We should, if the something in question is destructive, immoral, or contrary to the public good. We don't have to tolerate every possible opinion just because some people are conflict-avoidant.
> We should, if the something in question is destructive, immoral, or contrary to the public good. We don't have to tolerate every possible opinion just because some people are conflict-avoidant
The point being made by the parent comment to yours is not that you have been fined "HN points", but that your opinions posted are toxic, "destructive, immoral, or contrary to the public good" which is why they have been deleted and flagged, (given what you just said, you should be celebrating this fact, though I assume since the communities views on toxicity differ from your own you will be decrying the censorship of your viewpoint).
> Also, a commit's author should be judged from his code quality, not from his opinion on random issues.
You say that, but there's been a number of OS developers that have been ostracised and expelled from communities by something they (for example) tweeted. Contributors are rejected to contribute because they don't conform to a code of conduct. People lose jobs over being called out for jokes at conferences (and over calling out said jokes, both in part thanks to internet armies).
So while in theory it should, in practice people will get vetted and judged for their online presence.
In other words, the ye olde adage is still valid; don't be identifiable online. If you're an OS developer / contributor with an unpopular opinion, best to keep that part separate from your OS contributor profile. And keep your real name safe.
The oppression is exclusively from one extreme of the political spectrum directed rightward, which triggers anyone believing in fairness or freedom of speech.
You're right. Every single opinion need not even be considered either. But people should be allowed to hold it and you shouldn't disadvantage them in an unrelated field because of it.
I don't care if my coworker thinks that gay marriage is a sin. It is his right to hold that opinion. If he doesn't let it come in the way of his work it's fine. But that doesn't mean I am asking everybody to consider his viewpoint. If it is absurd enough for you you needn't worry about it.
A 100% out-of-context-single-data-point suggestion: Seems like the author has a lot of great ideas, but would benefit greatly from increased collaboration - getting the proper feedback, morphing ideas from theoretical land into reality, and also benefiting from the mindshare (and energy) of others - even something as simple as getting another pair of eyes to help debug. Most big things are built by teams, not by individuals (even if the contributions are skewed).
Every time an open source developer stops working, a star burns out somewhere in the universe.
I wrote a similar comment below before seeing yours, and now I’m even more curious: How much opportunity did Ticki have for good collaboration, just on that one, huge unresolved bug? How much could it have short circuited that month long drought?
I’m not sure exactly how much our thoughts were overlapping, but in case you haven’t heard the name of one particular flavor, @serens response to my comment shows the wikipedia reference to the concept, apparently known to some as “rubber duck debugging”.
The WP article centers around debugging, however it seems commonplace in many subjects and problem solving variations. I suspect it’s just as effective at ideation or design stages, or even when purely theoretical creativity is desired, for example in proving a mathematical result.
> Perfectionism makes me a poor Open Source contributor.
It's interesting that the OP ended up on this conclusion, although it would be much much better long-term to take the necessary time to deliver good pieces.
This is probably the kind of person you don't want to cut ties with open source too often. Good software, from research to implementation takes a huge amount of resources (both people-hours and people to put in those hours), and the kind that measure 20 times before making 1 cut are some of the most important, because they are the type that should be in charge of the types of early design decisions.
For every one of these kinds of developers, it seems like there are at least 10 who measure way less and cut way more (myself included in that 10).
I do think ticki might find his way back to F/OSS with Haskell or some similarly related ML project, they can offer a good mix of ivory-tower and just enough in-the-weeds implementation to make rigid, type-safe, theoretically sound systems and abstractions...
Maybe it was just an issue of picking the right language to pursue the purity he was seeking -- one further away from the mainstream, under less pressure to "get shit done".
In the first place, good software is software that exists. I don't know ticki or his work, but if it is vaporware what he calls vaporware, then there is no way for it to be good software.
If ticki reads this: props for the clear words. Honest posts like this are rarely seen. And good luck for your career in mathematics. Though I figure great mathematics is not much different than great software (I'm not talking about glue-coding): It needs to exist. You need to find simple, obviously correct, and useful models to create something that other things can build on.
And if you decide to come back later: A clear goal helps separating the essential from the non-essential. Formalism is only a tool, not an end in itself.
I don't agree with the notion that software has to be finished to be good (which isn't exactly what you said but the implication seems to be there). Taken literally, software that is unfinished (i.e. unusable) cannot possibly be good, obviously, but software that was been theorized but didn't necessarily exist in finished form until relatively recently is pretty common. If you don't want to make a bundled mess of spaghetti design, theory/play/experimentation that doesn't necessarily turn into a functioning project is crucial, ideas are sometimes reused/refactored into a project that is completed.
Maybe if none of his work was actually published at all, then that statement would make sense (since it would literally be impossible to derive value from something that doesn't exist), but he's contributed documentation, schematics, etc, it's vaporware in the sense that it isn't a finished product and may never actually become one since he's not supporting it anymore, but if someone else sees what he's done (ex. https://github.com/redox-os/tfs), they might pick it up and finish it. ATM there are 500+ commits to that project, I find it hard to believe that if what he was doing is worth doing that those commits are completely worthless.
Yes totally agree, good software evolves to be that way. It's never perfect from day 1. On day 1 you don't ecen know what users want because you have no users to tell you what is required.
My statement was about software, not about what can be learned from failed projects. Sure experimentation has value, even if it only leads to the insight that theory can rarely be applied to software in materialized form. And I think that's the gist of the post.
Take regular expressions, one of the theories that actually have been applied successfully to practice - because they are easy to understand and, as a corollary, describe practical concepts. Now, where are state machines implemented in their as a materialization of their abstract form? I don't know, maybe not even in a rather generalist tool like grep. They are at least not useful for lexers (one canonical use case for RE), because the formal overhead gets in the way of converting literals and looking up identifiers.
In Software you need to cut corners to be able to implement useful functionality and achieve good performance.
While this comment may not be directly "productive", I think the immediate response to it, and in general response to the topic at hand is rather instructive.
It shows a general negativity (on both sides) which is obviously detracting from the positive energy and enthusiasm associated with (and often crucial for) sustainable open-source software projects.
For all the good various diversity-initiatives has intended to do, I must admit I've yet to see any proof that these actually work and give the promised results. It's their claim and thus their responsibility to prove.
Faced with constant reminders (like this) of how they keep causing toxic debates, which again and again causes people to leave (or avoid joining), it's easy to assume that right now these well intended initiatives, executed as they are, represent a net negative.
Let's not make FOSS a matter of gender-identities and diversity, but again focus on the product, the commits, the code and the incremental improvements. Towards reaching a common goal, together.
We should all focus on the good things which are uniting instead of letting a select few try to force a divisive agenda top-down upon a audience we know will give a mixed reception.
Let's not kill something good with something well-meant, but misguided.
I don't think there ever was a single person that changed their mind after reading a misguided moralistic sermon.
Common sense dictates that the topics of software development and identity politics do not overlap at all, but there are groups that try to, against overwhelming pushback, use one to gain control over the other in bizarre and puzzling ways.
Every time somebody forces a "code of conduct" on a project that was doing very well without it, lots of talented developers leave, and, I imagine, an angel cries.
The linked article is about the author actively changing their identity from FOSS dev to math researcher, and commenting about their identity of perfectionism. Entirely a commentary on the noun of identity, nothing on the verb of performing their identity.
Chrome word search finds 77 instances of the capital letter "I" followed by space. Its harder to search on verbs, the word "Do " appears 8 times but mostly in comments.
The subject of the post and discussion is personal identity, not personal actions or philosophy of action or whatever. It seems fair to bring up the OPs other identity posts, on the topics of politics or sexuality or whatever.
The post is an interesting mix of personal diary and social status signalling.
Let's be honest here, "non-binary genders" is a weird concept to begin with. It's alien, and doesn't apply to humans. Why is this whacko stuff getting shoved down our throats, and what does it have to do with programming? Do programmers think they are aliens or above human biology?
