6 ms·

The Impermanence, Karma, and Bad Behavior of Why The Lucky Stiff

126 points by smokinn 17y ago

fogus 17y ago
I shudder to think how much chatter this is going to generate. Zed bashing on _why... worlds collide. The only thing that would be better is if he somehow brought up Erlang in the argument.
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago
  Learn You Some Buddha For Great Good, Biatch, by Zed Shaw.
  - shabda 17y ago
    Yes, we should be discounting everything Zed Shaw says, instead of arguing things on merit. I for one think Zed is right this time.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  Except that Zed isn't "bashing", he's making an intelligent, measured well thought-out argument - for once. Perhaps the only thing that will happen is the brains of those expecting insanity will explode...
  - unalone 17y ago
    He's bashing. Calls _why Jonathan instead of giving him the courtesy of an alias, presumes to know _why's motives, calls him names repeatedly.
    - steveklabnik 17y ago
      I read that as showing how he actually cared about _why? as a person, rather than as his persona. He doesn't really care about _why?'s code, he cares that everything is okay with him.
      - unalone 17y ago
        But _why's name isn't Jonathan, Zed didn't know him in person, and in the one public conversation they had _why and Zed weren't on the same side of the argument. We have no proof that _why is in any trouble at all, and this isn't the first time he's nuked things he created. There's nothing much about the person to be worried about, and the persona isn't real. Zed just likes ranting. (BTW, if you're worried about a person and how they're doing, you don't call them names.)
        steveklabnik 17y ago
        I don't know what _why?'s name is, I have no idea if Zed knew him, or not. Just saying that that's how I read it initially. Also, it might be poor form to call someone names, but just because you disagree with one of someone's actions, doesn't mean you don't like them. You can say someone did a bad thing without thinking that they're a bad person.
    - MaysonL 17y ago
      Given that "Why the Lucky Stiff" is a persona - a mask, that this guy has worn for a while, and that seemingly, he no longer wishes to wear, what are we supposed to call him? Jonathon, if that's his "official" name, seems as good as anything else, since he seems to have resigned from the "Why" role.
      - unalone 17y ago
        It's not his name. Zed posted a link on Twitter to somebody named Jonathan and insisted it was _why. It wasn't. We're talking about why the lucky stiff. We don't know anything about the man that wore the mask. He was very good at keeping his personal life a mystery. So calling him why the lucky stiff makes sense, at least until/if we learn more about what's going on.
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    To me, that’s fucked up, and something only an obnoxious Nihilist would do. A Nihilist who was just jerking people around and playing a long con on everyone. If you think this is measured I would hate to see your definition of intemperate.
die_sekte 17y ago
Zed, while offending, at least cares about other people. _why does not. Edit: Woah, controversial comment. Let me rephrase that: Zed cares more than _why about his projects' afterlife.
- unalone 17y ago
  Which is an entirely different claim to make. Zed likes pretending that he knows _why's name is Jonathan, when in fact every person here who knows _why says it isn't, and when _why didn't like people speculating about his name to begin with. So Zed's a dick, too, and, typical of Zedshawism, he doesn't get his facts right, choosing instead to trust a specious Wordpress blog whose author is both unknown and a dick himself. _why never said he was Buddhist. _why said nothing. The rest is speculation. So judging his philosophy is a little bit stupid as well. I agree with your second statement, which is that _why didn't treat his projects well. But Zed isn't talking about other people. Zed's talking about himself, as always. He's no Jason Scott, who devotes his life to archiving other people's work. Instead, without anything to go on, he calls _why a nihilist (only for him it's a capital-N Nihilist), a "Nihilist who was just jerking people around and playing a long con on everyone," which is pretty offensive in my book. He also calls _why a dick (er, he calls "Jonathan" a dick), and he talks about how he's better than _why because he left up his code after insulting the entire community. I don't know if we'll ever hear _why's story, but I'm going to give him the benefit of a little doubt. I won't lie, though: I think the guy had every right to remove himself from the Internet. I'd understand his motivation in removing everything, suddenly, without warning. Hell, the only reason I still have this HN account is that there's no option to delete on this site. And leaving gradually isn't leaving. Even when he completely vanished people made it a drama: If he'd announced this a week ago, we'd have had a week's extra drama. So maybe Zed cared about his projects more than _why, but he doesn't care about people. He cares about pretending he knows shit about philosophy and psychology, and, stripped-down theme or no, about Zed's So Fucking Awesome, enough that his ego gets to influence every story he decides to force himself on. That's not caring about people, especially not caring in the way _why did.
