10 ms·

what github fiasco?

by reddotX 11y ago

what github fiasco?

valdiorn 11y ago
the whole "we host half the world's open source projects but we're going to censor content at a whim" -fiasco.
tedchs 11y ago
Is he referring to the thing with the word "retarded"? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9966118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9966118
- brandonwamboldt 11y ago
  Not just that, GitHub's new Code of Conduct is pretty sketchy (e.g. racism is against the CoC but "reverse" racism isn't). The exact quote is: "We will not act on complaints regarding ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’" which is stupid and not really a thing. It's not reverse racism, its just racism. Also, GitHub has been removing other projects, like some Gamergate ones (like this markdown only repo: http://imgur.com/a/CMRVq http://imgur.com/a/CMRVq). Regardless of your opinion on Gamergate, the repos weren't violating the ToS and shouldn't have been removed.
  - spdustin 11y ago
    Seems clear to me. "Reverse racism" isn't a thing. It's simply racism to view a person as inferior or superior based on their race. Reverse racism would be, I guess, saying your own race is inferior?
    - brandonwamboldt 11y ago
      Except "Reverse Racism" has a specific meaning, which is racism against a majority group (e.g. white people). There are people who believe that you can't be racist against a majority group, that it's called "reverse racism", and isn't a legitimate issue.
      - spdustin 11y ago
        Racism is racism, whether the group being stereotyped is a minority or a majority. It minimizes the detrimental effect of a racist behavior to say it's "reverse racism". It's euphemistic language that serves no purpose in its colloquial usage other than for a member of a majority group to claim victimization, usually when they themselves have exhibited a prejudice against the "reverse racist". EDIT: to be clear, people who believe that reverse racism isn't a thing are semantically correct, it's just racism. And whether it's against a minority or majority group - terms which, themselves, are prime to define a disparity between two groups - it's unjustifiable.
      - thomasfoster96 11y ago
        What you just described is still called racism, no need to prepend the word 'reverse'. But, I doubt many people are going to take fears/claims of discrimination against white people in western countries seriously, because it's either a cover for actual racism or paranoia.
      - zajd 11y ago
        There's no such thing as a majority group. "Minority group" is a sociological term, not a mathematical one.
      - A_COMPUTER 11y ago
        Presumably, since up further in the CoC you're expected to be welcoming to people of all races/sexes, you can't treat white people like crap. This technically wouldn't be "reverse racism", but should still be prohibited. I have very low expectation that this framing would be recognized though, based on how these things have played out before. It is also not clear to me if the CoC applies to behavior outside the community, or re. nonmembers.
    - stingraycharles 11y ago
      I would guess it means the same as positive discrimination? At least, it would make sense if they did nothing against that.
    - CamatHN 11y ago
      Racism according to its academic description has to be systematic. i.e. A white person can be discriminated against because they are white but because its not systematic, i.e. within our social system infectiosly, its not racism.
    - ultramancool 11y ago
      If it's "not a thing", why do they need to list it? Wouldn't their existing prohibition of racism be sufficient?
    - Cthulhu_ 11y ago
      "You cannot do / say X because you're skin color / gender / sexual orientation Y" is racism / sexism, end of. "Affirmative Action" (which is doublespeak for "we prefer minorities") is racist/sexist too (and often referred to as being reverse racism).
    - worklogin 11y ago
      Reverse racism is used (in my experience) to define racist behaviors taken as a response to "original" racism. Examples include quota systems at universities, or otherwise discriminating against whites/majorities in the name of social justice. It's racism, but with a modifier to make it clear what's being talked about. I don't know why you're trying so hard to make it "not a thing".
  - amyjess 11y ago
    So, reading into this some more. The CoC is terrible, but fortunately it only applies to the projects GitHub maintains themselves, and it's not a site-wide thing.
  - lemevi 11y ago
    I think it's a good thing that safe spaces at reddit and Github are evaporating for toxic angry people forcing them into seedier, more isolated silos. Having said that GitHub has been turning into a bit of a joke with extremes from both ends of the spectrum turning GitHub into a personal soap box. I consider GitHub to be a an employment related website and treat it as such. It's like my resume. I'm not going to write my opinions about politics and social issues across my resume so I don't comment on this stuff there or get involved in any shape or form and you shouldn't either. It's not the place.
    - Ianvdl 11y ago
      Oddly enough the people who advocate for "safe spaces" often seem to be the "toxic angry people" themselves. That's at least what I've seen when these fallouts happen.
      - chrissnell 11y ago
        Indeed. Who you consider "toxic" and "angry" depends mostly on what side you take. It's best to keep all politics out of work-related places like Github. Unfortunately, their new Code of Conduct seems to encourage such stances.
    - brandonwamboldt 11y ago
      So, first of all, I'm 100% against harassment and discrimination like racism/sexism. But "safe spaces" are taking things way too far. If you have to constantly self censor yourself because the person on the other side may get upset and get you or your project banned, it hinders discussion, critique, feedback, reviews, etc. It's not just "toxic angry people" who are being forced out. With policies like this, we see time and time again that people holding certain viewpoints or disagreeing with other people are affected too. Even if they are politely doing so.
