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> It's pushing talented, good people, with controversial lifestyle/opinion out of open source, out of the very thing that, in theory, should welcome contributio

> It's pushing talented, good people, with controversial lifestyle/opinion out of open source, out of the very thing that, in theory, should welcome contributions from anyone as long as it's technically sound and clear. What if the people who are being pushed out have been pushing other people out this whole time? People complain a lot about losing talented/high-profile developers because they made parts of the community uncomfortable, but then seem to ignore/minimize the way that person was driving other talented people--often from underrepresented/marginalized groups--away.

pmlnr 7y ago
It may have been when these scandals started many moons ago and there are always exceptions to anything, but from what I've been reading for the past ~2 years, this is not the case any more. People being pushed out are, in many if not most cases those who have a personal life, with personal view on life, which other can't accept, despite the fact that those views and their work are usually well separated from each other.
- 0xB31B1B 7y ago
  I don’t think they write articles/scandals on the huge amount of harassment people receive just for being a woman on the internet, or black on the internet. The reality is that (1) everyone gets harassed online (2) black people get harassed more than white people (3) women get harassed much much more than men. If all you’re reading is articles about “gates” then of course it seems like there is an assault on a specific type of person, but you need to adjust your priors to understand that many women receive that volume of abuse much more frequently and no one is writing articles on it. There might be acute attacks on individuals in scandals, but there is a constant mid to high level harassment on some individuals.
  - pmlnr 7y ago
    I've not challenged or questioned your points. The scandals, CoC, []Gate, on the other hand, doesn't really seems to be working, because they keep popping up. Hence the thought of pseudonyms.
    - apacheCamel 7y ago
      I am not sure on your reasoning here. If they keep popping up, isn't that a good thing? More and more communities are seeing the internal problems these people are causing and are calling them out on it. I've never seen "ReactGate 2.0 cause the 1.0 people are still causing issues". I can't say every "gate" has fixed all their problems but acknowledging the issues and working towards a fix is a step in the right direction.
      - username90 7y ago
        Is there any part of tech which succeeded and is now a blossoming haven of diversity? I mean, with so many people getting pushed out from everywhere else it should be easy to fill your rank with top talent, no? Given that we have a few million programmers in USA, you'd expect it to be a simple task to get a few thousand of these harassed people together to start something big. I know there are a few projects with ~100 people, but I am not aware of anything larger than that which is not what we would expect. So the measures we apply today like CoC's seems to have no effect on how welcoming the industry feels to marginalized people.
  - eej2ya1K 7y ago
    Stop lying.
mieseratte 7y ago
> What if the people who are being pushed out have been pushing other people out this whole time? So who decides when and where someone may be "pushed out?" If you're going to war to push out someone, you may well end up pushing out more than just that one person. You become the thing you sought to defeat. So who is "right?"
- 0xB31B1B 7y ago
  That’s exactly what the COC is for. The community adopts rules and abides by them, break the rules and you’re out.
  - mieseratte 7y ago
    What if I'm offended and feel put-off by malcontents playing lawyer-ball? Should I start screaming bigot until they capitulate to my will?
TheCraiggers 7y ago
I have no problem with reprimanding people that say caustic things about people while communicating in some project-specific forum. I personally draw the line at Linus' conduct in the past- he may have attacked people, but at least it was always entirely because of their code. However, people have started policing other, non-project forums as well. That, I do not abide. Just because the person that submitted that PR was an absolute racist bigot on twitter a decade ago (or even last night), it has no bearing on the quality of their code. As long as it stays out of their code and their PR.
- jmcqk6 7y ago
  >As long as it stays out of their code and their PR. That assumes that the only important thing about the ecosystem of a project is the code. The code is only going to be useful as long as there are people to continue building and maintaining it. I don't know about you, but I have a difficult time working with racists, regardless of the quality of their code. I'm not willing to overlook something like that just to get some code written. There are more important things than code.
  - username90 7y ago
    > I have a difficult time working with racists Racists is such an overloaded term that this means basically nothing. It could mean that you refuse to work with people who burn crosses in black people's yards in which case basically everyone would agree with you, but it could mean that you refuse to work with people who made an ok-sign once without knowing that it had been adopted by white supremacists in which case most people would think you are ridiculous. When people say that we should leave politics outside of it they mean the second kind. In more remote open source projects some people advocate for the "everyone is anonymous" variant, in which case they think that nothing matters if the technical parts are good since they wont even know what they do outside of the project. But afaik not a lot of people argue for that in a normal workplace or for conferences.
    - jmcqk6 7y ago
      What exactly does 'politics' mean in this case? Any concerns that aren't related to code? Can you define it in simple terms that leaves no gray areas? Completely anonymous systems leads to abuse. This has been demonstrated over and over again. The most insidious kinds of racism do not involve burning crosses. Obviously just flashing the ok-sign doesn't make you a racist. But society has clearly demonstrated that we are perfectly willing to tolerate the more subtle instances of racism for many reasons. In an environment like that, it's no surprise that the targets of that behavior become incredibly suspicious and distrusting. The way to solve that problem is not to "leave politics out of it" or to complain that they are too sensitive. The way to solve that problem is to address the underlying problem.
goatinaboat 7y ago
What if the people who are being pushed out have been pushing other people out this whole time? Is there any actual evidence that ever happens? Citation very much needed.
notus 7y ago
Can you really say that about Dan Abramov and Ken Wheeler though? Some of the nicest and most inclusive people in the community. I've seen them both engage people all at different points in their career and be encouraging and positive. They are allies in this case but they are being turned into enemies for no reason. This reminds me a lot of BLM verbally attacking Sanders when he was the only person in their corner at the time.

pmlnr 7y ago

It may have been when these scandals started many moons ago and there are always exceptions to anything, but from what I've been reading for the past ~2 years, this is not the case any more. People being pushed out are, in many if not most cases those who have a personal life, with personal view on life, which other can't accept, despite the fact that those views and their work are usually well separated from each other.

