12 ms·

CoreJS: State of the project? Looks like dead. Any official fork?

280 points by SenHeng 7y ago

jakear 7y ago
What a wild ride this has been. Looking at the police report, I do wonder what the punishment would be in other countries. It seems the victims were laying drunk on the ground in dark clothing at top a hill (edit: hill not mentioned in police report, but seems logical given the headlight statement), causing the headlight beams to not illuminate them. On top of that, incoming traffic blinded the driver. This is of course according to his testimony, but I can't imagine I (or anyone else) would have been able to avoid such a situation. Edit with source: Citing the actual circumstances of the accident, he emphasizes that he could not notice the pedestrians in a timely manner, as they were below the light level of the headlights of the vehicle(R.G. - lay, P.A. - tried to lift it), were dressed in dark clothes, street lighting was insufficient, he(Pushkarev D.V.)was blinded by the distant light of the oncoming car. Further, the author discloses the contents of the testimony of witnesses A.A., A.Y., A.M., I.K., A.S.,focuses on the behavior of victims at a pedestrian crossing, which contradicted the requirements of p.4.6 of the Rules of the Road of the Russian Federation. It notes that the victims were in a state of alcoholic intoxication, behaved inadequately. It points out that p.14.1 traffic rules of the Russian Federation provides for the duty of the driver to pass pedestrians crossing the roadway, and not lying on it. He insists that he would have noticed the victims and was able to prevent the attack if they were moving on the crossing upright. https://kraevoy--alt.sudrf.ru/modules.php?name=sud_delo&srv_num=1&name_op=doc&number=1733512&delo_id=4&new=4&text_number=1 https://kraevoy--alt.sudrf.ru/modules.php?name=sud_delo&srv_... Transalted by Bing.
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Honestly I could see that happening to me. Some cars have lights that make it hard to see clearly on my side of the road. I wish car windshields could shield your eyes from lights too bright or something. Especially now that cars have these bright LED lights depending on the angle they are as bad as high beams when they pierce your eyes. I kinda hate driving at night. People can barely keep from getting into accidents in broad daylight imagine at night time.
  - anitil 7y ago
    Often those LED lights aren't angled correctly (at least here in Australia), on the highway in a non-SUV I sometimes get temporarily blinded by oncoming and following traffic at night on the highway
  - MiroF 7y ago
    This was in a motorcycle.
    - agapon 7y ago
      Many motorcycles have windshields too. Many motorcycle helmets as well.
  - vbezhenar 7y ago
    There are glasses for night driving (yellow ones) which will reduce bright light and increase contrast in low light situations. You might want to check them out.
- nl 7y ago
  I haven't read the full coverage, but it does appear it occurred at a pedestrian crossing, and there doesn't appear to be any dispute that it was properly signposted. Most countries require greater care at pedestrian crossings.
  - jnbiche 7y ago
    Yes, but they were lying flat on the road, intoxicated.
    - sdegutis 7y ago
      If the google translation wasn’t too faulty, one was still lying down, one was getting up and probably trying to get out of the way. The main impediment to seeing them seems to be the headlights of oncoming cars, possibly while coming over a hill. I always slow down in exactly those circumstances (hill and oncoming headlights) for similar reasons: you just don’t know what’s over the hill, and it’s an extra few seconds of travel time. There’s no downside and only extra caution and safety for all involved.
      - jnbiche 7y ago
        There's a medium between being a super careful driver like you and I, and being a grossly negligent driver who drove in such a grossly negligent manner that they deserve over a year in a harsh prison system. I highly recommend driving like you say, and do so myself. The last points on my license were were over 15 years ago. But I don't think someone who was failed to be extremely careful to this level deserves 1.5 years in a harsh prison system. Maybe lose his license, but not prison.
        tonyedgecombe 7y ago
        If he didn't slow down enough that he could stop in the distance he could see then he was grossly negligent.
  - 40four 7y ago
- jessaustin 7y ago
  One could go to prison for this in USA, but only if the local police and prosecutors already hated one's guts for other reasons. In most cases a drunk pedestrian would be considered less sympathetic than a sober driver. Yes it is a pretty shabby "justice" when sympathies rather than facts determine verdicts.
  - MiroF 7y ago
    The US justice system in general is pretty sympathetic to drivers in general, I doubt a case like this would see over a year of jail time here, and likely none at all.
    - globular-toast 7y ago
      Drivers yes, but I think he was riding a motorbike.
    - syshum 7y ago
      The US does not have a justice system, it has a legal system. Any "justice" served by the system is pure coincidence
  - tashoecraft 7y ago
    Someone I know was driving down a country road and struck a person in the middle of the road and killed them. The person wasn't drunk as far as I know, but their car broke down and they were trying to walk to somewhere. Why they chose to walk in the middle of the road at night no one knows, but due to the desolate region and the unexpectedness of it, they were not seen. There was no jail time and charges filled. It was understood that the pedestrian shouldn't have done that. It really messed the driver up, they're a very nice person and having caused the death of someone really hurt them, even though there really wasn't anything they could have done. Obviously every instance is circumstantial, and I didn't really read anything about the case, but if drunk people were lying down in the road, at night, in dark clothing, I don't see a crime.
    - valuearb 7y ago
- nostromo 7y ago
  If you'll permit a tangent, there are a lot of drunk pedestrian fatalities. I don't think we talk enough about the risk of drunk walking. Over one third of pedestrians killed in the US each year have been drinking too much to drive. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/05/drunk-pedestrian-fatalities/2621673/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/05/drunk-...
  - catalogia 7y ago
    How much of this is due to the immediate physiological effects of alcohol (e.g. impaired reaction time, etc) and how much of it is chronic depressed alcoholics disregarding their own well-being and possibly committing suicide? I've walked home drunk from bars more than a few times and I've never experienced any trouble using crosswalks like normal. I'm pretty certain it's much safer than driving home drunk (not that I drive to bars in the first place.)
    - fiblye 7y ago
