Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ben Noordhuis's Departure

blog.nodejs.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 241 posts

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#81

Post by abcd_f »

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.

> 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 of "he" when referring to a user?

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#82

Post by sanxiyn »

eropple wrote: post #69
sanxiyn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Noordhuis is considerably more privileged in the context of an open-source project than the people he's chosen to behave poorly towards.

True, but I was commenting on English privilege in general. (nknighthb's comment was also general.)

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#83

Post by Myrmornis »

Gender inequality is the world's greatest human rights challenge, but Ben Noordhuis is not the problem. This was idiotic politically correct micromanaging that deserved the response initially given to the PR: "not interested in trivial changes like that".

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#84

Post by DanBC »

jacalata wrote: post #54
rodgerd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#85

Post by ssafejava »

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…

You have to admit, that responding to a very informative message comparing and contracting Solaris's networking stack with Linux's with

  Have you ever kissed a girl?
  - Bryan
is incredibly tasteless.

But of course that was long ago.

I don't think it at all appropriate to criticize what was clearly an honest mistake with a call for his employer to fire him. I would expect that of the masses on Twitter and commenting on the PR, but not of Joyent or Cantrill.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#87

Post by towski »

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.

I think most of the biggest core contributors are unable to project that kind of emotional intelligence.

Because, well, they are programming, not working PR

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#88

Post by malandrew »

eropple wrote: post #77
Zikes wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am quite serious. "No" is a powerful word, and the "no means no" slogan is about enforcing the power of that word and the expectations our society place on it no matter the context. Women and sexuality do not have an exclusive claim to protection from having someone force their ideals or their actions upon you or, as in this case, your repository.

This may fly as rhetoric on /r/MensRights (and yeah I mention that because I went and looked) but it doesn't hold true in...like...reality. "No means no" as popular phrasing most specifically does refer to unwanted sexual contact, originating specifically in the context of date rape--and no, to forestall the tired MRA argument, male- or female-initiated sexual contact . And it was not Noordhuis's repository at all, a…

To be fair here, the only reason that /joyent/ is in the name is because Ryan Dahl entrusted the project to Isaac Schleuter, who works at Joyent (and was working at Joyent at the time of the bequeathment).

TBH, I was always bothered by having the project move from Ryan's account to Joyent. Ideally it would have moved to Isaac's or another, new organizational account "nodejs" should have been made, where all the core Node.js projects could have lived.

I'm quite frankly appalled at Joyent, the company, having made a statement via a spokesman about an extremely valuable contributor of the project. Joyent is a guest in the open source community. It is a sponsor and it enjoys brand benefits. But it is not a member of the community. It's engineers are and if anyone from Joyent (or anywhere else) was going to call out Ben, then they should have done so speaking for themselves on their own personal blog. This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to keep companies at an arms length of any open source project. There are only two entities in an open source project, the individuals and the group. Any entity beyond those two can only serve to split the community or inject more politically charged discourse into conflicts.

AFAIK, engineers from both Joyent, Strongloop (Ben's company) and Nodejitsu have all been core contributes of Node.js, but that Joyent has gotten most of the name recognition.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/nodejs/hfajgpvGTLY

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#89

Post by sanxiyn »

nknighthb wrote: post #71
sanxiyn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

You are not addressing the subject I am addressing at all. I am the only full-time monolingual employee of the company I work for, the only one who does not speak Mandarin, the only one whose mother tongue is English, the only one who grew up in a primarily English-speaking country, and one of maybe four who would be classified as fluent in English (and that count is probably high). You can't imagine the things that…

I can easily imagine things that pass through such inbox :) I am in a similar situation (a few who is considered good at English in a large group). In addition, I myself am a non-native speaker.

I imagine when you correct your co-workers' English, you don't assume malice instead of ignorance. I think you especially don't assume bad intentions when it has to do with tones, nuances, and cultural backgrounds. I am just requesting to extend similar consideration to people who are not your co-workers.

I am quite surprised to learn that you imply non-native speakers have "severe interpersonal issues" if they don't "know their limits". While I agree knowing one's limit is a good thing, when one doesn't you tell them, carefully, in non-condescending manner, not in the manner of "Non-native speakers should know better than to pass judgement on linguistic issues".

Post reply on HN