Seriously though, I agree with the other comment about having Codes of Conduct. Don't programmers know what constitutes acceptable behavior? (Apart from stuff like not showering).
There are a lot of weird things associated with the counter-cultural ideas that helped spawn FOSS. To suggest that people can't or shouldn't advocate for acceptance of their conceptual identity is pretty misguided. On the other hand everything shouldn't be turned into some kind of litmus test. I saw nothing at all confrontational in that writing on non-binary genders and in general think that people would be cool with someone deciding that they identify themselves however.
But getting back to the topic on hand, I remember reading about TFS and I thought wow this is really ambitious I wonder who will have the time to actually develop it. Evidently the author of said spec agreed. I do appreciate perfectionist programmers as I definitely tend towards hacking away to solve problems even if I chip the paint so to speak.
> To suggest that people can't or shouldn't advocate for acceptance of their conceptual identity is pretty misguided.
I'm sorry, but made-up genders simply do not find their way into my model of the world. I never encounter such people in real life (hopefully they've all been siphoned off to Portland by now) and I simply do not have the time or the energy to so much as blink at such whacko ideas, much less accommodate the crazies by building special bathrooms just for them and their delusions. So sorry, but I will never "accept" this into any personal framework and will treat people like normal people with real genders, not made-up ones.
> Let's be honest here, "non-binary genders" is a weird concept to begin with. It's alien and doesn't apply to humans.
It's actually a lot more prevalent in the population than some people realise. It's not something that was made up. For example, odds are, you almost certainly know a few people who are intersex one way or another, but they might not share this information freely with you.
Simply not having XX nor XY chromosomes happens about in one in every 1666 people. Surely you have met at least two thousand people in your life.
> Simply not having XX nor XY chromosomes happens about in one in every 1666 people. Surely you have met at least two thousand people in your life.
That's a disease, not a gender. What makes people with such a disease think they are special? Moreover, why should I care about this particular disease when there are much worse?
Honestly, everyone has quirks, not everyone makes them the core of their identity.
Edit: apparently someone here is offended by my comments and instantly downvoting them. Pretty sad, and doesn't help your cause. If censorship is the best strategy you can think of, then maybe your cause is total fucking bullshit.
That is but one possible situation. Read the link. There are other things like adrenal hyperplasia which are really common and results in developing secondary sexual characteristics of both genders.
Is being a man a quirk or a disease of yours or in the core of your identity?
> There are other things like adrenal hyperplasia which are really common and results in developing secondary sexual characteristics of both genders.
"Really common" is people bullshitting. Most of this stuff is in their heads. I don't know about adrenal hyperplasia but certainly you don't need to be a liberal to have it? So why do only liberals want preferential treatment?
Sorry, all this crap is just identity politics... it's not based in reality at all.
Should we accept the status quo in all cases because somebody might speak up in upset?
The diversity initiatives in the Rust community are one of the primary reasons I attempt to stay part of it, file bug reports, fix code, and attend conferences, in a way that I don't in communities which appear divided over whether or not it's socially acceptable to harass me based on my gender and/or medical history.
You're suggesting that it's better that we allow people to continue harassing people over things that have literally nothing to do with their ability to code, than that people feel comfortable enough to code on your project - that it's more important to make racists, sexist, and other bigots comfortable than their victims. That's your call, but to call it "uniting" is complete nonsense.
> You're suggesting that it's better that we allow people to continue harassing people over things that have literally nothing to do with their ability to code
I don't. That's you misrepresenting my point of view.
I've yet to contribute to a project which holds a COC, still I've yet to see any kind of harassament or abuse based on the ethnicity, sex, religious view or age of other contributors. In fact these things have not not ever been a subject. The subject was always the code.
My opinion is that we focus on the code, the commits and not who wrote them. Simple as that. Why construe that as me supporting abuse?
Yes, that means that if a trans "woman of colour" (or whatever is PC to write these days) submits a bad patch I should be able openly criticize it the same way I would criticize it as if it was written by a straight, white male. And how would I know that? Why should I even be expected to know that in the first place?
I'm also against using a disproportionate amount of energy on explicitly focusing on these things which we all agree should not matter. Many of these diversity initiatives do exactly this, and when they do, that's just utterly detracting to the task at hand: crafting good software together.
So my opinion is that these things are counter-productive and misguided, and my point is that I've yet to see any proof that I am wrong in holding that opinion.
I think that's simple and clear enough, without the need to read any ulterior motives into it.
Who's writing that code? Do individuals write code and throw it over the wall, never having to talk to another soul? Or does it come from a community of people who have to interact with each other?
The practice of FOSS software development is, in part, an exercise in community management. It'd be great if we could all just focus on the code - that's a significant chunk of the point of active community management, so that the developers involved don't have to worry about their safety at conferences, about harassment from other members of the community, about whether they're going to be the only POC/woman/disabled person at the meetup and how to protect themselves from everybody else there, when they just want to build software. The people who want to do more than just build software are the people who decide it'd be a great idea to use their power within the community to harass us, assault us, or more, without social consequence.
As a result of FOSS software development being a community activity, figuring out how best to run that community for the benefit of all within it is a necessity. And at some point, you'll find a transphobe and a trans person, a racist and an Indian, a misogynist and a woman, in your community, and something happens - and the question is, what happens then? Do we put huge amounts of effort into trying to teach bigots not to be bigots, or at least shut up about their bigotry within the context of the community? (Yes, the communities I'm part of do this, to a significant degree.) Do we eventually kick out the people causing the trouble, or the victims of it? Do we intentionally create segregated communities so that women never have to meet misogynists and rapists, in order to avoid kicking anybody out? Do we try to avoid conflict from happening, or do we only ever react to it when it does? These are questions that need answering, and nobody will ever agree on the answers to all of them.
I've been a part of several communities and suffered harassment in a few of them due to my gender, medical history, and disabilities. Most notable is the hacklab in my previous city where women and people of colour were regularly made to feel uncomfortable by one particular member, and nothing was done about it for months, directly losing us several potential new members. The building it's situated in, up a number of flights of stairs, has lost us multiple members over the years, due to its inaccessibility to people with mobility issues - a problem to be solved, not ignored. A number of friends have received sexual harassment at conferences - I'm picky enough about the conferences I go to that I'm lucky not to have suffered that. I'm also smart enough to figure out that when someone goes off on a rant in a project's IRC channel about how stylistic issues around gendered wording in documentation are going to bring the fall of mankind, I'm probably not going to be accepted there - if someone is that upset about a Bob being changed to a Barbara in the documentation, it's likely they have larger issues with women. I'm glad that you have not suffered any of this, and hope that continues.
What, exactly, would you accept as proof that a community has benefited from the existence of its code of conduct and other community management tools?
How does this stuff even come up? Most websites have basically anonymous usernames.
Only when I use my facebook/instagram people will call me a white male. But I dont use that for online communities for the most part, and I mention they are racist for propagating race>merit.
While I think people say they wanted to be treated equal, they dont. They want to tell everyone their story and have pitty or debate over themselves.
> How does this stuff even come up? Most websites have basically anonymous usernames.
Because my photo exists on GitHub - like many men's - and I use my real name. I have no interest in hiding my identity when the men in the same community don't have to, and manage to receive no flack for it. I also occasionally attend conferences, meetups, and so on and so forth, and my various physical attributes are incredibly obvious there.
> Who's writing that code? Do individuals write code and throw it over the wall, never having to talk to another soul?
Individuals who I respect professionally based on their work and effort, but whose religion and sexual orientation is something I leave to be their own. Same as I leave mine my own and don't try to impose on to others.
> And at some point, you'll find a transphobe and a trans person, a racist and an Indian, a misogynist and a woman, in your community, and something happens - and the question is, what happens then? Do we put huge amounts of effort into trying to teach bigots not to be bigots, or at least shut up about their bigotry within the context of the community?
If someone is detrimental to the community because of their actions within the community, that makes the resolution fairly obvious without a need to codify this in a document focused mostly on ethnicity, gender, religion or sexual orientation.