  - travisjeffery 17y ago
    Zed's material on Buddhism was a response to John Resig's "Eulogy to _why" in-which he excuses _why's behavior with an analogy to a Buddhist tradition.
teh_pete 17y ago
I don't know why everyone thinks all of _why's code is gone, which is Zed's main complaint. He left his Rubyforge page up, with all of his code, and anything your project depended on can still be installed. He also had it all on github, so anyone with a checkout has full commit history.
- bmelton 17y ago
  That may be true, but tryruby.hobix.com is GONE, and that is a travesty of the highest proportions. That was the page I learned my first bits of Ruby on. That was the page I introduced 8 friends to Ruby for the first time. It was the page I single-handedly got our contract renewed, by proving a piece of functionality was possible and easily done. I think for many, it was an easy way in to Ruby. Someone must replace this immediately.
  - pygy 17y ago
    There was a tryruby repository at Github, but I don't know if it was all that was needed to run it. One of the things that bother me more is the fact that he also pulled the plug on all the mailing list of his projects, which would have been the right place to discuss what to do with the code.
    - bmelton 17y ago
      For what it's worth, this impacts me enough that I've looked, and I couldn't find it. If I had, I likely would have already been fast at work trying to put up a replacement, if only to have something to link to the people who are sure to ask me what happened to it. My wife actually noticed yesterday that it was gone before I got around to reading all the comments on HN about Why's departure. I eventually told her that he was basically dead. Her response? "How am I going to learn Ruby now?" I of course have installed a local interpreter, but she really liked the lessons.
- shabda 17y ago
  I dont follow or use _why's work, but if used I would be pretty angry with him. Sure with DVCS there I have full commit history, but, now there is no centralised place to send patches, and take the development forward. There is going to be commotion for a long time before things settle down, and if my business and livelihood depended on it, you can bet I would be searching him to give him a piece of my mind. Just think how would you feel if the Rails or Django guys decided to take everything down. You have the full commit history, if you had cloned the Github repo, so why do you care?
icey 17y ago
I liked the part where Zed suddenly thinks it's important to play nice.
- req2 17y ago
  You're conflating the niceness of calling someone a ninny and the niceness of kidnapping someone's nanny. edit: I'm not sure what the issue is- it's clear there is a difference between material niceness and immaterial niceness, and Zed, to my knowledge, has never been materially unnice.
- prospero 17y ago
  My take is that Zed thinks there are some things that transcend personal issues, which doesn't seem to be a sudden development.
  - icey 17y ago
    Didn't Zed just have a whole essay about how it's the author's right to do what they want to with their code [1]? _why had absolutely zero obligation to anybody with his contributions. People should be allowed to take things offline if they choose to, it's laughable that Zed is suddenly high and mighty because someone took their ball and went home. [1] http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html
    - steveklabnik 17y ago
      As he says, you have the right do do whatever you want, but that doesn't mean that people won't think that you're a dick for it. http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/3412630996 http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/3412630996
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - sunir 17y ago
      It's not inconsistent. It's enlightened. I know this quote has been used already in Zed's defense, but I'll post it again in response to this particular comment. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire Please note: By arguing that Zed is being internally consistent, do not jump to the conclusion I am personally making a judgment on _why.
