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Open Source Initiative bans co-founder, Eric S Raymond

328 points by sabas_ge 7y ago

voldacar 7y ago
> It's less bad that people sometimes got their feelings hurt than it is to institutionalize a means by which dissenting opinions are crushed under the rubric of “not nice”. This is eloquently put. The "fetishization of niceness" he talks about is such a strange trend to watch. It started in universities but it's like it wants to eat all of society and social interactions
- jshevek 7y ago
  Worse, it's not actually about being nice. I'm speaking in general and not about this ESR situation, but subtle forms of bigotry, bullying and intimidation are often part of the tone policing culture.
woofie11 7y ago
I wanted to address one error in this article: "Richard Stallman being compelled to resign from the Free Software Foundation." RMS was not compelled to resign from the FSF. RMS decided to resign since he felt it was for the good of the organization, and he could no longer be effective there. While there was a lot of external pressure, there was zero pressure from within. It was RMS trying to do the right thing. My major concern about the sequence of events there were external appearances. It seems that problem materialized.
- kazinator 7y ago
  > RMS decided to resign since he felt it was for the good of the organization, and he could no longer be effective there. That's just the cover story, and nobody in their right mind buys it. It was more likely a "you can appear to go spontaneously, or there will be a big fuss and you will be out anyway". It's the same old thing like when any public figure "steps down" in the midst of a scandal. That just means they picked the least unpalatable item from a menu that was handed to them, so to speak. RMS had no more real option to stay at the helm of the FSF than he had to keep that MIT office.
  - woofie11 7y ago
    No. I know the personalities involved. It was not a cover story.
phaemon 7y ago
So, does anyone know what exactly he was banned for?
- raldi 7y ago
  In my experience, decisions like this don't usually turn on one specific incident, but rather a long-running pattern of behavior.
- evv 7y ago
  Here's a previous thread on the topic [1]. From what I can gather, Eric was arguing against allowing "ethical source" licenses from being designated as "Open Source" by the institute. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22518370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22518370
  - kick 7y ago
    That thread is wrong. Unfortunately, for a stupid reason. The OSI removed the messages from their archive after he got banned. Because removing all evidence is totally the correct thing to do. I support getting rid of Raymond, but they couldn't have made themselves come off worse to your average internet commentator.
    - mikestew 7y ago
      The OSI removed the messages from their archive after he got banned. Until demonstrated how it might be otherwise, I contend that to be lunacy. Without a dog in the fight, or frankly much interest, I looked at the thread to make my own conclusions. I found nothing from ESR that I consider offensive, and I have much less tolerance for ass-clown behavior than I used to (coincidentally about the time I started working on becoming less of an ass-clown myself). So I walk away thinking, yup, some special dandruff flake got their panties in a bunch over something silly. Because the message that might have changed my mind on that, well, it's not visible anymore.
      - buckminster 7y ago
silverreads 7y ago
Anyone unaffiliated with a large commercial organization is being systematically rooted out and destroyed in the free software community. I'm honestly ashamed to be a part of this community right now. ESR has done SO MUCH for us, but doesn't align with a position some wishy washy corporate PR departments have OK'd, so he's OUT. There is no "be nice" rule in life, and doubly so for corporate America. This is disgraceful bigotry in action.
- turbinerneiter 7y ago
  Read ESRs blog. He has gone insane after 9/11. He thinks homosexuals are pedophile. I have the cathedral and the Bazaar at home, and I live that book, but he isn't part of the healthy open source community anymore.
  - justinmk 7y ago
    > He thinks homosexuals are pedophile. Do you have a primary source for that? This sounds like a cancel-culture rumor intended to attach negative ideas to a person in order to discredit them.
    - supernintendo 7y ago
      Straight from the horse's mouth: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=26 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=26
      - asdf21 7y ago
        >and the North American Man-Boy Love Association, actively advocating pederasty and pedophilia, is welcomed at gay-pride events everywhere. Hit "D" for doubt. ^ That being said, he never says all gays are pedos though -- he says they are three to ten times more likely to be pedos.
      - kyleee 7y ago
        After reading that entire post, I believe the above quote that: "He thinks homosexuals are pedophile[s]" is false. The rant asserts that homosexuals may be more predisposed to pedophelia and/or ephebophelia than those who are straight. Though as an astute commenter on the post pointed out that basically no evidence for the central thesis was provided by ESR.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
millette 7y ago
Only 2 months after Perens left https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21958105 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21958105
seilrse 7y ago
I'm just going to leave this here. https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-Bruce-Byfield-s-Blog/The-Decline-and-Fall-of-Eric-S.-Raymond https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-Bru... More sources: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond
- tedivm 7y ago
  You don't even need rationalwiki, wikipedia itself has some choice comments- > In 2015 Raymond accused the Ada Initiative and other women in tech groups of attempting to entrap male open source leaders and accuse them of rape, saying "Try to avoid even being alone, ever, because there is a chance that a 'women in tech' advocacy group is going to try to collect your scalp." > Raymond has claimed that "Gays experimented with unfettered promiscuity in the 1970s and got AIDS as a consequence", and that "Police who react to a random black male behaving suspiciously who might be in the critical age range as though he is an near-imminent lethal threat, are being rational, not racist."
  - joana035 7y ago
    What about context?
aeturnum 7y ago
From the previous discussion, plorkyeran[1] found the email that they suspect got ESR banned: http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021328.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.... I'm not familiar with the culture or standards of the OSI but I don't think I'd wanna participate in a community where this kind of engagement is normal, so good for them I suppose? Edit: replaced plorkyeran's account link with their post. I also now notice others posted the link, but I saw plorkyeran's post. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22521608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22521608
- justinmk 7y ago
  What parts of that email are so objectionable?
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    The "toxic loonytoon" part, referencing a prominent candidate to the OSI board? I mean, surely we can all have our own opinions about any candidate, but the optics aren't that good.
    - monksy 7y ago
      Yes, he has his own opinion. What is wrong with that? IMO: His opinion has a lot of weight here. He founded the project. Without his philosphy in the start you wouldn't be where it is today.
      - joe_the_user 7y ago
        I'm pretty the point is that OSI already laid down guidelines that asked for civil communication - and name calling is epitome of uncivil communication. Indeed, his comment is basically contesting those guidelines. So this was clearly one of those no recovery situations. Either guidelines for civil behavior or "show me the code" meritocracy wins but it's hard to see "agreeing to disagree" being possible here.
aidenn0 7y ago
I do wish that the author had pushed back on ESR's claim that removing CoC is the correct solution, particularly given the author's claim that nothing he found in ESRs posts to the list came even close to violating the CoC.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  CoCs are an elaborate legalistic version of a conch shell. ESR wasn't holding the shell when he spoke.
armatav 7y ago
Eventually darwinism will win out. If the correct way is to censor certain opinions, then naturally organizations that tend to do that will outcompete organizations that don’t. And if not, then not.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  That might be true (although it might not; evolution infamously doesn't exactly optimize for "best", just "survived"), but even if it is it would be nice to minimize the collateral damage.
- odiroot 7y ago
  It took quite a long time for Central and Eastern European countries to escape the obviously dysfunctional socialist regime. Many people perished waiting for the collapse. I'm too not hopeful this time. To paraphrase, "revolutionaries" can remain irrational longer than the you can remain alive and willing to contribute.
sneak 7y ago
I’m torn on this. On one hand, esr has a point. There is a credible argument that cancel culture has gone too far, and that expressing disagreement itself is now becoming dangerous as those with whom you disagree will take the opportunity to play victim and attempt to defame you simply for disagreeing. Identity politics along these lines have lately become unproductive and distracting. I generally don’t participate in groups that permit that sort of thing. There’s a real problem afoot. On the other hand, esr is a real jerk. Real jerks in f/oss are also a real problem. f/oss groups should ABSOLUTELY eject bullies: not for wrongthink, but for bullying. We must be kind. I think the solution is to continue to repeat his warning message, but also to eject him and any other bullies like him. (Including those who bully with the extreme-PC victimization hammer.) One can fight excessive-SJWing and remain kind and considerate to others whilst doing so.
- derefr 7y ago
