10 ms·

Bleh

228 points by kk6mrp 4y ago

1MachineElf 4y ago
What is the vitriol being directed at Drew DeVault? I enjoy reading his blog posts and am a fan of SourceHut.
- riffic 4y ago
  yeah, drew is pretty awesome as a builder. I don't get the negativity other than haters gonna hate.
- bckr 4y ago
  I think it's a good idea if you find out on your own and we don't make this thread about it. That said, I don' t know and couldn't tell you.
- skybrian 4y ago
  I don't understand the harassment and I think it's terrible that a maintainer got so much criticism that they felt they had to resign. But more generally, I think he has a negative reputation largely because of his blogging. He has criticized others in strong terms, in blog posts that get a lot of attention. We aren't that into reading another criticism when the previous ones didn't seem that well thought out. Sometimes the advocacy for his own work is also based on strong criticism of others for doing it wrong. It's "my way is good and other projects are harmful" rather than "I think my way is better, but other projects have different goals and people have their reasons for preferring their workflows." But he's getting attention because people keep sharing his blog posts in various forums, and he's not responsible for that. (Including this blog post appearing in Hacker News.)
- kzrdude 4y ago
  He has his own ideas. I think it's refreshing, he's not afraid of going against some popular opinions. Sometimes he's controversial or showing some risky humor - like the time he was encouraging destruction through npm, but not really. (quote: https://drewdevault.com/2021/11/16/Cash-for-leftpad.html https://drewdevault.com/2021/11/16/Cash-for-leftpad.html )
  - danenania 4y ago
    That’s fine and I enjoy reading his posts quite a lot (haven’t used any of his services but they seem very cool in a particular HN minimalist kind of way). However if you’re going to traffic in language war melodrama and controversy-for-clicks (let’s be real, it’s a deliberate content strategy), then it’s sort of weak to cry about others not being nice enough in their criticisms of your own stuff. Pot meet kettle and all that /shrug. Regardless, I hope he gets through the rough patch and I look forward to reading more of his posts that may or may not eloquently shit all over some of my favorite programming tools :)
- mattl 4y ago
  - VoidWhisperer 4y ago
    The username he goes by is sircmpwn. Hence the 'sir' in the first part of the email address. It isn't too out there as far as emails go.
    - mattl 4y ago
      - nix23 4y ago
        mattl 4y ago
        nix23 4y ago
        mattl 4y ago
        nix23 4y ago
        dang 4y ago
        You broke the site guidelines very badly in this thread, and repeatedly. We ban accounts that do that. I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it. That includes no more swipes and no more personal attacks.
- The_Colonel 4y ago
  I don't know what he's referring to, but he's kind of guilty of jumping on the hate wagons as well, e.g. https://drewdevault.com/2021/11/16/Cash-for-leftpad.html https://drewdevault.com/2021/11/16/Cash-for-leftpad.html or https://drewdevault.com/2016/11/24/Electron-considered-harmful.html https://drewdevault.com/2016/11/24/Electron-considered-harmf...
  - garren 4y ago
    I don’t see either of those as particularly hateful. He’s got strong opinions, yes, and you’re certainly free to disregard his posts for whatever reasons you’d like, but they don’t strike me as obviously derogatory or repulsive. He makes good points in both - electron is great in some ways, but terrible in others, and dependency management with npm/node is, charitably, problematic.
    - The_Colonel 4y ago
      > Electron enables lazy developers to write garbage > The reason people choose Electron is because they are too lazy to learn the right tools for the job. > For the love of God, learn something else. Now contrast with what he complains about in this blogpost: > SourceHut’s email-oriented approach might not be for everyone, and instead of simply not using it, skeptics must harass any projects that do. His blogpost on electron was fueling this exact brand of hate.
      - 1MachineElf 4y ago
        To his credit, the blog post about electron was made on his own platform. It's not like he went out of his way to spread Electron developers on public forums. You can never achieve on a personal blog the vitriol Twitter, etc. can bear.
    - xoxoxoxox 4y ago
      I'd call your summarization of his takes more even-handed than the source material. I suspect, though, that his post wouldn't have gotten the traffic it did were all of it easy to nod along with.
- skyfaller 4y ago
  I use Sway and I pay to host my code on SourceHut. I admire Drew and I think he is making invaluable contributions to FOSS. That said, he has a history of... rash? impulsive? reactions to situations that might have been resolved with less bad blood if he had stepped away from the keyboard until he was less upset. The classic example is when he got upset about people wanting to unofficially add favicons to the Gemini protocol, and he threatened to blackhole any IP address which requests a favicon. https://github.com/makeworld-the-better-one/amfora/issues/199 https://github.com/makeworld-the-better-one/amfora/issues/19... I do not know if there is some specific recent event triggering vitriol, but the way this post is written, it sounds like Drew thinks it is resulting from less recent actions like the favicon threat. In Drew's defense, he has made (limited) apologies and I do believe he is trying to do better. https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disas... has a note at the bottom, saying: > I realize that my blog has been a source of a lot of negativity in the past, and I regret how harsh I've been with some of the projects I've criticised. I will make my arguments by example going forward: if I think we can do better, I'll do it better, instead of criticising those who are just earnestly trying their best. But it is also true that many people will not be quick to forgive him, and some people never will. It will take him time to undo the negative image he has created with some people, but after seeing Linus Torvald's positive changes, I am optimistic that Drew can change for the better if he wants to, and help create a welcoming community for everyone. If he doesn't give up first.
