to the community and the antisocial open source behavior of using pull requests as a soap box. If debating those two issues are bikeshedding, then I'…

I think we're allowed to be ignorant of the politically correct gender issues surrounding grammatical usage in a codebase. To do otherwise is to bikeshed

I read this (from your grandparent comment) as meaning 'discussion of gender/grammatical issues is bikeshedding' - and that to me sounds like you think it shouldn't happen because you don't care about it, which is effectively opposing the idea. If that's not what you meant, I'm sorry for the misinterpretation.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#232

Post by wpietri »

Lazare wrote: post #230
wpietri wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok. If it's not a policy, then I don't think there's any way you can expect a potential contributor to know that a particular pull request must be preceded by discussion. In which case, I think the burden falls on the person reviewing the requests. In this case, Noordhuis. The submitter did their bit by making a positive change and offering the patch.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#233

Post by wpietri »

malandrew wrote: post #211
wpietri wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That I don't have a right to Ben's time and attention is true, but irrelevant. I'm not demanding anything of him. I do have the right to criticize him for his public actions, which is what I'm doing. I think he behaved poorly in relation to two topics I care about: leading open source projects, and ending sexism. He doesn't owe me an explanation, but I would read it with interest. I also think people on the project h…

"I think he behaved poorly in relation to two topics I care about: leading open source projects, and ending sexism." I would think that the best way to do that is to lead by example by leading and open source project and combatting sexism in the project(s) you lead instead of knocking down my strawmen. If you lead an open source project and fight to end sexism, then great. If not, you are in no position to criticize…

Yes, I believe that's more smokescreen. As I said, I'm done engaging with you in this forum about this.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#234

Post by smrtinsert »

selmnoo wrote: post #7

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/li…

Joyent looks better to me honestly.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#235

Post by tedmielczarek »

malandrew wrote: post #214
chc wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, and I am not asking malandrew to act like this is important to him. My point is that we should not oppose it, not that you personally need to take action of some sort. In other words, I'm fine if you don't want to go through and revise your docs to be more gender-neutral — it would be nice, but you should spend your time on what's near and dear to you. But to say that such a change "shouldn't be in any projec…

I totally respect that this is an issue that is important to people. I'm not opposed to these changes in the docs. I'm opposed to these being the only changes in the pull requests. You want to crusade on this agenda? Earn it. Submit a non-trivial pull request with a bugfix or feature and bundle these changes that matter to you in with them. This is a perfect example of a group being it's own worst enemy. Alex Gaynor…

This attitude is silly. Lots of volunteer contributors start out making trivial changes because they're trivial. We take lots of trivial documentation and comment fixes at Mozilla as people's first patches. They help contributors learn how the contribution process works, such as the ins and outs of posting patches, navigating the bug tracker, etc. Rejecting trivial changes because the contributor hasn't "earned it" is a great way to raise the barrier to entry on your project. (Also, bundling unrelated changes seems like a terrible practice to promote. We like to have separate issues addressed separately.)

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#237

Post by rohamg »

patcon wrote: post #42
selmnoo wrote: post #7

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/li…

I'd never heard of Ben before this whole ordeal, but he unfortunately projected like an asshole, with zero damage control instincts and no apparent sense of urgency for reconciliation. If you can't contribute to a positive space, you should probably find a less public project where you're free to exercise your lack of emotional intelligence.

He did explain himself a day later: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#238

Post by vor_ »

jacalata wrote: post #173
znowi wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus. Take a look at this "patch": https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015/files Ousted the guy because he referred to "user" as a "he" in the comments? Are you fucking kidding me? I'm all for gender equality, but the amount of drama that came out of this is just insane and disturbing for the hacker community. I can not see it as anything more than pure politics and gender issue as a convenient pretext. Joyent has…

No, it was not because the original documentation used "he". It was because of his rejection of a suggested update, followed by his revert of the update when committed by another guy.

As I understand it, Ben was following commit rules.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#239

Post by vor_ »

patcon wrote: post #42
selmnoo wrote: post #7

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/li…

I'd never heard of Ben before this whole ordeal, but he unfortunately projected like an asshole, with zero damage control instincts and no apparent sense of urgency for reconciliation. If you can't contribute to a positive space, you should probably find a less public project where you're free to exercise your lack of emotional intelligence.

Ben isn't a native English speaker and was following the repo's rules. Joyent publicly shaming him and saying they'd fire him over a gendered pronoun in the documentation is an absurdity. There is prior history between these folks as rivals that explains Joyent's animosity toward Ben.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#240

Post by dubcanada »

sampo wrote: post #153
DanBC wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would say that he is, as are most guys in tech, ignorant of issues around sexism He's also speaking English as a second language.

I am speaking English as a second language, and my native language does not have gendered pronouns, and the gendered pronouns bother me every day, I cannot make myself blind to them. Then again, if his native tongue also has gendered pronouns (as it appears to do), he should be aware of the issue, not because of English, but because of his native language has the same issue. Well, perhaps his native language user com…

Tbh I'm a native speaker and I've messed up gendered pronouns more then once in my life. So don't feel too bad ;)
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