      Driving at night down narrow streets, I've had some people pop out from behind a wall in front of me. Fortunately everyone involved has always had good reaction times, so I don't think I've killed anybody yet. Somebody who's not really thinking, or just stumbling around and being goofy. Lots of people including myself have said "DUDE wouldn't it be funny if we did [X incredibly stupid thing]?" while unreasonably drunk. Normally calm people start fights with people who can clearly kick their ass after a couple drinks. Probably a few think they can take on or play chicken with a car. Some people also just blink for a second and suddenly they're asleep, if they have enough drinks. Depression may be a cause, but honest accidents and impaired thinking are definitely big reasons.
      - pvorb 7y ago
        > I don't think I've killed anybody yet If you can't tell for sure, are you certain that you weren't drunk yourself?
    - cam_l 7y ago
- sdegutis 7y ago
  After reading the whole translation linked in the GitHub issue, and being a father of 6 kids who love to make me practice being a judge every day as if I have nothing better to do, I’m convinced the judgment is reasonable. Even in our tiny library parking lot, I very often see people driving unreasonably fast between all the parked cars and the library door, often within a foot of the cars. Even if they are driving within the speed limit, there are constantly people coming out from between cars in a way that they can’t be detected by cars ahead of time, especially young children who don’t have the life experience to know to come out slower. It’s unquestionably dangerous to drive like that, yet I see it almost every single day. One of these days someone is going to get hurt. And in this case it looks like the same circumstances: a bit of reasonable cautiousness could have possibly prevented the driver from not seeing the people apparently laying on the crosswalk. Unless the driver followed every single procedure of the road perfectly, they are at fault to at least some degree. And someone is dead. It’s just a generally awful situation all around and nobody wins.
  - jakear 7y ago
    The defendant actually admitted guilt, seemingly readily. His argument was not that he did nothing wrong, but instead that the sentence should be adjusted. Instead of the minimum jail time of 1.5 years, he was asking for the maximum suspension of driving privilege time of 3 years. If jail is for criminal activity and suspension of driving privilege is for poor driving practice, I can see his point. Of course it gets blurry when you have criminally poor driving practice.
    - sdegutis 7y ago
      Yes but assuming negligent driving is the cause of death of another person, it seems that just not being able to drive for a while is not taking into account the seriousness of the permanence or the consequences of the events. I am no fan of jail and don’t wish prison on anyone. But justice seems to demand at least some kind of serious retribution for the loss of life if there is any accountability. For intentional murder people get 20+ years. Accidental death having only 1.5 seems much smaller than that. That’s all I’m saying. If it wasn’t negligent but reasonable then I agree that no jail time makes most sense. But slowing down at cross walks at night in Russia seems like a reasonable thing to expect. But I’m no judge.
- manigandham 7y ago
  Perhaps this detail should be added to the Github issue to mitigate the misunderstandings and accusations already going on there.
  - scubadude 7y ago
    The lack of empathy displayed in that thread is disgusting.
- MiroF 7y ago
  I think it is worth including the fact that: a. He was driving a motorcycle and b. One of the victims was not lying on the road, but instead standing and trying to pull up the other (or so I've read)
  - lstodd 7y ago
    If he was driving a car there would have been two corpses. This is the only difference.
- baybal2 7y ago
  This is the very reason Russians buy dashcams by tonnes. Sold few thousands of them to Russian retailers at around 2008-2009, when I worked in a trade company in Singapore. Previously they were used by Taiwanese taxis to record what's going on inside the car. Russian's immediately found an inventive use for it, and instead made them to videolog what's going on in front of the car.
  - syshum 7y ago
    Everyone should have a dashcam.. I have had installed them in all of my cars fro the better part of a decade now. I am in the US
    - vbezhenar 7y ago
      Does every country allows filming everything outside? I could imagine that some laws won't allow that or won't allow such a recording to be used as an evidence in court.
      - Operyl 7y ago
        At least in the US, I believe it varies state by state with certain restrictions pertaining to audio specifically, iirc.
- throwaway147147 7y ago
  The following is case assured me that the justice system in Germany is good and just: A child was fatally hit by a truck at a tram station after another child pushed them. The truck driver tested positive for pot and was ultimately acquitted because the court concluded that even if the driver had been perfectly fit for driving, the accident would have been unavoidable. I can not remember but I am certain that the driver had to face additional charges for driving under influence but this is another thing.
- gbuk2013 7y ago
  > Looking at the police report, I do wonder what the punishment would be in other countries. In the U.K. 1-2 years it seems. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causing_death_by_dangerous_driving https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causing_death_by_dangerous_d... Having read the facts appeal case you linked to it does not seem unreasonable (colliding with pedestrians on a marked and signed road crossing, travelling at >30mph). In the U.K. there is definitely an expectation that you slow down before a crossing. In this case the court applied the minimum sentence and appeal rejected the victims’s side request for a harsher sentence. The facts in the appeal case list many factors, some of which are not in favour of the driver (one pedestrian was trying to pick up the other so they were unlikely to have been lying down on the road and oncoming vehicles were flashing lights as a warning).
deleted 7y ago
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saagarjha 7y ago
Some background: CoreJS is a widely used JavaScript library, apparently used for polyfilling by Babel. The author was previously know for asking for a job in npm install logs (https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/548 https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/548), and recently seems to have gone to jail for vehicular manslaughter, leaving the project without a maintainer.
- jakear 7y ago
  To add to this, he was actually asking for a job to help with the legal fees from this incident. https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/548#issuecomment-494112872 https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/548#issuecomment-...
- jnbiche 7y ago
  Evidently, it was his legal problems that provoked the job request and console ads, so I'm sympathetic. And based on the description above, it's highly unlikely that he would have been charged in most countries. The person who died was lying on the road at night, in dark clothes, intoxicated. Sympathy to her family, but that would count as an exculpating circumstance in most Western countries, I'm fairly sure. I sure as hell that I'd do whatever I could legally to avoid going to a Russian (or American) prison, if what I'd done was an accident and of very doubtful criminality from the perspective of most countries. Wouldn't you? Now he'll be stuck in a Russian prison for 2 years because of a tragic accident in which he was arguably not that negligent. Edit: All of this is based on the facts as I have been able to find them online. I may be wrong in my interpretation.