antonovka 17y ago
Zed Shaw trying to leverage more attention on the back of _why's mysterious disappearance. It's as saccarine and transparent as Crystal Pepsi. [Edit] I'm being downvoted into oblivion. Answer me this -- Shouldn't Zed Shaw be contacting _why directly and privately first, rather than posting this publicly shaming and incredibly presumptuous article? What possible benefit is there here? Given that Zed offhandedly switches between _why and 'Jonathan', he must know _why, right?
- die_sekte 17y ago
  I assume that it has gotten a little bit impossible to contact _why.
  - antonovka 17y ago
    Zed didn't seem to try very hard before assuming the mantle of Internet Behavior and Buddhist Philosophy Police. [Edit] The downvotes truly boggle my mind. Since when did it become socially acceptable to public dress down a software community member without any facts, evidence, or corroborating information? Zed Shaw is trolling. He has nothing in the game (he 'cut all ties' to Ruby, remember?), no relation to _why, and no reason to be publishing invective from his bully pulpit other than a desire to inject himself into the conversation. He doesn't know what happened to _why, or what _why has planned, or whether the code is gone for good.
    - unalone 17y ago
      You're entirely right. As it happens, _why's email address was pretty well-known; furthermore, judging somebody so quickly after something's happened is brash and impertinent. Even if you were wrong, you're making well-reasoned points, and it's irritating that people are downvoting you and upvoting snark.
    - steveklabnik 17y ago
      It's as much as a response to the people responding to him on Twitter as anything else.
kwamenum86 17y ago
"Johnathan, I truly hope you’re doing alright, but that was a dickhead thing to do." Extremely judgmental especially since open source offers no warranties or guarantees and implicit in this is the very real possibility of the code simply disappearing. It isn't like there is some contract (social or otherwise) that requires people to leave their code up online.
- cwan 17y ago
  Yeah, that's fine, but if you think of open source as an intellectual gift of sorts, isn't what he did sort of like giving a kid a chocolate bar and yanking it away and throwing it in the trash mid bite?
  - unalone 17y ago
    That's why it's stupid to think of open source as a gift. It's great, but you're not entitled to it.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - mtkd 17y ago
      If you create Open Source Software you are putting a contribution in to the community. That contribution is often derived from or utilises other OSS. I think of OSS as a movement. Publicly nuking your (popular) repositories is a step back for that movement. Any developer has every right to do it. However, for those of us who are trying to get large enterprises to embrace and contribute to OSS, our task is a little harder this week than it was last week.
      - unalone 17y ago
        I agree. The advantage here is that his contributions aren't gone. The only thing I know of that's seemingly gone for good is TryRuby. As for getting enterprises to embrace OSS: Wouldn't you say that the ability for people to do what _why did is a disadvantage? Commercial apps don't do things like that. I'm not knocking OSS, but that's certainly something to take into consideration.
anatoly 17y ago
Shorter Zed Shaw: "It annoys me that you're all talking about _why instead of talking about me, what I believe, what I did for the Ruby community, and how I left it. I'm going to try and change that."
- antonovka 17y ago
  I'm going to keep tilting at the windmill, here. Why are you downvoting these comments? How is Zed Shaw not simply trying to insert himself in the debate with base presumptions about _why and his motivations or the cause of his disappearance?
  - ynniv 17y ago
    Zed is making the same comments that I would, so I upvote. Simple as that.
    - antonovka 17y ago
      Unfortunately, neither you, Zed, or I actually have claim to the assumed facts upon which he basis his suppositions and invective.
      - ynniv 17y ago
        As I see it, there are two possibilities: a) _why was hacked. a crime has been commited b) he did this for personal or "artistic" reasons, and other people got screwed Since (a) is unlikely, I can only assume (b). I understand the artistic mind - the need to create, and destroy, to find beauty in the world. I'm glad that people were touched by _why and are sad to see him go. I saw his persona as an artist, and never got personally involved with his projects because I like more professionalism in my code. It sucks to say it, but now I'm glad that I didn't.
  - GHFigs 17y ago