  - d9h549f34w6 11y ago
    Phrases like "there's no such thing as reverse racism" seem inherently ambiguous and prone to causing argument, mainly because two very opposed sides can both say the same statement: - "There's no such thing as reverse racism (because any kind of discrimination based on race is racism and we shouldn't be diminishing some kinds of discrimination)" - "There's no such thing as reverse racism (because it's impossible to be racist against people who are in the Oppressive Group category)" It's a namespace collision that can inadvertently give "support to the other side." Though, it's the same thing with words like "racist." There's a generally universal desire in our society to not want to be "racist" in the sense of "common-usage-racism," discriminating against others based on group identities. Thrown into this mix is a new "academic-racism" definition of "racist," which requires "privilege+power" and demotes anything that doesn't fit into mere "discrimination" (which apparently isn't a bad thing anymore by itself?). The reason why this new concept (which, let's be honest, is different than the common-usage meaning of racism) has the same name is because there is an ideological/political strength in namespace collisions or identifier overloading. By using the same taboo word for two different concepts, the new meaning can insert itself as the dominant meaning.
    - chc 11y ago
      This is a little off-topic, but discrimination has never been a bad thing by itself. Discrimination means using judgment to differentiate two things or people. There are many ways in which we can discriminate that are useful and entirely valid (e.g. "this guy has a long history of scamming people and no sign he's really changed, so I'm not going to invest my money with him").
    - schwarze_pest 11y ago
      > Thrown into this mix is a new "academic-racism" definition of "racist," which requires "privilege+power" and demotes anything that doesn't fit into mere "discrimination" Is this "academic-racism" an American thing or is it universally accepted in academia?
  - adl 11y ago
    For someone who lives outside the USA, what's the standard meaning of 'reverse racism'? I think I understand, as in: if the standard meaning of racism is a majority (Caucasian in this case) oppressing a minority (black, Mexican, asian, etc) then is reverse racism when said minority oppresses or acts against said majority? I hope not, that seems wrong. Prejudice (against a ethnicity, culture, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc) is wrong no matter the percentage of the majority/minority doing it involved
ta140604 11y ago
There have been a bunch, actually. First one I can recall was the meritocracy scandal, where they tried to put a rug promoting meritocracy, and their in-house feminist Julie-Ann Horvath (nudged by her friends) complained in the general sense of "meritocracy is bad since it's racist and sexist". The caved in and removed the rug. Said Julie-Ann Horvath later got in a fight with a (CEO&founder)'s wife, left the company and made another huge scandal. She accused the company of sexism and sexual harassment (independent investigator found none, and other female Github engineers said there was nothing wrong), accused a co-worker of systematically removing her code from repos since, I quote, "I wouldn't let him fuck me" (independent investigator found that he was actually fixing her errors), and that CEO's wife overstepped her boundaries and used company resources for her own projects [1] (independent investigator found that to be true, and CEO stepped down). JAH also complained of terrible sexual harassment - that is, men looking at women spinning hula hoops. Women did not complain, but JAH got offended on their behalf anyway. In the end, she left with a loud door slam, smeared a bunch of Github people, and in general had a huge meltdown on Twitter, as you do. Then, as mentioned, there was a bunch of scandals where people had their repos removed (like C+=, a language satirizing the more, uh, out-there ideas expressed by the feminists; or a few repos related to GamerGate). The latest in a series was a repo threatened with removal (or removed?) for using the word 'retarded'. Then they added a CoC endorsing anti-white racism and anti-male sexism: "Github's new Code of Conduct says "Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort." and will not act on "reverse" racism, sexism, etc." [2] Well, at least we have BitBucket, GitLab et al. ---------------------------------------- [1] That's one empowered woman! What's not to like here? - TA [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3fpnuw/githubs_new_code_of_conduct_says_our_open_source/ https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3fpnuw/githubs_...
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  >that CEO's wife overstepped her boundaries and used company resources for her own projects [1] (independent investigator found that to be true, and CEO stepped down). This is particularly fun to note, because it shows that these investigators were not being easy/taking the side of the CEO. In short, it gives strong evidence they really were independent investigators.
bcg1 11y ago
Let's not forget the whole "I'm going to build a business around and name my company after a GPL project, and then proceed to trash the GPL at OSCON" fiasco. We are, after all, talking about a GNU project here.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- jumpwah 11y ago
  git is not a GNU project.
  - bcg1 11y ago
    Didn't say it was. Was talking about GNU Mailman. With respect to git, I said it is released using the GPL.
    - jumpwah 11y ago
      Right, sorry. I still thought you were talking about git after the first line, at least that's how I read it. Misunderstanding, my bad.
      - bcg1 11y ago
        No worries :)
gbersac 11y ago
Github is not hacker-proof. It has been down for a few hours in march : http://thehackernews.com/2015/03/github-hit-by-massive-ddos-attack-from_27.html http://thehackernews.com/2015/03/github-hit-by-massive-ddos-... Software industry is becoming so dependant of github hosted open source project that is if github is down for a long time, it could hurt software industry seriously.