  - jbiason 4y ago
    Dunno if he still have his Mastodon account, but after seeing continuous posts calling GNOME devs "complete idiots" and constantly bashing Rust for their decisions, I stopped following him completely. You're seeing the posts in his blogs. His timeline was full of bashing devs of other open source projects. Never a constructive criticism, just plain bashing (with occasional self-congratulatory comment for his own decision). PS: I think part of his Rust criticism was towards the attempt to make Sway use wlroots-rs and it not fitting his idea. So, instead of saying "Sorry, it didn't work", he jumped into full bashing Rust for not doing what he was trying to do.
brianzelip 4y ago
Awful to read about. Thanks Drew for Providing Alternatives!
dgb23 4y ago
> I have made no shortage of mistakes, and there are plenty of hurt feelings which can be laid at my feet. I am regretful for my mistakes, and I have worked actively to improve. I think that it has been working. Perhaps that’s arrogant of me to presume, but I’m not sure what else to do. Must I resign myself to my fate for stupid comments I made years ago? I’m sorry, and I’ve been working to do better. Can I have another chance? When you are working on yourself and reach new milestones, then it will take time until even your closest will recognize and really trust the observed changes. And I assume public / anonymous people will take even longer. This can feel unfair, because these things are very hard like improving, changing your habits, getting a bit wiser, or learning a new skill. But it is how it is. People have an image of you and it changes in a delayed manner. It's even doubly unfair if that image is distorted in the first place. Also people like jumping on negativity bandwagons. It seems to be one of the really stupid parts of human nature. I do it too, most people do it even if we try to avoid it most of the time. It sucks.
- mikepurvis 4y ago
  > ... it will take time until even your closest will recognize and really trust the observed changes. And I assume public / anonymous people will take even longer. In my observation it's quite the opposite. Those closest to you have the longest history with whatever was the "old way" and will therefore take the longest to believe that any change is for real.
jnsaff2 4y ago
I’ve been a very delighted user of Sway for at least 5 years and am grateful for the work Drew has put into it. I once made a trivial PR to sway that was maybe 6 chars in total but Drew made sure I felt welcomed and even mentioned me in the list of contributors. I find it a bit puzzling why someone who contributes so much to the community gets so much hate. Even if the opinions might not always be popular, the volume and quality of his work should speak much louder than words.
- mustache_kimono 4y ago
  > I find it a bit puzzling why someone who contributes so much to the community gets so much hate. Watch out, because even this self-pitying blog post manages to find time to reach out and troll the Rust community. Internet troll gets back internet hate is not exactly unexpected right? And we all know Drew says some trollish things sometimes. I don't think the way that some handle it and him is anywhere near correct, but Drew might consider the way he presents himself isn't always conducive to good faith disagreement.
  - synu 4y ago
    That sums it up nicely. I put my heart and soul into a product that at one point Drew personally decided was harmful and worthy of self righteous scorn, and that wasn’t very fun, but I don’t wish the same back on him. It’s just kind of the way people behave on the internet sometimes, and you can’t take it too seriously.
  - caslon 4y ago
    He doesn't "troll" the Rust community at all in the post. The line about the borrow checker was directly snagged from a lobsters or HN thread around Hare's announcement.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - lifthrasiir 4y ago
      Keep in mind that the line was written by some throw-away account [1]. To suggest that it is anything to do with the broader Rust community is trolling. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=borrow%20checker%20irresponsible&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
rossdavidh 4y ago
I feel like I'm coming in to the middle of an emotional conversation about a topic which has a lot of backstory I don't know about. Someone here care to bring me up to speed?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- gidorah 4y ago
  I agree. It feels like there are pro-drew and anti-drew camps, and I have no idea what's going on without reading thousands of comments.
  - thomassmith65 4y ago
    In all likelihood, neither do the authors of the thousands of comments; it's the internet.
- wheelerof4te 4y ago
