5 ms·

This is a straw man. No one is going to call you our for using a piece of code because it lacks "inclusive" language, unless you decide to use a library with a

by pyre 10y ago

This is a straw man. No one is going to call you our for using a piece of code because it lacks "inclusive" language, unless you decide to use a library with a name like `libniggerjew`. Or something that maybe includes variable names like "theHolocaustIsALie". At some point, you would have the blame the author of the software for injecting politics into their software. That said, open source has been shaped by the people behind it. Entire forks have been created over nothing but internal politics regardless of "inclusivity." Large projects have rejected major features just because the maintainer didn't want it even though others did. Just because you have been insulated from this doesn't mean it isn't there.

waterphone 10y ago
This is exactly what happens. People crawl through projects on github for certain words and open pull requests to try and get them changed.
- pyre 10y ago
  Can you quantify this? How many of these people exist? To me this just sounds like some sort of "stranger danger" boogeyman. A problem that is much smaller than you make it out to be.
  - waterphone 10y ago
    Here are a few random examples of such absurdity I found in a several minute search. https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/kickstarter/rack-attack/pull/181 https://github.com/kickstarter/rack-attack/pull/181 https://github.com/graphite-project/graphite-web/issues/1569 https://github.com/graphite-project/graphite-web/issues/1569 https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/pull/3507 https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/pull/3507 https://github.com/Droogans/unmaintainable-code/pull/20 https://github.com/Droogans/unmaintainable-code/pull/20 https://github.com/zendframework/zend-expressive/pull/340 https://github.com/zendframework/zend-expressive/pull/340 https://github.com/assemble/assemble.io/issues/163 https://github.com/assemble/assemble.io/issues/163 https://github.com/braydie/HowToBeAProgrammer/issues/68 https://github.com/braydie/HowToBeAProgrammer/issues/68 https://github.com/airbnb/javascript/pull/698 https://github.com/airbnb/javascript/pull/698 https://github.com/lighthouse-labs/clock-tower/pull/87 https://github.com/lighthouse-labs/clock-tower/pull/87 https://github.com/smalltownheroes/bikini-girls-with-machine-guns/issues/1 https://github.com/smalltownheroes/bikini-girls-with-machine... https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/27430 https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/27430 https://github.com/ardanlabs/gotraining/issues/75 https://github.com/ardanlabs/gotraining/issues/75 https://github.com/antirez/redis/issues/3185 https://github.com/antirez/redis/issues/3185 https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/pull/3484 https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/pull/3484 https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/5889 https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/5889 https://github.com/twolfson/sexy-bash-prompt/issues/56 https://github.com/twolfson/sexy-bash-prompt/issues/56 http://web.archive.org/web/20151030100136/https://github.com/rosarior/awesome-django/issues/176 http://web.archive.org/web/20151030100136/https://github.com... https://github.com/pickhardt/betty/issues/11 https://github.com/pickhardt/betty/issues/11
    - vsl 10y ago
      The Roslyn one removing "whitelist", that's... Wow.
    - pyre 10y ago
      I've look through a few of these and you're being disingenuous. Someone suggesting "Hey, maybe we should adopt a Code of Conduct" is not: > People crawl through projects on github for certain words and open pull requests to try and get them changed You've also failed to demonstrate in this thread instances of people being called out for using the "wrong" libraries (where "wrong" is defined as libraries that don't conform to the complainant's views). All of these examples are of people making direct changes to software. The idea that one should be scared that they may get called out over the transgressions of their software dependencies has yet to be demonstrated.
      - waterphone 10y ago