  - ivan_gammel 7y ago
    I can read Russian. According to the information from the court: 1) he lost an appeal, meaning that his case was in the court at least two times. 2) the dead victim was not lying on the road, that’s false information. She was trying to remove other victim from the crosswalk. Knowing the motorcycle culture in Russia I would not be sympathetic to anyone there - it has nothing to do with safety on the road.
meritt 7y ago
Can NPM not just override "core-js" when performing dependency resolution and point to a maintained fork?
- jakear 7y ago
  Would you want all packages you're responsible for being taken over by whomever happens to be NPM's preferred forker in the event of your getting into legal troubles? I'd be strongly against that. This should be handled the way any other fork happens: people create forks, other people audit them for stability and choose which to update their dependencies to. This isn't up to NPM to decide.
  - waterfowl 7y ago
    Now Microsoft's preferred forker. Yikes!
    - battery_cowboy 7y ago
      I'd rather hear Microsoft's suggestions on libraries to use than some random Joe Developer. They have/had unethical business practices, but their tech is really good and they have very smart people working for them.
      - foepys 7y ago
        A lot of people are making fun of Microsoft but most of them don't know or appreciate that you can run software compiled in the 90s on the most recent Windows 10 1909 without problems. Microsoft's backwards compatibility is off the charts. Try that with macOS.
        Zardoz84 7y ago
        Well... Windows 10 have the record of the being the only windows that breaks backwards compatibility sometimes. I saw Visual Basic 5/6 applications stooping to work because Microsoft break something on a update. Also, good luck trying to run any Windows 16 bit application on a modern Windows 64 bit installation.
agildehaus 7y ago
Couldn't someone he trusts just ask him for credentials? It may be harder to contact him right now, but not impossible.
- bdcravens 7y ago
  Jails have mail, and most have phones.
  - agapon 7y ago
    And Russian jails?
    - baybal2 7y ago
      1 box of Marlboro for the prison guard should do it
- oefrha 7y ago
  Not if the credentials are in a password manager. Will I divulge my master password just so that someone else could maintain a project that I can’t? The most likely answer is no.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Seems really sheepish to bother the guy in jail over this. Also, publish creds aren't the problem. The problem seems to be that nobody else really wants to maintain it including anyone at Babel, core-js' biggest user afaict. If nobody steps up, it should just be a reminder of how flimsy open-source can be when there are so many bus-factor-of-one nodes out there that we depend on. It's a pretty big downside of depending on the hobbytime charity of random people, especially when we (or github comment culture) are so hostile when anyone dares to seek a penny. You could write a library that every fortune 500 company uses to save a cumulative hundreds of thousands of dollars in employee-hours over the library's lifetime, but you're the asshole if you use your library's popularity to seek work or donations. People will come out of the woodwork to scold you.
- shaneprrlt 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
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orliesaurus 7y ago
I am really curious as to what happens here, remember left-pad controversy? [1][2] This is like round 2. How will npm/github act now? Especially now that it's Microsoft's npm /s [1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/ [2] https://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-npm https://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-np...
- whoisjuan 7y ago
  Why would the registry do anything at all? That’s why forking it’s a thing. It’s certainly inconvenient but transferring the access of the original project to another party sets a very bad precedent. Maybe when the maintainer dies, but this guy is very much alive. It is his work and he chose to give it freely to others through an OSS license. That doesn’t automatically grant anybody access to the original project. If somebody wants and needs to keep updating it then they should just fork it. The left-pad issue is also different because in that case the original maintainer took it down which broke a bunch of packages that had dependencies on it. This project is still in the registry and it will still work as it is for the foreseeable future.
  - juliansimioni 7y ago
    Here's a hypothetical, but extremely plausible scenario. Lets say tomorrow a major security vulnerability is discovered in CoreJS. Full root access because I'm making this all up. NPM says core-js has 19k dependents, so it would be very preferable if an X.Y.1 release could be pushed with a security only fix, to be picked up in as many projects as possible. In that case, I think it would be extremely reasonable for NPM to decide to take action. For example, they could take the package over themselves and publish a patch release. Or they could temporarily add maintainership to a trusted member of the community. No solution is without problems in this scenario, but there would be good arguments for either of those serious actions.
    - qeternity 7y ago
      You're conflating two things: the npm package, and the GitHub repo. In your hypothetical, I agree with you that action would be needed: the repo should be forked and patched, and NPM should publish the new release as the official npm corejs package. This has accomplishes the same while trampling as little "ownership" as possible.
untog 7y ago
What an ugly comment thread that is. Anyway I doubt it’s fair to say the project is dead, something of this importance will be forked and maintained. It’s an annoyance for sure, though.
ssijak 7y ago
What if the person lying on the road survived and the person driving the motorbike died. Would the person lying on the road be charged for manslaughter? And if yes, how is this situation different to shift the blame from one person to another.
- joecool1029 7y ago
  At least in US there's a pedestrian's duty of care that's involved in determinations like this. A pedestrian could be found guilty of negligence and the burden shifts to them partially or in full depending on the state and the exact circumstances. Examples could include intentionally running into traffic, attempting to disrupt traffic, or even things like ignoring walk signals. However, in the last case it's unlikely that would relieve a driver of their duty of care as they'd still be in a crosswalk, it would just usually reduce the portion of their liability and move some onto the pedestrian... in some places (like NY). That type of scenario probably would have played out in this case for the states that have compensatory systems, but I'm really not 100% sure once it involves death. I think even Russia has this situation covered if you can prove on a camera that someone intentionally jumped out in front of you. It's just way less open to interpretation by the court.