  > Real jerks in f/oss are also a real problem. f/oss groups should ABSOLUTELY eject bullies: not for wrongthink, but for bullying. We must be kind. So, is it illegitimate, then, to have a FOSS project with an intentional/cultivated "culture of abuse", where the idea is that nobody is kind to anybody and that's how everybody likes it? Sort of a... "BSDM but we build something along the way" thing? (For example, picture "Twitch Plays Pokemon" but, rather than a game, the peanut gallery is "playing" an IDE.) I mean, it's not like every FOSS project needs to be treated as a serious attempt at being productive above all else, right? Fundamentally, for a lot of people, FOSS is a hobby of theirs, and if some people want to do whips-and-chains FOSS as a hobby, I don't see why anyone needs to butt in between them doing so. Which gets to a deeper point: does FOSS imply open membership? It doesn't obviously in the case where it's a one-author library; but beyond that, things seem sort of fuzzy right now. You'd think it could be made clear which projects are "for joining", and which projects are more in the vein of "you can certainly fork it, but our own version will stay exactly what we, the static set of existing maintainers, want, and nothing else." Where in the latter case, the culture of the project doesn't really matter to anyone but the existing static set of maintainers, because it's not like anyone else is going to be exposed to it but them.
  - 7y ago
moomin 7y ago
If you want to understand ESR, you should read this that he wrote back in 1995: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/dancing.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/dancing.html
- yellowapple 7y ago
  > Rituals are programs written in the symbolic language of the unconscious mind. Religions are program libraries that share critical subroutines. And the Gods represent subystems in the wetware being programmed. All humans have potential access to pretty much the same major gods because our wetware design is 99% shared. > Only...that cold and mechanistic a way of thinking about the Gods simply will not work when you want to evoke one. For full understanding, the Apollonian/scientific mode is essential; for direct experience, the Dionysian/ecstatic mode is the only way to go. That resonated surprisingly strongly with me.
vearwhershuh 7y ago
"The worse, the better." -Nikolay Chernyshevsky
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
chx 7y ago
> They have already had an alarming degree of success at this through the institution of "Codes of Conduct" on many projects. This has led to the expulsion of productive contributors for un-PCness; it's not just a problem in theory. Talk to me. Seriously, you can not talk about this topic without talking to me because you are talking about me anyways. (And no, ESR never reached out to me.) I have been, by any measure, the most prolific code contributor to the Drupal project for many years, 2005-2012 at least, maybe a year or two more even. I have been banned from the Drupal project for Code Of Conduct violations in 2016. It shattered me. They have been right to do so. Relevant blog posts: https://medium.com/@chx/women-of-drupal-ive-failed-you-and-i-am-sorry-fa22f37801b5 https://medium.com/@chx/women-of-drupal-ive-failed-you-and-i... (I just updated this with an archive.org link to a post that is now absent from its original place.) https://medium.com/@chx/a-note-from-an-open-source-lead-developer-who-got-banned-from-his-community-due-to-code-of-conduct-22d8f066ab9e https://medium.com/@chx/a-note-from-an-open-source-lead-deve... this specifically deals with meritocracy and this post is the most important: you need to understand it's not about some abstract PC-ness it's about driving people away. Do read https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/blog/2018/a-case-study-in-not-being-a-jerk-in-open-source https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/blog/2018/a-case-study-in... about how to formulate a message without this sort of language. And now I am back with a much diminished role https://medium.com/@chx/here-we-go-again-not-quite-a9d52ad93200 https://medium.com/@chx/here-we-go-again-not-quite-a9d52ad93... and life is good again.
- monksy 7y ago
  Why give back to someone that has stabbed you in the back?
  - sounds 7y ago
    Can you please post specific claims about @chx?
    - monksy 7y ago
      My message was based on his posts about the situation.
nrclark 7y ago
I've read a bunch of ESR's writing, and I disagree with him on an awful lot of political and social issues. Chances are we wouldn't get along very well. Tone-policing, cancel culture, and identity politics are a real problem though, and it seems like they're getting out of hand. This is happening everywhere though - it's not unique to the open source world at all. I don't know what the right solution is. ESR and RMS (who recently got removed from the FSF) helped create the open-source movement that we have today. And they both were instrumental popularizing the hacker counter-culture that dominated Linux during its rise to prominence. Would I like them as people? Maybe. Probably not. I don't know. It seems wrong to marginalize them and cast them aside though, even if they're socially awkward or say the wrong thing sometimes.
- geofft 7y ago
  We also don't know what the movement would look like today if it weren't dominated by their personalities (and their personality conflicts) in its formative days. It's pretty clear that a lot of people were interested in the ideals behind their movements and contributed in massive ways to the success of the movements - it's not clear that either of them were needed to get the movement off the ground (see also, Great Man Theory).
  - kazinator 7y ago
    What it would look like: an army of docile microserfs beavering away for free to make FOSS work better for Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle, IBM, ... and the odd government who wants a crypto backdoor or two.
    - ForHackernews 7y ago
      This is a weird rejoinder to make in a thread about ESR, who was one of the loudest voices arguing for corporate-friendly language ("open-source" not "free software") and licenses (permissive, not copyleft).
      - DuskStar 7y ago
vitorbaptistaa 7y ago
He writes about the reasons behind his expulsion on a post named "The right to be rude" [1] on his blog. This was written before he was banned. [1] http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8609 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8609
tarkin2 7y ago
He’s obviously a great when it comes to his contributions over the years. And he may have a point in his criticisms. But he doesn’t seem in a healthy state of mind. He seems paranoid - “make no mistake we are under attack” - angry - “loonytoon”, “ratfucking” - and the victim of a cultural attack - “journalistically-protected class“. The linked article on here about homosexual priests seems to suggest it’s been a theme for a while.
- cpach 7y ago
  Yeah it’s pretty obvious that he has issues.
JohnFen 7y ago
That's distressing, but unsurprising. I've been watching the OSS community engaging in slow-motion self-destruction for a while now. This sort of thing is right in line with that.
kazinator 7y ago
What's going on in FOSS these days is that the world of large, multi-national corporations, as well as governments, has become dependent on FOSS for critical infrastructure. These players want volunteers to do free work for them, but otherwise to be in control. They can't have some scruffy old ultra-libertarians who speak their mind running the projects; they want weaklings and pushovers. To be in control means being able to inject dubious changes into code that are against the interests of the public. Crypto Backdoors, DRM, vendor-specific crap, subversions of open standards, you name it.
- cpach 7y ago
  ESR is not only an ultra-libertarian, he’s also a vile scumbag with a considerably inflated ego.
  - eMSF 7y ago
    >ESR is not only an ultra-libertarian You say that like it's a bad thing...
    - cpach 7y ago
      I don’t really care either way TBH. Anarchocapitalism is not my cup of tea but there are definitely libertarians that I enjoy listening to. My point was that ESR’s biggest problem area isn’t his ideology of choice but rather his long list of other undesirable character traits.
m0zg 7y ago
And that's why political activist infestations should be dealt with quickly and forcefully, before they get a chance to fester and take over the host. ESR: "The effect – the intended effect – is to diminish the prestige and autonomy of people who do the work – write the code – in favor of self-appointed tone-policers. In the process, the freedom to speak necessary truths even when the manner in which they are expressed is unpleasant is being gradually strangled." Which is what happened in the end.
- pessimizer 7y ago
  The OSI is a political activist organization.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    Only if you equate open source advocacy with political activism. In fact their "about" page states: "Much of OSI’s advocacy takes the form of quiet persuasion rather than public activism", and the whole thing was founded in part because the term "free software" seemed too politically charged to the founders, both of which, BTW, have been ejected.
  - antepodius 7y ago
    Cancer can get cancer; parasites can get parasites.
shiado 7y ago
The open source community might want to think long and hard about ceding control to groups of people that proudly list their mental illnesses in their twitter bios (like actually, they really fucking do this). I predict a serious split in open source culture once people realize they have been played by narcissists seeking power.
- aliakhtar 7y ago
  Uh, what's wrong with listing if you have a mental illness? To me, its no different than listing any physical illness you're a survivor of.
  - shiado 7y ago
    There should be no shame in having a mental illness, but there are many mental illnesses that I would highly highly advise not disclosing publicly. It isn't a simple matter of discrimination, if you disclose that you have BPD or ASPD or are bipolar people will avoid you and view you negatively with actual reason, these conditions are absolutely devastating.
  - jshevek 7y ago
    I don't see a problem with an individual that discloses a mental illness. I do see a problem with a subculture that celebrates mental illness.