0xB31B1B 7y ago
I don’t think they write articles/scandals on the huge amount of harassment people receive just for being a woman on the internet, or black on the internet. The reality is that (1) everyone gets harassed online (2) black people get harassed more than white people (3) women get harassed much much more than men. If all you’re reading is articles about “gates” then of course it seems like there is an assault on a specific type of person, but you need to adjust your priors to understand that many women receive that volume of abuse much more frequently and no one is writing articles on it. There might be acute attacks on individuals in scandals, but there is a constant mid to high level harassment on some individuals.
- pmlnr 7y ago
  I've not challenged or questioned your points. The scandals, CoC, []Gate, on the other hand, doesn't really seems to be working, because they keep popping up. Hence the thought of pseudonyms.
  - apacheCamel 7y ago
    I am not sure on your reasoning here. If they keep popping up, isn't that a good thing? More and more communities are seeing the internal problems these people are causing and are calling them out on it. I've never seen "ReactGate 2.0 cause the 1.0 people are still causing issues". I can't say every "gate" has fixed all their problems but acknowledging the issues and working towards a fix is a step in the right direction.
    - username90 7y ago
      Is there any part of tech which succeeded and is now a blossoming haven of diversity? I mean, with so many people getting pushed out from everywhere else it should be easy to fill your rank with top talent, no? Given that we have a few million programmers in USA, you'd expect it to be a simple task to get a few thousand of these harassed people together to start something big. I know there are a few projects with ~100 people, but I am not aware of anything larger than that which is not what we would expect. So the measures we apply today like CoC's seems to have no effect on how welcoming the industry feels to marginalized people.
- eej2ya1K 7y ago
  Stop lying.

mieseratte 7y ago

> What if the people who are being pushed out have been pushing other people out this whole time? So who decides when and where someone may be "pushed out?" If you're going to war to push out someone, you may well end up pushing out more than just that one person. You become the thing you sought to defeat. So who is "right?"

0xB31B1B 7y ago
That’s exactly what the COC is for. The community adopts rules and abides by them, break the rules and you’re out.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  What if I'm offended and feel put-off by malcontents playing lawyer-ball? Should I start screaming bigot until they capitulate to my will?

TheCraiggers 7y ago

I have no problem with reprimanding people that say caustic things about people while communicating in some project-specific forum. I personally draw the line at Linus' conduct in the past- he may have attacked people, but at least it was always entirely because of their code. However, people have started policing other, non-project forums as well. That, I do not abide. Just because the person that submitted that PR was an absolute racist bigot on twitter a decade ago (or even last night), it has no bearing on the quality of their code. As long as it stays out of their code and their PR.

jmcqk6 7y ago
>As long as it stays out of their code and their PR. That assumes that the only important thing about the ecosystem of a project is the code. The code is only going to be useful as long as there are people to continue building and maintaining it. I don't know about you, but I have a difficult time working with racists, regardless of the quality of their code. I'm not willing to overlook something like that just to get some code written. There are more important things than code.
- username90 7y ago
  > I have a difficult time working with racists Racists is such an overloaded term that this means basically nothing. It could mean that you refuse to work with people who burn crosses in black people's yards in which case basically everyone would agree with you, but it could mean that you refuse to work with people who made an ok-sign once without knowing that it had been adopted by white supremacists in which case most people would think you are ridiculous. When people say that we should leave politics outside of it they mean the second kind. In more remote open source projects some people advocate for the "everyone is anonymous" variant, in which case they think that nothing matters if the technical parts are good since they wont even know what they do outside of the project. But afaik not a lot of people argue for that in a normal workplace or for conferences.
  - jmcqk6 7y ago
    What exactly does 'politics' mean in this case? Any concerns that aren't related to code? Can you define it in simple terms that leaves no gray areas? Completely anonymous systems leads to abuse. This has been demonstrated over and over again. The most insidious kinds of racism do not involve burning crosses. Obviously just flashing the ok-sign doesn't make you a racist. But society has clearly demonstrated that we are perfectly willing to tolerate the more subtle instances of racism for many reasons. In an environment like that, it's no surprise that the targets of that behavior become incredibly suspicious and distrusting. The way to solve that problem is not to "leave politics out of it" or to complain that they are too sensitive. The way to solve that problem is to address the underlying problem.

goatinaboat 7y ago

What if the people who are being pushed out have been pushing other people out this whole time? Is there any actual evidence that ever happens? Citation very much needed.

notus 7y ago

Can you really say that about Dan Abramov and Ken Wheeler though? Some of the nicest and most inclusive people in the community. I've seen them both engage people all at different points in their career and be encouraging and positive. They are allies in this case but they are being turned into enemies for no reason. This reminds me a lot of BLM verbally attacking Sanders when he was the only person in their corner at the time.