- PeterisP 7y ago
  The court determined that in this case (on a marked pedestrian crossing where pedestrians have right of way) the bike driver broke the rules of traffic as he should have stopped before the crossing; and it did not determine that the pedestrians broke the rules of traffic. So if the person lying on the road survived and the person driving the motorbike died, then it's plausible that the person lying on the road would be charged for manslaughter in order to determine the situation (I believe that in case of fatal traffic incidents involving more than one party, in Russia almost always a criminal investigation is opened) but would be found not guilty.
SaxonRobber 7y ago
Jesus npm is a cancerous dumpster fire. Guy must have been a saint to continue maintaining the project in spite of all of entitled "developers" using his package and scolding him for DARING TO ASK FOR A DIME.
- ankka 7y ago
  And nobody wants to take responsibility and maintain it either, not even now.
  - throw_m239339 7y ago
    I'm not surprised at all. I bet there are plenty of multi-billion dollars companies using that project who never contributed a cent to its author yet sent their developers on GitHub to complain about the state of the project. It happened to a few maintainers I know. These companies save millions in development cost on the back of a few developers in developed countries. This is open source, I get it, but this isn't fair either. Look at that comment: > ....yikes. Sounds like a fork needs to happen. And github should really look to provide a 'risk' rating to projects from a maintenance PoV... a project depended on by 4.5m users with 1 maintainer should visualise as a high-risk dependency. It's not up to GitHub to do that, it's up to the individual or the company to audit a project and its dependencies and be prepared to be able to maintain it themselves. Or pay the only developer to do exactly that. Another comment (quoted by another guy): > Babel maintainer here We are probably not going to fork core-js because we don't have enough resources to maintain it. And people expect a single developer to have the resources to do exactly that? look at babel and the list of sponsors, yet they don't have the resources: https://github.com/babel/babel https://github.com/babel/babel
    - SaxonRobber 7y ago
      That's what happens when the Free is removed from FOSS.
      - throw_m239339 7y ago
chrismorgan 7y ago
In bus factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor) considerations, I guess I’ve never considered that legal matters can take the driver out of commission as well as the person hit by the bus!
miguelmota 7y ago
The CoreJS author blocked me and many other people on github for simply making a suggestion to tone down the "looking for a good job" npm install logs because it'll invoke other people to try the same thing which would result in unnecessary log pollution. It seemed like strange behavior for someone maintaining a very popular community driven project.
- aastronaut 7y ago
  IMHO there is no reason to bring an unrelated GitHub issue discussion into this comment thread.
  - Operyl 7y ago
    It seems partially related, if you read the linked threads. It goes on to link to various other issues detailing what is going on with the author, including the ultimate reason he added the job message (he had a ton of lawyer fees he needed to recuperate.) He ran out of money, it would appear, to continue paying and ultimately had to take his sentence if I got the general gist.
- Strom 7y ago
  > community driven project Check out the contributors page for this project. [1] This is not a community driven project. It's a one man show. -- [1] https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/graphs/contributors https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/graphs/contributors
  - miguelmota 7y ago
    What I meant is that he implements features based on community feedback and responses. The community was largely opposed to NPM install log ads but he became pretty passive-aggressive towards people with opposing opinions.
ariabuckles 7y ago
FYI it looks like this project isn't necessarily dead; another contributor who merged a PR 2 days ago just posted a short update: https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/767#issuecomment-603682034 https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/767#issuecomment-... > Stop spam & panic! I have rules for this repo and i have some time for fixing critical bugs and major updates.
fractalf 7y ago
Don't panic! No need to bring out the towel, the dolphins aren't leaving just yet. Someone else has access to this repo and stated that security fixes will be maintained.
enitihas 7y ago
The entitlement in that thread is mind blowing. A lot of people who are complaining about there being only a single maintainer, seem to have no open source contribution history on github. If the project is important to so many people, they sure didn't show it by donating to the maintainer. Saying XYZ project is important to me, and there should be some js foundation taking care of it, (implicitly also saying I have zero intention of making any effort) sounds too hard to believe unless you see this in real life. As Joe Biden said: "Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value."
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Frost1x 7y ago
  This really reminds me of most my interactions with the JS community. I'm sure not everyone is that way. Whenever my projects use FOSS I always remind them exactly what a 'dependency' is. You should know and understand your dependencies and risks associated with relying on them. You need to be willing to lock-in to a version if need be or replace it entirely. Some developers I work with that throw together one-off web applications tend to inject dozens (sometimes hundreds) of dependencies (which they like to dynamically pull from latest builds) into their projects, enough to make me dizzy looking through the list. Typically development starts, they meet some initial goal and keep gluing more and more packages together to meet some goal/desired functionality. Then something breaks and they conveniently have other internal work that has to take priority, leaving a broken application they don't want to deal with for someone else to fix because they know it's an absolute mess they created. Rinse repeat. Now you've established an expectation of functionality you have no clue how to maintain and did not clearly explain that to your client when you took shortcuts to glue everything together.
ilyich 7y ago
He will be able to maintain the repo. From the sentence [0] you can see that he is sentenced to spend his term in an open prison [1] (Russian колония-поселение) It means he will be able to have internet access without any problems. So no need to panic at all. [0] https://kraevoy--alt.sudrf.ru/modules.php?name=sud_delo&srv_num=1&name_op=doc&number=1733512&delo_id=4&new=4&text_number=1 https://kraevoy--alt.sudrf.ru/modules.php?name=sud_delo&srv_... [1] https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D0%BF%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5 https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%...