  In a nutshell, as concise as I can muster it: Drew didn't like Rust very much, and criticized it a lot for it's complexity. He is also a very vocal supporter of open-source, going so far as to disable NVIDIA's non-free driver support in his wayland window manager/compositor Sway. On top of that, he made SourceHut, an alternative to GitHub/Gitlab and some other innovative projects, like Gemini. EDIT: Drew did not make Gemini, but he is still one of it's most vocal promoters. /EDIT Recently, he even disclosed a new systems language, much simpler than Rust and more flexible than Golang. Suffice to say, he's made some enemies that don't want him and his team to succeed.
  - lifthrasiir 4y ago
    Your summary is very one-sided and even misleading. (Drew never invented Gemini for example.) It is fair to say that Drew did bring lots of great things to F/OSS but is also a controversial figure due to his writing and communication style.
meibo 4y ago
The fact is that workflows that are forced on you by hosting a project on SourceHut don't work for the majority of open source contributors anymore. It's no reason for hate or any kind of personal attacks of course, but saying "then don't contribute" is not an option for most project leads that want to build successful open source software today. You have to choose your audience and the size of it.
- em-bee 4y ago
  what about that workflow doesn't work? (i don't actually know, i didn't try using sourcehut yet) is the problem that it isn't like github?
  - lifthrasiir 4y ago
    To my knowledge Sourcehut is strictly based on mailing lists and email patches, which is by no means obsolete (Linux still uses them for a good reason) but old-fashioned compared to say, Github PRs, limiting a pool of potential contributors.
    - jefurii 4y ago
      Drew wrote an interesting piece on the mail-based workflow (I linked to it elsewhere on this page). Yes it's been around for awhile, but it also seems like it really works better for certain use-cases.
- MaxLeiter 4y ago
  If the maintainer chooses to use SourceHut they know and accept the costs and benefits. Anecdotally, the quality:quantity ratio in regards to both contributions and contributors is far higher if you use a service like SourceHut. There are no activity charts so there's no reason to game the system with low effort pull requests and features.
  - meibo 4y ago
    Really must be anecdotal, I've been running a major open source project on Github for 3 years now and the only pull requests I've ever had to turn away were major refactorings that I preferred to do myself. You can work very methodically and receive high quality contributions everywhere - as I said, really depends on your audience.
em-bee 4y ago
Perhaps it this has something to do with the backlash, not just against me and my work, but against others who use and participate in that work. this a thousand times. i didn't care when people insulted or criticized me, but when they went against my team, then that hurt deeply and i really took that personal. shrugging off attacks directed at me is kind of doable, but when others are attacked because of me, then i want to be able to protect them. sometimes it works to redirect the attention to me, but when it doesn't it makes me feel helpless.
wheelerof4te 4y ago
Thank you Drew for doing your best! Please, never give up, no matter who wants you and your hard work to go away. I have used Sway and fell in love with it, it was such a discovery of simplicity and beautiful design. I read about your new language many months ago, even then realizing the potential behind it. They want to silence you because you are a beacon of new hope and ideas. They fear your potential. Don't let anyone to belittle your talent and skill.
vnorilo 4y ago
I guess I should have known better but I was surprised to learn that Drew would be on the receiving end of that stuff. The vibe I got from sourcehut is that it's built by peers for peers, they are remarkably open about everything. The service is straightforward and doesn't force you to a particular workflow. It's a solid hosted version control with a no-nonsense web UI - open source to boot. What's not to like? It blows my mind that someone would actively hate on such a project. Oh well, internet. (I signed up for srht and pay a small amount for my personal non-work stuff.)
- proto_lambda 4y ago
  > The service [...] doesn't force you to a particular workflow. I've never actually used it, but isn't that exactly what it does? As far as I know, it only allows submitting patches using emails, not using the "pull request"/"merge request"/etc workflow of most other big hosted Git solutions. But it's very possible I just don't have the whole picture here.
  - vnorilo 4y ago
    You are not wrong - there is no web UI for pull requests or merge checks. However the features it does have are simple and thus easily interoperable and composable. There's no push to adopt ever more interlocked services or upsell premium features. Like a nice buffet that just does not have a particular (albeit popular) dish on offer. Where you can bring your own bottle or even an appetizer and nobody will mind.
  - jefurii 4y ago
    Sourcehut is designed to operate the way Git itself operates, and the way the Linux kernel project uses it. In other words, the way it was designed to be used, not the "embrace, extend, extinguish" way that Github uses to insert itself into the process.
    - meibo 4y ago
      Or most git hosting solutions. Gitea and Gitlab do exactly the same thing, gitea even looks exactly like GitHub, works the same way, and can be hosted on pretty much any machine. It might be GitHub that popularized this, but it made open source more accessible to a lot of people and a majority of developers clearly get something out of it.
yoavm 4y ago
Just yesterday I was telling a friend about Sway, and then about Drew and all of his other projects I use and love. To me he is no less than legend developer with ethics that don't just show in his words, but in his code. We need more people like Drew.