    I downvoted the parent for snarky ad hominem that adds nothing to the site. I downvoted this comment for complaining about comment voting and perpetuating the notion that voting should be about whether you agree or disagree with it. They are just bad comments.
dylanz 17y ago
I'm assuming _why kept the free stuff up, but took down the stuff he had to pay for? I'd probably do that as well. Monthly hosting fee's and domain name uptake can be a PITA, and a money sink.
- steveklabnik 17y ago
  He did delete his Twitter and his GitHub, so it wasn't just paid for things.
  - dylanz 17y ago
    Gotcha. Well, no harm in deleting your own Twitter account. It may be that he was on a paid plan at Github (personally, I'm on the $7/mo plan), and just deleted it instead of downgrading? You "can" downgrade accounts though, for what it's worth.
    - steveklabnik 17y ago
      Totally true. Just figured I'd mention it.
- shabda 17y ago
  There would be a few hundered people here on HN who would be glad to hosts _why's code/site/whatever.
bballant 17y ago
Zed will never understand _why and his simplistic depiction (not understanding) of Buddhism is a testament to this. Moreover he doesn't recognize _why as an artist. He does this in numerous ways but the most obvious and most gauche is the refusal to call _why by his name, which is _why, not Jonathan. In doing so, Zed pulls why out of his world and into his own, which is not an artist's world, and then judges _why. This is unfair to _why in the extreme. It reminds me of an essay by Henry Miller called "Creative Death" which may help explain _why to those of us who can't understand the state of mind and the motivation of an artist like _why. Here are some excerpts, which run to the end of this post: For the artist in man is the undying symbol of the union between his warring selves. Live has to be given meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning. Something has to be created, as a healing and goading intervention, between life and death… The process is a long and devious one. It is all a conquest of fear… His war with reality is a reflection of the war within himself… The ideas which germinate in the artist are unique and must be lived out. He is the sign of Fate itself, the very symbol of destiny. For when, by living out his dream logic, he fulfills himself through the destruction of his own ego, he is incarnating for humanity the drama of individual life which, to be tasted and experienced, must embrace dissolution… It is what Nietzche described as the fusion in one being of two divergent streams–the Apollonian dreamer type and the ecstatic Dionysian…
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- pyre 17y ago
  > Zed will never understand _why and his simplistic depiction (not understanding) of Buddhism is a testament to this. Moreover he doesn't recognize _why as an artist. He does this in numerous ways but the most obvious and most gauche is the refusal to call _why by his name, which is _why, not Jonathan. In doing so, Zed pulls why out of his world and into his own, which is not an artist's world, and then judges _why. This is unfair to _why in the extreme. On the other hand, _why is just an online persona created and portrayed by an actual person. When he says "I truly hope that Jonathan is ok," he's referring to the actual person, not to the online persona... The persona is fictional. A farce. A farce in the name of art, but a farce nonetheless. It would be like Zed trying to talk about the guy behind 'Fake Steve Jobs' by constantly referring to him as 'Fake Steve Jobs' rather than by his real name, Daniel Lyons. If I said, "I hope that Fake Steve Jobs is in a good frame of mind," most people will not take that to mean, "I hope that Daniel Lyons is in a good state of mind." In the same way, saying, "Fake Steve Jobs is acting like a dick," is not the same as saying, "Daniel Lyons is acting like a dick." I seriously think that people are taking this "Zed and _why are two polar opposites" idea way too far. Zed is basically saying that _why can do whatever he wants, but to create a bunch of projects that people rely on (even if these projects are your art) and then abruptly, without notice pull the rug out from under these people is an asshole move. Let's bring all this into a small example. Say there's this artist whose art strikes such a chord with me that I invest every penny I own into putting on a spectacular art show to showcase this artist's art to the world. Let's say that the artist and I spend months and months planning the show and collaborating on it. Then comes the big day of the show, and I go to the location to find out that the artist has up and disappeared, taking all of his art with him. Leaving me with nothing. If the artist and I have no formal argreement that he has