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He's not being sarcastic I think. The point is people talk about rebasing and squashing a commit with a typo, and then people argue against this because it's "

He's not being sarcastic I think. The point is people talk about rebasing and squashing a commit with a typo, and then people argue against this because it's "rewriting the history". But, as you say, why would anyone ever want to capture that typo?

dahart 5y ago
I actually managed to get Dr. Hipp to slightly soften the language on the Fossil page once, in a thread right here on HN regarding git. I’m a huge fan of his work and SQLite, and respect him a lot, but I think the git is lying thing is a terrible tactical mistake backed only by assumption and (possibly willful) misunderstanding, and just needs to die. Fundamentally, git consciously and intentionally provides tools to edit history. It’s fine, it’s great, to write a new tool with a new goal of making history immutable. That’s awesome. But that does not mean git or the people who use git are being “deceitful” and it seems a little bogus to throw around that kind of judgemental hyperbole, especially when there’s an underlying competitive conflict of interest.
- richie_adler 5y ago
  > I actually managed to get Dr. Hipp to slightly soften the language on the Fossil page once, in a thread right here on HN regarding git He did because AFAIK he's an extremely nice guy who gladly suffers fools; I guess that's for ideological reasons, and that's his choice. I found your own participation in the whole ordeal deeply insulting. But, again, that's me exclusively. I'm just a happy Fossil user.
  - dahart 5y ago
    I understand your emotional reaction to me criticizing Dr. Hipp. Believe it or not, I have no doubt he’s a nice person, and I mean it when I say I respect him. But you seem to be making assumptions and defending him reflexively without knowing what happened in the past, or even really understanding this argument. You haven’t explained your insult, therefore I suppose I have no choice but to ignore that remark. I made a very small amount of headway before because he agreed with me that I was right about one very specific piece of the exaggerated language on Fossil’s web page. He has, however, and despite my pointed questions, held firmly to his belief that editing commit history is lying and should be considered a crime, as demonstrated here. Look, I think it’s absolutely great if you like Fossil. And I also think it’s great if Fossil has immutable history and cares about it deeply. My beef here is with saying that git rebase is a “lie”, being “deceitful”, “fabricating” things, etc. That is an untrue claim, it’s ironically itself completely dishonest. If you like Fossil and want others to use it too, it might be worth reflecting on how Fossil’s marketing pages are actually pushing some people away from trying it. That’s what the claims about git really are: marketing. The dogma that allows someone to go around calling others a liar over the tools they use to write code is what’s deeply insulting, and Dr. Hipp has had far, far more influence already than I ever will. You can stand next to this dogma if you like, but I think you’ll be on the wrong side of history. For now, blind followers everywhere like to parrot the claim that git rebase is a lie, without being equipped to defend this idea because they don’t actually share it deeply and haven’t been thoughtful enough on their own to understand the implications.

dahart 5y ago

I actually managed to get Dr. Hipp to slightly soften the language on the Fossil page once, in a thread right here on HN regarding git. I’m a huge fan of his work and SQLite, and respect him a lot, but I think the git is lying thing is a terrible tactical mistake backed only by assumption and (possibly willful) misunderstanding, and just needs to die. Fundamentally, git consciously and intentionally provides tools to edit history. It’s fine, it’s great, to write a new tool with a new goal of making history immutable. That’s awesome. But that does not mean git or the people who use git are being “deceitful” and it seems a little bogus to throw around that kind of judgemental hyperbole, especially when there’s an underlying competitive conflict of interest.

richie_adler 5y ago
> I actually managed to get Dr. Hipp to slightly soften the language on the Fossil page once, in a thread right here on HN regarding git He did because AFAIK he's an extremely nice guy who gladly suffers fools; I guess that's for ideological reasons, and that's his choice. I found your own participation in the whole ordeal deeply insulting. But, again, that's me exclusively. I'm just a happy Fossil user.
- dahart 5y ago
  I understand your emotional reaction to me criticizing Dr. Hipp. Believe it or not, I have no doubt he’s a nice person, and I mean it when I say I respect him. But you seem to be making assumptions and defending him reflexively without knowing what happened in the past, or even really understanding this argument. You haven’t explained your insult, therefore I suppose I have no choice but to ignore that remark. I made a very small amount of headway before because he agreed with me that I was right about one very specific piece of the exaggerated language on Fossil’s web page. He has, however, and despite my pointed questions, held firmly to his belief that editing commit history is lying and should be considered a crime, as demonstrated here. Look, I think it’s absolutely great if you like Fossil. And I also think it’s great if Fossil has immutable history and cares about it deeply. My beef here is with saying that git rebase is a “lie”, being “deceitful”, “fabricating” things, etc. That is an untrue claim, it’s ironically itself completely dishonest. If you like Fossil and want others to use it too, it might be worth reflecting on how Fossil’s marketing pages are actually pushing some people away from trying it. That’s what the claims about git really are: marketing. The dogma that allows someone to go around calling others a liar over the tools they use to write code is what’s deeply insulting, and Dr. Hipp has had far, far more influence already than I ever will. You can stand next to this dogma if you like, but I think you’ll be on the wrong side of history. For now, blind followers everywhere like to parrot the claim that git rebase is a lie, without being equipped to defend this idea because they don’t actually share it deeply and haven’t been thoughtful enough on their own to understand the implications.