ta238911 4y ago
I happily pay for sourcehut, not only but also because sourcehut aligns so much with the software world I am hoping to see more of. Imagine just 10% of the revenue involving software globally would go into supporting all excellent open source projects that millions of people depend on on a daily basis. What a beautiful world that could be.
hawski 4y ago
The following are only my lax feelings. There was a time here on HN a few years back were Drew was often on the front page. He seemed to be a growing Open Source star. He had opinions, but also projects to show. I don't know if he changed or I changed, but for me he got some attitude problem. It certainly is not easy to be impartial when you are in the spotlight, but his opinions took a bit too self-righteous turn for me. It could be just miscommunication on his part (or misreading on my part), but I felt many times that I mostly agreed with him, but was not a fan of how he put it. I like what he does even if I don't really use any of his software. Now that he was involved in a new language he seems to get more bad press with it, I think mostly because he is someone that is Internet semi-famous. I think he has his niche and people should just leave him be. As it is the question of popularity it is sad that work he was involved with also suffers, making this spiral that gets back to him. Probably what would help the most would be to go a little under the radar. It is unfair, but the Internet drain pipe must forget that he's a subject to pin things to. In his place I would limit writing to things not easily consumed by masses or associated with him - like mailing lists. It sucks, because who wouldn't like to be free to express himself and to advertise his work, but there is no spam filter for the public Internet.
- em-bee 4y ago
  i feel this is similar to dan bernstein, who also was/is a vocal critic of some projects, and also created software that is loved by many but hated by others. i haven't heard from him lately but i remember controversial discussions a few decades ago.
  - em-bee 4y ago
    related, there is a discussion about DJB here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31700732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31700732
PhantomBKB 4y ago
Meditate, find peace, and all this nonsense internet hate will no longer bother you.
rvieira 4y ago
Drew's been doing really cool stuff. I'm a paying user of Sourcehut myself and I'm considering moving from the "Amateur" to "Pro" tier just to support the project. I also don't get how someone would get out of their way just to be toxic against a free, open and community-oriented project. If you don't like it, don't use it.
ushakov 4y ago
i've been following Drew DeVault and his project ever since SourceHut announcement SourceHut turned out to be a company which values i very much share i wasn't aware about the harassment-campaign, but i wish a soon recovery! consider going off-line for a while and start talking to a therapist
sosodev 4y ago
I am greatly appreciative of Drew's work. I too have found that people will be intensely negative about anything I do online. It can be really hard to tune out the trolls because there is often truth to what they're saying. I just try to remind myself that trolls accomplish nothing and the end of the day I've at least done something.
harryvederci 4y ago
Anyone sticking their head out above the crowd will receive negative attention. Take it as a compliment, Drew. :)
no_time 4y ago
>It’s irresponsible, if not immoral, to design a language without a borrow checker in 2022. The rustacean cries out in pain as it pinches you.
- vnorilo 4y ago
  I too have found programming languages on the internet that I don't like. I have survived through my awesome power of not having to use them.
dreich 4y ago
> [...] This kind of harassment is something I hear about often from many maintainers of projects on SourceHut. It breaks my heart and I feel helpless to do anything about it. I most certainly can't provide an answer here but doesn't the medium (IRC, mailing lists, forums, etc) facilitate this toxic environment too? People whose sole intent is to manufacture a narrative in order to harass someone, or their project(s), are a lot more comfortable doing so online. They are guaranteed a wide audience, lots of views and publicity which in turn maximizes the damage. Rarely do I encounter this behavior in workplace meetings, conferences or venues that require physical attendance.
akagusu 4y ago
It is incredible how much hate people point to another person. Why not point this hate to corporations that are destroying our society with their unethical business practices?
fitzie 4y ago
One thing I don't see mentioned is that sourcehut users are taking the hit for hosting their code there. Some of it is because of natural tech activism and the coders need to create their desired order, but certainly there just typical bullying as well. Of course we're all just human, but I hope that retelling Drew's faults is not to justify any retaliation delivered to sourcehut users. I consider drew a prolific coder who seems to be focused on all aspects relating to getting good code out of our brains. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if he would come out with a new keyboard next.
diego_sandoval 4y ago
I always look forward to reading Drew's blog posts and I suspect that there's more people that, like me, value Drew's work, but we mostly just shut up about it. The haters are always going to have a louder voice because hate is an emotion that provokes people to be loud and outspoken. Appreciation is usually silent.

