5 ms·

Rubyists, we must do better

79 points by damagednoob 6y ago

LandR 6y ago
This is absurd.
- pavel_lishin 6y ago
  Which part?
  - Insanity 6y ago
    The idea that a globally used library should be renamed because of the issues in one country today. Many countries have had issues with the police for decades, but no one cares. And there's plenty of countries with good police.
- guggle 6y ago
  Indeed... Bozhidar was incredibly patient.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jiofih 6y ago
The entitled generation is now adult, and they demand safe-for-work cereal names, movies and open source libraries. You must comply lest you be added to the big social media blacklist of people-who-did-not-agree-with-us. What should be considered offensive is to distract from what really matters right now (the BLM movement) to discuss a stupid name for a code linter. A very daft display of privilege.
- hackissimo123 6y ago
  "adult"
luckylion 6y ago
Rubies are often mined using slave labor. I hope they consider renaming the language, surely they don't want to stand with slavers? /s
denysvitali 6y ago
I do care about all of the BLM movement, I really do. I can't stand racism or any other sort of hate towards minorities or any other group of people. That being said, can we please keep politics away from software development? We already have good fights to battle, and changing whitelist / blacklist or master / slave isn't really helping to the cause. This matter obviously is not only related to Rubyists, Rustaceans, Gophers or any other programmer group anyways. I don't see the point in moving politics to software: if you really want a change you should vote for better leaders and fight in different ways. I don't think anybody will ever be offended by reading "whitelist" or "master". Truth is that nowadays everybody gets offended by anything. Please, do not answer to this comment if you intend to make the discussion political. I feel that it is right to speak up for your rights, but I feel that it is best if we generally keep the discussions apolitical, whenever possible
- pavel_lishin 6y ago
  > I don't see the point in moving politics to software Politics are already present in software, as they are always present in all human enterprise. Saying "don't get politics in software" means "I prefer the status quo."
  - PeterisP 6y ago
    No, saying "don't get politics in software" means asserting that the political influence of the name "RuboCop" is small and not significant to the project (it is significant as a signal to parties in a particular conflict that's not relevant to the project) and any discussion about it would be much ado about nothing that detracts from issues that are actually relevant to that piece of software. Intent matters. If the name was initially intentionally chosen in order to assert a political position, that would make a difference. But if someone is requiring all the world to join in this current USA internal conflict and pick sides, then that's not a reasonable demand. The RuboCop maintainer is not part of this conflict, he's neither a victim nor a cause in this long-festering USA issue, and it's his moral right to stay out of it if he so wishes. I have a preference towards the BLM side in this issue due to the appalling examples of police brutality, however, if someone on the BLM side would demand me to be "with us or against us" then I'd consider a profane refusal to be appropriate, I'm not applying for a membership in a tribe; If refusing unquestioning signals of support means that people become enemies of your tribe, well, so be it, that's just an indication of an unreasonable tribe.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rvz 6y ago
Good that the author did not succumb to such frivolous requests from delicate sunflowers in changing the name when it is only and only based primarily in context to the 'Robocop' film and nothing else. This PC-nonsense has to stop.
fsloth 6y ago
I don't understand why anybody would like to change the name of a technical product for an unrelated political issue in a specific country. This is extremely biased and prejudiced! Globally not all police are like in the US. I admire the police in my country (Finland). They are professional and courteous.
- ysavir 6y ago
  > I admire the police in my country (Finland). They are professional and courteous. This is a great point and one that needs to be heard more throughout this debate. Changing RuboCop's name due to BLM isn't just inserting politics into software, it's inserting _American_ politics into software. "Cop" might be a negative here, but positive in other places. Demanding a name change of an internationally-used tool due to a localized problem is nothing short of cultural imperialism. Its great that American policing is finally coming under scrutiny and that we're starting to see institutions bend to the pressure of change. But it's critical that we keep a level head during this time and separate the modern culture of American policing (a negative) from the idea of a police force (a positive). I'd love to see a shift in this communication, not just in the Ruby community in a worldwide a community; a shift from "All cops are bad" to "Here is what good cops look like". Places that are proud and admiring of their police forces need to speak up about it and why they feel that way and lead the rest of the world by example.
  - krainboltgreene 6y ago
    Please explain to me how renaming a package from "rubocop", which is based on a movie about american police and american politics, to something like "rubyopinion" is "injecting politics"?
ritchiea 6y ago
