12 ms·

Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community

75 points by apaprocki 13y ago

hackula1 13y ago
> But if he can, we’ll get Node v0.12 delivered a lot faster and have a stronger community. And of course, Strongloop could not help but make another half way claim that they are the ones "in charge" of node. This current stuff aside, I just cannot believe their lack of shame when trying to take commercial credit for a community project.
krrishd 13y ago
I think it was pretty classy of Ben not to comment on some of the hateful comments in the commit that, instead of adding to discussion or trying to prevent future error, simply were personal attacks at him.
- dmpk2k 13y ago
  I can't say I'm surprised though. bnoordhuis lacks tact; poke other people enough and eventually you'll get an angry mob. The parent article talks about learning, but glosses over that bnoordhuis' behaviour that set this all off isn't unusual for him. Learning? No. Class? No. That said, this is a tempest in a teacup. bnoordhuis upsets someone again, news at 11.
  - kika 13y ago
    Linus for example isn't the nicest guy in town either. I know a few devs who are parsecs ahead of me, in knowledge and/or productivity. None of them could qualify as a nice and polite person. May be observation bias, but I see a connection here.
    - dmpk2k 13y ago
      I think that's an example of sample bias. There are many excellent developers who are nice too, you just don't hear as much about them because they're not causing drama. Again. All the great developers I've worked with have been fantastic people too. Maybe I've just been lucky. As a counterpoint in the node community: isaacs is pleasant, amazingly patient, and an excellent developer.
      - cjbprime 13y ago
        Excellent point, thanks for making it.
  - selmnoo 13y ago
    Uhm, Ben lacks tact? Says who? I think you guys are maybe confusing the tough Dutch culture as being insensitive to some hot issues. Ben is an extremely smart, extremely prolific programmer. When you're out and about like him you're bound to get yourself tripped somewhere along the way. As an aside, while Joyent has exposed itself as being extremely unprofessional and prone to jumping on the gun, I'm saddened that Strongloop is quick to say things like "If Ben can’t learn, we’ll fire him" too ... and this is just after all of this happened. My goodness people, stop sitting on your high chairs and speculating firings, it's not a fucking game.
    - dmpk2k 13y ago
      Uhm, Ben lacts tact? Says who? It's a general observation I've developed watching node development on occasion. I don't even follow it that closely, but a disproportionate amount of negativity seems to stem from bnoordhuis; that's why I remember him specifically. Okay, it could be just me, but I've heard other people subsequently complain about his behaviour too. I think you guys are maybe confusing the tough Dutch culture as being insensitive to some hot issues. The Netherlands isn't the world, and only a tiny percentage of developers come from there. As the blog post says, bnoordhuis needs to learn, but so far he has not. Furthermore, regardless of the origins of his behaviour, it's still negative.
    - mseepgood 13y ago
      > I think you guys are maybe confusing the tough Dutch culture as being insensitive to some hot issues. I've read that the Netherlands have a racist Santa Claus tradition and even some politicians are defending it against change. :/ Edit: found the article http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/protests-sparked-by-dutch-santas-helper-black-pete/story-e6frg6so-1226761889114 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/protests-sparked-...
      - X-Istence 13y ago
        Way to go making a comment about a culture and tradition you are unfamiliar with based upon a newspaper article that doesn't go into the history behind said tradition!
brianmcdonough 13y ago
I love this post. I work with engineers on a daily basis and the one thing I find so foreign is an unhealthy attachment to perfection, as if such a thing existed. The easy thing to do is deride someone. The hard thing is to reach out. Nice article written in support of a hard working guy. Upvote.
itafroma 13y ago
Most of the new guidelines[1] are technical, but the one relevant the events of the last day or two is on line 78: +* When documenting APIs and/or source code, don't make assumptions or make + implications about race, gender, religion, political orientation or anything + else that isn't relevant to the project. [1]: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/39db22594df13e8423af3e923ec15b8dc47a5234 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/39db22594df13e8423af3...
- jdunck 13y ago
  That commit was made in response to this incident. No commit process was previously documented.
rpedela 13y ago
I think the article is missing a lot of context. What was the offending issue?
- dmpk2k 13y ago
  At a guess: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538615 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538... and https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482dcc8d1c41c14333fcb48 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d... Those two may not seem like much (at least I don't think so), but this kind of passive-aggressive behaviour isn't atypical for bnoordhuis. Eventually it'll cause a bad backlash. Like this. bnoordhuis is an example of a problem that many popular OSS projects will face in their lifetime: is keeping a highly-productive jerk around worth it? On the one hand they produce good code, but on the other they help drag the community's ethos into the tank.
  - victorhooi 13y ago
    I just see a guy following policy, and then reverting the patch when that policy was broken. Also, I don't know if it's very smart calling somebody a jerk whom you've never met, or had any significant dealings with. It's very easy to do it from the comfort of your couch at home, but I suspect it'd be a different story if they were right in front of you. In fact, it's basically bullying. This is the sort of thing you get from reading tabloids or gossip mags - "OMG, Kim Kardashian is like, such a <xyz>, because I read that, like, <xyz> said <xyz> to <xyz>. She is like, a total <xyz>! I mean, if I were her, I'd <xyz>". Seriously, I would have thought that HN as a community is better than that.
    - dmpk2k 13y ago
      You're making a lot of assumptions there.
- mmaster5 13y ago
  Here is the context: Joyent VP of Eng calls Node.js leading contributor an asshole on the corporate blog. http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun Real classy. Yes the guy was being thick, but he was virtually fired by someone not at his own company.