what github fiasco?

by reddotX 11y ago

what github fiasco?

valdiorn 11y ago

the whole "we host half the world's open source projects but we're going to censor content at a whim" -fiasco.

tedchs 11y ago

Is he referring to the thing with the word "retarded"? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9966118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9966118

brandonwamboldt 11y ago
Not just that, GitHub's new Code of Conduct is pretty sketchy (e.g. racism is against the CoC but "reverse" racism isn't). The exact quote is: "We will not act on complaints regarding ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’" which is stupid and not really a thing. It's not reverse racism, its just racism. Also, GitHub has been removing other projects, like some Gamergate ones (like this markdown only repo: http://imgur.com/a/CMRVq http://imgur.com/a/CMRVq). Regardless of your opinion on Gamergate, the repos weren't violating the ToS and shouldn't have been removed.
- spdustin 11y ago
  Seems clear to me. "Reverse racism" isn't a thing. It's simply racism to view a person as inferior or superior based on their race. Reverse racism would be, I guess, saying your own race is inferior?
  - brandonwamboldt 11y ago
    Except "Reverse Racism" has a specific meaning, which is racism against a majority group (e.g. white people). There are people who believe that you can't be racist against a majority group, that it's called "reverse racism", and isn't a legitimate issue.
    - spdustin 11y ago
      Racism is racism, whether the group being stereotyped is a minority or a majority. It minimizes the detrimental effect of a racist behavior to say it's "reverse racism". It's euphemistic language that serves no purpose in its colloquial usage other than for a member of a majority group to claim victimization, usually when they themselves have exhibited a prejudice against the "reverse racist". EDIT: to be clear, people who believe that reverse racism isn't a thing are semantically correct, it's just racism. And whether it's against a minority or majority group - terms which, themselves, are prime to define a disparity between two groups - it's unjustifiable.
    - thomasfoster96 11y ago
      What you just described is still called racism, no need to prepend the word 'reverse'. But, I doubt many people are going to take fears/claims of discrimination against white people in western countries seriously, because it's either a cover for actual racism or paranoia.
    - zajd 11y ago
      There's no such thing as a majority group. "Minority group" is a sociological term, not a mathematical one.
    - A_COMPUTER 11y ago
      Presumably, since up further in the CoC you're expected to be welcoming to people of all races/sexes, you can't treat white people like crap. This technically wouldn't be "reverse racism", but should still be prohibited. I have very low expectation that this framing would be recognized though, based on how these things have played out before. It is also not clear to me if the CoC applies to behavior outside the community, or re. nonmembers.
  - stingraycharles 11y ago
    I would guess it means the same as positive discrimination? At least, it would make sense if they did nothing against that.
  - CamatHN 11y ago
    Racism according to its academic description has to be systematic. i.e. A white person can be discriminated against because they are white but because its not systematic, i.e. within our social system infectiosly, its not racism.
  - ultramancool 11y ago
    If it's "not a thing", why do they need to list it? Wouldn't their existing prohibition of racism be sufficient?
  - Cthulhu_ 11y ago
    "You cannot do / say X because you're skin color / gender / sexual orientation Y" is racism / sexism, end of. "Affirmative Action" (which is doublespeak for "we prefer minorities") is racist/sexist too (and often referred to as being reverse racism).
  - worklogin 11y ago
    Reverse racism is used (in my experience) to define racist behaviors taken as a response to "original" racism. Examples include quota systems at universities, or otherwise discriminating against whites/majorities in the name of social justice. It's racism, but with a modifier to make it clear what's being talked about. I don't know why you're trying so hard to make it "not a thing".
- amyjess 11y ago