Bleh

228 points by kk6mrp 4y ago

1MachineElf 4y ago

What is the vitriol being directed at Drew DeVault? I enjoy reading his blog posts and am a fan of SourceHut.

riffic 4y ago
yeah, drew is pretty awesome as a builder. I don't get the negativity other than haters gonna hate.
bckr 4y ago
I think it's a good idea if you find out on your own and we don't make this thread about it. That said, I don' t know and couldn't tell you.
skybrian 4y ago
I don't understand the harassment and I think it's terrible that a maintainer got so much criticism that they felt they had to resign. But more generally, I think he has a negative reputation largely because of his blogging. He has criticized others in strong terms, in blog posts that get a lot of attention. We aren't that into reading another criticism when the previous ones didn't seem that well thought out. Sometimes the advocacy for his own work is also based on strong criticism of others for doing it wrong. It's "my way is good and other projects are harmful" rather than "I think my way is better, but other projects have different goals and people have their reasons for preferring their workflows." But he's getting attention because people keep sharing his blog posts in various forums, and he's not responsible for that. (Including this blog post appearing in Hacker News.)
kzrdude 4y ago
He has his own ideas. I think it's refreshing, he's not afraid of going against some popular opinions. Sometimes he's controversial or showing some risky humor - like the time he was encouraging destruction through npm, but not really. (quote: https://drewdevault.com/2021/11/16/Cash-for-leftpad.html https://drewdevault.com/2021/11/16/Cash-for-leftpad.html )
- danenania 4y ago
  That’s fine and I enjoy reading his posts quite a lot (haven’t used any of his services but they seem very cool in a particular HN minimalist kind of way). However if you’re going to traffic in language war melodrama and controversy-for-clicks (let’s be real, it’s a deliberate content strategy), then it’s sort of weak to cry about others not being nice enough in their criticisms of your own stuff. Pot meet kettle and all that /shrug. Regardless, I hope he gets through the rough patch and I look forward to reading more of his posts that may or may not eloquently shit all over some of my favorite programming tools :)
mattl 4y ago
- VoidWhisperer 4y ago
  The username he goes by is sircmpwn. Hence the 'sir' in the first part of the email address. It isn't too out there as far as emails go.
  - mattl 4y ago
    - nix23 4y ago
      - mattl 4y ago
        nix23 4y ago
        mattl 4y ago
        nix23 4y ago
        dang 4y ago
        You broke the site guidelines very badly in this thread, and repeatedly. We ban accounts that do that. I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it. That includes no more swipes and no more personal attacks.
The_Colonel 4y ago
I don't know what he's referring to, but he's kind of guilty of jumping on the hate wagons as well, e.g. https://drewdevault.com/2021/11/16/Cash-for-leftpad.html https://drewdevault.com/2021/11/16/Cash-for-leftpad.html or https://drewdevault.com/2016/11/24/Electron-considered-harmful.html https://drewdevault.com/2016/11/24/Electron-considered-harmf...
- garren 4y ago
  I don’t see either of those as particularly hateful. He’s got strong opinions, yes, and you’re certainly free to disregard his posts for whatever reasons you’d like, but they don’t strike me as obviously derogatory or repulsive. He makes good points in both - electron is great in some ways, but terrible in others, and dependency management with npm/node is, charitably, problematic.
  - The_Colonel 4y ago
    > Electron enables lazy developers to write garbage > The reason people choose Electron is because they are too lazy to learn the right tools for the job. > For the love of God, learn something else. Now contrast with what he complains about in this blogpost: > SourceHut’s email-oriented approach might not be for everyone, and instead of simply not using it, skeptics must harass any projects that do. His blogpost on electron was fueling this exact brand of hate.
    - 1MachineElf 4y ago
      To his credit, the blog post about electron was made on his own platform. It's not like he went out of his way to spread Electron developers on public forums. You can never achieve on a personal blog the vitriol Twitter, etc. can bear.
  - xoxoxoxox 4y ago
    I'd call your summarization of his takes more even-handed than the source material. I suspect, though, that his post wouldn't have gotten the traffic it did were all of it easy to nod along with.
skyfaller 4y ago
I use Sway and I pay to host my code on SourceHut. I admire Drew and I think he is making invaluable contributions to FOSS. That said, he has a history of... rash? impulsive? reactions to situations that might have been resolved with less bad blood if he had stepped away from the keyboard until he was less upset. The classic example is when he got upset about people wanting to unofficially add favicons to the Gemini protocol, and he threatened to blackhole any IP address which requests a favicon. https://github.com/makeworld-the-better-one/amfora/issues/199 https://github.com/makeworld-the-better-one/amfora/issues/19... I do not know if there is some specific recent event triggering vitriol, but the way this post is written, it sounds like Drew thinks it is resulting from less recent actions like the favicon threat. In Drew's defense, he has made (limited) apologies and I do believe he is trying to do better. https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disas... has a note at the bottom, saying: > I realize that my blog has been a source of a lot of negativity in the past, and I regret how harsh I've been with some of the projects I've criticised. I will make my arguments by example going forward: if I think we can do better, I'll do it better, instead of criticising those who are just earnestly trying their best. But it is also true that many people will not be quick to forgive him, and some people never will. It will take him time to undo the negative image he has created with some people, but after seeing Linus Torvald's positive changes, I am optimistic that Drew can change for the better if he wants to, and help create a welcoming community for everyone. If he doesn't give up first.
- jbiason 4y ago
  Dunno if he still have his Mastodon account, but after seeing continuous posts calling GNOME devs "complete idiots" and constantly bashing Rust for their decisions, I stopped following him completely. You're seeing the posts in his blogs. His timeline was full of bashing devs of other open source projects. Never a constructive criticism, just plain bashing (with occasional self-congratulatory comment for his own decision). PS: I think part of his Rust criticism was towards the attempt to make Sway use wlroots-rs and it not fitting his idea. So, instead of saying "Sorry, it didn't work", he jumped into full bashing Rust for not doing what he was trying to do.