to show his art there he has every right to walk out like this. But it is a very asshole move to leave me hanging after I've invested all of my time in money into it, no? Or do I just scratch my head, say "I just don't understand his art" and call it a day? This is the same case here. There are things like his twitter account/tweets/blogs/blog entries/etc which pulling from the web isn't that big of a deal. On the other hand, all of his software projects/code are things that people have come to rely on and invest time into contributing to. He basically giving all of those people the finger when he just cuts out everything like this. Without taking the time to organize for these projects to be taken over by someone else (or at least leaving the hosting up for them), he's saying that all of those people, all the effort and time they've spent mean shit all to him. Being 'artsy' and 'artistic' doesn't excuse you from being an asshole. I mean, Caravaggio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravaggio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravaggio) was a 'ruffian' and a murderer. While his art still stands on its own, he was a dick of a person. Just because a dick of a person produces great art doesn't mean that we hand-wave away all their misdeeds with nebulous phrases like, "You just don't understand his art." What if Caravaggio decided to pull a _why? Let's say that he broke into all of the places that his paintings resided (cathedrals,churches,mansions,etc) and destroyed every last piece of art that he had created. Should we excuse this behavior as "Well, it's his art and this action is just an extention of his art. You just don't understand his art?" This has become a bit long-winded, so I'll just cut it here with this. Zed isn't tearing down _why's art. But some parts of _why's art have crossed over from just being 'just art' to being 'art plus' if you will. In this case, it's 'art + software project.' The fact that part of it is art doesn't mean one can ignore that the other part is a software project.
sofal 17y ago
I have used both Zed's code and _why's code and have benefited a lot from both. That being said, I would much rather that Zed had left the Ruby community in the same way that _why did than vice versa.
simplegeek 17y ago
Zed, as much as I love you and your work, that also was a dickhead thing to say ;(
ianbishop 17y ago
A true budhist would throw a hissy fit first and then let his software fucking rot, right? The only difference between the disappearance of these two from the ruby scene is that _why will actually be missed. Fuck Zed Shaw.
- crystalis 17y ago
  I feel the conflict within you. Let go of your hate.
tjogin 17y ago
He keeps calling him Jonathan all the time, but it's not at all sure that's his real name (see: http://ozmm.org/posts/his_name_is_robert_paulson.html http://ozmm.org/posts/his_name_is_robert_paulson.html). And even if it is, it's kind of a dick thing to do, given that we know that _why never wanted to be known as anything but _why.
- burke 17y ago
  Actually, it is: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=774673 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=774673 , particularly http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=775578 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=775578 I agree though, dick move. Then again, this _is_ Zed we're talking about.
  - blasdel 17y ago
    No, it's pretty obvious that they were close friends and coworkers, but not the same person.
    - burke 17y ago
      I'm starting to sympathize with http://xkcd.com/386/ http://xkcd.com/386/ more and more. I wish I could just stop doing this already. Umm, ok, let's recap, shall we?: 1) His sister. This ( http://www.advogato.org/person/whytheluckystiff/diary/14.html http://www.advogato.org/person/whytheluckystiff/diary/14.htm... ) says she was 14 in 2001. That makes her ~21 today. "Jonathan Gillette from Utah" has "Kristin Gillete" listed as a relative here: http://www.intelius.com/search-summary-out.php?ReportType=1&qf=jonathan&qmi=&qn=gillette&qs=UT&trackit=74&focusfirst=1 http://www.intelius.com/search-summary-out.php?ReportType=1&... . She's 21. 