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That was pretty immature, to delete the repos as well. Sure, nuke your Twitter, who cares. But people might have been depending on the repos; it's a breach of t
by sho 17y ago
That was pretty immature, to delete the repos as well. Sure, nuke your Twitter, who cares. But people might have been depending on the repos; it's a breach of trust IMO.
Not impressed.
- arghnoname 17y agoYeah I think so too. My initial reaction was that this is his right, which technically I'm sure it is. It does call into question an unspoken rule of open source though, which is you can abandon your stuff if you want, but don't try to remove all traces, even if that is ultimately a futile act.
- jamesbritt 17y agoOTOH, I have to believe there are many people with copies of that code.
- noodle 17y agoassuming that this is a tantrum, yes. not impressed, only really detrimental. at least have the courtesy to leave your stuff as it is for the people who have and will benefit from it, instead of scrubbing it all clean. on the other hand, if this is a case of someone managing to crack/guess/etc his passwords and just wants to do some malicious damage, that would be too bad.
- donw 17y agoAgreed; it's really childish.
- patio11 17y agoThat was pretty immature, to delete the repos as well. They were git repos, right? I am new to git, but my understanding is you pretty much have to type git clone --i-dont-want-a-full-copy-of-the-repository-please-screw-me-over-if-the-master-vanishes to be in a position where you are "dependent" on the code (i.e. have looked at it, ever) and do not have a full copy of the entire project extending to the mists of prehistory. [Edit: apparently the actual command is git clone --depth (some number) I like my version better.]
- pyre 17y ago--depth does have some benefits... one of my friends tried to do a 'git svn clone' of his work's svn repo... he gave up after the process had been running for a full 3 or 4 weeks. That said --depth doesn't have too much use when it comes to native git repos though. Unless you have a ton of binary files in the repo and don't want the full history of all of them...
- silentbicycle 17y agoNone of _why's projects were that big, so in this case it's kind of a moot point.
- pyre 17y agoRight, but the parent post didn't seem limited to only _why's repos.
- gamache 17y agoNot true. Hpricot and Syck are in heavy use.
- silentbicycle 17y agoI meant big in the lines-of-code sense, not in how much they're used. (looks like I missed the edit window.)
- joeycfan 17y agoTrue - I use hpricot every day.
- eridius 17y agoIf you want to git-svn clone such a massive repository (and either it was truly massive, or your friend's net connection sucked, or he was using an old version of git that had the bug where git-svn slowed down over time), you should copy it to your local computer. git-svn runs significantly faster when it doesn't have to deal with network latency. Edit: Also, --depth does have a use with git repos, namely if the git repo is accessible only over http, as downloading packs over http is kind of slow.
- loincloth 17y agoWow. Dick.
- antonovka 17y agoLet's wait for the circumstances before passing judgement.
- gamache 17y agoName some circumstances which justify pulling down a broadly-used open source project like Hpricot. At a certain point it must be admitted that a project has a life beyond its author.
- matthewking 17y agoHe could have had his computer, or email hacked.. have to wait to see if we hear from him before we assume he actually cleared all the accounts himself.
- gamache 17y agoSure, well of course if he got hacked then I am not gonna hold it against him. I just can't imagine anyone targeting _why.
- apotheon 17y agoI can, but only because I'm a cynic.
- sho 17y agoThat explanation seems highly unlikely, especially considering the lack of any messages saying as such. update: I assume I'm being downvoted because people do consider it a likely explanation? It would be utterly unprecedented AFAIK.
- bunnny 17y agoNo, you're being down-voted because you're a selfish arse. Is the primary concern the slight inconvenience his disappearance will cause you?? ... to us, the answer is No.
- rcoder 17y agoHave a little respect. Unlike most of us here, _why never profited directly on his online celebrity status. If he chose to remove himself from the 'net, it seems only reasonable that he would want to shut down public repositories he managed, if only to avoid the inevitable deluge of complaints about them going stale, requests for commit rights from other people, etc. The fact that you would care more about his shepherding of repositories which have been available to everyone else all along speaks volumes to me about the kind of attitudes that probably helped to drive him offline in the first place.
- sho 17y agoI would like to think I have utmost respect for _why. I have certainly never said or done anything against him in the past, nor ever felt anything besides quiet appreciation for his efforts. If he wanted to quit, that's his right, of course. But at least give people a day's notice before he nukes everything, right? "The fact that you would care more about his shepherding of repositories" Care more about them than what? What else is there? I don't know what's going on. The repos were his work, they're all I know of him. You seem to detect this entitled, callous attitude in my words but I assure you it's a false positive. I have, or had, nothing but positive feelings for the guy. Never met him, spoken to him, or anything else really. But I have relied on his code, and in my book, when you release open source code there's a kind of implied promise that you don't suddenly delete the master repo in a fit of internet pique. if that's "the kind of attitudes that probably helped to drive him offline in the first place" then .. maybe he should be offline because I think it's pretty reasonable.
- adbachman 17y agoNo, he shouldn't give people a day's notice. He doesn't owe it to you, he doesn't owe it to me. That makes two of us. Let's imagine we're not unusual in that regard. Who does he owe a warning, then? when you release open source code there's a kind of implied promise that you don't suddenly delete the master repo in a fit of internet pique. You're making a lot of assumptions, not least among them _why's motivations (should they even exist) for dropping off your radar. Again, he doesn't owe you an explanation or a warning. You were a user, not a co-owner of the projects, not an extensive financial donor (most likely), not an employer. The relationship is entirely one way. _why gives you things, you say "thank you", and move on. This is also the Internet we're talking about, if someone decides the content (repository or writing) should be made available again, it will happen.
- mosburger 17y agoYou know, I've been mulling over this "was it an immature/douchebaggy thing to do?" question, and my gut was with the "leave this guy alone, he doesn't owe you anything, it's open source" camp initially. Then I thought - what if, e.g., Zed Shaw had done this? I have a feeling we'd all be calling for his head and claiming it was the biggest douchebag move he could make. So does _why get a free pass? Because he's so likable and has a special pedestal in the Ruby world? I honestly don't know the answer to that, but it made me reconsider my gut knee-jerk reaction.