    - aliakhtar 7y ago
      Why? Mental illnesses are not a choice, so its not others will start getting mental illnesses if its celebrated. But if you're successful despite a mental illness (by any measure of success), its worth celebrating that so others with that condition can see it can be overcome. And it'll help reduce stigma.
      - jshevek 7y ago
        You are correct on the benefits of reducing stigma, but that is something else altogether. You response doesn't seem to have anything to do with my statement. Celebrating success is not the same as celebrating mental illness. While discreet thresholds and states exist in mental illness, many exist on a spectrum. The real world consequences of some mental illness are influenced by the choices made by the person. Subcultures which celebrate mental illness often have the effect of enabling the worst forms of irresponsible mismanagement.
Jare 7y ago
"I haven't been here for 20 years but I've come to fix all your problems. I will not be nice while I do that." In what possible world do you expect such a story to end any other way, regardless of the forum and people involved?
motohagiography 7y ago
Making creators accountable to bureaucratic values using cynical techniques like whisper campaigns and deplatforming will destroy the culture and technologies it produced. FOSS was started as a divergence from corporate bureaucratic software, and now political bureaucracy is coopting and subverting it. An intolerant minority is poisoning the well of creativity in multiple disciplines by subverting the organizations that support it instead of producing the tools people want and use. It's the same crowd that is causing campus problems. These people aren't civil or "nice," they're nihilists who understand bureaucratic power and align with whatever meaningless words achieve their end. It's not just right/left either, this particular flavor of bureaucracy affects progressivism, but it's a wave of the same force that hollows out creative endeavors and turns them into hosts for bureaucratic governance. The only way to defeat it is individual competence and peer recognition of the excellence of their work, which people who exploit bureaucracy are necessarily incapable. Rant over, but this issue is crucial to everything from net neutrality, crypto policy and backdoors, and software freedom everywhere. It cannot be allowed to be shut down.
- antepodius 7y ago
  Or we need a cycle of a band of foul-mouthed non-agreeable assholes breaking off from the stale norm and creating a programming counterculture that goes on to revolutionize the world before being taken over by entryists who grind its culture back in to placid oppressive normalcy, upon which a band of foul-mouthed non-agreeable assholes break off and...
rvz 7y ago
Once again, another person has been arrested and unfortunately cancelled by those who disagree with him over wrong-think. The OSI isn't really doing anyone favours over banning people like ESR because they have an opposing view over changing the organisation's policy, they just make the whole argument a one-sided echo-chamber which isn't healthy for any org if one is concerned about some changes like ESR was. The cancel-culture attitude over people who you disagree with is so dangerous to any organisation. It's like it has become a crime on the internet these days. If someone was to say an opposing opinion with evidence towards a PC crowd, they will be locked up in the dungeon, charged with high treason and banished forever.
cpach 7y ago
Oh, lots of ESR fanboys here today! Can someone of you please explain exactly what it is that makes ESR a great hacker/programmer?
- ForHackernews 7y ago
  Nothing, imho. He maintained the jargon file and some irrelevant old unix utilities for a while. His primary achievement was non-technical: taking the radical philosophy of free software and neutering it be acceptable to corporations. He also wrote a book[0] with a catchy title that many people referenced and few people read. I think ESR is a dabbler and popularizer who has built his personal brand around being a Man-in-Tech rather than a person who actually produces significant technical contributions. RMS or Torvalds he ain't. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar
  - cpach 7y ago
    IMO you summed it up very well there.
planetzero 7y ago
How ironic: A person railing against cancel culture gets cancelled by cancel culture. Simply disagreeing with politically charged topics gets you a boot from many open source projects. Many people that claim to want tolerance, actually want nothing less than exuberance for their own causes and have no problem painting people they disagree with as non-human, so they can harass, get them fired from their jobs or positions (canceling), and then finally silence. This comes right out of the 'rules for radicals' playbook. If you can't respect my freedom of speech, why should I protect yours?
- zionic 7y ago
  >Many people that claim to want tolerance, actually want nothing less than exuberance for their own causes This is absolutely brilliant
- woofyman 7y ago
  > How ironic: A person railing against cancel culture gets cancelled by cancel culture. That’s not ironic. It would be ironic if a supporter of cancel culture got canceled.
  - jjgreen 7y ago
    Like rain, on your wedding day, ...
rodgerd 7y ago
Given that the free software world struggles to resolve the relatively simple moral conundrum of whether or not licenses should require people to share, adding another layer of moral and ethical concerns on top - around the idea of trying to define good and bad uses for software - is a heck of an ambitious problem; as such there's a lot of good arguments for and against a candidate who wants the OSI to pick up that work. It's unfortunately that the esr clown show has derailed that with the ravings of a man who, quite to the contrary of one of his sayings, doesn't contribute much code and won't shut up; and the rather than introducing any cogent or interesting thoughts on the topic, has simply sprayed abuse around like an out-of-control honeywagon. The OSI will be a great deal better off for his absence.
itamarst 7y ago
I found one of the emails (https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021328.html https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists..., at the bottom) I would ban someone for that. "Toxic loonytoon" is not a productive way to have a discussion. (Originally quoted it here but getting formatting right here is terrible).
pipework 7y ago
Or we could stop using the things made by people we cancel instead of getting rid of the people. Cancel culture is about not seeing faces anymore, not getting better or improving anything. It's ridiculous to stand atop the work of the people you bury and call yourself holy for it.
paweladamczuk 7y ago
It makes me sad that people are so sensitive that reading a message like the one ESR wrote drives them away from participating in projects and communities that otherwise would interest them. At least this seems to be the narrative of the "PC supporters" here. The world is full of assholes. I think it's better to get used to it than to shelter yourself, try to make every space safe or withdraw from interacting with other people. I know I'm biased though. I am pretty thick-skinned so it's hard to see it from the other perspective.
- a1369209993 7y ago
  > It makes me sad that people are so sensitive that reading a message like the one ESR wrote drives them away from participating in projects and communities that otherwise would interest them. If it helps, people are not actually like that (or least people that far along the bell curve are much rarer than you seem to believe). The people you're seeing are taking (no, I don't mean feigning) offence in a strategic attempt to shut down someone who disagrees with them politically.
josteink 7y ago
Does someone have a list of common, non-OSI approved software licenses for FOSS software? I might want to relicense some projects I have...
ringzero 7y ago
You know, this really sucks for me personally. Not the ban, but the sorts of things Eric appears to stand for. I read The Cathedral and the Bazaar when I was 13, and it was probably my gateway into advocating for open source. Somewhere around that age, I ended up speaking on a panel, among other OSS advocates, that successfully sold one of the local school divisions on OSS (we also helped them integrate it, on-site :). To be honest, I don’t quite remember the book or quite what I thought of it, but I know it had a profound influence on me at the time. Then I see Eric write this: > Usually (and in this case) accompanied by a lot of bafflegab about “inclusion” and “diversity” so thay anyone who isn't a fan of the new, censorious rules can be cast as some sort of bigot. :/ Eric, we can have it both ways. I hammer it home into the engineers I’ve lead that code is the ultimate source of truth. I‘ll guide them from, for example, “do we need a mutex here” through to object code to generated assembly through to an intel reference manual, because I want to demonstrate that as engineers, we are in full control of our creations. The engineers I work with all challenge each other, and ask difficult questions, and put ideas through difficult tests. Because we’re mature adults, we can do so with language more advanced than “this is shit” (an open source favorite). It’s real easy. How about, “what happens when <state concern>” or “have you considered <alternate approach>”. In fact, by soliciting more feedback and criticism, you are being more inclusive - as long as the conversations play out in a constructive way! Yes, it can be hard to teach that, but that’s why we pay people managers and technical leads to do a job. Honestly, though, what sucks most of all is when you see that people who were so influential to you early in life would apparently look down on the person you are, just because you would ask to be respected in return.
- pdonis 7y ago