280 points by SenHeng 7y ago

What a wild ride this has been. Looking at the police report, I do wonder what the punishment would be in other countries. It seems the victims were laying drunk on the ground in dark clothing at top a hill (edit: hill not mentioned in police report, but seems logical given the headlight statement), causing the headlight beams to not illuminate them. On top of that, incoming traffic blinded the driver. This is of course according to his testimony, but I can't imagine I (or anyone else) would have been able to avoid such a situation. Edit with source: Citing the actual circumstances of the accident, he emphasizes that he could not notice the pedestrians in a timely manner, as they were below the light level of the headlights of the vehicle(R.G. - lay, P.A. - tried to lift it), were dressed in dark clothes, street lighting was insufficient, he(Pushkarev D.V.)was blinded by the distant light of the oncoming car. Further, the author discloses the contents of the testimony of witnesses A.A., A.Y., A.M., I.K., A.S.,focuses on the behavior of victims at a pedestrian crossing, which contradicted the requirements of p.4.6 of the Rules of the Road of the Russian Federation. It notes that the victims were in a state of alcoholic intoxication, behaved inadequately. It points out that p.14.1 traffic rules of the Russian Federation provides for the duty of the driver to pass pedestrians crossing the roadway, and not lying on it. He insists that he would have noticed the victims and was able to prevent the attack if they were moving on the crossing upright. https://kraevoy--alt.sudrf.ru/modules.php?name=sud_delo&srv_num=1&name_op=doc&number=1733512&delo_id=4&new=4&text_number=1 https://kraevoy--alt.sudrf.ru/modules.php?name=sud_delo&srv_... Transalted by Bing.

