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It is indeed a deep betrayal of a hacker ethos: in particular, Geek Social Fallacy #1 (Ostracizers Are Evil). And you know what? That's probably a good thing.
by Millennium 8y ago
It is indeed a deep betrayal of a hacker ethos: in particular, Geek Social Fallacy #1 (Ostracizers Are Evil). And you know what? That's probably a good thing.
The radical inclusivity (i.e. exclude no one, for any reason) of the geek community led to some beautiful things. We took in the people nobody wanted around, and with their help, we built something special. But in our reluctance to exclude anyone, we forgot something important. We were all accused of dragging things down and ruining things for other people -it's part of what bound us together- but we neglected to address the fact that for some of us, that was true. And we became their enablers, and they did drag us down and ruin things for everybody, because that's what they do, and we did not insist that they change or leave. Many people preferred to just leave themselves, rather than confront the manchildren in our midst: a de facto exclusion, rather than mandated by any sort of rule. We were, in essence, abused and manipulated by the people we should have kicked to the curb, and because of this, they took over.
This is ending. And that scares some people to death, and not even unreasonably so: these are people who were rejected by their societies all their life before finding geekdom, which they clung to because, in its refusal to reject anyone, it could never reject them. Anyone who remembers being an outcast would be scared by the possibility of geeks beginning to cast people out, because it opens the potential that they might be cast out yet again. Who wouldn't fear that? Especially after years of growing unused to outcast status?
And yet, it has to be done. It should have been done a long time ago. Those who get cast out because of this still have the option that has been facing them since childhood: they can change. Because sometimes, the ostracizers are right.
- furgooswft13 8y agoWho, or what exactly are you talking about?
- Millennium 8y agoPeople are afraid of being cast out of the community because of the CoC, are they not?
- furgooswft13 8y agoI guess for what they'd consider unjust and bullshity reasons that have nothing to do with the project, yes. Publicised instances such as donglegate, opalgate, drupalgate, Brendan Eich all fit that mold. But really I'm just wondering when you say things like "they did drag us down and ruin things for everybody", who exactly are you talking about? Examples? Every group will have its pariahs but I don't see hacker culture as being "ruined for everyone". Quite the opposite. They do eschew social norms, which I guess is more of a problem since open-source has been taken over by big business with the usual endless need for bureaucracy and PR.
- pseudalopex 8y agoIn the "dongle" incident, both the men who made the jokes and the woman who tweeted about it were fired. People in the community seem to think it was badly handled all around. Someone on HN recently mentioned that the jokers found new jobs right away but the tweeter didn't. If "Opalgate" means the attempt to remove Elia Schito, it failed. If "Drupalgate" means the removal of Larry Garfield, he insisted on bringing elements of his fetish subculture into technical events. Brendan Eich remained CTO of Mozilla even after his material support for discrimination became widely known. People opposed his promotion to CEO because his actions cast doubt on his ability to represent Mozilla's values and to look out for the interests of LGBT employees. He chose not to distance himself from his past decisions and eventually to resign. According to Mozilla, he declined to stay in another C-level role. He's currently the CEO of another company in the same market.
- furgooswft13 8y agoThanks for the history lesson. Yea, all seems pretty shitty, whether any incident succeeded or failed, or someone got kicked out or just put in the basement. Interesting that all of these seemingly sprung out of some private action becoming publicly known, rather than the person's behavior on the project/job itself (as for Drupalgate, you claim he brought his fetish into technical events, but nothing I've read about it corroborates that).
- opwieurposiu 8y agoYou are completely missing the point. It's not about rejecting or accepting people. It's about rejecting or accepting patches.
- Millennium 8y agoI'm not sure that the CoC-alarmists see a difference. Reject the patch, reject the person: to them, it's all the same. And I'm not sure they're even wrong on that particular point, at least in the case of rejecting patches for reasons that don't have anything to do with the content of the patch itself. You are rejecting the person in that case. I just don't see anything wrong with that.