  So, reading into this some more. The CoC is terrible, but fortunately it only applies to the projects GitHub maintains themselves, and it's not a site-wide thing.
- lemevi 11y ago
  I think it's a good thing that safe spaces at reddit and Github are evaporating for toxic angry people forcing them into seedier, more isolated silos. Having said that GitHub has been turning into a bit of a joke with extremes from both ends of the spectrum turning GitHub into a personal soap box. I consider GitHub to be a an employment related website and treat it as such. It's like my resume. I'm not going to write my opinions about politics and social issues across my resume so I don't comment on this stuff there or get involved in any shape or form and you shouldn't either. It's not the place.
  - Ianvdl 11y ago
    Oddly enough the people who advocate for "safe spaces" often seem to be the "toxic angry people" themselves. That's at least what I've seen when these fallouts happen.
    - chrissnell 11y ago
      Indeed. Who you consider "toxic" and "angry" depends mostly on what side you take. It's best to keep all politics out of work-related places like Github. Unfortunately, their new Code of Conduct seems to encourage such stances.
  - brandonwamboldt 11y ago
    So, first of all, I'm 100% against harassment and discrimination like racism/sexism. But "safe spaces" are taking things way too far. If you have to constantly self censor yourself because the person on the other side may get upset and get you or your project banned, it hinders discussion, critique, feedback, reviews, etc. It's not just "toxic angry people" who are being forced out. With policies like this, we see time and time again that people holding certain viewpoints or disagreeing with other people are affected too. Even if they are politely doing so.
- d9h549f34w6 11y ago
  Phrases like "there's no such thing as reverse racism" seem inherently ambiguous and prone to causing argument, mainly because two very opposed sides can both say the same statement: - "There's no such thing as reverse racism (because any kind of discrimination based on race is racism and we shouldn't be diminishing some kinds of discrimination)" - "There's no such thing as reverse racism (because it's impossible to be racist against people who are in the Oppressive Group category)" It's a namespace collision that can inadvertently give "support to the other side." Though, it's the same thing with words like "racist." There's a generally universal desire in our society to not want to be "racist" in the sense of "common-usage-racism," discriminating against others based on group identities. Thrown into this mix is a new "academic-racism" definition of "racist," which requires "privilege+power" and demotes anything that doesn't fit into mere "discrimination" (which apparently isn't a bad thing anymore by itself?). The reason why this new concept (which, let's be honest, is different than the common-usage meaning of racism) has the same name is because there is an ideological/political strength in namespace collisions or identifier overloading. By using the same taboo word for two different concepts, the new meaning can insert itself as the dominant meaning.
  - chc 11y ago
    This is a little off-topic, but discrimination has never been a bad thing by itself. Discrimination means using judgment to differentiate two things or people. There are many ways in which we can discriminate that are useful and entirely valid (e.g. "this guy has a long history of scamming people and no sign he's really changed, so I'm not going to invest my money with him").
  - schwarze_pest 11y ago
    > Thrown into this mix is a new "academic-racism" definition of "racist," which requires "privilege+power" and demotes anything that doesn't fit into mere "discrimination" Is this "academic-racism" an American thing or is it universally accepted in academia?
- adl 11y ago
  For someone who lives outside the USA, what's the standard meaning of 'reverse racism'? I think I understand, as in: if the standard meaning of racism is a majority (Caucasian in this case) oppressing a minority (black, Mexican, asian, etc) then is reverse racism when said minority oppresses or acts against said majority? I hope not, that seems wrong. Prejudice (against a ethnicity, culture, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc) is wrong no matter the percentage of the majority/minority doing it involved