brianzelip 4y ago

Awful to read about. Thanks Drew for Providing Alternatives!

dgb23 4y ago

> I have made no shortage of mistakes, and there are plenty of hurt feelings which can be laid at my feet. I am regretful for my mistakes, and I have worked actively to improve. I think that it has been working. Perhaps that’s arrogant of me to presume, but I’m not sure what else to do. Must I resign myself to my fate for stupid comments I made years ago? I’m sorry, and I’ve been working to do better. Can I have another chance? When you are working on yourself and reach new milestones, then it will take time until even your closest will recognize and really trust the observed changes. And I assume public / anonymous people will take even longer. This can feel unfair, because these things are very hard like improving, changing your habits, getting a bit wiser, or learning a new skill. But it is how it is. People have an image of you and it changes in a delayed manner. It's even doubly unfair if that image is distorted in the first place. Also people like jumping on negativity bandwagons. It seems to be one of the really stupid parts of human nature. I do it too, most people do it even if we try to avoid it most of the time. It sucks.

mikepurvis 4y ago
> ... it will take time until even your closest will recognize and really trust the observed changes. And I assume public / anonymous people will take even longer. In my observation it's quite the opposite. Those closest to you have the longest history with whatever was the "old way" and will therefore take the longest to believe that any change is for real.

jnsaff2 4y ago

I’ve been a very delighted user of Sway for at least 5 years and am grateful for the work Drew has put into it. I once made a trivial PR to sway that was maybe 6 chars in total but Drew made sure I felt welcomed and even mentioned me in the list of contributors. I find it a bit puzzling why someone who contributes so much to the community gets so much hate. Even if the opinions might not always be popular, the volume and quality of his work should speak much louder than words.

mustache_kimono 4y ago
> I find it a bit puzzling why someone who contributes so much to the community gets so much hate. Watch out, because even this self-pitying blog post manages to find time to reach out and troll the Rust community. Internet troll gets back internet hate is not exactly unexpected right? And we all know Drew says some trollish things sometimes. I don't think the way that some handle it and him is anywhere near correct, but Drew might consider the way he presents himself isn't always conducive to good faith disagreement.
- synu 4y ago
  That sums it up nicely. I put my heart and soul into a product that at one point Drew personally decided was harmful and worthy of self righteous scorn, and that wasn’t very fun, but I don’t wish the same back on him. It’s just kind of the way people behave on the internet sometimes, and you can’t take it too seriously.
- caslon 4y ago
  He doesn't "troll" the Rust community at all in the post. The line about the borrow checker was directly snagged from a lobsters or HN thread around Hare's announcement.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - lifthrasiir 4y ago
    Keep in mind that the line was written by some throw-away account [1]. To suggest that it is anything to do with the broader Rust community is trolling. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=borrow%20checker%20irresponsible&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

rossdavidh 4y ago

I feel like I'm coming in to the middle of an emotional conversation about a topic which has a lot of backstory I don't know about. Someone here care to bring me up to speed?