The funny thing here is that RuboCop is an obvious pun on Robocop which is a satire of privatized police forces and corporate corruption. But I'm not here to tell people what they should not be offended by. Telling people "you shouldn't be offended by X" is as bad as "we should keep politics out of software." Instead of "keeping politics out of software" how about we try to listen to each other and be civil to each other even when we disagree? Which I think this posts articulates the argument for very well. I'm a lefty but this goes for all sides.
- onli 6y ago
  No. This attitude of attacking developers because of political insensibilities of clueless people is not acceptable. The author is dead wrong in that article. Not the ruby community has to be better, these people have to be blocked from it. There is no point in being nice to people so unreasonable and just plain in the wrong, this position does not deserve to be heard.
  - ritchiea 6y ago
    To me "be civil to each other" means don't attack people because of your political perspective. It's ok to have a political idea about say, the name of an OSS package, but if you request a change be kind about it, lay out your reasoning and don't expect that you are going to automatically get what you want.
kalium-xyz 6y ago
The spread of the Americans culture worries me, in a lot of countries the police are your friends and they do actually maintain social order yet still people will parrot these and other movements calling out agaisnt the police causing social disorder.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  I think some parties are taking the protests and broadening their spectrum; from protests against police violence to becoming against the police entirely. That last one isn't going to work in practice, regardless of your own libertarian or anarchist ideals.
  - zimpenfish 6y ago
    Camden, NJ, has seen some success disbanding the police force and reconstructing it as a community force. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/what-happened-to-crime-in-camden/549542/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/what-happened-to-crim...
danfritz 6y ago
This reminds me of the Factory Girl vs FactoryBot after #metoo movement. I'll go create a gem called covid now and wait for the fireworks... /s
josefrichter 6y ago
the 'copy' command should be removed from all operating systems and software too!
- tvmalsv 6y ago
  Nah, just replace it with the community_scribe_of_appropriate_self_hatred. It can be aliased to 'scribe' if it helps, though it loses some of it's power.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
robotmay 6y ago
What a ridiculous argument to be having in times like this. It's clearly named for the movie Robocop, and even if it wasn't: not all countries suffer from an abusive militarised police force like the USA does. I can understand the appeal to move away from master/slave and blacklist/whitelist naming conventions, but you have to draw the line somewhere and I think objecting to the name of a project just because it contains the word "cop" is way past that line. We use the term "cop" in a different context in the UK (https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/cop_2 https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...), so why should someone in Bulgaria care about the American usage of the word? Should I be abusing someone to have "fanny packs" renamed because the term could be deemed sexist in the UK?
- jhanschoo 6y ago
  Regarding whitelist/blacklist I haven't seen evidence that 1. It originates from a racist usage. 2. It is primarily used with reference to racist ideas. I still think that there may be reason to change it: e.g. allowlist/blocklist may be more easily understood, but whitelist/blacklist may be more easy to recall (since it is more standard terminology). Interestingly, along the same lines as whitelist/blacklist, certain Chinese and Japanese have historically called Caucasians red-haired peoples, with connotations of otherness. One wonders if in another century someone would argue to change the colors of the red-black tree.
seek3r00 6y ago
And still we let GitHub block Iranian citizens from accessing their repos. I’m pro BLM, and I’m really outraged by the behaviour of police across the US. But this has nothing to do with software names, and it is so a US-centric point of view.
abstractbarista 6y ago
This whole issue is incredibly stupid. The naming does not offend me, and anyone who is offput by it needs to learn not to be.
benjaminjosephw 6y ago
I think the real issue here is that maintaining communities of diverse people is hard work. It's not what a lot of maintainers sign-up for originally. It can be exhausting to try to keep the community aligned to a code of conduct in a way that's fair and allows open discussion. Worst of all, few people want to do this but it comes with the territory of a large open-for-contribution project. Perhaps the solution is for each community to fund a community manager role. Maybe community management as a service would make sense if each individual project doesn't require a full role itself (a startup opportunity perhaps). Does anyone know of any open source projects that currently employ a community manager?
jb3689 6y ago
It's just incredible to me how many people want to introduce churn amongst the entire Ruby community over this. We're talking about thousands of hours at least just to make the change and probably a lot more in following broken links. I could understand if the name was offensive in isolation, but it's not and hasn't ever been. Now suddenly external forces change that? Good luck to the folks who want to fork the project. It's super hard and will drain the life out of you