ta140604 11y ago

There have been a bunch, actually. First one I can recall was the meritocracy scandal, where they tried to put a rug promoting meritocracy, and their in-house feminist Julie-Ann Horvath (nudged by her friends) complained in the general sense of "meritocracy is bad since it's racist and sexist". The caved in and removed the rug. Said Julie-Ann Horvath later got in a fight with a (CEO&founder)'s wife, left the company and made another huge scandal. She accused the company of sexism and sexual harassment (independent investigator found none, and other female Github engineers said there was nothing wrong), accused a co-worker of systematically removing her code from repos since, I quote, "I wouldn't let him fuck me" (independent investigator found that he was actually fixing her errors), and that CEO's wife overstepped her boundaries and used company resources for her own projects [1] (independent investigator found that to be true, and CEO stepped down). JAH also complained of terrible sexual harassment - that is, men looking at women spinning hula hoops. Women did not complain, but JAH got offended on their behalf anyway. In the end, she left with a loud door slam, smeared a bunch of Github people, and in general had a huge meltdown on Twitter, as you do. Then, as mentioned, there was a bunch of scandals where people had their repos removed (like C+=, a language satirizing the more, uh, out-there ideas expressed by the feminists; or a few repos related to GamerGate). The latest in a series was a repo threatened with removal (or removed?) for using the word 'retarded'. Then they added a CoC endorsing anti-white racism and anti-male sexism: "Github's new Code of Conduct says "Our open source community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort." and will not act on "reverse" racism, sexism, etc." [2] Well, at least we have BitBucket, GitLab et al. ---------------------------------------- [1] That's one empowered woman! What's not to like here? - TA [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3fpnuw/githubs_new_code_of_conduct_says_our_open_source/ https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3fpnuw/githubs_...

Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>that CEO's wife overstepped her boundaries and used company resources for her own projects [1] (independent investigator found that to be true, and CEO stepped down). This is particularly fun to note, because it shows that these investigators were not being easy/taking the side of the CEO. In short, it gives strong evidence they really were independent investigators.

bcg1 11y ago

Let's not forget the whole "I'm going to build a business around and name my company after a GPL project, and then proceed to trash the GPL at OSCON" fiasco. We are, after all, talking about a GNU project here.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
jumpwah 11y ago
git is not a GNU project.
- bcg1 11y ago
  Didn't say it was. Was talking about GNU Mailman. With respect to git, I said it is released using the GPL.
  - jumpwah 11y ago
    Right, sorry. I still thought you were talking about git after the first line, at least that's how I read it. Misunderstanding, my bad.
    - bcg1 11y ago
      No worries :)

gbersac 11y ago

Github is not hacker-proof. It has been down for a few hours in march : http://thehackernews.com/2015/03/github-hit-by-massive-ddos-attack-from_27.html http://thehackernews.com/2015/03/github-hit-by-massive-ddos-... Software industry is becoming so dependant of github hosted open source project that is if github is down for a long time, it could hurt software industry seriously.