deleted 4y ago
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gidorah 4y ago
I agree. It feels like there are pro-drew and anti-drew camps, and I have no idea what's going on without reading thousands of comments.
- thomassmith65 4y ago
  In all likelihood, neither do the authors of the thousands of comments; it's the internet.
wheelerof4te 4y ago
In a nutshell, as concise as I can muster it: Drew didn't like Rust very much, and criticized it a lot for it's complexity. He is also a very vocal supporter of open-source, going so far as to disable NVIDIA's non-free driver support in his wayland window manager/compositor Sway. On top of that, he made SourceHut, an alternative to GitHub/Gitlab and some other innovative projects, like Gemini. EDIT: Drew did not make Gemini, but he is still one of it's most vocal promoters. /EDIT Recently, he even disclosed a new systems language, much simpler than Rust and more flexible than Golang. Suffice to say, he's made some enemies that don't want him and his team to succeed.
- lifthrasiir 4y ago
  Your summary is very one-sided and even misleading. (Drew never invented Gemini for example.) It is fair to say that Drew did bring lots of great things to F/OSS but is also a controversial figure due to his writing and communication style.

meibo 4y ago

The fact is that workflows that are forced on you by hosting a project on SourceHut don't work for the majority of open source contributors anymore. It's no reason for hate or any kind of personal attacks of course, but saying "then don't contribute" is not an option for most project leads that want to build successful open source software today. You have to choose your audience and the size of it.

em-bee 4y ago
what about that workflow doesn't work? (i don't actually know, i didn't try using sourcehut yet) is the problem that it isn't like github?
- lifthrasiir 4y ago
  To my knowledge Sourcehut is strictly based on mailing lists and email patches, which is by no means obsolete (Linux still uses them for a good reason) but old-fashioned compared to say, Github PRs, limiting a pool of potential contributors.
  - jefurii 4y ago
    Drew wrote an interesting piece on the mail-based workflow (I linked to it elsewhere on this page). Yes it's been around for awhile, but it also seems like it really works better for certain use-cases.
MaxLeiter 4y ago
If the maintainer chooses to use SourceHut they know and accept the costs and benefits. Anecdotally, the quality:quantity ratio in regards to both contributions and contributors is far higher if you use a service like SourceHut. There are no activity charts so there's no reason to game the system with low effort pull requests and features.
- meibo 4y ago
  Really must be anecdotal, I've been running a major open source project on Github for 3 years now and the only pull requests I've ever had to turn away were major refactorings that I preferred to do myself. You can work very methodically and receive high quality contributions everywhere - as I said, really depends on your audience.

em-bee 4y ago

Perhaps it this has something to do with the backlash, not just against me and my work, but against others who use and participate in that work. this a thousand times. i didn't care when people insulted or criticized me, but when they went against my team, then that hurt deeply and i really took that personal. shrugging off attacks directed at me is kind of doable, but when others are attacked because of me, then i want to be able to protect them. sometimes it works to redirect the attention to me, but when it doesn't it makes me feel helpless.

wheelerof4te 4y ago

Thank you Drew for doing your best! Please, never give up, no matter who wants you and your hard work to go away. I have used Sway and fell in love with it, it was such a discovery of simplicity and beautiful design. I read about your new language many months ago, even then realizing the potential behind it. They want to silence you because you are a beacon of new hope and ideas. They fear your potential. Don't let anyone to belittle your talent and skill.

vnorilo 4y ago

I guess I should have known better but I was surprised to learn that Drew would be on the receiving end of that stuff. The vibe I got from sourcehut is that it's built by peers for peers, they are remarkably open about everything. The service is straightforward and doesn't force you to a particular workflow. It's a solid hosted version control with a no-nonsense web UI - open source to boot. What's not to like? It blows my mind that someone would actively hate on such a project. Oh well, internet. (I signed up for srht and pay a small amount for my personal non-work stuff.)

proto_lambda 4y ago
> The service [...] doesn't force you to a particular workflow. I've never actually used it, but isn't that exactly what it does? As far as I know, it only allows submitting patches using emails, not using the "pull request"/"merge request"/etc workflow of most other big hosted Git solutions. But it's very possible I just don't have the whole picture here.
- vnorilo 4y ago
  You are not wrong - there is no web UI for pull requests or merge checks. However the features it does have are simple and thus easily interoperable and composable. There's no push to adopt ever more interlocked services or upsell premium features. Like a nice buffet that just does not have a particular (albeit popular) dish on offer. Where you can bring your own bottle or even an appetizer and nobody will mind.
- jefurii 4y ago
  Sourcehut is designed to operate the way Git itself operates, and the way the Linux kernel project uses it. In other words, the way it was designed to be used, not the "embrace, extend, extinguish" way that Github uses to insert itself into the process.
  - meibo 4y ago
    Or most git hosting solutions. Gitea and Gitlab do exactly the same thing, gitea even looks exactly like GitHub, works the same way, and can be hosted on pretty much any machine. It might be GitHub that popularized this, but it made open source more accessible to a lot of people and a majority of developers clearly get something out of it.