In case a community member holds opinions outside the project which another member finds objectionable, and which that other member then actively or repeatedly brings into the project, in order to stir conflict or evict others, I also think it's fairly obvious who is causing actual harm to the community.
And in those cases I would be very cautious about automatically portraying this offended person as a "victim", because doing so will also automatically portray the other party as a offender, despite this person maybe not having any direct involvement in the "offence" at hand.
And then you've created/codified a source of polarization in your community. That's IMO even worse than occasionally having people get offended and squaring up.
> If someone is detrimental to the community because of their actions within the community, that makes the resolution fairly obvious without a need to codify this in a document focused mostly on ethnicity, gender, religion or sexual orientation.
Funnily enough, it's usually highly political to suggest that someone might be detrimental to the community, even when it's obvious. I constantly see women leave communities because it's less of a hassle to find a group that actively seeks to protect its members than to try and gain enough political capital and put up with enough crap to get members thrown out. The people with no personal problems in those same communities never realise that there's a problem - they never realise that their community could benefit from kicking out the bigots, or even asking them to tone it down a little. And in fact they'll often actively fight to ensure that people suffer no consequences for their actions.
The hackers just write code and are generally nice to each other (with occasional flames). No CoC needed.
The activists and profiteurs who don't code see that there exists something that they can attach themselves to and increase their personal brand.
The make life difficult for hackers and do not give a damn. They want to be political officers, because that is the only thing they can monetize and profit from.
>Do we put huge amounts of effort into trying to teach bigots not to be bigots
I already replied to your other comment relating my work experience. To me, it's simple: no, you don't try to teach bigots better behavior, you reprimand them once (if their action wasn't too horrible), and after that you kick them out. Bad behavior can't be tolerated because of the effects you describe: it chases away other people. You don't need a "diversity initiative", you just need leadership willing to enforce some very simple rules of civility. If a project doesn't have that leadership, then find one that does.
>Do we eventually kick out the people causing the trouble, or the victims of it?
Again, you kick out the trouble-makers. Why is this a hard concept?
>the hacklab in my previous city where women and people of colour were regularly made to feel uncomfortable by one particular member, and nothing was done about it for months, directly losing us several potential new members.
Sounds like you (plural) needed to do something about the leadership, if possible. I'm not sure how your hacklab worked (is it privately owned, a non-profit, etc.? I don't know), but surely there was some upper management to complain to?
>The building it's situated in, up a number of flights of stairs, has lost us multiple members over the years, due to its inaccessibility to people with mobility issues - a problem to be solved, not ignored.
This sounds like a money problem to me. I've only seen a couple of hacklabs (and never got too involved) but basically they seemed to take over old buildings in a downtown area where the rent was really cheap (because the building was old), meaning these hacklabs didn't exactly have a lot of cash to spend on renovations. Putting an elevator into some old industrial building is not a cheap thing to do. If the organization doesn't have the money, they don't have the money. Would all the hackerspace members, yourself included, be willing to cough up $1000 to put in an elevator? I doubt it.
>A number of friends have received sexual harassment at conferences
This sucks, and unfortunately I don't know what you can do about that, because this isn't like a workplace or other organization where you can just identify the offenders and either discipline or eject them. It might be possible to identify them and raise their behavior with whatever organization they're representing (if any) at this conference.
> You don't need a "diversity initiative", you just need leadership willing to enforce some very simple rules of civility. If a project doesn't have that leadership, then find one that does.
I find projects that seem to care enough to kick uncivil members out by the presence of a code of conduct (very basic document that says "we welcome people, harassment is bad folks" and points at a resolution process most of the time) and leadership that's willing to talk about the issues that members of the community face. There's no other way to tell whether a community will have my back, and yet that gets classed as a "diversity initiative".
> I'm not sure how your hacklab worked (is it privately owned, a non-profit, etc.? I don't know), but surely there was some upper management to complain to?
It's a small group, 30-odd members, completely bootstrapped. Eventually I managed to gain enough political capital to convince a couple of people to talk to him, and it was eventually resolved - not before a lot of harm was done.
> This sounds like a money problem to me. I've only seen a couple of hacklabs (and never got too involved) but basically they seemed to take over old buildings in a downtown area where the rent was really cheap (because the building was old), meaning these hacklabs didn't exactly have a lot of cash to spend on renovations.
Sure - but the point is that at the very least, we acknowledged this as an issue (and continue to do so every AGM) and kept an eye out for more accessible locations, rather than - as a union that a friend is part of and that has plenty of money is doing - ignoring the needs of their members despite having the capital. I believe the hacklab is moving to a more accessible location in the near future primarily due to the increased accessibility, despite it costing them a little more money and potentially needing to raise membership costs or spend effort on recruiting new members, which is great.
> It might be possible to identify them and raise their behavior with whatever organization they're representing (if any) at this conference.
That's a wonderful way to receive more harassment from a wider group, unfortunately. The only reason people get away with this crap is that when anybody tries to do something about it, they have enough political capital that they can have it waved away as someone wanting to hurt them. It's more painful to try and do something about it and then see the same person at the next conference anyway with no apparent resolution than to just try and heal privately.
I think we may be talking about different things. A simple CoC is fine: "act civility and decently or there will be consequences" is what any decent CoC should boil down to. It's sad that any project feels that it needs such a thing, but if the project has an incident with a toxic member, it's understandable that they would feel the need for one.
A "diversity initiative" is something else altogether, attempting to do some kind of social politics rather than focus on the work. Pushing to recruit people of certain genders or ethnicities is an example here. IMO, there should be no such thing: members should be welcomed no matter their background or physical features, as long as they can follow the simple CoC (i.e., act civility and don't harass, abuse, etc.).
>Sure - but the point is that at the very least, we acknowledged this as an issue (and continue to do so every AGM) and kept an eye out for more accessible locations
I see no problem here. You have to be realistic though, but it doesn't hurt to keep your eyes open to other possibilities.
>That's a wonderful way to receive more harassment from a wider group, unfortunately. The only reason people get away with this crap is that when anybody tries to do something about it, they have enough political capital that they can have it waved away as someone wanting to hurt them.
Hmm.. definitely a tricky problem, and an indication of a toxic culture in some places. Maybe whatever organization that person is from should be disinvited from future conferences if they apparently condone such behavior? Otherwise, your organization could refuse to attend, citing such behavior. It does seem that some people (particularly those in leadership positions) need to take a stand here. Unfortunately, it does seem that usually, positive social change only comes about because of sacrifices made by some brave individuals.
It's easy to say all that when you are not being targeted or having to suffer the interactions that are the problem. Of course you don't see it, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
What you are describing is exactly what people want. They want to be able to do something they love and focus on that, not the rest of their world.
The issue is that some people do bring it into the conversation. It's not the choice of the people being targeted. These kinds of movements are about trying to ensure that those people can participate without having to deal with abuse.
No one is going to accuse you of being bigoted for criticising some code - that's creating a strawman.
Imagine you are trans and you offer up some changes, and they are rejected out of hand. You get a twitter DM full of abusive language. Should they have not had a twitter account with the same name as their github account where they talk about personal issues?
If you are acting as you say you are, (as most people do!), then you can ignore this stuff completely, because it won't affect you. What it will do, is ensure that people who do see that kind of harassment or abuse can get involved in the projects, and focus on the code.
Saying that people trying to stop abuse in FOSS communities are not focusing on the code is like complaining that someone getting punched isn't focusing on the task at hand. They were trying to! Blame the one doing the punching, not the one asking if we can stop them being punched.
> Imagine you offer up some changes, and they are rejected out of hand. You get a twitter DM full of abusive language. Should they have not had a twitter account with the same name as their github account where they talk about personal issues?
That's would be a problem anyhow, no matter who is affected.
Your ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation is not relevant to that particular case, so why bring it up at all? Why make it the core of your argument?
Believe it or not, the vast majority of abuse of this sort happens to members of minority groups due primarily to their existence as part of said group. Shock, horror, etc.