  > Then I see Eric write this You are taking what he wrote out of context and interpreting it to mean something very different than what he intended. Eric is not arguing that insults are preferable to dispassionate feedback. (As I noted in another comment upthread, I have worked with him on a small part of one of his coding projects, and in that context he is all dispassionate feedback and no insults whatever. So in actual work he does not exhibit the bad behavior you describe at all.) He is looking at what is being done to OSI, and what is being done to open source projects around the world, in the name of "social justice", and he sees the same game being played that has been played by the Left for centuries to gain control of institutions and then completely subvert them from their original purpose. If you don't understand that historical context, of course you're not going to understand why he is being so forceful about this. He is not trying to stop people from being constructive and non-insulting about actually writing good code. He is trying to stop people whose ultimate agenda has nothing to do with writing good code from taking over open source projects and ruining them, making us all much worse off in the process.
btilly 7y ago
I am conflicted. I generally despise SJWs and identity politics, but this couldn't have happened to a nicer person. Data point. Read http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/sextips/ http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/sextips/. Data point. It took ESR less than 15 minutes from meeting my ex in late 1999 to make an undesired pass at her. (He knew she was married to me, and was turned down.) Data point. I was at a PerlMongers meeting in 2003. And happened to remark that, "Someone needs to tell ESR that he's not God's gift to women." After the laughter died down, a woman at the table gave an account of his making an unwanted pass at her. This opened a floodgate as every woman at the table had her own similar story in turn. There are many more such data points. But clearly ESR's behavior has been a problem for a long time. However I am still deeply concerned that he establishes a convenient precedent that will be applied to other, much less problematic, people.
- gpanders 7y ago
  > but this couldn't have happened to a nicer person. I think maybe you meant "couldn't have happened to a more deserving person"? The way you phrased it implies you think ESR is actually quite a nice person who didn't deserve what he got, while the remainder of your post clearly shows that's not what you mean.
  - btilly 7y ago
    That is what I meant, and that is what the idiom usually means. See https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/couldn%27t+have+happened+to+a+nicer+person https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/couldn%27t+have+happene... for verification.
    - gpanders 7y ago
      > Sometimes used sarcastically when referring to a negative event happening to an unpleasant person. Interesting! I've never heard this used in a sarcastic way. My mistake.
6510 7y ago
I thought about it and its actually funny! Founding shit like this took a special kind of dinosaur, the kind who criticizes everything. The self critique being the most important kind. In an ideal world you can never have enough of that. Sadly for other people, if you have a lot of it, it is hard not to project it outwards as well. It takes a great struggle to not subject others to the same standard one holds himself to. It can be done... until codez of conduct are coined then such person just explodes - which is funny. Fuzzy little creatures then make a home in the hard shell they leave behind.
contingencies 7y ago
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, on Voltaire's principles
pcj-github 7y ago
I side with ESR, this is silly. What I think the moderators should have done in this circumstance is actually moderate. In cases like this where things are getting heated and you're obviously in an un-usual circumstance, schedule a real conversation to diffuse the situation. Slack, Zoom, Hangouts, phone call, whatever. Anything where tone and emotion can be effectively communicated. Can you do this always? No. Should you do it when you're founding member is at risk of being banned from the mailing list? Obviously, yes. This is what happens when people rely too much on email.
- yellowapple 7y ago
  Hell, even a private email chain (i.e. off-list) would be better than nothing.
classics2 7y ago
Not every contribution, even if useful, is worth the price the contributor demands. The way to stop this is to just disregard the contributions of those who’s asking price is everyone else’s slavish obedience to their standards of conduct.
Uhhrrr 7y ago
The enthusiasm for shaming in this mail from the thread makes my stomach turn. They seem to be either blissfully unaware or malevolently aware that it would lead to more marginalization, not less: https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021285.html https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists... "This special exception makes clear who the community considers a bad actor and initially imposes greater obligations on them than anyone else. [....] As in the Persona non Grata Preamble, this special exception serves as a clear statement on the community's view on who is welcome in their community. Additionally, if the bad actor wants to redistribute, they have to distribute the license shaming them."
- antepodius 7y ago
  There's no greater feeling than the crunch of the bones of the unworthy beneath your heel.
erulabs 7y ago
When I was 16 or so I made my very first patch to the KDE project. It was really awful code - and I was told to kill myself due to its quality. There are absolutely bullies in FOSS - but I swapped to Gnome and called it a day. I was pretty upset, but a few months later Postfix accepted a patch so I spent 3 years as a mail administrator. My issue here is the lack of transparency - just tell us why he was banned. His essay on social politics seems non-Germaine - it wasn’t aimed at anyone. If he directly insulted harassed or threatened a contributor - absolutely kick him out - but just copy paste the text! It’s a fairly low bar to hit for those given the authority to ban someone from their own creation.
jshevek 7y ago
Many people seem to believe that name calling in the form of "toxic loonytoon" was key to this decision. Toxic people exist. We must be able to discuss our opinion that someone is toxic. "Loonytoon" is indeed a gratuitous insult, but a very mild one. Silly, even. It doesn't make sense to me that OSI would react so strongly and dramatically to such a mild insult. I suspect there is another element to this which no one is discussing.
jshevek 7y ago
ESR discusses this on his blog: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8609 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8609
jasoneckert 7y ago
This is a well-written article on many levels. Unfortunately, my respect for OSI has bottomed out after reading it.
esjeon 7y ago
TBH, cancellers, who pull this kind of "cancel" drama, are no better than their cancellees. They are actually worse, because they are turning a personal drama into an organizational drama, rather abruptly. Not to mention that this process mostly involves ad-hominem, cherry-picking, and non-public decisions. I mean, these people create a bigger political mess while trying to "clean" a tiny irrelevant mess. Lame. Unproductive.
davidgerard 7y ago
The correct axis to consider this question along is "hostile work environment". Because coding is a job, and open source coding is a job these days. And you are expected to behave in a somewhat professional manner. ESR's email in any reasonable workplace would lead to a disciplinary hearing. It was a bad email that should not have been sent.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  An open source maintainer is not your boss. If your work on an open source project is not being accepted, you can just fork the project and effortlessly escape any "hostility", while still taking full credit for your coding. The proposed Persona Non Grata clause actively creates a full-blown "hostile work environment" problem where none existed before (by purposely obstructing the "freedom to fork" aspect of FLOSS development), so if you're right it's Ehmke who is doing what you describe, not ESR.
LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
Let them have it. All. Wait until they fall. Because bikeshedding Gerrit is not fit for merit. Bitrotten incest is their best. Fork in silent stealth, away from the screaming masses. Enjoy the silence, and clear air. No obnoxious gases anymore, just code and score. While THEY have nothing to show, except screaming fits. Dumb shits!
luord 7y ago
It's pretty pathetic that Chestek wasn't able (or allowed) to even mention who was the "subscriber" that was banned in that email. Mind you, I disagree with Raymond on quite a few things, but he's clearly far worthier of being read (at least on OSS matters) than these Chestek and Berkus persons.
zenlot 7y ago
> Eric S Raymond: The fetishization of ‘nice’ behavior, where ‘nice’ ends up defined as being any behavior some self-appointed censor doesn't like. Usually (and in this case) accompanied by a lot of bafflegab about “inclusion” and “diversity” so thay anyone who isn't a fan of the new, censorious rules can be cast as some sort of bigot. Pretty much represents HN community too.
speakingcode 7y ago
How is this reply from Josh Berkus NOT doing exactly what he accuses ESR of doing?? A directed attack on a person's character riddled with accusations and assumptions about their motive but entirely void of response to any of the points or topics the person brought up, and a dismissive, alienating assertion that the person makes no contribution or adds any value, and their absence will not be felt? Seems like an attempt to intimidate an opponent and win an argument by making the opponent afraid (or banned) to participate >>> ESR's “sharp language” is not an attempt to persuade. It is an attempt to intimidate opponents; to “win” an argument by making others afraid to participate. Indeed, even today OSI mailing list composition is entirely folks with enough privilege to be resistant to personal attacks. That's a sad, terrible thing. It's not “free speech” when it's an attempt to shout others down so that they have no voice. It's something else entirely. Further, not one of ESR's points is original or even original to this list. In his absence, not one of the ideas he so “colorfully” expressed will be lost. In the meantime, we're missing the input of so many people who will not participate in OSI because of our tolerance for wholly uncivilized behavior like his posts.