2) His wife. This page ( http://ftp.df.lth.se/pub/scene.org/music/groups/starving_but_happy/sbh-lp003-moonboots-elfin_princess_%28starvingbuthappy%2c_2004%29/moonboots-elfin_princess.txt http://ftp.df.lth.se/pub/scene.org/music/groups/starving_but... ) says Jonathan is married to Kylie, or at least was in 2004. She makes jewelry, and has a site hosted by _why: http://74.125.93.132/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=cache:snapd.net&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 http://74.125.93.132/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=c... 3) His band. See http://ftp.df.lth.se/pub/scene.org/music/groups/starving_but_happy/sbh-lp003-moonboots-elfin_princess_%28starvingbuthappy%2c_2004%29/moonboots-elfin_princess.txt http://ftp.df.lth.se/pub/scene.org/music/groups/starving_but... again. He plays in a band called (both) "Starving but Happy" and "The Child Who Was A Keyhole". See http://www.myspace.com/thechildwhowasakeyhole http://www.myspace.com/thechildwhowasakeyhole . Compare picture of _why (http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottlaird/31366517/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottlaird/31366517/ ) to http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=40210738&albumID=191117&imageID=957700 http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewIma... and http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=40210738&albumID=191117&imageID=85996 http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewIma... -- the guitar is pretty easy to identify as the same. 4) The why@rysa.inetz.com thing. 5) This site (http://members.tripod.com/soccer_riot/ http://members.tripod.com/soccer_riot/ ) was made by _why (pre-why, as far as I can tell). If he is just close friends with Jonathan Gillette, it's apparently to the point that it didn't seem relevant to point out that he was producing the audio clips for the site. Open dolphins.ram in pretty much any media player and you'll see "Jonathan Gillette" as its author. 6) Why did jgillette make several very informed posts to ruby-talk, then completely quit developing ruby (apparently...)?
doki_pen 17y ago
It's so easy to judge someone without walking in their shoes. You (and I) have no idea what this person is going through emotionally. He could have some serious problems.
doki_pen 17y ago
The only thing that really bothers me about what _why did is that he killed all the mailinglists without warning. I happen to know that there were a lot of teachers on the Shoes mailing list trying to use shoes to teach kids to code. It was the center piece of the new hackety hack designed for kids. It seems completely irrational that _why would abandon these innocent people without so much as a "sorry, I'm out". this makes me really worried for his mental health. It is not rational behavior.
- oscardelben 17y ago
  Let's wait some days to see (if we'll ever see) what's happened.
- Goladus 17y ago
  Not to nitpick semantics, but 'rational' is not actually a very high bar. It could be completely rational within a context that we don't know. It might be irrational, it's hard to say.
embeddedradical 17y ago
This is bull. The idea of karma is an illusion too. The man who stabs you in the gut and laughs, is a buddha. mu.
chewbranca 17y ago
As a new father I have to chime in and say I'm very disappointed to see hackety hack and shoes go away. It was exciting to see his talk from Art & Code, and I was looking forward to using both of those tools to teach my children. In response to the article and comments, there are a lot of people here who immediately dismiss the article because its written by Zed, and still others who deem _why's actions acceptable because he's an 'artist'. Assuming _why is ok and he just decided to log off, Zed is right in this case. _why has transcended being an artist by creating art that does not only have aesthetic beauty, but also has substantial value to the people who have used it and who have invested time into it. The fact that he has created solid documentation in addition to releasing his projects in a public distributed system geared towards sharing and reuse is proof that he was at least interested in having other people use his projects. Which means he has a social obligation to not actively screw over his user base so he can be dramatic. Just wait, I can see Eric Raymond writing a new chapter about the responsibilities associated with releasing code to the open source community. Maybe this is a sign we need an equivalent of archive.org for code so that nothing like this can happen again.
- pwmanagerdied 17y ago
  http://web.archive.org/web/20080211232452/http://hacketyhack.net/ http://web.archive.org/web/20080211232452/http://hacketyhack... It doesn't seem to have caught Shoes (too new?), but seems after a glance to at least have most of the important stuff for Hackety Hack. When you consider that (helped but not entirely due to to DCVS) the source code is all over, it doesn't seem to me that much was actually lost -- just a little misplaced.
- scorpion032 17y ago
  It takes a HN thread and a free github account to restore everything he "took down" And it took, [precisely that](http://whymirror.github.com/ http://whymirror.github.com/) Zed, you and other are arguing as if he actively deleted your own copies of all that work and that he had an obligation to support it for ever.