And do you know what? You're protected by the same code of conduct anyway, even if you do suffer that by some fluke. The Rust Code of Conduct has one line which states "We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all", followed by a listing of example characteristics under which people are commonly discriminated against - the basic assumption being that a person who isn't discriminated against doesn't need to be told that they're welcome, they already know that they are, the same as they don't need to be told that they're welcome before they apply to university or pop into their local bar or decide to rent a place in a "nice" neighbourhood or decide to take a midnight stroll. Later, there's a reference to a list of actions which are commonly considered "harassment", which includes things like "deliberate intimidation, stalking or following", which apply to anybody. Are you a man being sexually harassed by a man, woman, or non-binary person? That's included too, under "unwelcome sexual attention"!
It is relevant, because they are the people who get targeted repeatedly. Again, it's easy to say it shouldn't be the focus when you aren't the person getting harassed repeatedly.
It's fair that they want to know they can feel safe and contribute to a project - being explicit that they are welcome is important to helping these people overcome the adversity they face.
Why is it a problem for you that their issues are voiced? You said before it was a "disproportionate amount of energy being spent", but for the people spending that energy, it's not - it's their work or hobby being messed up time and again, and they are defending it.
Beyond that, the work being done is for anybody - it's not limited to those cases - but you say yourself you don't face these problems. These issues affect some people more - so why is it surprising that the solutions focus on them (but not exclusively)?
>The diversity initiatives in the Rust community are one of the primary reasons I attempt to stay part of it, file bug reports, fix code, and attend conferences, in a way that I don't in communities which appear divided over whether or not it's socially acceptable to harass me based on my gender and/or medical history.
>You're suggesting that it's better that we allow people to continue harassing people over things that have literally nothing to do with their ability to code
I don't know about your work situation, but I work in a pretty conservative industry as a software engineer, and many (but definitely not all) of my coworkers are probably Trump voters, and certainly conservative. But there's also women here, Muslims, one guy who's physically disabled, etc.
We don't talk about politics at work here, nor have I heard much open talk about politics in my last workplace that had a bunch of conservatives. People focused on the work. I certainly haven't seen any kind of harassment of people of religious minorities, people with medical problems, or women; everyone seems (and seemed at the previous jobs) pretty happy with the workplace. But there haven't been any "diversity initiatives"; they just seem to hire the best applicants, given the conditions they have (who's applying, etc.) and their goals (wanting to hire a certain number of "fresh-outs" for instance).
Why you seem to think that you need "diversity initiatives" to prevent harassment is completely beyond me. You don't need diversity initiatives to make sure people act civil towards each other and treat their coworkers with respect. In fact, most workplaces with college-educated professionals seem to have little trouble with their employees acting poorly this way. When they do, they get reprimanded or fired.
Workplaces != voluntary organisations. You could lose your livelihood and sink into crippling debt if you were fired - not so much if you're kicked out of a community. And, of course, people generally pick communities that they'd like to be part of and which contain people they generally agree with, whereas people are often willing to put up with a hell of a lot in return for money.
You do, in fact, need active community management in order to convince some minority of people to treat each other with respect if there's otherwise no downside to failing to do so.
I'm not so sure about your assertions here. AFAICT, the people I've worked with who are conservatives just generally wouldn't be that interested in working on a volunteer software project like that. They'd rather spend their free time with their fishing boat or something. I don't think they really care enough about software to get involved in a FOSS project. So I think FOSS projects may attract personalities that are more extreme than typical developers, with more personality defects.
But I completely agree about needing active management. I think this is true for any organization. You're just not going to get good results if you don't have some kind of leadership keeping people in line.
To be honest, I've never understood how people can see a code of conduct as being a divisive agenda. Every one I've seen has been strongly in favour of inclusivity.
I've seen numerous examples of such documents codifying that it's completely OK to indulge in both sexism and racism if the person on the receiving end belongs to the wrong race, sex or has the wrong sexual orientation. I find it hard to support such initiatives.
And again: It detracts from what should be the focus: code.
TODOGroup's OpenCOC[1] would be the most prominent example:
> Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. We will not act on complaints regarding: Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. We will not act on complaints regarding:
> ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’"
So if someone white or asian, straight or "regular" gay, of regular sex, or whatever are explicitly excluded from a community initiative and someone finds that objectionable, their COC says that kind of racism and sexism is OK.
> Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts
If you have problem with such principles, that's also not acceptable to discuss. Hardly a healthy environment for open debate.
I think more people need to acknowledge that these COCs are
1. Controversial as opposed to universal. Trying to frame it as universal, and then excluding anyone who disagrees with that, just shows that it by definition is the opposite of inclusive.
2. The noise generated from the above controversy is detracting from other work on the project.
IMO such measures should be avoided at all cost, as far as possible, especially considering how most FOSS projects are healthy, an that in most cases controversy like this is not needed and will do more harm than good.
I'm sure many workplaces were healthy before the success of feminism and the introduction of women to many traditionally male workplaces and jobs last century, too.
> Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts
> If you have problem with such principles, that's also not acceptable to discuss. Hardly a healthy environment for open debate.
This is funny in a way because I said these things encouraged toxic discussions and exclusion of non-agreeing view-points. And now this entire thread is flagged.
However, another reading of these facts could be that they the maintainers are human and have limited bandwidth to deal with such problems. If you observed that there was a high frequency of erroneous complaints that wasted your time citing "reverse-isms" you would be right to exclude them. Similarly if a lot of people wanted to try and bring you into debates that you didn't feel were productive, you would also ban those discussions.
I'm sure if they similarly experienced any cases where, say, cis white men were genuinely discriminated against, they would then revisit the code of conduct.
I tend to think code of conducts try and say that a community will be accepting and inclusive of people within it. They are made by people with limited bandwidth trying to do their best to deal with discrimination and harassment problems as they come up.
> So if someone white or asian, straight or "regular" gay, of regular sex, or whatever are explicitly excluded from a community initiative and someone finds that objectionable, their COC says that kind of racism and sexism is OK.
Here is the crux of the matter. Their code of conduct does not explicitly ban the behaviour you outlined. I would not say that the code of conduct says that is ok. The code of conduct does not explicitly ban fox hunting, but I do not take it to say that it condones that. If the group started to have a problem with fox hunting disrupting all of the planned work and activities it would move to stop that.
To me it sounds like the group may have started having a problem with people wasting time by trying to incorrectly cite "reverse-racism" e.t.c. as a method of causing harrassment and moved to stamp it out. Seems very reasonable to me.
Copying a trollish comment that was rightly flag-killed for breaking the site guidelines is a terrible thing to do in an HN thread, nor did you need to to make your point. It's a wonder this didn't revert to a tire fire; normally it would have. Please don't do this again.
Ticki was an active member of the Rust community, whose contribution was energetically and cheerfully campaigning for ambitious features. Sometimes perhaps a little too ambitious, but that's a useful kind of person to have in a community.
For example, Ticki wrote an early proposal for type-level integers, which everyone knows Rust needs eventually, but hadn't been able to work up a concrete proposal for:
Anyone know what kind of mathematics Ticki will be doing? Talking about correctness makes me thinks she or he is going to gravitate towards logic and foundations and the sorts of mathematics that computer people usually like. I ask because as someone who works with computers and doesn't prefer computery mathematics, I'm always looking for a kindred spirit.
Reading the comments here one would not think that the post is about someone who
1. Is announcing withdrawal from (active) FOSS, to focus full time on mathematics
2. Who also think they are not the best suited for contributing to Rust because they have a theoretical bent and aim for getting things right rather than simple or working... And acknowledge that this might be a limitation
3. Would like others to take over their projects
Rather the comments here lead you to think this is some sort of a negative disgruntled rant.
There is a couple of reasons for my choice. My main reason is that I have chosen to pursue a career in mathematics research. This is an extremely tough field and with this decision, I have no way of continuing my involvement in these very time consuming projects.