328 points by sabas_ge 7y ago

> It's less bad that people sometimes got their feelings hurt than it is to institutionalize a means by which dissenting opinions are crushed under the rubric of “not nice”. This is eloquently put. The "fetishization of niceness" he talks about is such a strange trend to watch. It started in universities but it's like it wants to eat all of society and social interactions

jshevek 7y ago
Worse, it's not actually about being nice. I'm speaking in general and not about this ESR situation, but subtle forms of bigotry, bullying and intimidation are often part of the tone policing culture.

woofie11 7y ago

I wanted to address one error in this article: "Richard Stallman being compelled to resign from the Free Software Foundation." RMS was not compelled to resign from the FSF. RMS decided to resign since he felt it was for the good of the organization, and he could no longer be effective there. While there was a lot of external pressure, there was zero pressure from within. It was RMS trying to do the right thing. My major concern about the sequence of events there were external appearances. It seems that problem materialized.

kazinator 7y ago
> RMS decided to resign since he felt it was for the good of the organization, and he could no longer be effective there. That's just the cover story, and nobody in their right mind buys it. It was more likely a "you can appear to go spontaneously, or there will be a big fuss and you will be out anyway". It's the same old thing like when any public figure "steps down" in the midst of a scandal. That just means they picked the least unpalatable item from a menu that was handed to them, so to speak. RMS had no more real option to stay at the helm of the FSF than he had to keep that MIT office.
- woofie11 7y ago
  No. I know the personalities involved. It was not a cover story.

phaemon 7y ago

So, does anyone know what exactly he was banned for?

raldi 7y ago
In my experience, decisions like this don't usually turn on one specific incident, but rather a long-running pattern of behavior.
evv 7y ago
Here's a previous thread on the topic [1]. From what I can gather, Eric was arguing against allowing "ethical source" licenses from being designated as "Open Source" by the institute. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22518370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22518370
- kick 7y ago
  That thread is wrong. Unfortunately, for a stupid reason. The OSI removed the messages from their archive after he got banned. Because removing all evidence is totally the correct thing to do. I support getting rid of Raymond, but they couldn't have made themselves come off worse to your average internet commentator.
  - mikestew 7y ago
    The OSI removed the messages from their archive after he got banned. Until demonstrated how it might be otherwise, I contend that to be lunacy. Without a dog in the fight, or frankly much interest, I looked at the thread to make my own conclusions. I found nothing from ESR that I consider offensive, and I have much less tolerance for ass-clown behavior than I used to (coincidentally about the time I started working on becoming less of an ass-clown myself). So I walk away thinking, yup, some special dandruff flake got their panties in a bunch over something silly. Because the message that might have changed my mind on that, well, it's not visible anymore.
    - buckminster 7y ago

silverreads 7y ago

Anyone unaffiliated with a large commercial organization is being systematically rooted out and destroyed in the free software community. I'm honestly ashamed to be a part of this community right now. ESR has done SO MUCH for us, but doesn't align with a position some wishy washy corporate PR departments have OK'd, so he's OUT. There is no "be nice" rule in life, and doubly so for corporate America. This is disgraceful bigotry in action.

turbinerneiter 7y ago
Read ESRs blog. He has gone insane after 9/11. He thinks homosexuals are pedophile. I have the cathedral and the Bazaar at home, and I live that book, but he isn't part of the healthy open source community anymore.
- justinmk 7y ago
  > He thinks homosexuals are pedophile. Do you have a primary source for that? This sounds like a cancel-culture rumor intended to attach negative ideas to a person in order to discredit them.
  - supernintendo 7y ago
    Straight from the horse's mouth: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=26 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=26
    - asdf21 7y ago
      >and the North American Man-Boy Love Association, actively advocating pederasty and pedophilia, is welcomed at gay-pride events everywhere. Hit "D" for doubt. ^ That being said, he never says all gays are pedos though -- he says they are three to ten times more likely to be pedos.
    - kyleee 7y ago
      After reading that entire post, I believe the above quote that: "He thinks homosexuals are pedophile[s]" is false. The rant asserts that homosexuals may be more predisposed to pedophelia and/or ephebophelia than those who are straight. Though as an astute commenter on the post pointed out that basically no evidence for the central thesis was provided by ESR.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

millette 7y ago

Only 2 months after Perens left https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21958105 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21958105

seilrse 7y ago

I'm just going to leave this here. https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-Bruce-Byfield-s-Blog/The-Decline-and-Fall-of-Eric-S.-Raymond https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-Bru... More sources: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond

tedivm 7y ago
You don't even need rationalwiki, wikipedia itself has some choice comments- > In 2015 Raymond accused the Ada Initiative and other women in tech groups of attempting to entrap male open source leaders and accuse them of rape, saying "Try to avoid even being alone, ever, because there is a chance that a 'women in tech' advocacy group is going to try to collect your scalp." > Raymond has claimed that "Gays experimented with unfettered promiscuity in the 1970s and got AIDS as a consequence", and that "Police who react to a random black male behaving suspiciously who might be in the critical age range as though he is an near-imminent lethal threat, are being rational, not racist."
- joana035 7y ago
  What about context?

aeturnum 7y ago

From the previous discussion, plorkyeran[1] found the email that they suspect got ESR banned: http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021328.html http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.... I'm not familiar with the culture or standards of the OSI but I don't think I'd wanna participate in a community where this kind of engagement is normal, so good for them I suppose? Edit: replaced plorkyeran's account link with their post. I also now notice others posted the link, but I saw plorkyeran's post. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22521608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22521608

justinmk 7y ago
What parts of that email are so objectionable?
- zozbot234 7y ago
  The "toxic loonytoon" part, referencing a prominent candidate to the OSI board? I mean, surely we can all have our own opinions about any candidate, but the optics aren't that good.
  - monksy 7y ago
    Yes, he has his own opinion. What is wrong with that? IMO: His opinion has a lot of weight here. He founded the project. Without his philosphy in the start you wouldn't be where it is today.
    - joe_the_user 7y ago
      I'm pretty the point is that OSI already laid down guidelines that asked for civil communication - and name calling is epitome of uncivil communication. Indeed, his comment is basically contesting those guidelines. So this was clearly one of those no recovery situations. Either guidelines for civil behavior or "show me the code" meritocracy wins but it's hard to see "agreeing to disagree" being possible here.

aidenn0 7y ago

I do wish that the author had pushed back on ESR's claim that removing CoC is the correct solution, particularly given the author's claim that nothing he found in ESRs posts to the list came even close to violating the CoC.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
CoCs are an elaborate legalistic version of a conch shell. ESR wasn't holding the shell when he spoke.

armatav 7y ago

Eventually darwinism will win out. If the correct way is to censor certain opinions, then naturally organizations that tend to do that will outcompete organizations that don’t. And if not, then not.

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
That might be true (although it might not; evolution infamously doesn't exactly optimize for "best", just "survived"), but even if it is it would be nice to minimize the collateral damage.
odiroot 7y ago
It took quite a long time for Central and Eastern European countries to escape the obviously dysfunctional socialist regime. Many people perished waiting for the collapse. I'm too not hopeful this time. To paraphrase, "revolutionaries" can remain irrational longer than the you can remain alive and willing to contribute.

sneak 7y ago

I’m torn on this. On one hand, esr has a point. There is a credible argument that cancel culture has gone too far, and that expressing disagreement itself is now becoming dangerous as those with whom you disagree will take the opportunity to play victim and attempt to defame you simply for disagreeing. Identity politics along these lines have lately become unproductive and distracting. I generally don’t participate in groups that permit that sort of thing. There’s a real problem afoot. On the other hand, esr is a real jerk. Real jerks in f/oss are also a real problem. f/oss groups should ABSOLUTELY eject bullies: not for wrongthink, but for bullying. We must be kind. I think the solution is to continue to repeat his warning message, but also to eject him and any other bullies like him. (Including those who bully with the extreme-PC victimization hammer.) One can fight excessive-SJWing and remain kind and considerate to others whilst doing so.