jamesaguilar 13y ago
Did you send this as a private teaching moment first?
- ijroth 13y ago
  I actually did.
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    That is good of you. No more questions. Generally I agree with your assessment, however when confronting systemic biases sometimes it's necessary to speak out publicly. However, that can be done outside the context of a particular person-to-person encounter.
  - jnbiche 13y ago
    Yeah, real private.
adriancooney 13y ago
> If Ben can’t learn, we’ll fire him. That statement feels a little to intimate for an outsider to the company. Ben made a mistake but to single out and threaten him like that in public would surely alienate him further. This entire situation has gotten extremely out of hand. It shows how activists can turn into extremists when faced with an adversary. I'm in no way advocating what Ben did but it's despicable how everyone jumped onto the bandwagon to exacerbate and publicize what should have been a minor event dealt with on employer-employee basis, not a public shaming.
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  It's important that everyone knows that violations against political correctness are serious things. Whether a person calls a commit that changes "he" to "they" trivial, or refuses to assert that women are at least as intelligent, if not more, than men, or attributes Africa's problems to something other than racism and exploitation, it is important that that person loses their job. Otherwise, how will people know who holds the power - straight White non-Jewish men, that is.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - yetanotherphd 13y ago
      Those people are already far beyond the pale, but I was referring to more benign cultural explanations. A professor was fired for his "racist" suggestion that cultural differences could help explain the relative poor performance of Black Kenyans relative to Indian Kenyans in running local businesses. The sad irony is that this man committed suicide over this, and that he was a committed liberal anti-racist. In this case the progressives had no compunction in sacrificing one of their own. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6705401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6705401 http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/09/since-some-people-seem-to-still-think.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/09/since-s...
ricardobeat 13y ago
I think the community would do better without these corporate fingers poking on it.
- mmaster5 13y ago
  Put node in neutral territory.
dbond 13y ago
Are there any pieces anywhere about comment gendering being an issue to female programmers? (My short googling failed me)
- astrodust 13y ago
  It's not an "issue" so much as a pervasive problem. Presuming default-male is bad form, and it has a subtle excluding effect. Replacing "him" with "the user" might seem inconsequential, but it's a tiny step in the right direction. A few million more like that and we'll be getting somewhere.
rdtsc 13y ago
My understanding of Node.JS and libuv community is as an outsider. I don't follow what's going on unless it is on the front page of HN once in a while and other forums. But one impression I get from Node.JS and its surrounding community is arrogance and immaturity. This is from top to down -- companies sponsoring it (Joyent) and many of its vocal proponents. I see plenty of energy, enthusiasm, but mixed with immaturity. "We don't know what are doing, but darn it! we will be very vocal and do it with lots of enthusiasm". One guy doesn't want to commit a trivial change. It blows up into a media shitstorm. Reverted commits. Joyent's reaction is what surprised me -- "While we would fire Ben over this". This guy doesn't even work for them. Hypothetically firing people, hmm, so committed to Women's Rights, they are hypothetically hiring and firing this person. Have they talked to him in private? StrongLoop, a company I never heard of until this point, is a bit more mature, that's good to see, but even they couldn't resist the veiled threat. What is sad, as a whole this episode just reinforced the (hopefully wrong) stereotype I have of the community. Joyent instead of helping the community (which I think they thought they did by writing that blog post), are hurting it. Buying into and spending time and money learning a platform/language is also an implicit buy in/participation in the community. So far it screams to me "stay away". Hopefully it will grow up at some point.
- yapcguy 13y ago
  Remember how vicious the Node.js "community" were to outsiders who critiqued event loop blocking? Whatever the technical merits, I think this incident will do significant damage to the perception of Node.js as a serious platform to build on.
  - Lazare 13y ago
    It already has in my view. Joyent is not coming across as an organisation I'd trust to back an important project.
  - GrinningFool 13y ago
    Tempest in a teapot. Most people using it will never come across this little storm.
mintplant 13y ago
From Joyent's blog post [1]: > But while Isaac is a Joyent employee, Ben is not—and if he had been, he wouldn't be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent. For comparison, here is bnoordhuis's comment from the pull request thread [2] that the post is referencing: > Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that. Honestly, Joyent's post strikes me as a horrible overreaction and attempt at character assassination over what should have been a small matter. Rejecting pull requests that only correct typos or comments has been standard practice for the Node.js project for a long time now--this isn't the first one to be closed for being too small of a change, a fact that Joyent, as the main driver of the project, should be aware of. bnoordhuis followed standard procedure, yet Joyent tries to cast him as being intentionally sexist and a terrible person. Seeing such immature behavior coming from their corporate blog--calling him an "asshole", saying he should be fired, insinuating that they wish they could kick him out of the project--has pretty much destroyed the respect I had for the company. [1] https://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun https://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun [2] https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015
- Lazare 13y ago
