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Ben Noordhuis's Departure

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Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#91

Post by regularfry »

salehenrahman wrote: post #41
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 missing one very important detail: the person issuing the pull request didn't sign a CLA.

Yes he did. After the PR, before the initial close.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#92

Post by wpietri »

Zikes wrote: post #34
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…

"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.

Evidence? Know Your Meme documents it as related to spanking:

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/butthurt

That matches my understanding of butthurt as an overreaction to being chastised or shamed.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#93

Post by eropple »

malandrew wrote: post #88
eropple wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Agreed almost entirely (I think that many companies have shown themselves capable of being very responsible stewards of open-source projects, it's only in a couple of communities that I see this sort of thing happening), but what-should-be doesn't really change anything. It probably should be under its own project--but it's not, it's under Joyent's and the actions on the project reflect on them. I think Joyent overreacted terribly and did themselves more damage than the tempest in a teapot otherwise would have caused, but I get the motives behind it.

The only reason I replied is because the tenor of Zikes's posts throughout this discussion have been consistently of the "I'm not touching you I'm not touching you we both know I'm being a dick but I'm not touching you!" variety and this straight-up mistruth about something rather important ground my gears.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#94

Post by malandrew »

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…

Yup, it was 100% bikeshedding, plain and simple. It's almost like we need to amend Wadler's Law to include a 4th level, "4. Politically correctness of pronouns in comments" [0]

The entire time that nerd rage battle was occurring I wanted nothing more than to be able to magically erase both the original commit and reversion from history, since it had nothing to do with the project, wasn't productive and was a distraction of many people's valuable time from things that actually matter for Node.js.

Seriously, if you want to bikeshed over pronouns instead of contribute working code, GTFO and go blag about it somewhere else.

[0] http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Wadler's_Law

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#95

Post by md224 »

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…

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 politics.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#96

Post by DanBC »

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…

> In live, non-corporate language would any native speaker in fact routinely use "they" instead of "he" when referring to a user?

Yes, lots of people choose to use words like "the user" rather than "he". Or they use "he" and "she" throughout the documentation. Or they'll use singular "they".

> But is it an actually big deal for native speakers?

For some people it is a big deal because they are that type of person. For other people it's not a big deal but they do it anyway, just because.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#97

Post by malandrew »

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 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. On the internet no one knows you're a dog. 99% of the time I have no idea if the person I'm talking to on Github is a man, woman or has a different gender identity, nor do I care. It'd simply doesn't matter. [0]

All that original commit did is set off a giant clusterfuck of nerd rage and bikeshedding. No one should ever submit a commit like that. If you want to edit executable code and make those pronoun changes in productive commits, fine. But to make those changes to the pronouns of comments and nothing else is pure unadulterated bikeshedding and shouldn't be in any project.

[0] http://programming-motherfucker.com/

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#98

Post by wpietri »

veemjeem wrote: post #53
sneak wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I read the github thread.

Ben closed the sincere and well-meant patch, saying, "Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that." He didn't just participate in the drama; he started it.

Non-drama options would be things like: asking the contributor more, asking a colleague to look it over, asking a native speaker why it mattered, and just moving past the pull request and leaving it for somebody who cared.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#99

Post by chc »

Lazare wrote: post #17
mseepgood wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because he refused to take a commit making language in some part of the code gender-neutral He didn't only refuse such a commit. He actively reverted it.

On procedural grounds. It hadn't been accepted, as far as Ben knew, by someone with the authority to make that decision, it didn't follow project guidelines, and the contributor hadn't signed a CLA. The revert had nothing to do with grammar and language.

AFAIK this is not the case. The contributor had not signed a CLA when he first submitted the pull request, but evidently did sign it well before Isaac merged in the change (he claimed to have done so very early in the original PR thread). As far as I can tell, procedure was followed.

It seems pretty clear that Ben acted somewhat inappropriately — maybe not with his initial rejection, but when he reverted Isaac's merge and "chided" him. The important thing to remember, though, is that one bit of prickly behavior shouldn't be enough to brand someone "an asshole." Heaven knows I've gotten annoyed and said things I've regretted on more than one occasion.

Re: Ben Noordhuis's Departure

#100

Post by _delirium »

Zikes wrote: post #43
rosser wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if there's one thing I thought feminists had taken to heart it's "no means no". I'm a dude, and this comment seriously offends me. I'm sure you thought you were being funny or something, but I dare you to make that kind of quip to a woman's face, and see if you don't begin realize why by the way her expression changes.

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.

"No means no" specifically refers to a campaign against rape. It is not some general defense of the right to refuse anything and the sanctity of the word "no". The word "no" in itself isn't some kind of sacred word, and it should not have general power in all contexts that's enforced, as you seem to be proposing.

Apart from the analogy seeming silly and over-dramatic when applied to a... pull request to a software repository... it doesn't even make sense based on how open-source projects I've worked on in the past operate. There is nothing particularly out-of-bounds about making a suggestion a second time, even if it was rejected the first time. Situations and personnel change, and discussions recur. Linus even actively encourages it himself, and many pull requests are accepted after three or four "nos" from Linus. This does not mean that Linus encourages you to initiate sexual advances with people who've asked you to stop, though, because that situation is not at all similar!

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