Ben Noordhuis's Departure • Hacker News Board

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#31

Post by sneak » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 6:50 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #8

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 impressi…

> But one impression I get from Node.JS and its surrounding community is arrogance and immaturity.

s/Node\.JS/javascript/;

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#32

Post by jonpaul » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 6:50 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #24

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 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. 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. If he's butt…

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.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#33

Post by sneak » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 6:51 AM UTC

kirinan wrote: post #2

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 some…

No, this is trivial and his stand was just him being pointlessly argumentative. It's entirely unproductive from both an equal rights standpoint as well as a technical one.

Drama for drama's sake is and should remain a firing offense.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#34

Post by Zikes » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 6:52 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #24

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 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. 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. If he's butt…

"butthurt" is slang for rape.

I suggest you edit your comment to remove the offensive language and make it more inclusive to the Hacker News community.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#35

Post by sneak » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 6:53 AM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #13

cliftonk wrote: post #6

Joyent's decision to publicly shame one of Node's largest contributors with a passive-aggressive blog post instead of approaching him privately speaks volumes about their maturity.

[deleted]

I don't think that's verging, as they aren't referring directly to him.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#36

Post by xs_kid » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 6:53 AM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #25

xs_kid wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was Joyent defending their control over to project, remember that Ben & StrongLoop were a menace for Joyent: http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/18/can-this-startup-steal-nod...

That explains a ton, I imagine. It might even explain everything. ...makes Ben's decision to pull out of the project even more interesting though. Where does that leave StrongLoop?

Before of this incident each company (Joyent & StrongLoop) had two core members in the project, now StrongLoop have only one: Bert Belder

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#37

Post by parennoob » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 6:53 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #24

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 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. 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. If he's butt…

> He could have just smooshed the big green button and scored one for the "not pointlessly defaulting to masculine terms" team

No specific change should be considered to be above the rules, and especially not those that have some sort of political agenda behind them.

I don't contribute to Node, but if I did, I would expect to follow all their procedures for accepting diffs, and Alex Gaynor's diff should have also been processed according to the same procedure. Why should his diff be more "special" than a one-line change I make in some code?

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#38

Post by res0nat0r » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 6:55 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #24

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 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. 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. If he's butt…

He gave a perfectly reasonable explanation why he did what he did: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#39

Post by tks2103 » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 6:55 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #24

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 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. 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. If he's butt…

+1 for defending women's rights while using the term 'butthurt'.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#40

Post by rmgraham » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 6:55 AM UTC

parennoob wrote: post #11

People who want to ruthlessly enforce their personal version of political correctness (Bryan Cantrill in particular, and Ben's employer Issac Roth, who seems to have competed with Bryan in a no- I -am-the-bigger-asshole contest) forced an important core committer out because he tried to enforce accepted commit policy. This is a particularly aggressive brand of feminism, one that I have mostly seen in the USA. It seem…

Was the strongloop blog post modified since you linked to it? It really doesn't match your characterization of Issac Roth at all. Quite the opposite, actually.