yoavm 4y ago

Just yesterday I was telling a friend about Sway, and then about Drew and all of his other projects I use and love. To me he is no less than legend developer with ethics that don't just show in his words, but in his code. We need more people like Drew.

ta238911 4y ago

I happily pay for sourcehut, not only but also because sourcehut aligns so much with the software world I am hoping to see more of. Imagine just 10% of the revenue involving software globally would go into supporting all excellent open source projects that millions of people depend on on a daily basis. What a beautiful world that could be.

hawski 4y ago

The following are only my lax feelings. There was a time here on HN a few years back were Drew was often on the front page. He seemed to be a growing Open Source star. He had opinions, but also projects to show. I don't know if he changed or I changed, but for me he got some attitude problem. It certainly is not easy to be impartial when you are in the spotlight, but his opinions took a bit too self-righteous turn for me. It could be just miscommunication on his part (or misreading on my part), but I felt many times that I mostly agreed with him, but was not a fan of how he put it. I like what he does even if I don't really use any of his software. Now that he was involved in a new language he seems to get more bad press with it, I think mostly because he is someone that is Internet semi-famous. I think he has his niche and people should just leave him be. As it is the question of popularity it is sad that work he was involved with also suffers, making this spiral that gets back to him. Probably what would help the most would be to go a little under the radar. It is unfair, but the Internet drain pipe must forget that he's a subject to pin things to. In his place I would limit writing to things not easily consumed by masses or associated with him - like mailing lists. It sucks, because who wouldn't like to be free to express himself and to advertise his work, but there is no spam filter for the public Internet.

em-bee 4y ago
i feel this is similar to dan bernstein, who also was/is a vocal critic of some projects, and also created software that is loved by many but hated by others. i haven't heard from him lately but i remember controversial discussions a few decades ago.
- em-bee 4y ago
  related, there is a discussion about DJB here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31700732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31700732

PhantomBKB 4y ago

Meditate, find peace, and all this nonsense internet hate will no longer bother you.

rvieira 4y ago

Drew's been doing really cool stuff. I'm a paying user of Sourcehut myself and I'm considering moving from the "Amateur" to "Pro" tier just to support the project. I also don't get how someone would get out of their way just to be toxic against a free, open and community-oriented project. If you don't like it, don't use it.

ushakov 4y ago

i've been following Drew DeVault and his project ever since SourceHut announcement SourceHut turned out to be a company which values i very much share i wasn't aware about the harassment-campaign, but i wish a soon recovery! consider going off-line for a while and start talking to a therapist

sosodev 4y ago

I am greatly appreciative of Drew's work. I too have found that people will be intensely negative about anything I do online. It can be really hard to tune out the trolls because there is often truth to what they're saying. I just try to remind myself that trolls accomplish nothing and the end of the day I've at least done something.

harryvederci 4y ago

Anyone sticking their head out above the crowd will receive negative attention. Take it as a compliment, Drew. :)

no_time 4y ago

>It’s irresponsible, if not immoral, to design a language without a borrow checker in 2022. The rustacean cries out in pain as it pinches you.

vnorilo 4y ago
I too have found programming languages on the internet that I don't like. I have survived through my awesome power of not having to use them.

dreich 4y ago

> [...] This kind of harassment is something I hear about often from many maintainers of projects on SourceHut. It breaks my heart and I feel helpless to do anything about it. I most certainly can't provide an answer here but doesn't the medium (IRC, mailing lists, forums, etc) facilitate this toxic environment too? People whose sole intent is to manufacture a narrative in order to harass someone, or their project(s), are a lot more comfortable doing so online. They are guaranteed a wide audience, lots of views and publicity which in turn maximizes the damage. Rarely do I encounter this behavior in workplace meetings, conferences or venues that require physical attendance.

akagusu 4y ago

It is incredible how much hate people point to another person. Why not point this hate to corporations that are destroying our society with their unethical business practices?

fitzie 4y ago

One thing I don't see mentioned is that sourcehut users are taking the hit for hosting their code there. Some of it is because of natural tech activism and the coders need to create their desired order, but certainly there just typical bullying as well. Of course we're all just human, but I hope that retelling Drew's faults is not to justify any retaliation delivered to sourcehut users. I consider drew a prolific coder who seems to be focused on all aspects relating to getting good code out of our brains. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if he would come out with a new keyboard next.

diego_sandoval 4y ago

I always look forward to reading Drew's blog posts and I suspect that there's more people that, like me, value Drew's work, but we mostly just shut up about it. The haters are always going to have a louder voice because hate is an emotion that provokes people to be loud and outspoken. Appreciation is usually silent.