When I was a military wife, I did a lot of volunteer work. I had time on my hands, but not enough to pursue a serious career, and I didn't have a pressing need for earned income because my husband's career provided adequately for the family. Some military wives seem to have a third baby about the time the second one starts kindergarten or first grade. I volunteered. It kept me occupied and met some of my needs on a schedule I could sustain.
My kids grew up and I got divorced. My time constraints went down and my need for money went up. I began investing more time and effort in developing a career and income, less in doing volunteer work.
I think that is kind of the norm. People do this sort of thing when they have some time on their hands and volunteer work meets some need that isn't being met some other way in their life. Their life changes, they move on.
I wish more goodbyes were clearer about that. These types of posts are very often a rant about the rest of the world.
This reads me like the lowest part of a burnout episode. I don't mean to trivialize the author's experience...I'm sure their experience and what they are describing is very real. But when you're experiencing a defeat (even a defeat not caused by a single specific event), it can compound the whole "what am I doing with my life" feeling.
I hope the author gets back into open source though eventually. We need people who can bring levels of correctness that mathematics students tend to pursue. Even if its complicated, it can push the artform forward, and everyone else will adapt.
> But when you're experiencing a defeat (even a defeat not caused by a single specific event), it can compound the whole "what am I doing with my life" feeling.
That's a very interesting perspective. You're suggesting that 'a burnout' is a consequence of series of defeats. Interesting.
If you go a month without being able to find a bug in an algorithm/problem that you already understand in principle, it seems often a result of not talking to others enough.
Not that some smarter person would instantly give you the answer (although if so great), rather the way that the process of explaining the problem out loud and letting someone pick through your thought process can cause the solution, or just new lines of attack, to spontaneously pop into your head.
Surely this benefits most people at some point. I heard of a guy who articulates math problems to his dog, and doing so still added value, even though the dog doesn’t tend to probe or challenge his thinking very often.
Sometimes when I get stuck I explain problems to my wife (who is technical but specializes outside of CS) for only 15 minutes or so, and on occasion she provides me the solution without saying a word.
However I don’t know the mechanism, is there a formal name for the phenomenon?
I’d be curious to know how often during the month he had an opportunity to try this approach on his skip lists bug with different people.
Ha, it's so funny that you mention this. My wife isn't a Luddite, but she's not a developer, either. I narrate design issues I have with our products to her, and she patiently lets me work through the issue out loud, although I'm not quite sure she would love being associated with a dog in this respect. :-)
There's something about saying things out loud that clarifies the muddled mess in our heads. I also find this to be the case when having to teach something to someone.
Oh dear, please don’t infer any disrespect. I’m sure she is adding much more value than the dog, if for no other reason than you are forced to articulate things more cogently.
I suspect it can work in different ways based on the experience/knowledge of the problem solving partner. Maybe your wife or an expert forces more precise thinking, maybe the dog for some people could create a more uninhibited environment, where we can share “dumb” thoughts we wouldn’t want to speak to a person yet could still lead down a productive path.
I hope she appreciates her contribution. Seriously listening to someone is a great gift to give in so many contexts.
No worries, I did not take your comments that way at all. In fact, we both just had a good laugh again about the subject when I mentioned that it had come up here.
And yes, her listening is very kind and generous, although I do need to let her off the hook and get an actual tech partner at some point. 20+ years is a long time to subject someone to such things. :-)
Most open source projects lose money for the authors. There still isn't a good funding model for open source or open research. These tools are invaluable to developers, and open-source 'vaporware' is R&D.
We really should figure out a way to compensate open source authors.
I spent decades perfecting my code, never got anything worth mentioning done. To me it was important to realize that it's a way to escape reality, to protect the fuzzy bubble of intellectual masturbation. Truth is; if it doesn't work, no one cares; and rightly so. These days I try hard to stick with solving actual problems and continuously improving solutions; writing code like marathons rather than 100m sprints, growing it like a garden rather than constructing cathedrals.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadThe point being made by the parent comment to yours is not that you have been fined "HN points", but that your opinions posted are toxic, "destructive, immoral, or contrary to the public good" which is why they have been deleted and flagged, (given what you just said, you should be celebrating this fact, though I assume since the communities views on toxicity differ from your own you will be decrying the censorship of your viewpoint).
Also, a commit's author should be judged from his code quality, not from his opinion on random issues.
You say that, but there's been a number of OS developers that have been ostracised and expelled from communities by something they (for example) tweeted. Contributors are rejected to contribute because they don't conform to a code of conduct. People lose jobs over being called out for jokes at conferences (and over calling out said jokes, both in part thanks to internet armies).
So while in theory it should, in practice people will get vetted and judged for their online presence.
In other words, the ye olde adage is still valid; don't be identifiable online. If you're an OS developer / contributor with an unpopular opinion, best to keep that part separate from your OS contributor profile. And keep your real name safe.
Is it really true that for no combination of position and person, it's a net negative for that person to consider the merits of that position?
For example, should a recovering alcoholic consider an argument regarding one particular liquor being better than another?
I don't care if my coworker thinks that gay marriage is a sin. It is his right to hold that opinion. If he doesn't let it come in the way of his work it's fine. But that doesn't mean I am asking everybody to consider his viewpoint. If it is absurd enough for you you needn't worry about it.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I don't see any way I could convince you of anything believably, since I'm just some stranger on the internet.
Please just do me a favor and delete all the posts I've ever made from this account, thanks.
Every time an open source developer stops working, a star burns out somewhere in the universe.
I wrote a similar comment below before seeing yours, and now I’m even more curious: How much opportunity did Ticki have for good collaboration, just on that one, huge unresolved bug? How much could it have short circuited that month long drought?
I’m not sure exactly how much our thoughts were overlapping, but in case you haven’t heard the name of one particular flavor, @serens response to my comment shows the wikipedia reference to the concept, apparently known to some as “rubber duck debugging”.
The WP article centers around debugging, however it seems commonplace in many subjects and problem solving variations. I suspect it’s just as effective at ideation or design stages, or even when purely theoretical creativity is desired, for example in proving a mathematical result.
It's interesting that the OP ended up on this conclusion, although it would be much much better long-term to take the necessary time to deliver good pieces.
For every one of these kinds of developers, it seems like there are at least 10 who measure way less and cut way more (myself included in that 10).
I do think ticki might find his way back to F/OSS with Haskell or some similarly related ML project, they can offer a good mix of ivory-tower and just enough in-the-weeds implementation to make rigid, type-safe, theoretically sound systems and abstractions...
Maybe it was just an issue of picking the right language to pursue the purity he was seeking -- one further away from the mainstream, under less pressure to "get shit done".
If ticki reads this: props for the clear words. Honest posts like this are rarely seen. And good luck for your career in mathematics. Though I figure great mathematics is not much different than great software (I'm not talking about glue-coding): It needs to exist. You need to find simple, obviously correct, and useful models to create something that other things can build on.
And if you decide to come back later: A clear goal helps separating the essential from the non-essential. Formalism is only a tool, not an end in itself.
Maybe if none of his work was actually published at all, then that statement would make sense (since it would literally be impossible to derive value from something that doesn't exist), but he's contributed documentation, schematics, etc, it's vaporware in the sense that it isn't a finished product and may never actually become one since he's not supporting it anymore, but if someone else sees what he's done (ex. https://github.com/redox-os/tfs), they might pick it up and finish it. ATM there are 500+ commits to that project, I find it hard to believe that if what he was doing is worth doing that those commits are completely worthless.
Take regular expressions, one of the theories that actually have been applied successfully to practice - because they are easy to understand and, as a corollary, describe practical concepts. Now, where are state machines implemented in their as a materialization of their abstract form? I don't know, maybe not even in a rather generalist tool like grep. They are at least not useful for lexers (one canonical use case for RE), because the formal overhead gets in the way of converting literals and looking up identifiers.
In Software you need to cut corners to be able to implement useful functionality and achieve good performance.
> From the man who brought you "The Case for Non-Binary Genders" last year. No thanks.
