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I guess this in response to the passing / maybe passing of it's author, Terry Davis. It's still not fully clear to me if that's a rumor or if it's real. Regard

I guess this in response to the passing / maybe passing of it's author, Terry Davis. It's still not fully clear to me if that's a rumor or if it's real. Regardless, it's clear that Terry is both a tremendously talented and deeply troubled person. But, his personal troubles have nothing to do with the technical merits of what he created - it's impressive, to say the least. These accomplishments, however, don't in any way excuse his egregious behavior. He's a complicated figure.

shawn 8y ago
These accomplishments, however, don't in any way excuse his egregious behavior. Every time TempleOS comes up, someone chimes in with a remark like this. Can't we just focus on the technical aspects?
- icelancer 8y ago
  It's better if you get out in front of it before someone with no knowledge of Terry's history comes in guns blazing with accusations that Terry is a mega racist evil person.
- tree_of_item 8y ago
  No, because his behavior really is over the top and is going to draw attention every single time.
- dagenix 8y ago
  It is his project. It's his legacy. I don't see how you can separate him from what he created - I never got the feeling that he wanted anyone to - so why should we? History is what it is - let's recognize that and look at the good with the bad.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    Easy to separate. You dont think about a singer's private life doing drugs to be able to enjoy their music. Why is it different here? And if you only follow folks who have never said anything wrong in their whole life, well you cant do much anymore can you? Because true saints are rare to come by.
    - dagenix 8y ago
      Some singer doing drugs wasn't trying to hurt anyone. It's a simple difference.
      - inawarminister 8y ago
        Who is Terry trying to hurt?
- matheusmoreira 8y ago
  Agreed. He wrote an operating system, a compiler and a whole lot more. That kind of achievement deserves respect.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    Can we separate the cause for what drove him to do that from what caused his other, less acceptable, behavior? There's been a lot of looking purely at the technical merits of stuff in the past few decades, with quite little attention paid to the causes or effects of the technology in question, to my mind. I'm not sure it's left us in a particularly good position.
omeid2 8y ago
> Terry is tremendously talented... these accomplishments, however, don't in any way excuse his egregious behavior. He's a complicated figure. A bit of a stretch, but your comment is on par with saying: Stephen Hawking was a tremendously smart person... his accomplishments, however, don't in anyway excuse his lack of physical productivity. The point I am trying to illustrate is that the behavior most people, perhaps rightfully so, find egregious, is the best effort possible for people with schizophrenia. Having expectation for any kind of excuse, beyond the neurological condition, I believe is being a little short with compassion.
- dagenix 8y ago
  The Stephen Hawking comparison is way off. His condition effected just himself. Terry Davis said some pretty terrible things aimed at actual people. He tried to hurt real people - Hawking didn't. That is a factual statement. Im sure he did the best he could. Mental illness is a terrible thing. as a society, we do a terrible job in dealing with it. But, we can't just pretend like racist comments werent made. They were. They are part of his legacy. TempleOs is part of his legacy too. It's his project - no one else's. It will always be tied to him. To pretend like he didn't behave the way that he did would be the same as pretending he didn't suffer from his illness. It's an impressive legacy. It's a tragic one. It's an appalling one. But, it's who he is. Whitewashing his mental problems, would just perpetuate the problems of how we handle such an illness.
  - xref 8y ago
    > It's an impressive legacy. It's a tragic one. It's an appalling one. But, it's who he is. Whitewashing his mental problems, would just perpetuate the problems of how we handle such an illness. I think that is the finest summation I've read in any thread about Terry, thank you
  - omeid2 8y ago
    > It's an appalling one. But, it's who he is. Terry's behavior is an unfortunate condition of his mental illness. It is not kind or even considerate to call someone appalling for their mental illness, it is rather, exactly the kind of behavior I would consider appalling from people who are in good headspace.
OtterCoder 8y ago
Maybe we should stop expecting perfection from public figures. I'm sure there's plenty of dirt I could dig up about you, if I rifled through your past, all your actions and opinions. I'm really tired of the idea that a hero has to be a perfect saint by modern, vogue definitions. We have a news media that is so rabidly searching for reasons to destroy people, that Musk headbutting a car in frustration is somehow news. So what? Who hasn't banged their head in frustration? Then we have more serious cases, like attacks on Gandhi, where compromising situations with 18-19 year olds (which I'm not defending) get transmuted into accusations of pedophilia. Can we just stop!? Let good actions be remembered, and let truely bad ones be punished in a timely fashion. By speaking ill of the dead, we rob ourselves of heroes and examples that are genuinely worth following, just because the whole person isn't who we want to be. Edit: transmitted -> transmuted
- xref 8y ago
  it seems eminently fair to remember the whole person, not an idealized version of them.
  - OtterCoder 8y ago
    Who said life is fair? Or should be? I prefer mercy.
    - kbenson 8y ago
      > I prefer mercy. I prefer accuracy, and not just for my own benefit. It's a small thing here, but whitewashing uncomfortable past truthful actions rarely leads to a good future outcome. One could argue that we should let the small stuff go and only hold to this for large infractions, but that just leads to fighting over what is small and what is large, as well as problems where in hindsight something that looked small really wasn't. Perhaps the way forward is to call out behavior we don't agree with, but also be more accepting of people (as opposed to their behavior) that have portions of their behavior we don't agree with.
  - ekianjo 8y ago

shawn 8y ago

These accomplishments, however, don't in any way excuse his egregious behavior. Every time TempleOS comes up, someone chimes in with a remark like this. Can't we just focus on the technical aspects?