  Wow, Joyent comes across very poorly. For the record, I support using gender-neutral pronouns; I actually support the original pull request. But it seems inarguable that: 1. It's a minor change 2. Node.js, like many projects, rejects minor changes 3. It was rejected for being a minor change 4. Joyent reacted amazingly unprofessionally In particular, I have concerns both with the way the initial decision was reversed (this seems like an abuse of Joyent's power over the project), and in particular with their remarkable blog post. Following a project's guidelines on accepting a commit is "gobsmackingly inappropriate"? Really? I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that attitude from someone in Joyent's position. And as for their pointed comment that they would have fired Ben if he worked for them...really? Boy do they sound like a barrel of fun to work for. "Follow the rules or be fired; unless it's a rule we decide isn't important, then we'll fire you if you do follow it. Have fun guessing which one is which!" I use Node.js professionally, and I will continue to do so for now. My opinion of Joyent, however, is dropping rapidly. Node.js will either grow beyond them or die. Edit: Rephrased the language to better reflect my opinion. Had too much hyperbole in the first draft.
dreamfactory 13y ago
Are these people illiterate? Are they not aware that in the English language masculine pronouns are correct for both gender-specific and gender-neutral uses? Mankind refers to everybody. It may seem awkward, particularly to over-literal types, but so is our spelling, grammar, and pronunciation generally.
- Brakenshire 13y ago
  Mankind is gender neutral, it's highly debatable whether he, him or his are also.
  - CyruzDraxs 13y ago
    Several centuries of linguistic evolution would disagree. Those have always been neutral, though there has been usage of singular "they" dating back to Shakespearean-era. It is somewhat widely accepted that he/him/his is only gender-neutral in situations where the gender is ambiguous though. For example, in writing documentation. Personally, I think it sounds weird and prefer they/one.
  - dreamfactory 13y ago
    > gender neutral, it's highly debatable whether he, him or his are also Not in the English language. It's debated by some whether this might have a subliminal effect and reinforce social gender stereotypes (though no evidence for that hypothesis as far as I'm aware) and therefore whether masculine prepositions _should_ be treated as neutral but that's in the same category as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_spelling_reform http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_spelling_reform. There's nothing wrong with that of course and it can be an interesting hypothesis to pursue - but I find it depressing that a self-proclaimed educated and science-based open source tech community so easily engages on a witch hunt based on pure speculation.
aaronem 13y ago
Having recently been considering Node for a major new project in my organization, I'm greatly encouraged to see that the folks in its developer community so thoroughly refuse to let themselves be distracted by irrelevancies from such a laserlike focus on improving their code.
aroman 13y ago
I'm sorry, but the entire notion that using masculine pronouns somehow implies sexism is complete bullshit. That's how the English language works. "He" is used as both neuter and masculine. There is no "it" pronoun. Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop fighting about this. Unless someone actually did something sexist, this is a linguistic bikeshed to end all bikesheds. Childish community behavior aside, the entire argument is a moot point. There is NOTHING sexist about using "he". If you feel otherwise, please, please educate me.
- quinnchr 13y ago
  Yeah for sure the english language couldn't possibly itself be influenced by sexism. That's just how it works. We should just accept it. The pronoun itself isn't sexist it's the reason behind it's use. Beyond indicating (possible) differences in biological sex, what purpose does using a gendered pronoun serve? It doesn't add information, it merely reinforces gender norms. http://www.english.wisc.edu/rfyoung/336/gender.pdf http://www.english.wisc.edu/rfyoung/336/gender.pdf
  - aroman 13y ago
    Thanks for your reply. > Yeah for sure the english language couldn't possibly itself be influenced by sexism. That's just how it works. We should just accept it. That was not my point, nor do I believe I implied that. I acknowledge that the original reason why English's nonspecific/neuter pronoun is the same as the masculine is almost certainly because of ages-old sexism and masculo-normativity. > The pronoun itself isn't sexist it's the reason behind it's use. I completely agree. Do you think sexism was intended in the original code comment? If not, then by your logic there was nothing sexist about using "he" and "him". > Beyond indicating (possible) differences in biological sex, what purpose does using a gendered pronoun serve? It doesn't add information, it merely reinforces gender norms. I agree, from a 21st century perspective it seems absurd to not have a neutral/neuter/nonspecific pronoun. But it is an established point of English grammar and language that the masculine pronoun is because there does not exist a neutral/neuter/nonspecific one. Using "they" and "them" and those forms is a relatively recent development of modern language. Personally, I tend to use them very often because I don't want to offend anyone, and I think their usage as an "official unofficial" neutral/neuter/nonspecific pronoun is well on its way to becoming the de-facto way of referring to non-gender-specific people. My point was, and still is, that it is neither wrong nor sexist to use "he" or "his". Unless of course, the sentence you are writing is incorrect or sexist.
bcoates 13y ago
The guy who wrote the initial pull request should get some sort of medal for efficiency in trolling, it's not common that you can make this many alleged professionals look like idiots with a 3 character patch.
xs_kid 13y ago
It's just me or there are some (a lot of) tension between Joyent and StrongLoop about the management of the project?
smewpy 13y ago
Great response from StrongLoop, it was ridiculous over-react from Joyent to publicly pull out the pitchforks.
jmspring 13y ago
It is interesting following this particular discussion about gender pronouns in Node.js. I am curious how other, more mature, products have handled similar. GitHub and easily viewed pull requests make some of this much more visible than say in the old days of sites like sourceforge.
eliteraspberrie 13y ago
Way to throw your people under the bus. I wouldn't work for a company like this -- not to mention Joyent, after that bit of libel they call a blog post.
kmeluna 13y ago