126 points by smokinn 17y ago

fogus 17y ago

I shudder to think how much chatter this is going to generate. Zed bashing on _why... worlds collide. The only thing that would be better is if he somehow brought up Erlang in the argument.

RyanMcGreal 17y ago
Learn You Some Buddha For Great Good, Biatch, by Zed Shaw.
- shabda 17y ago
  Yes, we should be discounting everything Zed Shaw says, instead of arguing things on merit. I for one think Zed is right this time.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
joe_the_user 17y ago
Except that Zed isn't "bashing", he's making an intelligent, measured well thought-out argument - for once. Perhaps the only thing that will happen is the brains of those expecting insanity will explode...
- unalone 17y ago
  He's bashing. Calls _why Jonathan instead of giving him the courtesy of an alias, presumes to know _why's motives, calls him names repeatedly.
  - steveklabnik 17y ago
    I read that as showing how he actually cared about _why? as a person, rather than as his persona. He doesn't really care about _why?'s code, he cares that everything is okay with him.
    - unalone 17y ago
      But _why's name isn't Jonathan, Zed didn't know him in person, and in the one public conversation they had _why and Zed weren't on the same side of the argument. We have no proof that _why is in any trouble at all, and this isn't the first time he's nuked things he created. There's nothing much about the person to be worried about, and the persona isn't real. Zed just likes ranting. (BTW, if you're worried about a person and how they're doing, you don't call them names.)
      - steveklabnik 17y ago
        I don't know what _why?'s name is, I have no idea if Zed knew him, or not. Just saying that that's how I read it initially. Also, it might be poor form to call someone names, but just because you disagree with one of someone's actions, doesn't mean you don't like them. You can say someone did a bad thing without thinking that they're a bad person.
  - MaysonL 17y ago
    Given that "Why the Lucky Stiff" is a persona - a mask, that this guy has worn for a while, and that seemingly, he no longer wishes to wear, what are we supposed to call him? Jonathon, if that's his "official" name, seems as good as anything else, since he seems to have resigned from the "Why" role.
    - unalone 17y ago
      It's not his name. Zed posted a link on Twitter to somebody named Jonathan and insisted it was _why. It wasn't. We're talking about why the lucky stiff. We don't know anything about the man that wore the mask. He was very good at keeping his personal life a mystery. So calling him why the lucky stiff makes sense, at least until/if we learn more about what's going on.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  To me, that’s fucked up, and something only an obnoxious Nihilist would do. A Nihilist who was just jerking people around and playing a long con on everyone. If you think this is measured I would hate to see your definition of intemperate.

die_sekte 17y ago

Zed, while offending, at least cares about other people. _why does not. Edit: Woah, controversial comment. Let me rephrase that: Zed cares more than _why about his projects' afterlife.