79 points by damagednoob 6y ago

LandR 6y ago

This is absurd.

pavel_lishin 6y ago
Which part?
- Insanity 6y ago
  The idea that a globally used library should be renamed because of the issues in one country today. Many countries have had issues with the police for decades, but no one cares. And there's plenty of countries with good police.
guggle 6y ago
Indeed... Bozhidar was incredibly patient.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jiofih 6y ago

The entitled generation is now adult, and they demand safe-for-work cereal names, movies and open source libraries. You must comply lest you be added to the big social media blacklist of people-who-did-not-agree-with-us. What should be considered offensive is to distract from what really matters right now (the BLM movement) to discuss a stupid name for a code linter. A very daft display of privilege.

hackissimo123 6y ago
"adult"

luckylion 6y ago

Rubies are often mined using slave labor. I hope they consider renaming the language, surely they don't want to stand with slavers? /s

denysvitali 6y ago

I do care about all of the BLM movement, I really do. I can't stand racism or any other sort of hate towards minorities or any other group of people. That being said, can we please keep politics away from software development? We already have good fights to battle, and changing whitelist / blacklist or master / slave isn't really helping to the cause. This matter obviously is not only related to Rubyists, Rustaceans, Gophers or any other programmer group anyways. I don't see the point in moving politics to software: if you really want a change you should vote for better leaders and fight in different ways. I don't think anybody will ever be offended by reading "whitelist" or "master". Truth is that nowadays everybody gets offended by anything. Please, do not answer to this comment if you intend to make the discussion political. I feel that it is right to speak up for your rights, but I feel that it is best if we generally keep the discussions apolitical, whenever possible

pavel_lishin 6y ago
> I don't see the point in moving politics to software Politics are already present in software, as they are always present in all human enterprise. Saying "don't get politics in software" means "I prefer the status quo."
- PeterisP 6y ago
  No, saying "don't get politics in software" means asserting that the political influence of the name "RuboCop" is small and not significant to the project (it is significant as a signal to parties in a particular conflict that's not relevant to the project) and any discussion about it would be much ado about nothing that detracts from issues that are actually relevant to that piece of software. Intent matters. If the name was initially intentionally chosen in order to assert a political position, that would make a difference. But if someone is requiring all the world to join in this current USA internal conflict and pick sides, then that's not a reasonable demand. The RuboCop maintainer is not part of this conflict, he's neither a victim nor a cause in this long-festering USA issue, and it's his moral right to stay out of it if he so wishes. I have a preference towards the BLM side in this issue due to the appalling examples of police brutality, however, if someone on the BLM side would demand me to be "with us or against us" then I'd consider a profane refusal to be appropriate, I'm not applying for a membership in a tribe; If refusing unquestioning signals of support means that people become enemies of your tribe, well, so be it, that's just an indication of an unreasonable tribe.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rvz 6y ago

Good that the author did not succumb to such frivolous requests from delicate sunflowers in changing the name when it is only and only based primarily in context to the 'Robocop' film and nothing else. This PC-nonsense has to stop.

fsloth 6y ago

I don't understand why anybody would like to change the name of a technical product for an unrelated political issue in a specific country. This is extremely biased and prejudiced! Globally not all police are like in the US. I admire the police in my country (Finland). They are professional and courteous.

ysavir 6y ago
> I admire the police in my country (Finland). They are professional and courteous. This is a great point and one that needs to be heard more throughout this debate. Changing RuboCop's name due to BLM isn't just inserting politics into software, it's inserting _American_ politics into software. "Cop" might be a negative here, but positive in other places. Demanding a name change of an internationally-used tool due to a localized problem is nothing short of cultural imperialism. Its great that American policing is finally coming under scrutiny and that we're starting to see institutions bend to the pressure of change. But it's critical that we keep a level head during this time and separate the modern culture of American policing (a negative) from the idea of a police force (a positive). I'd love to see a shift in this communication, not just in the Ruby community in a worldwide a community; a shift from "All cops are bad" to "Here is what good cops look like". Places that are proud and admiring of their police forces need to speak up about it and why they feel that way and lead the rest of the world by example.
- krainboltgreene 6y ago
  Please explain to me how renaming a package from "rubocop", which is based on a movie about american police and american politics, to something like "rubyopinion" is "injecting politics"?