From the blog post: > If Ben can’t learn, we’ll fire him. Reforming the use of English pronouns has nothing to do with the employee's professional activities. No one should be threatened for either supporting or not supporting a political cause or brand of activism. There is no consensus in society about how pronouns should be used or their cultural significance [1]. No one should have their livelihood threatened for either agreeing or not agreeing with one position or another or not having an opinion on the topic, or applying their professional, technical judgement. Without commenting on the details of the kerfuffle, from a broader perspective, the workplace should not be a place for political coercion. One editorial recently suggested that: "[E]mployers coercing employees to express their employers’ political views is “the most undercovered story of the year.” [2] "Already, American employers are increasingly using the captive audience technique to force their employees to learn about the employer’s political and religious views. During these sessions, employees may be forced, at the risk of losing their jobs, to listen to their employer’s perspective on the latest political and religious issues of the day." [3] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-onlanguage-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-onlanguage-... [2] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_12/the_most_undercovered_story_of042089.php http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_12/... [3] http://yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal-pocket-part/volume-120/addressing-political-captive-audience-workplace-meetings-in-the-post%11citizens-united-environment/ http://yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal-pocket-part/v... [4] Efforts to keep politics out of the workplace: http://votesmart.org/bill/1711/ http://votesmart.org/bill/1711/
- acdha 13y ago
  > No one should be threatened for either supporting or not supporting a political cause or brand of activism. You should read before commenting: the problem wasn't his choice of wording but rather how he turned a trivial change into an argument and reverted another committer's action complete with a threat. If he didn't want to get involved, simply ignoring it was by far the easiest course of action. Instead, he twice chose to escalate to an unnecessary level of confrontation.
  - yetanotherphd 13y ago
drderidder 13y ago
The vindictive reaction from Joyent on this was just atrocious. Perhaps it's time for node to find a new home.
JohnTHaller 13y ago
For context, here is the entirety of what Ben Noordhuis has publicly said on the matter thus far: "Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that." - https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538615 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538... "@isaacs may have his commit bit but that does not mean he is at liberty to land patches at will. All patches have to be signed off by either me or Bert. Isaac, consider yourself chided." - https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482dcc8d1c41c14333fcb48 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d... "Hi all, let me try to clear up a few things. Why I rejected the pull request. Us maintainers tend to reject tiny doc changes because they're often more trouble than they're worth. You have to collect and check the CLA, it makes git blame less effective, etc. That's why the usual approach to such pull requests is 'no, unless' - in this case the 'unless' should probably have applied. To me as a non-native speaker, the difference between 'him' and 'them' seems academic but hey, if it gets us scores of female contributors, who am I to object? Why I reverted the commit. In hindsight, I should have given Isaac the benefit of the doubt because I don't doubt that he acted with the best of intentions. On the other hand, if another committer jumped the line like that, I would have done the same thing. We have procedures in place and no one is exempt from them. To the people that felt it necessary to call me a misogynist: I volunteer in a mentorship program that gets young people - especially young women - involved in technology. How many of you go out and actively try to increase the number of women in the field? I'm probably going to step back from libuv and node.js core development. I do it more out a sense of duty than anything else. If this is what I have to deal with, then I'd just as rather do something else. Hope that clears things up. Thanks." - https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568172 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...
Artemis2 13y ago
This story is getting annoying.
- waterlion 13y ago
  Not quite as annoying as having hundreds of raging angry people name-calling and character-assassinating you over a mistake.
ksec 13y ago
THIS IS GREAT! There goes the reputation of Joyet. Wait a min. I remember something about Lifelong Free Hosting drama not long ago. ( Correct me if i am wrong. ) A Company to look at what NOT to do and how NOT to run.
rok3 13y ago
Great to see that someone took the time to create a well thought-out, positive response to this situation. https://gist.github.com/creationix/5fb9e94fd8d80268c047 https://gist.github.com/creationix/5fb9e94fd8d80268c047
Oculus 13y ago
What would it take for Node to be taken out from under Joyent's arm to be setup as its own project?
- janjongboom 13y ago
  Joyent has izs, that's mainly it. Strongloop does biggest part of development, and before Strongloop it was Cloud9. I guess putting node in a foundation would make the most sense.
namuol 13y ago
As poorly as Joyent may have responded, and as badly they might have misunderstood this entire situation, I am convinced that everyone involved here (on both sides) had nothing but good intentions, and that until we acknowledge these things and make up, this is going to become needlessly harmful to the community at large. Pause, reflect, forgive... nobody here is a monster.
- binocarlos 13y ago
  I agree - a classic case of hyper media attention boiling over into other, existing politics. God only knows what would have happened if he had rejected a commit involving the word 'religion'
- waterlion 13y ago
  I would dearly love to agree (see my other comments if you don't believe me). But Bryan Cantrill's, and Joyent's behaviour seems very cynical, manipulative, and childish. He used deliberately inflammatory language, and would have, at the very least, been aware of the fact that it might not be so black and white. He will have known that he started a witch-hunt and did nothing, as far as I can tell, to try and quell it. No-one is a monster, but some people are either playing games or have spectacularly poor judgment. Not the kind of company you want to work with either way. Joyent has severely blotted its copy-book. For that reason if I'm ever in a position to make purchasing decisions I will exclude Joyent.