giancarlostoro 7y ago
Honestly I could see that happening to me. Some cars have lights that make it hard to see clearly on my side of the road. I wish car windshields could shield your eyes from lights too bright or something. Especially now that cars have these bright LED lights depending on the angle they are as bad as high beams when they pierce your eyes. I kinda hate driving at night. People can barely keep from getting into accidents in broad daylight imagine at night time.
- anitil 7y ago
  Often those LED lights aren't angled correctly (at least here in Australia), on the highway in a non-SUV I sometimes get temporarily blinded by oncoming and following traffic at night on the highway
- MiroF 7y ago
  This was in a motorcycle.
  - agapon 7y ago
    Many motorcycles have windshields too. Many motorcycle helmets as well.
- vbezhenar 7y ago
  There are glasses for night driving (yellow ones) which will reduce bright light and increase contrast in low light situations. You might want to check them out.
nl 7y ago
I haven't read the full coverage, but it does appear it occurred at a pedestrian crossing, and there doesn't appear to be any dispute that it was properly signposted. Most countries require greater care at pedestrian crossings.
- jnbiche 7y ago
  Yes, but they were lying flat on the road, intoxicated.
  - sdegutis 7y ago
    If the google translation wasn’t too faulty, one was still lying down, one was getting up and probably trying to get out of the way. The main impediment to seeing them seems to be the headlights of oncoming cars, possibly while coming over a hill. I always slow down in exactly those circumstances (hill and oncoming headlights) for similar reasons: you just don’t know what’s over the hill, and it’s an extra few seconds of travel time. There’s no downside and only extra caution and safety for all involved.
    - jnbiche 7y ago
      There's a medium between being a super careful driver like you and I, and being a grossly negligent driver who drove in such a grossly negligent manner that they deserve over a year in a harsh prison system. I highly recommend driving like you say, and do so myself. The last points on my license were were over 15 years ago. But I don't think someone who was failed to be extremely careful to this level deserves 1.5 years in a harsh prison system. Maybe lose his license, but not prison.
      - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
        If he didn't slow down enough that he could stop in the distance he could see then he was grossly negligent.
- 40four 7y ago
jessaustin 7y ago
One could go to prison for this in USA, but only if the local police and prosecutors already hated one's guts for other reasons. In most cases a drunk pedestrian would be considered less sympathetic than a sober driver. Yes it is a pretty shabby "justice" when sympathies rather than facts determine verdicts.
- MiroF 7y ago
  The US justice system in general is pretty sympathetic to drivers in general, I doubt a case like this would see over a year of jail time here, and likely none at all.
  - globular-toast 7y ago
    Drivers yes, but I think he was riding a motorbike.
  - syshum 7y ago
    The US does not have a justice system, it has a legal system. Any "justice" served by the system is pure coincidence
- tashoecraft 7y ago
  Someone I know was driving down a country road and struck a person in the middle of the road and killed them. The person wasn't drunk as far as I know, but their car broke down and they were trying to walk to somewhere. Why they chose to walk in the middle of the road at night no one knows, but due to the desolate region and the unexpectedness of it, they were not seen. There was no jail time and charges filled. It was understood that the pedestrian shouldn't have done that. It really messed the driver up, they're a very nice person and having caused the death of someone really hurt them, even though there really wasn't anything they could have done. Obviously every instance is circumstantial, and I didn't really read anything about the case, but if drunk people were lying down in the road, at night, in dark clothing, I don't see a crime.
  - valuearb 7y ago
nostromo 7y ago
If you'll permit a tangent, there are a lot of drunk pedestrian fatalities. I don't think we talk enough about the risk of drunk walking. Over one third of pedestrians killed in the US each year have been drinking too much to drive. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/05/drunk-pedestrian-fatalities/2621673/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/05/drunk-...
- catalogia 7y ago
  How much of this is due to the immediate physiological effects of alcohol (e.g. impaired reaction time, etc) and how much of it is chronic depressed alcoholics disregarding their own well-being and possibly committing suicide? I've walked home drunk from bars more than a few times and I've never experienced any trouble using crosswalks like normal. I'm pretty certain it's much safer than driving home drunk (not that I drive to bars in the first place.)
  - fiblye 7y ago
    Driving at night down narrow streets, I've had some people pop out from behind a wall in front of me. Fortunately everyone involved has always had good reaction times, so I don't think I've killed anybody yet. Somebody who's not really thinking, or just stumbling around and being goofy. Lots of people including myself have said "DUDE wouldn't it be funny if we did [X incredibly stupid thing]?" while unreasonably drunk. Normally calm people start fights with people who can clearly kick their ass after a couple drinks. Probably a few think they can take on or play chicken with a car. Some people also just blink for a second and suddenly they're asleep, if they have enough drinks. Depression may be a cause, but honest accidents and impaired thinking are definitely big reasons.
    - pvorb 7y ago
      > I don't think I've killed anybody yet If you can't tell for sure, are you certain that you weren't drunk yourself?
  - cam_l 7y ago
sdegutis 7y ago
After reading the whole translation linked in the GitHub issue, and being a father of 6 kids who love to make me practice being a judge every day as if I have nothing better to do, I’m convinced the judgment is reasonable. Even in our tiny library parking lot, I very often see people driving unreasonably fast between all the parked cars and the library door, often within a foot of the cars. Even if they are driving within the speed limit, there are constantly people coming out from between cars in a way that they can’t be detected by cars ahead of time, especially young children who don’t have the life experience to know to come out slower. It’s unquestionably dangerous to drive like that, yet I see it almost every single day. One of these days someone is going to get hurt. And in this case it looks like the same circumstances: a bit of reasonable cautiousness could have possibly prevented the driver from not seeing the people apparently laying on the crosswalk. Unless the driver followed every single procedure of the road perfectly, they are at fault to at least some degree. And someone is dead. It’s just a generally awful situation all around and nobody wins.
- jakear 7y ago
  The defendant actually admitted guilt, seemingly readily. His argument was not that he did nothing wrong, but instead that the sentence should be adjusted. Instead of the minimum jail time of 1.5 years, he was asking for the maximum suspension of driving privilege time of 3 years. If jail is for criminal activity and suspension of driving privilege is for poor driving practice, I can see his point. Of course it gets blurry when you have criminally poor driving practice.
  - sdegutis 7y ago
    Yes but assuming negligent driving is the cause of death of another person, it seems that just not being able to drive for a while is not taking into account the seriousness of the permanence or the consequences of the events. I am no fan of jail and don’t wish prison on anyone. But justice seems to demand at least some kind of serious retribution for the loss of life if there is any accountability. For intentional murder people get 20+ years. Accidental death having only 1.5 seems much smaller than that. That’s all I’m saying. If it wasn’t negligent but reasonable then I agree that no jail time makes most sense. But slowing down at cross walks at night in Russia seems like a reasonable thing to expect. But I’m no judge.
manigandham 7y ago
Perhaps this detail should be added to the Github issue to mitigate the misunderstandings and accusations already going on there.
- scubadude 7y ago
  The lack of empathy displayed in that thread is disgusting.
MiroF 7y ago
I think it is worth including the fact that: a. He was driving a motorcycle and b. One of the victims was not lying on the road, but instead standing and trying to pull up the other (or so I've read)
- lstodd 7y ago
  If he was driving a car there would have been two corpses. This is the only difference.
baybal2 7y ago
This is the very reason Russians buy dashcams by tonnes. Sold few thousands of them to Russian retailers at around 2008-2009, when I worked in a trade company in Singapore. Previously they were used by Taiwanese taxis to record what's going on inside the car. Russian's immediately found an inventive use for it, and instead made them to videolog what's going on in front of the car.
- syshum 7y ago
  Everyone should have a dashcam.. I have had installed them in all of my cars fro the better part of a decade now. I am in the US
  - vbezhenar 7y ago
    Does every country allows filming everything outside? I could imagine that some laws won't allow that or won't allow such a recording to be used as an evidence in court.
    - Operyl 7y ago
      At least in the US, I believe it varies state by state with certain restrictions pertaining to audio specifically, iirc.
throwaway147147 7y ago
The following is case assured me that the justice system in Germany is good and just: A child was fatally hit by a truck at a tram station after another child pushed them. The truck driver tested positive for pot and was ultimately acquitted because the court concluded that even if the driver had been perfectly fit for driving, the accident would have been unavoidable. I can not remember but I am certain that the driver had to face additional charges for driving under influence but this is another thing.
gbuk2013 7y ago
> Looking at the police report, I do wonder what the punishment would be in other countries. In the U.K. 1-2 years it seems. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causing_death_by_dangerous_driving https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causing_death_by_dangerous_d... Having read the facts appeal case you linked to it does not seem unreasonable (colliding with pedestrians on a marked and signed road crossing, travelling at >30mph). In the U.K. there is definitely an expectation that you slow down before a crossing. In this case the court applied the minimum sentence and appeal rejected the victims’s side request for a harsher sentence. The facts in the appeal case list many factors, some of which are not in favour of the driver (one pedestrian was trying to pick up the other so they were unlikely to have been lying down on the road and oncoming vehicles were flashing lights as a warning).

deleted 7y ago

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saagarjha 7y ago

Some background: CoreJS is a widely used JavaScript library, apparently used for polyfilling by Babel. The author was previously know for asking for a job in npm install logs (https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/548 https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/548), and recently seems to have gone to jail for vehicular manslaughter, leaving the project without a maintainer.