ritchiea 6y ago

The funny thing here is that RuboCop is an obvious pun on Robocop which is a satire of privatized police forces and corporate corruption. But I'm not here to tell people what they should not be offended by. Telling people "you shouldn't be offended by X" is as bad as "we should keep politics out of software." Instead of "keeping politics out of software" how about we try to listen to each other and be civil to each other even when we disagree? Which I think this posts articulates the argument for very well. I'm a lefty but this goes for all sides.

onli 6y ago
No. This attitude of attacking developers because of political insensibilities of clueless people is not acceptable. The author is dead wrong in that article. Not the ruby community has to be better, these people have to be blocked from it. There is no point in being nice to people so unreasonable and just plain in the wrong, this position does not deserve to be heard.
- ritchiea 6y ago
  To me "be civil to each other" means don't attack people because of your political perspective. It's ok to have a political idea about say, the name of an OSS package, but if you request a change be kind about it, lay out your reasoning and don't expect that you are going to automatically get what you want.

kalium-xyz 6y ago

The spread of the Americans culture worries me, in a lot of countries the police are your friends and they do actually maintain social order yet still people will parrot these and other movements calling out agaisnt the police causing social disorder.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
I think some parties are taking the protests and broadening their spectrum; from protests against police violence to becoming against the police entirely. That last one isn't going to work in practice, regardless of your own libertarian or anarchist ideals.
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  Camden, NJ, has seen some success disbanding the police force and reconstructing it as a community force. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/what-happened-to-crime-in-camden/549542/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/what-happened-to-crim...

danfritz 6y ago

This reminds me of the Factory Girl vs FactoryBot after #metoo movement. I'll go create a gem called covid now and wait for the fireworks... /s

josefrichter 6y ago

the 'copy' command should be removed from all operating systems and software too!

tvmalsv 6y ago
Nah, just replace it with the community_scribe_of_appropriate_self_hatred. It can be aliased to 'scribe' if it helps, though it loses some of it's power.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

robotmay 6y ago

What a ridiculous argument to be having in times like this. It's clearly named for the movie Robocop, and even if it wasn't: not all countries suffer from an abusive militarised police force like the USA does. I can understand the appeal to move away from master/slave and blacklist/whitelist naming conventions, but you have to draw the line somewhere and I think objecting to the name of a project just because it contains the word "cop" is way past that line. We use the term "cop" in a different context in the UK (https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/cop_2 https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...), so why should someone in Bulgaria care about the American usage of the word? Should I be abusing someone to have "fanny packs" renamed because the term could be deemed sexist in the UK?

jhanschoo 6y ago
Regarding whitelist/blacklist I haven't seen evidence that 1. It originates from a racist usage. 2. It is primarily used with reference to racist ideas. I still think that there may be reason to change it: e.g. allowlist/blocklist may be more easily understood, but whitelist/blacklist may be more easy to recall (since it is more standard terminology). Interestingly, along the same lines as whitelist/blacklist, certain Chinese and Japanese have historically called Caucasians red-haired peoples, with connotations of otherness. One wonders if in another century someone would argue to change the colors of the red-black tree.

seek3r00 6y ago

And still we let GitHub block Iranian citizens from accessing their repos. I’m pro BLM, and I’m really outraged by the behaviour of police across the US. But this has nothing to do with software names, and it is so a US-centric point of view.

abstractbarista 6y ago

This whole issue is incredibly stupid. The naming does not offend me, and anyone who is offput by it needs to learn not to be.

benjaminjosephw 6y ago

I think the real issue here is that maintaining communities of diverse people is hard work. It's not what a lot of maintainers sign-up for originally. It can be exhausting to try to keep the community aligned to a code of conduct in a way that's fair and allows open discussion. Worst of all, few people want to do this but it comes with the territory of a large open-for-contribution project. Perhaps the solution is for each community to fund a community manager role. Maybe community management as a service would make sense if each individual project doesn't require a full role itself (a startup opportunity perhaps). Does anyone know of any open source projects that currently employ a community manager?

jb3689 6y ago

It's just incredible to me how many people want to introduce churn amongst the entire Ruby community over this. We're talking about thousands of hours at least just to make the change and probably a lot more in following broken links. I could understand if the name was offensive in isolation, but it's not and hasn't ever been. Now suddenly external forces change that? Good luck to the folks who want to fork the project. It's super hard and will drain the life out of you