derefr 7y ago
> Real jerks in f/oss are also a real problem. f/oss groups should ABSOLUTELY eject bullies: not for wrongthink, but for bullying. We must be kind. So, is it illegitimate, then, to have a FOSS project with an intentional/cultivated "culture of abuse", where the idea is that nobody is kind to anybody and that's how everybody likes it? Sort of a... "BSDM but we build something along the way" thing? (For example, picture "Twitch Plays Pokemon" but, rather than a game, the peanut gallery is "playing" an IDE.) I mean, it's not like every FOSS project needs to be treated as a serious attempt at being productive above all else, right? Fundamentally, for a lot of people, FOSS is a hobby of theirs, and if some people want to do whips-and-chains FOSS as a hobby, I don't see why anyone needs to butt in between them doing so. Which gets to a deeper point: does FOSS imply open membership? It doesn't obviously in the case where it's a one-author library; but beyond that, things seem sort of fuzzy right now. You'd think it could be made clear which projects are "for joining", and which projects are more in the vein of "you can certainly fork it, but our own version will stay exactly what we, the static set of existing maintainers, want, and nothing else." Where in the latter case, the culture of the project doesn't really matter to anyone but the existing static set of maintainers, because it's not like anyone else is going to be exposed to it but them.
- 7y ago

moomin 7y ago

If you want to understand ESR, you should read this that he wrote back in 1995: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/dancing.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/dancing.html

yellowapple 7y ago
> Rituals are programs written in the symbolic language of the unconscious mind. Religions are program libraries that share critical subroutines. And the Gods represent subystems in the wetware being programmed. All humans have potential access to pretty much the same major gods because our wetware design is 99% shared. > Only...that cold and mechanistic a way of thinking about the Gods simply will not work when you want to evoke one. For full understanding, the Apollonian/scientific mode is essential; for direct experience, the Dionysian/ecstatic mode is the only way to go. That resonated surprisingly strongly with me.

vearwhershuh 7y ago

"The worse, the better." -Nikolay Chernyshevsky

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

chx 7y ago

> They have already had an alarming degree of success at this through the institution of "Codes of Conduct" on many projects. This has led to the expulsion of productive contributors for un-PCness; it's not just a problem in theory. Talk to me. Seriously, you can not talk about this topic without talking to me because you are talking about me anyways. (And no, ESR never reached out to me.) I have been, by any measure, the most prolific code contributor to the Drupal project for many years, 2005-2012 at least, maybe a year or two more even. I have been banned from the Drupal project for Code Of Conduct violations in 2016. It shattered me. They have been right to do so. Relevant blog posts: https://medium.com/@chx/women-of-drupal-ive-failed-you-and-i-am-sorry-fa22f37801b5 https://medium.com/@chx/women-of-drupal-ive-failed-you-and-i... (I just updated this with an archive.org link to a post that is now absent from its original place.) https://medium.com/@chx/a-note-from-an-open-source-lead-developer-who-got-banned-from-his-community-due-to-code-of-conduct-22d8f066ab9e https://medium.com/@chx/a-note-from-an-open-source-lead-deve... this specifically deals with meritocracy and this post is the most important: you need to understand it's not about some abstract PC-ness it's about driving people away. Do read https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/blog/2018/a-case-study-in-not-being-a-jerk-in-open-source https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/blog/2018/a-case-study-in... about how to formulate a message without this sort of language. And now I am back with a much diminished role https://medium.com/@chx/here-we-go-again-not-quite-a9d52ad93200 https://medium.com/@chx/here-we-go-again-not-quite-a9d52ad93... and life is good again.

monksy 7y ago
Why give back to someone that has stabbed you in the back?
- sounds 7y ago
  Can you please post specific claims about @chx?
  - monksy 7y ago
    My message was based on his posts about the situation.

nrclark 7y ago

I've read a bunch of ESR's writing, and I disagree with him on an awful lot of political and social issues. Chances are we wouldn't get along very well. Tone-policing, cancel culture, and identity politics are a real problem though, and it seems like they're getting out of hand. This is happening everywhere though - it's not unique to the open source world at all. I don't know what the right solution is. ESR and RMS (who recently got removed from the FSF) helped create the open-source movement that we have today. And they both were instrumental popularizing the hacker counter-culture that dominated Linux during its rise to prominence. Would I like them as people? Maybe. Probably not. I don't know. It seems wrong to marginalize them and cast them aside though, even if they're socially awkward or say the wrong thing sometimes.

geofft 7y ago
We also don't know what the movement would look like today if it weren't dominated by their personalities (and their personality conflicts) in its formative days. It's pretty clear that a lot of people were interested in the ideals behind their movements and contributed in massive ways to the success of the movements - it's not clear that either of them were needed to get the movement off the ground (see also, Great Man Theory).
- kazinator 7y ago
  What it would look like: an army of docile microserfs beavering away for free to make FOSS work better for Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle, IBM, ... and the odd government who wants a crypto backdoor or two.
  - ForHackernews 7y ago
    This is a weird rejoinder to make in a thread about ESR, who was one of the loudest voices arguing for corporate-friendly language ("open-source" not "free software") and licenses (permissive, not copyleft).
    - DuskStar 7y ago

vitorbaptistaa 7y ago

He writes about the reasons behind his expulsion on a post named "The right to be rude" [1] on his blog. This was written before he was banned. [1] http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8609 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8609

tarkin2 7y ago

He’s obviously a great when it comes to his contributions over the years. And he may have a point in his criticisms. But he doesn’t seem in a healthy state of mind. He seems paranoid - “make no mistake we are under attack” - angry - “loonytoon”, “ratfucking” - and the victim of a cultural attack - “journalistically-protected class“. The linked article on here about homosexual priests seems to suggest it’s been a theme for a while.

cpach 7y ago
Yeah it’s pretty obvious that he has issues.

JohnFen 7y ago

That's distressing, but unsurprising. I've been watching the OSS community engaging in slow-motion self-destruction for a while now. This sort of thing is right in line with that.

kazinator 7y ago

What's going on in FOSS these days is that the world of large, multi-national corporations, as well as governments, has become dependent on FOSS for critical infrastructure. These players want volunteers to do free work for them, but otherwise to be in control. They can't have some scruffy old ultra-libertarians who speak their mind running the projects; they want weaklings and pushovers. To be in control means being able to inject dubious changes into code that are against the interests of the public. Crypto Backdoors, DRM, vendor-specific crap, subversions of open standards, you name it.

cpach 7y ago
ESR is not only an ultra-libertarian, he’s also a vile scumbag with a considerably inflated ego.
- eMSF 7y ago
  >ESR is not only an ultra-libertarian You say that like it's a bad thing...
  - cpach 7y ago
    I don’t really care either way TBH. Anarchocapitalism is not my cup of tea but there are definitely libertarians that I enjoy listening to. My point was that ESR’s biggest problem area isn’t his ideology of choice but rather his long list of other undesirable character traits.

m0zg 7y ago

And that's why political activist infestations should be dealt with quickly and forcefully, before they get a chance to fester and take over the host. ESR: "The effect – the intended effect – is to diminish the prestige and autonomy of people who do the work – write the code – in favor of self-appointed tone-policers. In the process, the freedom to speak necessary truths even when the manner in which they are expressed is unpleasant is being gradually strangled." Which is what happened in the end.

pessimizer 7y ago
The OSI is a political activist organization.
- m0zg 7y ago
  Only if you equate open source advocacy with political activism. In fact their "about" page states: "Much of OSI’s advocacy takes the form of quiet persuasion rather than public activism", and the whole thing was founded in part because the term "free software" seemed too politically charged to the founders, both of which, BTW, have been ejected.
- antepodius 7y ago
  Cancer can get cancer; parasites can get parasites.

shiado 7y ago

The open source community might want to think long and hard about ceding control to groups of people that proudly list their mental illnesses in their twitter bios (like actually, they really fucking do this). I predict a serious split in open source culture once people realize they have been played by narcissists seeking power.

aliakhtar 7y ago
Uh, what's wrong with listing if you have a mental illness? To me, its no different than listing any physical illness you're a survivor of.
- shiado 7y ago
  There should be no shame in having a mental illness, but there are many mental illnesses that I would highly highly advise not disclosing publicly. It isn't a simple matter of discrimination, if you disclose that you have BPD or ASPD or are bipolar people will avoid you and view you negatively with actual reason, these conditions are absolutely devastating.
- jshevek 7y ago
  I don't see a problem with an individual that discloses a mental illness. I do see a problem with a subculture that celebrates mental illness.
  - aliakhtar 7y ago
    Why? Mental illnesses are not a choice, so its not others will start getting mental illnesses if its celebrated. But if you're successful despite a mental illness (by any measure of success), its worth celebrating that so others with that condition can see it can be overcome. And it'll help reduce stigma.
    - jshevek 7y ago
      You are correct on the benefits of reducing stigma, but that is something else altogether. You response doesn't seem to have anything to do with my statement. Celebrating success is not the same as celebrating mental illness. While discreet thresholds and states exist in mental illness, many exist on a spectrum. The real world consequences of some mental illness are influenced by the choices made by the person. Subcultures which celebrate mental illness often have the effect of enabling the worst forms of irresponsible mismanagement.