jakear 7y ago
To add to this, he was actually asking for a job to help with the legal fees from this incident. https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/548#issuecomment-494112872 https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/548#issuecomment-...
jnbiche 7y ago
Evidently, it was his legal problems that provoked the job request and console ads, so I'm sympathetic. And based on the description above, it's highly unlikely that he would have been charged in most countries. The person who died was lying on the road at night, in dark clothes, intoxicated. Sympathy to her family, but that would count as an exculpating circumstance in most Western countries, I'm fairly sure. I sure as hell that I'd do whatever I could legally to avoid going to a Russian (or American) prison, if what I'd done was an accident and of very doubtful criminality from the perspective of most countries. Wouldn't you? Now he'll be stuck in a Russian prison for 2 years because of a tragic accident in which he was arguably not that negligent. Edit: All of this is based on the facts as I have been able to find them online. I may be wrong in my interpretation.
- ivan_gammel 7y ago
  I can read Russian. According to the information from the court: 1) he lost an appeal, meaning that his case was in the court at least two times. 2) the dead victim was not lying on the road, that’s false information. She was trying to remove other victim from the crosswalk. Knowing the motorcycle culture in Russia I would not be sympathetic to anyone there - it has nothing to do with safety on the road.

meritt 7y ago

Can NPM not just override "core-js" when performing dependency resolution and point to a maintained fork?

jakear 7y ago
Would you want all packages you're responsible for being taken over by whomever happens to be NPM's preferred forker in the event of your getting into legal troubles? I'd be strongly against that. This should be handled the way any other fork happens: people create forks, other people audit them for stability and choose which to update their dependencies to. This isn't up to NPM to decide.
- waterfowl 7y ago
  Now Microsoft's preferred forker. Yikes!
  - battery_cowboy 7y ago
    I'd rather hear Microsoft's suggestions on libraries to use than some random Joe Developer. They have/had unethical business practices, but their tech is really good and they have very smart people working for them.
    - foepys 7y ago
      A lot of people are making fun of Microsoft but most of them don't know or appreciate that you can run software compiled in the 90s on the most recent Windows 10 1909 without problems. Microsoft's backwards compatibility is off the charts. Try that with macOS.
      - Zardoz84 7y ago
        Well... Windows 10 have the record of the being the only windows that breaks backwards compatibility sometimes. I saw Visual Basic 5/6 applications stooping to work because Microsoft break something on a update. Also, good luck trying to run any Windows 16 bit application on a modern Windows 64 bit installation.

agildehaus 7y ago

Couldn't someone he trusts just ask him for credentials? It may be harder to contact him right now, but not impossible.

bdcravens 7y ago
Jails have mail, and most have phones.
- agapon 7y ago
  And Russian jails?
  - baybal2 7y ago
    1 box of Marlboro for the prison guard should do it
oefrha 7y ago
Not if the credentials are in a password manager. Will I divulge my master password just so that someone else could maintain a project that I can’t? The most likely answer is no.
hombre_fatal 7y ago
Seems really sheepish to bother the guy in jail over this. Also, publish creds aren't the problem. The problem seems to be that nobody else really wants to maintain it including anyone at Babel, core-js' biggest user afaict. If nobody steps up, it should just be a reminder of how flimsy open-source can be when there are so many bus-factor-of-one nodes out there that we depend on. It's a pretty big downside of depending on the hobbytime charity of random people, especially when we (or github comment culture) are so hostile when anyone dares to seek a penny. You could write a library that every fortune 500 company uses to save a cumulative hundreds of thousands of dollars in employee-hours over the library's lifetime, but you're the asshole if you use your library's popularity to seek work or donations. People will come out of the woodwork to scold you.
shaneprrlt 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

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orliesaurus 7y ago

I am really curious as to what happens here, remember left-pad controversy? [1][2] This is like round 2. How will npm/github act now? Especially now that it's Microsoft's npm /s [1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/ [2] https://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-npm https://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-np...

whoisjuan 7y ago
Why would the registry do anything at all? That’s why forking it’s a thing. It’s certainly inconvenient but transferring the access of the original project to another party sets a very bad precedent. Maybe when the maintainer dies, but this guy is very much alive. It is his work and he chose to give it freely to others through an OSS license. That doesn’t automatically grant anybody access to the original project. If somebody wants and needs to keep updating it then they should just fork it. The left-pad issue is also different because in that case the original maintainer took it down which broke a bunch of packages that had dependencies on it. This project is still in the registry and it will still work as it is for the foreseeable future.
- juliansimioni 7y ago
  Here's a hypothetical, but extremely plausible scenario. Lets say tomorrow a major security vulnerability is discovered in CoreJS. Full root access because I'm making this all up. NPM says core-js has 19k dependents, so it would be very preferable if an X.Y.1 release could be pushed with a security only fix, to be picked up in as many projects as possible. In that case, I think it would be extremely reasonable for NPM to decide to take action. For example, they could take the package over themselves and publish a patch release. Or they could temporarily add maintainership to a trusted member of the community. No solution is without problems in this scenario, but there would be good arguments for either of those serious actions.
  - qeternity 7y ago
    You're conflating two things: the npm package, and the GitHub repo. In your hypothetical, I agree with you that action would be needed: the repo should be forked and patched, and NPM should publish the new release as the official npm corejs package. This has accomplishes the same while trampling as little "ownership" as possible.

untog 7y ago

What an ugly comment thread that is. Anyway I doubt it’s fair to say the project is dead, something of this importance will be forked and maintained. It’s an annoyance for sure, though.

ssijak 7y ago

What if the person lying on the road survived and the person driving the motorbike died. Would the person lying on the road be charged for manslaughter? And if yes, how is this situation different to shift the blame from one person to another.

joecool1029 7y ago
At least in US there's a pedestrian's duty of care that's involved in determinations like this. A pedestrian could be found guilty of negligence and the burden shifts to them partially or in full depending on the state and the exact circumstances. Examples could include intentionally running into traffic, attempting to disrupt traffic, or even things like ignoring walk signals. However, in the last case it's unlikely that would relieve a driver of their duty of care as they'd still be in a crosswalk, it would just usually reduce the portion of their liability and move some onto the pedestrian... in some places (like NY). That type of scenario probably would have played out in this case for the states that have compensatory systems, but I'm really not 100% sure once it involves death. I think even Russia has this situation covered if you can prove on a camera that someone intentionally jumped out in front of you. It's just way less open to interpretation by the court.
PeterisP 7y ago
The court determined that in this case (on a marked pedestrian crossing where pedestrians have right of way) the bike driver broke the rules of traffic as he should have stopped before the crossing; and it did not determine that the pedestrians broke the rules of traffic. So if the person lying on the road survived and the person driving the motorbike died, then it's plausible that the person lying on the road would be charged for manslaughter in order to determine the situation (I believe that in case of fatal traffic incidents involving more than one party, in Russia almost always a criminal investigation is opened) but would be found not guilty.