75 points by apaprocki 13y ago

> But if he can, we’ll get Node v0.12 delivered a lot faster and have a stronger community. And of course, Strongloop could not help but make another half way claim that they are the ones "in charge" of node. This current stuff aside, I just cannot believe their lack of shame when trying to take commercial credit for a community project.

krrishd 13y ago

I think it was pretty classy of Ben not to comment on some of the hateful comments in the commit that, instead of adding to discussion or trying to prevent future error, simply were personal attacks at him.

dmpk2k 13y ago
I can't say I'm surprised though. bnoordhuis lacks tact; poke other people enough and eventually you'll get an angry mob. The parent article talks about learning, but glosses over that bnoordhuis' behaviour that set this all off isn't unusual for him. Learning? No. Class? No. That said, this is a tempest in a teacup. bnoordhuis upsets someone again, news at 11.
- kika 13y ago
  Linus for example isn't the nicest guy in town either. I know a few devs who are parsecs ahead of me, in knowledge and/or productivity. None of them could qualify as a nice and polite person. May be observation bias, but I see a connection here.
  - dmpk2k 13y ago
    I think that's an example of sample bias. There are many excellent developers who are nice too, you just don't hear as much about them because they're not causing drama. Again. All the great developers I've worked with have been fantastic people too. Maybe I've just been lucky. As a counterpoint in the node community: isaacs is pleasant, amazingly patient, and an excellent developer.
    - cjbprime 13y ago
      Excellent point, thanks for making it.
- selmnoo 13y ago
  Uhm, Ben lacks tact? Says who? I think you guys are maybe confusing the tough Dutch culture as being insensitive to some hot issues. Ben is an extremely smart, extremely prolific programmer. When you're out and about like him you're bound to get yourself tripped somewhere along the way. As an aside, while Joyent has exposed itself as being extremely unprofessional and prone to jumping on the gun, I'm saddened that Strongloop is quick to say things like "If Ben can’t learn, we’ll fire him" too ... and this is just after all of this happened. My goodness people, stop sitting on your high chairs and speculating firings, it's not a fucking game.
  - dmpk2k 13y ago
    Uhm, Ben lacts tact? Says who? It's a general observation I've developed watching node development on occasion. I don't even follow it that closely, but a disproportionate amount of negativity seems to stem from bnoordhuis; that's why I remember him specifically. Okay, it could be just me, but I've heard other people subsequently complain about his behaviour too. I think you guys are maybe confusing the tough Dutch culture as being insensitive to some hot issues. The Netherlands isn't the world, and only a tiny percentage of developers come from there. As the blog post says, bnoordhuis needs to learn, but so far he has not. Furthermore, regardless of the origins of his behaviour, it's still negative.
  - mseepgood 13y ago
    > I think you guys are maybe confusing the tough Dutch culture as being insensitive to some hot issues. I've read that the Netherlands have a racist Santa Claus tradition and even some politicians are defending it against change. :/ Edit: found the article http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/protests-sparked-by-dutch-santas-helper-black-pete/story-e6frg6so-1226761889114 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/protests-sparked-...
    - X-Istence 13y ago
      Way to go making a comment about a culture and tradition you are unfamiliar with based upon a newspaper article that doesn't go into the history behind said tradition!

brianmcdonough 13y ago

I love this post. I work with engineers on a daily basis and the one thing I find so foreign is an unhealthy attachment to perfection, as if such a thing existed. The easy thing to do is deride someone. The hard thing is to reach out. Nice article written in support of a hard working guy. Upvote.

itafroma 13y ago

Most of the new guidelines[1] are technical, but the one relevant the events of the last day or two is on line 78: +* When documenting APIs and/or source code, don't make assumptions or make + implications about race, gender, religion, political orientation or anything + else that isn't relevant to the project. [1]: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/39db22594df13e8423af3e923ec15b8dc47a5234 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/39db22594df13e8423af3...

jdunck 13y ago
That commit was made in response to this incident. No commit process was previously documented.

rpedela 13y ago

I think the article is missing a lot of context. What was the offending issue?

dmpk2k 13y ago
At a guess: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538615 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538... and https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482dcc8d1c41c14333fcb48 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d... Those two may not seem like much (at least I don't think so), but this kind of passive-aggressive behaviour isn't atypical for bnoordhuis. Eventually it'll cause a bad backlash. Like this. bnoordhuis is an example of a problem that many popular OSS projects will face in their lifetime: is keeping a highly-productive jerk around worth it? On the one hand they produce good code, but on the other they help drag the community's ethos into the tank.
- victorhooi 13y ago
  I just see a guy following policy, and then reverting the patch when that policy was broken. Also, I don't know if it's very smart calling somebody a jerk whom you've never met, or had any significant dealings with. It's very easy to do it from the comfort of your couch at home, but I suspect it'd be a different story if they were right in front of you. In fact, it's basically bullying. This is the sort of thing you get from reading tabloids or gossip mags - "OMG, Kim Kardashian is like, such a <xyz>, because I read that, like, <xyz> said <xyz> to <xyz>. She is like, a total <xyz>! I mean, if I were her, I'd <xyz>". Seriously, I would have thought that HN as a community is better than that.
  - dmpk2k 13y ago
    You're making a lot of assumptions there.
mmaster5 13y ago
Here is the context: Joyent VP of Eng calls Node.js leading contributor an asshole on the corporate blog. http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun Real classy. Yes the guy was being thick, but he was virtually fired by someone not at his own company.