        If you look more closely, you'll note that many of those requests (some of which come with threats attached) are from people not in the community: they are activists trying to push harmful codes of conduct onto projects they have no involvement with. I have no idea what you're talking about with regards to wrong libraries and dependencies. I made no mention of such a thing.
        pyre 10y ago
        Up thread from @pkd: > Nowadays I worry that I might be called out for using a piece of code (however good it might be) just because the person who wrote it does not use "inclusive" language This is what I was originally responding to.
  - gone35 10y ago
    Can you quantify this? Judge for yourself: https://www.reddit.com/r/GitInaction/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GitInaction/
- tangent128 10y ago
  If the proposed rewordings are just as good from a technical perspective, does it hurt anybody to just accept the commit?
  - LyndsySimon 10y ago
    Yes, it does - it emboldens those who expect the rest of the world to change in order to meet their arbitrary demands.
    - tangent128 10y ago
      I mean, "expecting the rest of the world to change in order to meet their arbitrary demands" is pretty much the definition of a standards body. And the majority of SJ-related requests I've seen are in effect just that; declarations that the existing society standards are suboptimal for the usecases of ethnic minorities, women, LGBTA+ people, etc., along with suggestions for revisions.
      - pyre 10y ago
        Most people I've come across that argue against this stuff have some sort of straw man SJW in mind that is offended at the drop of a hat, but these people never really materialize or if they do no one can quantify that they are anything more than some random extremist. They are (in my mind) the same people that view Native Americans being offended at the existence of the Washington Redskins as people that are making "a bit fuss over nothing."
        LyndsySimon 10y ago
        > but these people never really materialize or if they do no one can quantify that they are anything more than some random extremist. It seems that we're commenting on an article where just such a person materialized, and their impact can be quantified: a well-qualified speaker was dropped from a conference. > They are (in my mind) the same people that view Native Americans being offended at the existence of the Washington Redskins as people that are making "a bit fuss over nothing." I admit I don't follow sports enough to know the details of that brouhaha so I don't know if someone (or many someones) of American Indian descent were the ones calling for the change or if it was a "disinterested" third party. Either way, the opinions and preferences of the community at large must be weighed against those of the dissenters. In my opinion we already have an extremely effective means of recourse for those who take offense - the free market, which can be impacted by direct means (boycott) or indirect means (convincing others to support your view).
emgee3 10y ago
This reminds me, a few years back I was reading the code of a few different obscure libraries. One of them had a primary process that would spawn different worker processes and kill them off if certain conditions were met. No joke, the primary process was named "Hitler". I didn't end up using the library.
- Turing_Machine 10y ago
  There is a Scheme compiler named Stalin (slogan: "Stalin brutally optimizes") that I won't use because I find it in extremely bad taste. What I haven't done is try to gin up a twit mob to have the author hounded from his job, no-platformed at conferences, and so on.
pkd 10y ago
Sure, I am extrapolating a bit based on present trends, but this actually kind of happened with Spacemacs, which is an Emacs distribution. On the issue which was opened for including a CoC, the original maintainer was against adopting the Contributor Covenant as their CoC. This was misinterpreted by several package maintainers as being proof of his reluctance to include a CoC in the first place. This lead to threats of boycott where the Flycheck maintainer said that he would actively discourage the contributors to his project from supporting Spacemacs because of this issue.