Link for the lazy: https://ticki.github.io/blog/the-case-for-non-binary-genders...
While this comment may not be directly "productive", I think the immediate response to it, and in general response to the topic at hand is rather instructive.
It shows a general negativity (on both sides) which is obviously detracting from the positive energy and enthusiasm associated with (and often crucial for) sustainable open-source software projects.
For all the good various diversity-initiatives has intended to do, I must admit I've yet to see any proof that these actually work and give the promised results. It's their claim and thus their responsibility to prove.
Faced with constant reminders (like this) of how they keep causing toxic debates, which again and again causes people to leave (or avoid joining), it's easy to assume that right now these well intended initiatives, executed as they are, represent a net negative.
Let's not make FOSS a matter of gender-identities and diversity, but again focus on the product, the commits, the code and the incremental improvements. Towards reaching a common goal, together.
We should all focus on the good things which are uniting instead of letting a select few try to force a divisive agenda top-down upon a audience we know will give a mixed reception.
Let's not kill something good with something well-meant, but misguided.
Common sense dictates that the topics of software development and identity politics do not overlap at all, but there are groups that try to, against overwhelming pushback, use one to gain control over the other in bizarre and puzzling ways.
Every time somebody forces a "code of conduct" on a project that was doing very well without it, lots of talented developers leave, and, I imagine, an angel cries.
I actually agree with you when you say that software development and identity politic don't overlap.
So please, practice what you preach and stop trying to bring identity politics on an interesting subject about OSS and perfectionism.
Chrome word search finds 77 instances of the capital letter "I" followed by space. Its harder to search on verbs, the word "Do " appears 8 times but mostly in comments.
The subject of the post and discussion is personal identity, not personal actions or philosophy of action or whatever. It seems fair to bring up the OPs other identity posts, on the topics of politics or sexuality or whatever.
The post is an interesting mix of personal diary and social status signalling.
Seriously though, I agree with the other comment about having Codes of Conduct. Don't programmers know what constitutes acceptable behavior? (Apart from stuff like not showering).
Seriously though, great comment.
Judging by your first paragraph: very much no.
But getting back to the topic on hand, I remember reading about TFS and I thought wow this is really ambitious I wonder who will have the time to actually develop it. Evidently the author of said spec agreed. I do appreciate perfectionist programmers as I definitely tend towards hacking away to solve problems even if I chip the paint so to speak.
I'm sorry, but made-up genders simply do not find their way into my model of the world. I never encounter such people in real life (hopefully they've all been siphoned off to Portland by now) and I simply do not have the time or the energy to so much as blink at such whacko ideas, much less accommodate the crazies by building special bathrooms just for them and their delusions. So sorry, but I will never "accept" this into any personal framework and will treat people like normal people with real genders, not made-up ones.
It's actually a lot more prevalent in the population than some people realise. It's not something that was made up. For example, odds are, you almost certainly know a few people who are intersex one way or another, but they might not share this information freely with you.
Simply not having XX nor XY chromosomes happens about in one in every 1666 people. Surely you have met at least two thousand people in your life.
http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency
That's a disease, not a gender. What makes people with such a disease think they are special? Moreover, why should I care about this particular disease when there are much worse?
Honestly, everyone has quirks, not everyone makes them the core of their identity.
Edit: apparently someone here is offended by my comments and instantly downvoting them. Pretty sad, and doesn't help your cause. If censorship is the best strategy you can think of, then maybe your cause is total fucking bullshit.
Is being a man a quirk or a disease of yours or in the core of your identity?
"Really common" is people bullshitting. Most of this stuff is in their heads. I don't know about adrenal hyperplasia but certainly you don't need to be a liberal to have it? So why do only liberals want preferential treatment?
Sorry, all this crap is just identity politics... it's not based in reality at all.
The diversity initiatives in the Rust community are one of the primary reasons I attempt to stay part of it, file bug reports, fix code, and attend conferences, in a way that I don't in communities which appear divided over whether or not it's socially acceptable to harass me based on my gender and/or medical history.
You're suggesting that it's better that we allow people to continue harassing people over things that have literally nothing to do with their ability to code, than that people feel comfortable enough to code on your project - that it's more important to make racists, sexist, and other bigots comfortable than their victims. That's your call, but to call it "uniting" is complete nonsense.
I don't. That's you misrepresenting my point of view.
I've yet to contribute to a project which holds a COC, still I've yet to see any kind of harassament or abuse based on the ethnicity, sex, religious view or age of other contributors. In fact these things have not not ever been a subject. The subject was always the code.
My opinion is that we focus on the code, the commits and not who wrote them. Simple as that. Why construe that as me supporting abuse?
Yes, that means that if a trans "woman of colour" (or whatever is PC to write these days) submits a bad patch I should be able openly criticize it the same way I would criticize it as if it was written by a straight, white male. And how would I know that? Why should I even be expected to know that in the first place?
I'm also against using a disproportionate amount of energy on explicitly focusing on these things which we all agree should not matter. Many of these diversity initiatives do exactly this, and when they do, that's just utterly detracting to the task at hand: crafting good software together.
So my opinion is that these things are counter-productive and misguided, and my point is that I've yet to see any proof that I am wrong in holding that opinion.
I think that's simple and clear enough, without the need to read any ulterior motives into it.
Edit: Clarifications. Examples.
The practice of FOSS software development is, in part, an exercise in community management. It'd be great if we could all just focus on the code - that's a significant chunk of the point of active community management, so that the developers involved don't have to worry about their safety at conferences, about harassment from other members of the community, about whether they're going to be the only POC/woman/disabled person at the meetup and how to protect themselves from everybody else there, when they just want to build software. The people who want to do more than just build software are the people who decide it'd be a great idea to use their power within the community to harass us, assault us, or more, without social consequence.
As a result of FOSS software development being a community activity, figuring out how best to run that community for the benefit of all within it is a necessity. And at some point, you'll find a transphobe and a trans person, a racist and an Indian, a misogynist and a woman, in your community, and something happens - and the question is, what happens then? Do we put huge amounts of effort into trying to teach bigots not to be bigots, or at least shut up about their bigotry within the context of the community? (Yes, the communities I'm part of do this, to a significant degree.) Do we eventually kick out the people causing the trouble, or the victims of it? Do we intentionally create segregated communities so that women never have to meet misogynists and rapists, in order to avoid kicking anybody out? Do we try to avoid conflict from happening, or do we only ever react to it when it does? These are questions that need answering, and nobody will ever agree on the answers to all of them.
I've been a part of several communities and suffered harassment in a few of them due to my gender, medical history, and disabilities. Most notable is the hacklab in my previous city where women and people of colour were regularly made to feel uncomfortable by one particular member, and nothing was done about it for months, directly losing us several potential new members. The building it's situated in, up a number of flights of stairs, has lost us multiple members over the years, due to its inaccessibility to people with mobility issues - a problem to be solved, not ignored. A number of friends have received sexual harassment at conferences - I'm picky enough about the conferences I go to that I'm lucky not to have suffered that. I'm also smart enough to figure out that when someone goes off on a rant in a project's IRC channel about how stylistic issues around gendered wording in documentation are going to bring the fall of mankind, I'm probably not going to be accepted there - if someone is that upset about a Bob being changed to a Barbara in the documentation, it's likely they have larger issues with women. I'm glad that you have not suffered any of this, and hope that continues.
What, exactly, would you accept as proof that a community has benefited from the existence of its code of conduct and other community management tools?
How does this stuff even come up? Most websites have basically anonymous usernames.
Only when I use my facebook/instagram people will call me a white male. But I dont use that for online communities for the most part, and I mention they are racist for propagating race>merit.
While I think people say they wanted to be treated equal, they dont. They want to tell everyone their story and have pitty or debate over themselves.
Because my photo exists on GitHub - like many men's - and I use my real name. I have no interest in hiding my identity when the men in the same community don't have to, and manage to receive no flack for it. I also occasionally attend conferences, meetups, and so on and so forth, and my various physical attributes are incredibly obvious there.