Jare 7y ago

"I haven't been here for 20 years but I've come to fix all your problems. I will not be nice while I do that." In what possible world do you expect such a story to end any other way, regardless of the forum and people involved?

motohagiography 7y ago

Making creators accountable to bureaucratic values using cynical techniques like whisper campaigns and deplatforming will destroy the culture and technologies it produced. FOSS was started as a divergence from corporate bureaucratic software, and now political bureaucracy is coopting and subverting it. An intolerant minority is poisoning the well of creativity in multiple disciplines by subverting the organizations that support it instead of producing the tools people want and use. It's the same crowd that is causing campus problems. These people aren't civil or "nice," they're nihilists who understand bureaucratic power and align with whatever meaningless words achieve their end. It's not just right/left either, this particular flavor of bureaucracy affects progressivism, but it's a wave of the same force that hollows out creative endeavors and turns them into hosts for bureaucratic governance. The only way to defeat it is individual competence and peer recognition of the excellence of their work, which people who exploit bureaucracy are necessarily incapable. Rant over, but this issue is crucial to everything from net neutrality, crypto policy and backdoors, and software freedom everywhere. It cannot be allowed to be shut down.

antepodius 7y ago
Or we need a cycle of a band of foul-mouthed non-agreeable assholes breaking off from the stale norm and creating a programming counterculture that goes on to revolutionize the world before being taken over by entryists who grind its culture back in to placid oppressive normalcy, upon which a band of foul-mouthed non-agreeable assholes break off and...

rvz 7y ago

Once again, another person has been arrested and unfortunately cancelled by those who disagree with him over wrong-think. The OSI isn't really doing anyone favours over banning people like ESR because they have an opposing view over changing the organisation's policy, they just make the whole argument a one-sided echo-chamber which isn't healthy for any org if one is concerned about some changes like ESR was. The cancel-culture attitude over people who you disagree with is so dangerous to any organisation. It's like it has become a crime on the internet these days. If someone was to say an opposing opinion with evidence towards a PC crowd, they will be locked up in the dungeon, charged with high treason and banished forever.

cpach 7y ago

Oh, lots of ESR fanboys here today! Can someone of you please explain exactly what it is that makes ESR a great hacker/programmer?

ForHackernews 7y ago
Nothing, imho. He maintained the jargon file and some irrelevant old unix utilities for a while. His primary achievement was non-technical: taking the radical philosophy of free software and neutering it be acceptable to corporations. He also wrote a book[0] with a catchy title that many people referenced and few people read. I think ESR is a dabbler and popularizer who has built his personal brand around being a Man-in-Tech rather than a person who actually produces significant technical contributions. RMS or Torvalds he ain't. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar
- cpach 7y ago
  IMO you summed it up very well there.

planetzero 7y ago

How ironic: A person railing against cancel culture gets cancelled by cancel culture. Simply disagreeing with politically charged topics gets you a boot from many open source projects. Many people that claim to want tolerance, actually want nothing less than exuberance for their own causes and have no problem painting people they disagree with as non-human, so they can harass, get them fired from their jobs or positions (canceling), and then finally silence. This comes right out of the 'rules for radicals' playbook. If you can't respect my freedom of speech, why should I protect yours?

zionic 7y ago
>Many people that claim to want tolerance, actually want nothing less than exuberance for their own causes This is absolutely brilliant
woofyman 7y ago
> How ironic: A person railing against cancel culture gets cancelled by cancel culture. That’s not ironic. It would be ironic if a supporter of cancel culture got canceled.
- jjgreen 7y ago
  Like rain, on your wedding day, ...

rodgerd 7y ago

Given that the free software world struggles to resolve the relatively simple moral conundrum of whether or not licenses should require people to share, adding another layer of moral and ethical concerns on top - around the idea of trying to define good and bad uses for software - is a heck of an ambitious problem; as such there's a lot of good arguments for and against a candidate who wants the OSI to pick up that work. It's unfortunately that the esr clown show has derailed that with the ravings of a man who, quite to the contrary of one of his sayings, doesn't contribute much code and won't shut up; and the rather than introducing any cogent or interesting thoughts on the topic, has simply sprayed abuse around like an out-of-control honeywagon. The OSI will be a great deal better off for his absence.

itamarst 7y ago

I found one of the emails (https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021328.html https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists..., at the bottom) I would ban someone for that. "Toxic loonytoon" is not a productive way to have a discussion. (Originally quoted it here but getting formatting right here is terrible).

pipework 7y ago

Or we could stop using the things made by people we cancel instead of getting rid of the people. Cancel culture is about not seeing faces anymore, not getting better or improving anything. It's ridiculous to stand atop the work of the people you bury and call yourself holy for it.

paweladamczuk 7y ago

It makes me sad that people are so sensitive that reading a message like the one ESR wrote drives them away from participating in projects and communities that otherwise would interest them. At least this seems to be the narrative of the "PC supporters" here. The world is full of assholes. I think it's better to get used to it than to shelter yourself, try to make every space safe or withdraw from interacting with other people. I know I'm biased though. I am pretty thick-skinned so it's hard to see it from the other perspective.

a1369209993 7y ago
> It makes me sad that people are so sensitive that reading a message like the one ESR wrote drives them away from participating in projects and communities that otherwise would interest them. If it helps, people are not actually like that (or least people that far along the bell curve are much rarer than you seem to believe). The people you're seeing are taking (no, I don't mean feigning) offence in a strategic attempt to shut down someone who disagrees with them politically.

josteink 7y ago

Does someone have a list of common, non-OSI approved software licenses for FOSS software? I might want to relicense some projects I have...

ringzero 7y ago

You know, this really sucks for me personally. Not the ban, but the sorts of things Eric appears to stand for. I read The Cathedral and the Bazaar when I was 13, and it was probably my gateway into advocating for open source. Somewhere around that age, I ended up speaking on a panel, among other OSS advocates, that successfully sold one of the local school divisions on OSS (we also helped them integrate it, on-site :). To be honest, I don’t quite remember the book or quite what I thought of it, but I know it had a profound influence on me at the time. Then I see Eric write this: > Usually (and in this case) accompanied by a lot of bafflegab about “inclusion” and “diversity” so thay anyone who isn't a fan of the new, censorious rules can be cast as some sort of bigot. :/ Eric, we can have it both ways. I hammer it home into the engineers I’ve lead that code is the ultimate source of truth. I‘ll guide them from, for example, “do we need a mutex here” through to object code to generated assembly through to an intel reference manual, because I want to demonstrate that as engineers, we are in full control of our creations. The engineers I work with all challenge each other, and ask difficult questions, and put ideas through difficult tests. Because we’re mature adults, we can do so with language more advanced than “this is shit” (an open source favorite). It’s real easy. How about, “what happens when <state concern>” or “have you considered <alternate approach>”. In fact, by soliciting more feedback and criticism, you are being more inclusive - as long as the conversations play out in a constructive way! Yes, it can be hard to teach that, but that’s why we pay people managers and technical leads to do a job. Honestly, though, what sucks most of all is when you see that people who were so influential to you early in life would apparently look down on the person you are, just because you would ask to be respected in return.