jamesaguilar 13y ago

Did you send this as a private teaching moment first?

ijroth 13y ago
I actually did.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  That is good of you. No more questions. Generally I agree with your assessment, however when confronting systemic biases sometimes it's necessary to speak out publicly. However, that can be done outside the context of a particular person-to-person encounter.
- jnbiche 13y ago
  Yeah, real private.

adriancooney 13y ago

> If Ben can’t learn, we’ll fire him. That statement feels a little to intimate for an outsider to the company. Ben made a mistake but to single out and threaten him like that in public would surely alienate him further. This entire situation has gotten extremely out of hand. It shows how activists can turn into extremists when faced with an adversary. I'm in no way advocating what Ben did but it's despicable how everyone jumped onto the bandwagon to exacerbate and publicize what should have been a minor event dealt with on employer-employee basis, not a public shaming.

yetanotherphd 13y ago
It's important that everyone knows that violations against political correctness are serious things. Whether a person calls a commit that changes "he" to "they" trivial, or refuses to assert that women are at least as intelligent, if not more, than men, or attributes Africa's problems to something other than racism and exploitation, it is important that that person loses their job. Otherwise, how will people know who holds the power - straight White non-Jewish men, that is.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - yetanotherphd 13y ago
    Those people are already far beyond the pale, but I was referring to more benign cultural explanations. A professor was fired for his "racist" suggestion that cultural differences could help explain the relative poor performance of Black Kenyans relative to Indian Kenyans in running local businesses. The sad irony is that this man committed suicide over this, and that he was a committed liberal anti-racist. In this case the progressives had no compunction in sacrificing one of their own. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6705401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6705401 http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/09/since-some-people-seem-to-still-think.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/09/since-s...

ricardobeat 13y ago

I think the community would do better without these corporate fingers poking on it.

mmaster5 13y ago
Put node in neutral territory.

dbond 13y ago

Are there any pieces anywhere about comment gendering being an issue to female programmers? (My short googling failed me)

astrodust 13y ago
It's not an "issue" so much as a pervasive problem. Presuming default-male is bad form, and it has a subtle excluding effect. Replacing "him" with "the user" might seem inconsequential, but it's a tiny step in the right direction. A few million more like that and we'll be getting somewhere.

rdtsc 13y ago

My understanding of Node.JS and libuv community is as an outsider. I don't follow what's going on unless it is on the front page of HN once in a while and other forums. But one impression I get from Node.JS and its surrounding community is arrogance and immaturity. This is from top to down -- companies sponsoring it (Joyent) and many of its vocal proponents. I see plenty of energy, enthusiasm, but mixed with immaturity. "We don't know what are doing, but darn it! we will be very vocal and do it with lots of enthusiasm". One guy doesn't want to commit a trivial change. It blows up into a media shitstorm. Reverted commits. Joyent's reaction is what surprised me -- "While we would fire Ben over this". This guy doesn't even work for them. Hypothetically firing people, hmm, so committed to Women's Rights, they are hypothetically hiring and firing this person. Have they talked to him in private? StrongLoop, a company I never heard of until this point, is a bit more mature, that's good to see, but even they couldn't resist the veiled threat. What is sad, as a whole this episode just reinforced the (hopefully wrong) stereotype I have of the community. Joyent instead of helping the community (which I think they thought they did by writing that blog post), are hurting it. Buying into and spending time and money learning a platform/language is also an implicit buy in/participation in the community. So far it screams to me "stay away". Hopefully it will grow up at some point.

yapcguy 13y ago
Remember how vicious the Node.js "community" were to outsiders who critiqued event loop blocking? Whatever the technical merits, I think this incident will do significant damage to the perception of Node.js as a serious platform to build on.
- Lazare 13y ago
  It already has in my view. Joyent is not coming across as an organisation I'd trust to back an important project.
- GrinningFool 13y ago
  Tempest in a teapot. Most people using it will never come across this little storm.

mintplant 13y ago

From Joyent's blog post [1]: > But while Isaac is a Joyent employee, Ben is not—and if he had been, he wouldn't be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent. For comparison, here is bnoordhuis's comment from the pull request thread [2] that the post is referencing: > Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that. Honestly, Joyent's post strikes me as a horrible overreaction and attempt at character assassination over what should have been a small matter. Rejecting pull requests that only correct typos or comments has been standard practice for the Node.js project for a long time now--this isn't the first one to be closed for being too small of a change, a fact that Joyent, as the main driver of the project, should be aware of. bnoordhuis followed standard procedure, yet Joyent tries to cast him as being intentionally sexist and a terrible person. Seeing such immature behavior coming from their corporate blog--calling him an "asshole", saying he should be fired, insinuating that they wish they could kick him out of the project--has pretty much destroyed the respect I had for the company. [1] https://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun https://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun [2] https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015