icelancer 8y ago
It's better if you get out in front of it before someone with no knowledge of Terry's history comes in guns blazing with accusations that Terry is a mega racist evil person.
tree_of_item 8y ago
No, because his behavior really is over the top and is going to draw attention every single time.
dagenix 8y ago
It is his project. It's his legacy. I don't see how you can separate him from what he created - I never got the feeling that he wanted anyone to - so why should we? History is what it is - let's recognize that and look at the good with the bad.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  Easy to separate. You dont think about a singer's private life doing drugs to be able to enjoy their music. Why is it different here? And if you only follow folks who have never said anything wrong in their whole life, well you cant do much anymore can you? Because true saints are rare to come by.
  - dagenix 8y ago
    Some singer doing drugs wasn't trying to hurt anyone. It's a simple difference.
    - inawarminister 8y ago
      Who is Terry trying to hurt?
matheusmoreira 8y ago
Agreed. He wrote an operating system, a compiler and a whole lot more. That kind of achievement deserves respect.
- kbenson 8y ago
  Can we separate the cause for what drove him to do that from what caused his other, less acceptable, behavior? There's been a lot of looking purely at the technical merits of stuff in the past few decades, with quite little attention paid to the causes or effects of the technology in question, to my mind. I'm not sure it's left us in a particularly good position.

omeid2 8y ago

> Terry is tremendously talented... these accomplishments, however, don't in any way excuse his egregious behavior. He's a complicated figure. A bit of a stretch, but your comment is on par with saying: Stephen Hawking was a tremendously smart person... his accomplishments, however, don't in anyway excuse his lack of physical productivity. The point I am trying to illustrate is that the behavior most people, perhaps rightfully so, find egregious, is the best effort possible for people with schizophrenia. Having expectation for any kind of excuse, beyond the neurological condition, I believe is being a little short with compassion.

dagenix 8y ago
The Stephen Hawking comparison is way off. His condition effected just himself. Terry Davis said some pretty terrible things aimed at actual people. He tried to hurt real people - Hawking didn't. That is a factual statement. Im sure he did the best he could. Mental illness is a terrible thing. as a society, we do a terrible job in dealing with it. But, we can't just pretend like racist comments werent made. They were. They are part of his legacy. TempleOs is part of his legacy too. It's his project - no one else's. It will always be tied to him. To pretend like he didn't behave the way that he did would be the same as pretending he didn't suffer from his illness. It's an impressive legacy. It's a tragic one. It's an appalling one. But, it's who he is. Whitewashing his mental problems, would just perpetuate the problems of how we handle such an illness.
- xref 8y ago
  > It's an impressive legacy. It's a tragic one. It's an appalling one. But, it's who he is. Whitewashing his mental problems, would just perpetuate the problems of how we handle such an illness. I think that is the finest summation I've read in any thread about Terry, thank you
- omeid2 8y ago
  > It's an appalling one. But, it's who he is. Terry's behavior is an unfortunate condition of his mental illness. It is not kind or even considerate to call someone appalling for their mental illness, it is rather, exactly the kind of behavior I would consider appalling from people who are in good headspace.

OtterCoder 8y ago

Maybe we should stop expecting perfection from public figures. I'm sure there's plenty of dirt I could dig up about you, if I rifled through your past, all your actions and opinions. I'm really tired of the idea that a hero has to be a perfect saint by modern, vogue definitions. We have a news media that is so rabidly searching for reasons to destroy people, that Musk headbutting a car in frustration is somehow news. So what? Who hasn't banged their head in frustration? Then we have more serious cases, like attacks on Gandhi, where compromising situations with 18-19 year olds (which I'm not defending) get transmuted into accusations of pedophilia. Can we just stop!? Let good actions be remembered, and let truely bad ones be punished in a timely fashion. By speaking ill of the dead, we rob ourselves of heroes and examples that are genuinely worth following, just because the whole person isn't who we want to be. Edit: transmitted -> transmuted

xref 8y ago
it seems eminently fair to remember the whole person, not an idealized version of them.
- OtterCoder 8y ago
  Who said life is fair? Or should be? I prefer mercy.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    > I prefer mercy. I prefer accuracy, and not just for my own benefit. It's a small thing here, but whitewashing uncomfortable past truthful actions rarely leads to a good future outcome. One could argue that we should let the small stuff go and only hold to this for large infractions, but that just leads to fighting over what is small and what is large, as well as problems where in hindsight something that looked small really wasn't. Perhaps the way forward is to call out behavior we don't agree with, but also be more accepting of people (as opposed to their behavior) that have portions of their behavior we don't agree with.
- ekianjo 8y ago