Individuals who I respect professionally based on their work and effort, but whose religion and sexual orientation is something I leave to be their own. Same as I leave mine my own and don't try to impose on to others.
> And at some point, you'll find a transphobe and a trans person, a racist and an Indian, a misogynist and a woman, in your community, and something happens - and the question is, what happens then? Do we put huge amounts of effort into trying to teach bigots not to be bigots, or at least shut up about their bigotry within the context of the community?
If someone is detrimental to the community because of their actions within the community, that makes the resolution fairly obvious without a need to codify this in a document focused mostly on ethnicity, gender, religion or sexual orientation.
In case a community member holds opinions outside the project which another member finds objectionable, and which that other member then actively or repeatedly brings into the project, in order to stir conflict or evict others, I also think it's fairly obvious who is causing actual harm to the community.
And in those cases I would be very cautious about automatically portraying this offended person as a "victim", because doing so will also automatically portray the other party as a offender, despite this person maybe not having any direct involvement in the "offence" at hand.
And then you've created/codified a source of polarization in your community. That's IMO even worse than occasionally having people get offended and squaring up.
Funnily enough, it's usually highly political to suggest that someone might be detrimental to the community, even when it's obvious. I constantly see women leave communities because it's less of a hassle to find a group that actively seeks to protect its members than to try and gain enough political capital and put up with enough crap to get members thrown out. The people with no personal problems in those same communities never realise that there's a problem - they never realise that their community could benefit from kicking out the bigots, or even asking them to tone it down a little. And in fact they'll often actively fight to ensure that people suffer no consequences for their actions.
The activists and profiteurs who don't code see that there exists something that they can attach themselves to and increase their personal brand.
The make life difficult for hackers and do not give a damn. They want to be political officers, because that is the only thing they can monetize and profit from.
I already replied to your other comment relating my work experience. To me, it's simple: no, you don't try to teach bigots better behavior, you reprimand them once (if their action wasn't too horrible), and after that you kick them out. Bad behavior can't be tolerated because of the effects you describe: it chases away other people. You don't need a "diversity initiative", you just need leadership willing to enforce some very simple rules of civility. If a project doesn't have that leadership, then find one that does.
>Do we eventually kick out the people causing the trouble, or the victims of it?
Again, you kick out the trouble-makers. Why is this a hard concept?
>the hacklab in my previous city where women and people of colour were regularly made to feel uncomfortable by one particular member, and nothing was done about it for months, directly losing us several potential new members.
Sounds like you (plural) needed to do something about the leadership, if possible. I'm not sure how your hacklab worked (is it privately owned, a non-profit, etc.? I don't know), but surely there was some upper management to complain to?
>The building it's situated in, up a number of flights of stairs, has lost us multiple members over the years, due to its inaccessibility to people with mobility issues - a problem to be solved, not ignored.
This sounds like a money problem to me. I've only seen a couple of hacklabs (and never got too involved) but basically they seemed to take over old buildings in a downtown area where the rent was really cheap (because the building was old), meaning these hacklabs didn't exactly have a lot of cash to spend on renovations. Putting an elevator into some old industrial building is not a cheap thing to do. If the organization doesn't have the money, they don't have the money. Would all the hackerspace members, yourself included, be willing to cough up $1000 to put in an elevator? I doubt it.
>A number of friends have received sexual harassment at conferences
This sucks, and unfortunately I don't know what you can do about that, because this isn't like a workplace or other organization where you can just identify the offenders and either discipline or eject them. It might be possible to identify them and raise their behavior with whatever organization they're representing (if any) at this conference.
I find projects that seem to care enough to kick uncivil members out by the presence of a code of conduct (very basic document that says "we welcome people, harassment is bad folks" and points at a resolution process most of the time) and leadership that's willing to talk about the issues that members of the community face. There's no other way to tell whether a community will have my back, and yet that gets classed as a "diversity initiative".
> I'm not sure how your hacklab worked (is it privately owned, a non-profit, etc.? I don't know), but surely there was some upper management to complain to?
It's a small group, 30-odd members, completely bootstrapped. Eventually I managed to gain enough political capital to convince a couple of people to talk to him, and it was eventually resolved - not before a lot of harm was done.
> This sounds like a money problem to me. I've only seen a couple of hacklabs (and never got too involved) but basically they seemed to take over old buildings in a downtown area where the rent was really cheap (because the building was old), meaning these hacklabs didn't exactly have a lot of cash to spend on renovations.
Sure - but the point is that at the very least, we acknowledged this as an issue (and continue to do so every AGM) and kept an eye out for more accessible locations, rather than - as a union that a friend is part of and that has plenty of money is doing - ignoring the needs of their members despite having the capital. I believe the hacklab is moving to a more accessible location in the near future primarily due to the increased accessibility, despite it costing them a little more money and potentially needing to raise membership costs or spend effort on recruiting new members, which is great.
> It might be possible to identify them and raise their behavior with whatever organization they're representing (if any) at this conference.
That's a wonderful way to receive more harassment from a wider group, unfortunately. The only reason people get away with this crap is that when anybody tries to do something about it, they have enough political capital that they can have it waved away as someone wanting to hurt them. It's more painful to try and do something about it and then see the same person at the next conference anyway with no apparent resolution than to just try and heal privately.
A "diversity initiative" is something else altogether, attempting to do some kind of social politics rather than focus on the work. Pushing to recruit people of certain genders or ethnicities is an example here. IMO, there should be no such thing: members should be welcomed no matter their background or physical features, as long as they can follow the simple CoC (i.e., act civility and don't harass, abuse, etc.).
>Sure - but the point is that at the very least, we acknowledged this as an issue (and continue to do so every AGM) and kept an eye out for more accessible locations
I see no problem here. You have to be realistic though, but it doesn't hurt to keep your eyes open to other possibilities.
>That's a wonderful way to receive more harassment from a wider group, unfortunately. The only reason people get away with this crap is that when anybody tries to do something about it, they have enough political capital that they can have it waved away as someone wanting to hurt them.
Hmm.. definitely a tricky problem, and an indication of a toxic culture in some places. Maybe whatever organization that person is from should be disinvited from future conferences if they apparently condone such behavior? Otherwise, your organization could refuse to attend, citing such behavior. It does seem that some people (particularly those in leadership positions) need to take a stand here. Unfortunately, it does seem that usually, positive social change only comes about because of sacrifices made by some brave individuals.
What you are describing is exactly what people want. They want to be able to do something they love and focus on that, not the rest of their world.
The issue is that some people do bring it into the conversation. It's not the choice of the people being targeted. These kinds of movements are about trying to ensure that those people can participate without having to deal with abuse.
No one is going to accuse you of being bigoted for criticising some code - that's creating a strawman.
Imagine you are trans and you offer up some changes, and they are rejected out of hand. You get a twitter DM full of abusive language. Should they have not had a twitter account with the same name as their github account where they talk about personal issues?
If you are acting as you say you are, (as most people do!), then you can ignore this stuff completely, because it won't affect you. What it will do, is ensure that people who do see that kind of harassment or abuse can get involved in the projects, and focus on the code.
Saying that people trying to stop abuse in FOSS communities are not focusing on the code is like complaining that someone getting punched isn't focusing on the task at hand. They were trying to! Blame the one doing the punching, not the one asking if we can stop them being punched.
That's would be a problem anyhow, no matter who is affected.
Your ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation is not relevant to that particular case, so why bring it up at all? Why make it the core of your argument?
And do you know what? You're protected by the same code of conduct anyway, even if you do suffer that by some fluke. The Rust Code of Conduct has one line which states "We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all", followed by a listing of example characteristics under which people are commonly discriminated against - the basic assumption being that a person who isn't discriminated against doesn't need to be told that they're welcome, they already know that they are, the same as they don't need to be told that they're welcome before they apply to university or pop into their local bar or decide to rent a place in a "nice" neighbourhood or decide to take a midnight stroll. Later, there's a reference to a list of actions which are commonly considered "harassment", which includes things like "deliberate intimidation, stalking or following", which apply to anybody. Are you a man being sexually harassed by a man, woman, or non-binary person? That's included too, under "unwelcome sexual attention"!