by pyre 10y ago

waterphone 10y ago

This is exactly what happens. People crawl through projects on github for certain words and open pull requests to try and get them changed.

pyre 10y ago
Can you quantify this? How many of these people exist? To me this just sounds like some sort of "stranger danger" boogeyman. A problem that is much smaller than you make it out to be.
- waterphone 10y ago
  Here are a few random examples of such absurdity I found in a several minute search. https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/kickstarter/rack-attack/pull/181 https://github.com/kickstarter/rack-attack/pull/181 https://github.com/graphite-project/graphite-web/issues/1569 https://github.com/graphite-project/graphite-web/issues/1569 https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/pull/3507 https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/pull/3507 https://github.com/Droogans/unmaintainable-code/pull/20 https://github.com/Droogans/unmaintainable-code/pull/20 https://github.com/zendframework/zend-expressive/pull/340 https://github.com/zendframework/zend-expressive/pull/340 https://github.com/assemble/assemble.io/issues/163 https://github.com/assemble/assemble.io/issues/163 https://github.com/braydie/HowToBeAProgrammer/issues/68 https://github.com/braydie/HowToBeAProgrammer/issues/68 https://github.com/airbnb/javascript/pull/698 https://github.com/airbnb/javascript/pull/698 https://github.com/lighthouse-labs/clock-tower/pull/87 https://github.com/lighthouse-labs/clock-tower/pull/87 https://github.com/smalltownheroes/bikini-girls-with-machine-guns/issues/1 https://github.com/smalltownheroes/bikini-girls-with-machine... https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/27430 https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/27430 https://github.com/ardanlabs/gotraining/issues/75 https://github.com/ardanlabs/gotraining/issues/75 https://github.com/antirez/redis/issues/3185 https://github.com/antirez/redis/issues/3185 https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/pull/3484 https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/pull/3484 https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/5889 https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/5889 https://github.com/twolfson/sexy-bash-prompt/issues/56 https://github.com/twolfson/sexy-bash-prompt/issues/56 http://web.archive.org/web/20151030100136/https://github.com/rosarior/awesome-django/issues/176 http://web.archive.org/web/20151030100136/https://github.com... https://github.com/pickhardt/betty/issues/11 https://github.com/pickhardt/betty/issues/11
  - vsl 10y ago
    The Roslyn one removing "whitelist", that's... Wow.
  - pyre 10y ago
    I've look through a few of these and you're being disingenuous. Someone suggesting "Hey, maybe we should adopt a Code of Conduct" is not: > People crawl through projects on github for certain words and open pull requests to try and get them changed You've also failed to demonstrate in this thread instances of people being called out for using the "wrong" libraries (where "wrong" is defined as libraries that don't conform to the complainant's views). All of these examples are of people making direct changes to software. The idea that one should be scared that they may get called out over the transgressions of their software dependencies has yet to be demonstrated.
    - waterphone 10y ago
      If you look more closely, you'll note that many of those requests (some of which come with threats attached) are from people not in the community: they are activists trying to push harmful codes of conduct onto projects they have no involvement with. I have no idea what you're talking about with regards to wrong libraries and dependencies. I made no mention of such a thing.
      - pyre 10y ago
        Up thread from @pkd: > Nowadays I worry that I might be called out for using a piece of code (however good it might be) just because the person who wrote it does not use "inclusive" language This is what I was originally responding to.
- gone35 10y ago
  Can you quantify this? Judge for yourself: https://www.reddit.com/r/GitInaction/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GitInaction/
tangent128 10y ago
If the proposed rewordings are just as good from a technical perspective, does it hurt anybody to just accept the commit?
- LyndsySimon 10y ago
  Yes, it does - it emboldens those who expect the rest of the world to change in order to meet their arbitrary demands.
  - tangent128 10y ago
    I mean, "expecting the rest of the world to change in order to meet their arbitrary demands" is pretty much the definition of a standards body. And the majority of SJ-related requests I've seen are in effect just that; declarations that the existing society standards are suboptimal for the usecases of ethnic minorities, women, LGBTA+ people, etc., along with suggestions for revisions.
    - pyre 10y ago
      Most people I've come across that argue against this stuff have some sort of straw man SJW in mind that is offended at the drop of a hat, but these people never really materialize or if they do no one can quantify that they are anything more than some random extremist. They are (in my mind) the same people that view Native Americans being offended at the existence of the Washington Redskins as people that are making "a bit fuss over nothing."
      - LyndsySimon 10y ago
        > but these people never really materialize or if they do no one can quantify that they are anything more than some random extremist. It seems that we're commenting on an article where just such a person materialized, and their impact can be quantified: a well-qualified speaker was dropped from a conference. > They are (in my mind) the same people that view Native Americans being offended at the existence of the Washington Redskins as people that are making "a bit fuss over nothing." I admit I don't follow sports enough to know the details of that brouhaha so I don't know if someone (or many someones) of American Indian descent were the ones calling for the change or if it was a "disinterested" third party. Either way, the opinions and preferences of the community at large must be weighed against those of the dissenters. In my opinion we already have an extremely effective means of recourse for those who take offense - the free market, which can be impacted by direct means (boycott) or indirect means (convincing others to support your view).

emgee3 10y ago

This reminds me, a few years back I was reading the code of a few different obscure libraries. One of them had a primary process that would spawn different worker processes and kill them off if certain conditions were met. No joke, the primary process was named "Hitler". I didn't end up using the library.

Turing_Machine 10y ago
There is a Scheme compiler named Stalin (slogan: "Stalin brutally optimizes") that I won't use because I find it in extremely bad taste. What I haven't done is try to gin up a twit mob to have the author hounded from his job, no-platformed at conferences, and so on.

pkd 10y ago

Sure, I am extrapolating a bit based on present trends, but this actually kind of happened with Spacemacs, which is an Emacs distribution. On the issue which was opened for including a CoC, the original maintainer was against adopting the Contributor Covenant as their CoC. This was misinterpreted by several package maintainers as being proof of his reluctance to include a CoC in the first place. This lead to threats of boycott where the Flycheck maintainer said that he would actively discourage the contributors to his project from supporting Spacemacs because of this issue.