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Ben Noordhuis's Departure

blog.nodejs.org

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Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#51

Post by Zikes »

sneak wrote: post #44
Zikes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

No, it's not. It references rape, but is not synonymous. Its current definition is roughly synonymous with "unreasonably upset".

I see, I've suggested a very simple change to a single word of your comment which would make it more inclusive to the community, but you have refused to change it and instead taken a stand of principle.

I now have the choice of respecting your decision, or pressing the big red button to incite an internet mob upon you and score one for radical feminism.

I'll let you know my decision shortly.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#52

Post by nknighthb »

jonpaul wrote: post #32
sneak wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

1) Non-native speakers should know better than to pass judgement on linguistic issues without consulting others.

2) Ben rejected the change over 40 minutes after the submitter stated he had submitted a CLA.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#53

Post by veemjeem »

sneak wrote: post #33
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.

If you read the github thread, you'd see that Ben actually never participated in the drama/discussion until it blew up. Ben essentially rejected the pull request, then a giant PR nightmare blew up overnight with blog posts from Joyent & Strongloop. He decided to leave because of the whole ordeal from the companies.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#54

Post by jacalata »

rodgerd wrote: post #50
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…

> Here's hoping Ben now finds a workplace that appreciates him for his talents and respects him as a person. He'd better find one that respects him more than he appears to respect women. What's oddest about this is the amazing volte-face Bryan Cantrill appears to have performed. It wasn't that long ago he was adressing gross deficiencies in Solaris' performance compared to Linux on SPARC hardware with snarky, persona…

I don't think he appears to really disrespect women. I would say that he is, as are most guys in tech, ignorant of issues around sexism and arrogant enough to believe that if he is not aware of an issue it does not exist. Having read his responses, I think he seems like a reasonable guy who could stand to understand the world better.

edit: it wasn't that long ago? 16 years ago I was in elementary school. That's like 3 tech aeons ago.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#56

Post by jacalata »

goldenkey wrote: post #16
Zikes wrote: post #9

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-o…

Holy crap, what a read. You have to wonder... What feminist muff is he puffing? I can't stand white knighting especially when it befalls other men in armor. Ben, you've got my sympathies and support, sorry you have to hear this immature politico-feminist-fascluckery from Joyent

I can't stand white knighting especially when it befalls other men in armor what does that even mean?

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#57

Post by veemjeem »

[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 just don't understand how a company the size of Joyent would waste time writing blog posts about pronouns in a code comment. This would be the equivalent of Microsoft blogging about some engineer's code comment in the Windows source code. Nobody cares about that stuff.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#58

Post by sanxiyn »

nknighthb wrote: post #52
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.

1) Non-native speakers should know better than to pass judgement on linguistic issues without consulting others. 2) Ben rejected the change over 40 minutes after the submitter stated he had submitted a CLA.

I have issues with 1. Native speakers of English already enjoys tremendous privilege in open source world -- see antirez of Redis, another non-native speaker's take on this: http://antirez.com/news/61 -- and it should be native speakers who should be understanding of failings of non-native speakers, not the other way around. Check your privilege!

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#59

Post by WhaleBiologist »

sneak wrote: post #44
Zikes wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

No, it's not. It references rape, but is not synonymous. Its current definition is roughly synonymous with "unreasonably upset".

Unless you are a rape victim you have no right to determine what is and isn't acceptable usage of the term.

Please respect the triggers of other people and check your privilege.

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