It's fair that they want to know they can feel safe and contribute to a project - being explicit that they are welcome is important to helping these people overcome the adversity they face.
Why is it a problem for you that their issues are voiced? You said before it was a "disproportionate amount of energy being spent", but for the people spending that energy, it's not - it's their work or hobby being messed up time and again, and they are defending it.
Beyond that, the work being done is for anybody - it's not limited to those cases - but you say yourself you don't face these problems. These issues affect some people more - so why is it surprising that the solutions focus on them (but not exclusively)?
>You're suggesting that it's better that we allow people to continue harassing people over things that have literally nothing to do with their ability to code
I don't know about your work situation, but I work in a pretty conservative industry as a software engineer, and many (but definitely not all) of my coworkers are probably Trump voters, and certainly conservative. But there's also women here, Muslims, one guy who's physically disabled, etc.
We don't talk about politics at work here, nor have I heard much open talk about politics in my last workplace that had a bunch of conservatives. People focused on the work. I certainly haven't seen any kind of harassment of people of religious minorities, people with medical problems, or women; everyone seems (and seemed at the previous jobs) pretty happy with the workplace. But there haven't been any "diversity initiatives"; they just seem to hire the best applicants, given the conditions they have (who's applying, etc.) and their goals (wanting to hire a certain number of "fresh-outs" for instance).
Why you seem to think that you need "diversity initiatives" to prevent harassment is completely beyond me. You don't need diversity initiatives to make sure people act civil towards each other and treat their coworkers with respect. In fact, most workplaces with college-educated professionals seem to have little trouble with their employees acting poorly this way. When they do, they get reprimanded or fired.
You do, in fact, need active community management in order to convince some minority of people to treat each other with respect if there's otherwise no downside to failing to do so.
But I completely agree about needing active management. I think this is true for any organization. You're just not going to get good results if you don't have some kind of leadership keeping people in line.
And again: It detracts from what should be the focus: code.
> Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. We will not act on complaints regarding: Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. We will not act on complaints regarding:
> ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’"
So if someone white or asian, straight or "regular" gay, of regular sex, or whatever are explicitly excluded from a community initiative and someone finds that objectionable, their COC says that kind of racism and sexism is OK.
> Refusal to explain or debate social justice concepts
If you have problem with such principles, that's also not acceptable to discuss. Hardly a healthy environment for open debate.
I think more people need to acknowledge that these COCs are
1. Controversial as opposed to universal. Trying to frame it as universal, and then excluding anyone who disagrees with that, just shows that it by definition is the opposite of inclusive.
2. The noise generated from the above controversy is detracting from other work on the project.
IMO such measures should be avoided at all cost, as far as possible, especially considering how most FOSS projects are healthy, an that in most cases controversy like this is not needed and will do more harm than good.
[1] http://todogroup.org/opencodeofconduct/
> If you have problem with such principles, that's also not acceptable to discuss. Hardly a healthy environment for open debate.
This is funny in a way because I said these things encouraged toxic discussions and exclusion of non-agreeing view-points. And now this entire thread is flagged.
Way to be proven right, I guess.
However, another reading of these facts could be that they the maintainers are human and have limited bandwidth to deal with such problems. If you observed that there was a high frequency of erroneous complaints that wasted your time citing "reverse-isms" you would be right to exclude them. Similarly if a lot of people wanted to try and bring you into debates that you didn't feel were productive, you would also ban those discussions.
I'm sure if they similarly experienced any cases where, say, cis white men were genuinely discriminated against, they would then revisit the code of conduct.
I tend to think code of conducts try and say that a community will be accepting and inclusive of people within it. They are made by people with limited bandwidth trying to do their best to deal with discrimination and harassment problems as they come up.
> So if someone white or asian, straight or "regular" gay, of regular sex, or whatever are explicitly excluded from a community initiative and someone finds that objectionable, their COC says that kind of racism and sexism is OK.
Here is the crux of the matter. Their code of conduct does not explicitly ban the behaviour you outlined. I would not say that the code of conduct says that is ok. The code of conduct does not explicitly ban fox hunting, but I do not take it to say that it condones that. If the group started to have a problem with fox hunting disrupting all of the planned work and activities it would move to stop that.
To me it sounds like the group may have started having a problem with people wasting time by trying to incorrectly cite "reverse-racism" e.t.c. as a method of causing harrassment and moved to stamp it out. Seems very reasonable to me.
I kinda agree. Instead of solving the problem, it only digs worse.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
For example, Ticki wrote an early proposal for type-level integers, which everyone knows Rust needs eventually, but hadn't been able to work up a concrete proposal for:
https://github.com/ticki/rfcs/blob/pi-types/text/0000-pi-typ...
Outside the core project, Ticki was involved with RedoxOS, an OS written in Rust:
https://github.com/redox-os/redox#-ecosystem-
Particularly the TFS filesystem:
https://github.com/redox-os/tfs
TFS naver came to fruition, so RedoxOS still runs on its original filesystem, RedoxFS.
Why is this important? It isn't, any more so than the other 29 things currently on the front page!
1. Is announcing withdrawal from (active) FOSS, to focus full time on mathematics
2. Who also think they are not the best suited for contributing to Rust because they have a theoretical bent and aim for getting things right rather than simple or working... And acknowledge that this might be a limitation
3. Would like others to take over their projects
Rather the comments here lead you to think this is some sort of a negative disgruntled rant.
/Smh
When I was a military wife, I did a lot of volunteer work. I had time on my hands, but not enough to pursue a serious career, and I didn't have a pressing need for earned income because my husband's career provided adequately for the family. Some military wives seem to have a third baby about the time the second one starts kindergarten or first grade. I volunteered. It kept me occupied and met some of my needs on a schedule I could sustain.
My kids grew up and I got divorced. My time constraints went down and my need for money went up. I began investing more time and effort in developing a career and income, less in doing volunteer work.
I think that is kind of the norm. People do this sort of thing when they have some time on their hands and volunteer work meets some need that isn't being met some other way in their life. Their life changes, they move on.
I wish more goodbyes were clearer about that. These types of posts are very often a rant about the rest of the world.
I hope the author gets back into open source though eventually. We need people who can bring levels of correctness that mathematics students tend to pursue. Even if its complicated, it can push the artform forward, and everyone else will adapt.
That's a very interesting perspective. You're suggesting that 'a burnout' is a consequence of series of defeats. Interesting.
Not that some smarter person would instantly give you the answer (although if so great), rather the way that the process of explaining the problem out loud and letting someone pick through your thought process can cause the solution, or just new lines of attack, to spontaneously pop into your head.
Surely this benefits most people at some point. I heard of a guy who articulates math problems to his dog, and doing so still added value, even though the dog doesn’t tend to probe or challenge his thinking very often.
Sometimes when I get stuck I explain problems to my wife (who is technical but specializes outside of CS) for only 15 minutes or so, and on occasion she provides me the solution without saying a word.
However I don’t know the mechanism, is there a formal name for the phenomenon?
I’d be curious to know how often during the month he had an opportunity to try this approach on his skip lists bug with different people.
There's something about saying things out loud that clarifies the muddled mess in our heads. I also find this to be the case when having to teach something to someone.
I suspect it can work in different ways based on the experience/knowledge of the problem solving partner. Maybe your wife or an expert forces more precise thinking, maybe the dog for some people could create a more uninhibited environment, where we can share “dumb” thoughts we wouldn’t want to speak to a person yet could still lead down a productive path.
I hope she appreciates her contribution. Seriously listening to someone is a great gift to give in so many contexts.
And yes, her listening is very kind and generous, although I do need to let her off the hook and get an actual tech partner at some point. 20+ years is a long time to subject someone to such things. :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
We really should figure out a way to compensate open source authors.