pdonis 7y ago
> Then I see Eric write this You are taking what he wrote out of context and interpreting it to mean something very different than what he intended. Eric is not arguing that insults are preferable to dispassionate feedback. (As I noted in another comment upthread, I have worked with him on a small part of one of his coding projects, and in that context he is all dispassionate feedback and no insults whatever. So in actual work he does not exhibit the bad behavior you describe at all.) He is looking at what is being done to OSI, and what is being done to open source projects around the world, in the name of "social justice", and he sees the same game being played that has been played by the Left for centuries to gain control of institutions and then completely subvert them from their original purpose. If you don't understand that historical context, of course you're not going to understand why he is being so forceful about this. He is not trying to stop people from being constructive and non-insulting about actually writing good code. He is trying to stop people whose ultimate agenda has nothing to do with writing good code from taking over open source projects and ruining them, making us all much worse off in the process.

btilly 7y ago

I am conflicted. I generally despise SJWs and identity politics, but this couldn't have happened to a nicer person. Data point. Read http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/sextips/ http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/sextips/. Data point. It took ESR less than 15 minutes from meeting my ex in late 1999 to make an undesired pass at her. (He knew she was married to me, and was turned down.) Data point. I was at a PerlMongers meeting in 2003. And happened to remark that, "Someone needs to tell ESR that he's not God's gift to women." After the laughter died down, a woman at the table gave an account of his making an unwanted pass at her. This opened a floodgate as every woman at the table had her own similar story in turn. There are many more such data points. But clearly ESR's behavior has been a problem for a long time. However I am still deeply concerned that he establishes a convenient precedent that will be applied to other, much less problematic, people.

gpanders 7y ago
> but this couldn't have happened to a nicer person. I think maybe you meant "couldn't have happened to a more deserving person"? The way you phrased it implies you think ESR is actually quite a nice person who didn't deserve what he got, while the remainder of your post clearly shows that's not what you mean.
- btilly 7y ago
  That is what I meant, and that is what the idiom usually means. See https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/couldn%27t+have+happened+to+a+nicer+person https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/couldn%27t+have+happene... for verification.
  - gpanders 7y ago
    > Sometimes used sarcastically when referring to a negative event happening to an unpleasant person. Interesting! I've never heard this used in a sarcastic way. My mistake.

6510 7y ago

I thought about it and its actually funny! Founding shit like this took a special kind of dinosaur, the kind who criticizes everything. The self critique being the most important kind. In an ideal world you can never have enough of that. Sadly for other people, if you have a lot of it, it is hard not to project it outwards as well. It takes a great struggle to not subject others to the same standard one holds himself to. It can be done... until codez of conduct are coined then such person just explodes - which is funny. Fuzzy little creatures then make a home in the hard shell they leave behind.

contingencies 7y ago

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, on Voltaire's principles

pcj-github 7y ago

I side with ESR, this is silly. What I think the moderators should have done in this circumstance is actually moderate. In cases like this where things are getting heated and you're obviously in an un-usual circumstance, schedule a real conversation to diffuse the situation. Slack, Zoom, Hangouts, phone call, whatever. Anything where tone and emotion can be effectively communicated. Can you do this always? No. Should you do it when you're founding member is at risk of being banned from the mailing list? Obviously, yes. This is what happens when people rely too much on email.

yellowapple 7y ago
Hell, even a private email chain (i.e. off-list) would be better than nothing.

classics2 7y ago

Not every contribution, even if useful, is worth the price the contributor demands. The way to stop this is to just disregard the contributions of those who’s asking price is everyone else’s slavish obedience to their standards of conduct.

Uhhrrr 7y ago

The enthusiasm for shaming in this mail from the thread makes my stomach turn. They seem to be either blissfully unaware or malevolently aware that it would lead to more marginalization, not less: https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021285.html https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists... "This special exception makes clear who the community considers a bad actor and initially imposes greater obligations on them than anyone else. [....] As in the Persona non Grata Preamble, this special exception serves as a clear statement on the community's view on who is welcome in their community. Additionally, if the bad actor wants to redistribute, they have to distribute the license shaming them."

antepodius 7y ago
There's no greater feeling than the crunch of the bones of the unworthy beneath your heel.

erulabs 7y ago

When I was 16 or so I made my very first patch to the KDE project. It was really awful code - and I was told to kill myself due to its quality. There are absolutely bullies in FOSS - but I swapped to Gnome and called it a day. I was pretty upset, but a few months later Postfix accepted a patch so I spent 3 years as a mail administrator. My issue here is the lack of transparency - just tell us why he was banned. His essay on social politics seems non-Germaine - it wasn’t aimed at anyone. If he directly insulted harassed or threatened a contributor - absolutely kick him out - but just copy paste the text! It’s a fairly low bar to hit for those given the authority to ban someone from their own creation.

jshevek 7y ago

Many people seem to believe that name calling in the form of "toxic loonytoon" was key to this decision. Toxic people exist. We must be able to discuss our opinion that someone is toxic. "Loonytoon" is indeed a gratuitous insult, but a very mild one. Silly, even. It doesn't make sense to me that OSI would react so strongly and dramatically to such a mild insult. I suspect there is another element to this which no one is discussing.

jshevek 7y ago

ESR discusses this on his blog: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8609 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8609

jasoneckert 7y ago

This is a well-written article on many levels. Unfortunately, my respect for OSI has bottomed out after reading it.

esjeon 7y ago

TBH, cancellers, who pull this kind of "cancel" drama, are no better than their cancellees. They are actually worse, because they are turning a personal drama into an organizational drama, rather abruptly. Not to mention that this process mostly involves ad-hominem, cherry-picking, and non-public decisions. I mean, these people create a bigger political mess while trying to "clean" a tiny irrelevant mess. Lame. Unproductive.

davidgerard 7y ago

The correct axis to consider this question along is "hostile work environment". Because coding is a job, and open source coding is a job these days. And you are expected to behave in a somewhat professional manner. ESR's email in any reasonable workplace would lead to a disciplinary hearing. It was a bad email that should not have been sent.

zozbot234 7y ago
An open source maintainer is not your boss. If your work on an open source project is not being accepted, you can just fork the project and effortlessly escape any "hostility", while still taking full credit for your coding. The proposed Persona Non Grata clause actively creates a full-blown "hostile work environment" problem where none existed before (by purposely obstructing the "freedom to fork" aspect of FLOSS development), so if you're right it's Ehmke who is doing what you describe, not ESR.

LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago

Let them have it. All. Wait until they fall. Because bikeshedding Gerrit is not fit for merit. Bitrotten incest is their best. Fork in silent stealth, away from the screaming masses. Enjoy the silence, and clear air. No obnoxious gases anymore, just code and score. While THEY have nothing to show, except screaming fits. Dumb shits!

luord 7y ago

It's pretty pathetic that Chestek wasn't able (or allowed) to even mention who was the "subscriber" that was banned in that email. Mind you, I disagree with Raymond on quite a few things, but he's clearly far worthier of being read (at least on OSS matters) than these Chestek and Berkus persons.

zenlot 7y ago

> Eric S Raymond: The fetishization of ‘nice’ behavior, where ‘nice’ ends up defined as being any behavior some self-appointed censor doesn't like. Usually (and in this case) accompanied by a lot of bafflegab about “inclusion” and “diversity” so thay anyone who isn't a fan of the new, censorious rules can be cast as some sort of bigot. Pretty much represents HN community too.

speakingcode 7y ago

How is this reply from Josh Berkus NOT doing exactly what he accuses ESR of doing?? A directed attack on a person's character riddled with accusations and assumptions about their motive but entirely void of response to any of the points or topics the person brought up, and a dismissive, alienating assertion that the person makes no contribution or adds any value, and their absence will not be felt? Seems like an attempt to intimidate an opponent and win an argument by making the opponent afraid (or banned) to participate >>> ESR's “sharp language” is not an attempt to persuade. It is an attempt to intimidate opponents; to “win” an argument by making others afraid to participate. Indeed, even today OSI mailing list composition is entirely folks with enough privilege to be resistant to personal attacks. That's a sad, terrible thing. It's not “free speech” when it's an attempt to shout others down so that they have no voice. It's something else entirely. Further, not one of ESR's points is original or even original to this list. In his absence, not one of the ideas he so “colorfully” expressed will be lost. In the meantime, we're missing the input of so many people who will not participate in OSI because of our tolerance for wholly uncivilized behavior like his posts.