Lazare 13y ago
Wow, Joyent comes across very poorly. For the record, I support using gender-neutral pronouns; I actually support the original pull request. But it seems inarguable that: 1. It's a minor change 2. Node.js, like many projects, rejects minor changes 3. It was rejected for being a minor change 4. Joyent reacted amazingly unprofessionally In particular, I have concerns both with the way the initial decision was reversed (this seems like an abuse of Joyent's power over the project), and in particular with their remarkable blog post. Following a project's guidelines on accepting a commit is "gobsmackingly inappropriate"? Really? I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that attitude from someone in Joyent's position. And as for their pointed comment that they would have fired Ben if he worked for them...really? Boy do they sound like a barrel of fun to work for. "Follow the rules or be fired; unless it's a rule we decide isn't important, then we'll fire you if you do follow it. Have fun guessing which one is which!" I use Node.js professionally, and I will continue to do so for now. My opinion of Joyent, however, is dropping rapidly. Node.js will either grow beyond them or die. Edit: Rephrased the language to better reflect my opinion. Had too much hyperbole in the first draft.

dreamfactory 13y ago

Are these people illiterate? Are they not aware that in the English language masculine pronouns are correct for both gender-specific and gender-neutral uses? Mankind refers to everybody. It may seem awkward, particularly to over-literal types, but so is our spelling, grammar, and pronunciation generally.

Brakenshire 13y ago
Mankind is gender neutral, it's highly debatable whether he, him or his are also.
- CyruzDraxs 13y ago
  Several centuries of linguistic evolution would disagree. Those have always been neutral, though there has been usage of singular "they" dating back to Shakespearean-era. It is somewhat widely accepted that he/him/his is only gender-neutral in situations where the gender is ambiguous though. For example, in writing documentation. Personally, I think it sounds weird and prefer they/one.
- dreamfactory 13y ago
  > gender neutral, it's highly debatable whether he, him or his are also Not in the English language. It's debated by some whether this might have a subliminal effect and reinforce social gender stereotypes (though no evidence for that hypothesis as far as I'm aware) and therefore whether masculine prepositions _should_ be treated as neutral but that's in the same category as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_spelling_reform http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_spelling_reform. There's nothing wrong with that of course and it can be an interesting hypothesis to pursue - but I find it depressing that a self-proclaimed educated and science-based open source tech community so easily engages on a witch hunt based on pure speculation.

aaronem 13y ago

Having recently been considering Node for a major new project in my organization, I'm greatly encouraged to see that the folks in its developer community so thoroughly refuse to let themselves be distracted by irrelevancies from such a laserlike focus on improving their code.

aroman 13y ago

I'm sorry, but the entire notion that using masculine pronouns somehow implies sexism is complete bullshit. That's how the English language works. "He" is used as both neuter and masculine. There is no "it" pronoun. Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop fighting about this. Unless someone actually did something sexist, this is a linguistic bikeshed to end all bikesheds. Childish community behavior aside, the entire argument is a moot point. There is NOTHING sexist about using "he". If you feel otherwise, please, please educate me.

quinnchr 13y ago
Yeah for sure the english language couldn't possibly itself be influenced by sexism. That's just how it works. We should just accept it. The pronoun itself isn't sexist it's the reason behind it's use. Beyond indicating (possible) differences in biological sex, what purpose does using a gendered pronoun serve? It doesn't add information, it merely reinforces gender norms. http://www.english.wisc.edu/rfyoung/336/gender.pdf http://www.english.wisc.edu/rfyoung/336/gender.pdf
- aroman 13y ago
  Thanks for your reply. > Yeah for sure the english language couldn't possibly itself be influenced by sexism. That's just how it works. We should just accept it. That was not my point, nor do I believe I implied that. I acknowledge that the original reason why English's nonspecific/neuter pronoun is the same as the masculine is almost certainly because of ages-old sexism and masculo-normativity. > The pronoun itself isn't sexist it's the reason behind it's use. I completely agree. Do you think sexism was intended in the original code comment? If not, then by your logic there was nothing sexist about using "he" and "him". > Beyond indicating (possible) differences in biological sex, what purpose does using a gendered pronoun serve? It doesn't add information, it merely reinforces gender norms. I agree, from a 21st century perspective it seems absurd to not have a neutral/neuter/nonspecific pronoun. But it is an established point of English grammar and language that the masculine pronoun is because there does not exist a neutral/neuter/nonspecific one. Using "they" and "them" and those forms is a relatively recent development of modern language. Personally, I tend to use them very often because I don't want to offend anyone, and I think their usage as an "official unofficial" neutral/neuter/nonspecific pronoun is well on its way to becoming the de-facto way of referring to non-gender-specific people. My point was, and still is, that it is neither wrong nor sexist to use "he" or "his". Unless of course, the sentence you are writing is incorrect or sexist.

bcoates 13y ago

The guy who wrote the initial pull request should get some sort of medal for efficiency in trolling, it's not common that you can make this many alleged professionals look like idiots with a 3 character patch.

xs_kid 13y ago

It's just me or there are some (a lot of) tension between Joyent and StrongLoop about the management of the project?

smewpy 13y ago

Great response from StrongLoop, it was ridiculous over-react from Joyent to publicly pull out the pitchforks.

jmspring 13y ago

It is interesting following this particular discussion about gender pronouns in Node.js. I am curious how other, more mature, products have handled similar. GitHub and easily viewed pull requests make some of this much more visible than say in the old days of sites like sourceforge.

eliteraspberrie 13y ago

Way to throw your people under the bus. I wouldn't work for a company like this -- not to mention Joyent, after that bit of libel they call a blog post.