SaxonRobber 7y ago

Jesus npm is a cancerous dumpster fire. Guy must have been a saint to continue maintaining the project in spite of all of entitled "developers" using his package and scolding him for DARING TO ASK FOR A DIME.

ankka 7y ago
And nobody wants to take responsibility and maintain it either, not even now.
- throw_m239339 7y ago
  I'm not surprised at all. I bet there are plenty of multi-billion dollars companies using that project who never contributed a cent to its author yet sent their developers on GitHub to complain about the state of the project. It happened to a few maintainers I know. These companies save millions in development cost on the back of a few developers in developed countries. This is open source, I get it, but this isn't fair either. Look at that comment: > ....yikes. Sounds like a fork needs to happen. And github should really look to provide a 'risk' rating to projects from a maintenance PoV... a project depended on by 4.5m users with 1 maintainer should visualise as a high-risk dependency. It's not up to GitHub to do that, it's up to the individual or the company to audit a project and its dependencies and be prepared to be able to maintain it themselves. Or pay the only developer to do exactly that. Another comment (quoted by another guy): > Babel maintainer here We are probably not going to fork core-js because we don't have enough resources to maintain it. And people expect a single developer to have the resources to do exactly that? look at babel and the list of sponsors, yet they don't have the resources: https://github.com/babel/babel https://github.com/babel/babel
  - SaxonRobber 7y ago
    That's what happens when the Free is removed from FOSS.
    - throw_m239339 7y ago

chrismorgan 7y ago

In bus factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor) considerations, I guess I’ve never considered that legal matters can take the driver out of commission as well as the person hit by the bus!

miguelmota 7y ago

The CoreJS author blocked me and many other people on github for simply making a suggestion to tone down the "looking for a good job" npm install logs because it'll invoke other people to try the same thing which would result in unnecessary log pollution. It seemed like strange behavior for someone maintaining a very popular community driven project.

aastronaut 7y ago
IMHO there is no reason to bring an unrelated GitHub issue discussion into this comment thread.
- Operyl 7y ago
  It seems partially related, if you read the linked threads. It goes on to link to various other issues detailing what is going on with the author, including the ultimate reason he added the job message (he had a ton of lawyer fees he needed to recuperate.) He ran out of money, it would appear, to continue paying and ultimately had to take his sentence if I got the general gist.
Strom 7y ago
> community driven project Check out the contributors page for this project. [1] This is not a community driven project. It's a one man show. -- [1] https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/graphs/contributors https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/graphs/contributors
- miguelmota 7y ago
  What I meant is that he implements features based on community feedback and responses. The community was largely opposed to NPM install log ads but he became pretty passive-aggressive towards people with opposing opinions.

ariabuckles 7y ago

FYI it looks like this project isn't necessarily dead; another contributor who merged a PR 2 days ago just posted a short update: https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/767#issuecomment-603682034 https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/issues/767#issuecomment-... > Stop spam & panic! I have rules for this repo and i have some time for fixing critical bugs and major updates.

fractalf 7y ago

Don't panic! No need to bring out the towel, the dolphins aren't leaving just yet. Someone else has access to this repo and stated that security fixes will be maintained.

enitihas 7y ago

The entitlement in that thread is mind blowing. A lot of people who are complaining about there being only a single maintainer, seem to have no open source contribution history on github. If the project is important to so many people, they sure didn't show it by donating to the maintainer. Saying XYZ project is important to me, and there should be some js foundation taking care of it, (implicitly also saying I have zero intention of making any effort) sounds too hard to believe unless you see this in real life. As Joe Biden said: "Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value."

deleted 7y ago
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Frost1x 7y ago
This really reminds me of most my interactions with the JS community. I'm sure not everyone is that way. Whenever my projects use FOSS I always remind them exactly what a 'dependency' is. You should know and understand your dependencies and risks associated with relying on them. You need to be willing to lock-in to a version if need be or replace it entirely. Some developers I work with that throw together one-off web applications tend to inject dozens (sometimes hundreds) of dependencies (which they like to dynamically pull from latest builds) into their projects, enough to make me dizzy looking through the list. Typically development starts, they meet some initial goal and keep gluing more and more packages together to meet some goal/desired functionality. Then something breaks and they conveniently have other internal work that has to take priority, leaving a broken application they don't want to deal with for someone else to fix because they know it's an absolute mess they created. Rinse repeat. Now you've established an expectation of functionality you have no clue how to maintain and did not clearly explain that to your client when you took shortcuts to glue everything together.

ilyich 7y ago

He will be able to maintain the repo. From the sentence [0] you can see that he is sentenced to spend his term in an open prison [1] (Russian колония-поселение) It means he will be able to have internet access without any problems. So no need to panic at all. [0] https://kraevoy--alt.sudrf.ru/modules.php?name=sud_delo&srv_num=1&name_op=doc&number=1733512&delo_id=4&new=4&text_number=1 https://kraevoy--alt.sudrf.ru/modules.php?name=sud_delo&srv_... [1] https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D0%BF%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5 https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%...