kmeluna 13y ago

From the blog post: > If Ben can’t learn, we’ll fire him. Reforming the use of English pronouns has nothing to do with the employee's professional activities. No one should be threatened for either supporting or not supporting a political cause or brand of activism. There is no consensus in society about how pronouns should be used or their cultural significance [1]. No one should have their livelihood threatened for either agreeing or not agreeing with one position or another or not having an opinion on the topic, or applying their professional, technical judgement. Without commenting on the details of the kerfuffle, from a broader perspective, the workplace should not be a place for political coercion. One editorial recently suggested that: "[E]mployers coercing employees to express their employers’ political views is “the most undercovered story of the year.” [2] "Already, American employers are increasingly using the captive audience technique to force their employees to learn about the employer’s political and religious views. During these sessions, employees may be forced, at the risk of losing their jobs, to listen to their employer’s perspective on the latest political and religious issues of the day." [3] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-onlanguage-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-onlanguage-... [2] http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_12/the_most_undercovered_story_of042089.php http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_12/... [3] http://yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal-pocket-part/volume-120/addressing-political-captive-audience-workplace-meetings-in-the-post%11citizens-united-environment/ http://yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal-pocket-part/v... [4] Efforts to keep politics out of the workplace: http://votesmart.org/bill/1711/ http://votesmart.org/bill/1711/

acdha 13y ago
> No one should be threatened for either supporting or not supporting a political cause or brand of activism. You should read before commenting: the problem wasn't his choice of wording but rather how he turned a trivial change into an argument and reverted another committer's action complete with a threat. If he didn't want to get involved, simply ignoring it was by far the easiest course of action. Instead, he twice chose to escalate to an unnecessary level of confrontation.
- yetanotherphd 13y ago

drderidder 13y ago

The vindictive reaction from Joyent on this was just atrocious. Perhaps it's time for node to find a new home.

JohnTHaller 13y ago

For context, here is the entirety of what Ben Noordhuis has publicly said on the matter thus far: "Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that." - https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538615 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538... "@isaacs may have his commit bit but that does not mean he is at liberty to land patches at will. All patches have to be signed off by either me or Bert. Isaac, consider yourself chided." - https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482dcc8d1c41c14333fcb48 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d... "Hi all, let me try to clear up a few things. Why I rejected the pull request. Us maintainers tend to reject tiny doc changes because they're often more trouble than they're worth. You have to collect and check the CLA, it makes git blame less effective, etc. That's why the usual approach to such pull requests is 'no, unless' - in this case the 'unless' should probably have applied. To me as a non-native speaker, the difference between 'him' and 'them' seems academic but hey, if it gets us scores of female contributors, who am I to object? Why I reverted the commit. In hindsight, I should have given Isaac the benefit of the doubt because I don't doubt that he acted with the best of intentions. On the other hand, if another committer jumped the line like that, I would have done the same thing. We have procedures in place and no one is exempt from them. To the people that felt it necessary to call me a misogynist: I volunteer in a mentorship program that gets young people - especially young women - involved in technology. How many of you go out and actively try to increase the number of women in the field? I'm probably going to step back from libuv and node.js core development. I do it more out a sense of duty than anything else. If this is what I have to deal with, then I'd just as rather do something else. Hope that clears things up. Thanks." - https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568172 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...

Artemis2 13y ago

This story is getting annoying.

waterlion 13y ago
Not quite as annoying as having hundreds of raging angry people name-calling and character-assassinating you over a mistake.

ksec 13y ago

THIS IS GREAT! There goes the reputation of Joyet. Wait a min. I remember something about Lifelong Free Hosting drama not long ago. ( Correct me if i am wrong. ) A Company to look at what NOT to do and how NOT to run.

rok3 13y ago

Great to see that someone took the time to create a well thought-out, positive response to this situation. https://gist.github.com/creationix/5fb9e94fd8d80268c047 https://gist.github.com/creationix/5fb9e94fd8d80268c047

Oculus 13y ago

What would it take for Node to be taken out from under Joyent's arm to be setup as its own project?

janjongboom 13y ago
Joyent has izs, that's mainly it. Strongloop does biggest part of development, and before Strongloop it was Cloud9. I guess putting node in a foundation would make the most sense.

namuol 13y ago

As poorly as Joyent may have responded, and as badly they might have misunderstood this entire situation, I am convinced that everyone involved here (on both sides) had nothing but good intentions, and that until we acknowledge these things and make up, this is going to become needlessly harmful to the community at large. Pause, reflect, forgive... nobody here is a monster.

binocarlos 13y ago
I agree - a classic case of hyper media attention boiling over into other, existing politics. God only knows what would have happened if he had rejected a commit involving the word 'religion'
waterlion 13y ago
I would dearly love to agree (see my other comments if you don't believe me). But Bryan Cantrill's, and Joyent's behaviour seems very cynical, manipulative, and childish. He used deliberately inflammatory language, and would have, at the very least, been aware of the fact that it might not be so black and white. He will have known that he started a witch-hunt and did nothing, as far as I can tell, to try and quell it. No-one is a monster, but some people are either playing games or have spectacularly poor judgment. Not the kind of company you want to work with either way. Joyent has severely blotted its copy-book. For that reason if I'm ever in a position to make purchasing decisions I will exclude Joyent.