unalone 17y ago
Which is an entirely different claim to make. Zed likes pretending that he knows _why's name is Jonathan, when in fact every person here who knows _why says it isn't, and when _why didn't like people speculating about his name to begin with. So Zed's a dick, too, and, typical of Zedshawism, he doesn't get his facts right, choosing instead to trust a specious Wordpress blog whose author is both unknown and a dick himself. _why never said he was Buddhist. _why said nothing. The rest is speculation. So judging his philosophy is a little bit stupid as well. I agree with your second statement, which is that _why didn't treat his projects well. But Zed isn't talking about other people. Zed's talking about himself, as always. He's no Jason Scott, who devotes his life to archiving other people's work. Instead, without anything to go on, he calls _why a nihilist (only for him it's a capital-N Nihilist), a "Nihilist who was just jerking people around and playing a long con on everyone," which is pretty offensive in my book. He also calls _why a dick (er, he calls "Jonathan" a dick), and he talks about how he's better than _why because he left up his code after insulting the entire community. I don't know if we'll ever hear _why's story, but I'm going to give him the benefit of a little doubt. I won't lie, though: I think the guy had every right to remove himself from the Internet. I'd understand his motivation in removing everything, suddenly, without warning. Hell, the only reason I still have this HN account is that there's no option to delete on this site. And leaving gradually isn't leaving. Even when he completely vanished people made it a drama: If he'd announced this a week ago, we'd have had a week's extra drama. So maybe Zed cared about his projects more than _why, but he doesn't care about people. He cares about pretending he knows shit about philosophy and psychology, and, stripped-down theme or no, about Zed's So Fucking Awesome, enough that his ego gets to influence every story he decides to force himself on. That's not caring about people, especially not caring in the way _why did.
- travisjeffery 17y ago
  Zed's material on Buddhism was a response to John Resig's "Eulogy to _why" in-which he excuses _why's behavior with an analogy to a Buddhist tradition.

teh_pete 17y ago

I don't know why everyone thinks all of _why's code is gone, which is Zed's main complaint. He left his Rubyforge page up, with all of his code, and anything your project depended on can still be installed. He also had it all on github, so anyone with a checkout has full commit history.

bmelton 17y ago
That may be true, but tryruby.hobix.com is GONE, and that is a travesty of the highest proportions. That was the page I learned my first bits of Ruby on. That was the page I introduced 8 friends to Ruby for the first time. It was the page I single-handedly got our contract renewed, by proving a piece of functionality was possible and easily done. I think for many, it was an easy way in to Ruby. Someone must replace this immediately.
- pygy 17y ago
  There was a tryruby repository at Github, but I don't know if it was all that was needed to run it. One of the things that bother me more is the fact that he also pulled the plug on all the mailing list of his projects, which would have been the right place to discuss what to do with the code.
  - bmelton 17y ago
    For what it's worth, this impacts me enough that I've looked, and I couldn't find it. If I had, I likely would have already been fast at work trying to put up a replacement, if only to have something to link to the people who are sure to ask me what happened to it. My wife actually noticed yesterday that it was gone before I got around to reading all the comments on HN about Why's departure. I eventually told her that he was basically dead. Her response? "How am I going to learn Ruby now?" I of course have installed a local interpreter, but she really liked the lessons.
shabda 17y ago
I dont follow or use _why's work, but if used I would be pretty angry with him. Sure with DVCS there I have full commit history, but, now there is no centralised place to send patches, and take the development forward. There is going to be commotion for a long time before things settle down, and if my business and livelihood depended on it, you can bet I would be searching him to give him a piece of my mind. Just think how would you feel if the Rails or Django guys decided to take everything down. You have the full commit history, if you had cloned the Github repo, so why do you care?

icey 17y ago

I liked the part where Zed suddenly thinks it's important to play nice.

req2 17y ago
You're conflating the niceness of calling someone a ninny and the niceness of kidnapping someone's nanny. edit: I'm not sure what the issue is- it's clear there is a difference between material niceness and immaterial niceness, and Zed, to my knowledge, has never been materially unnice.
prospero 17y ago
My take is that Zed thinks there are some things that transcend personal issues, which doesn't seem to be a sudden development.
- icey 17y ago
  Didn't Zed just have a whole essay about how it's the author's right to do what they want to with their code [1]? _why had absolutely zero obligation to anybody with his contributions. People should be allowed to take things offline if they choose to, it's laughable that Zed is suddenly high and mighty because someone took their ball and went home. [1] http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html
  - steveklabnik 17y ago
    As he says, you have the right do do whatever you want, but that doesn't mean that people won't think that you're a dick for it. http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/3412630996 http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/3412630996
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - sunir 17y ago
    It's not inconsistent. It's enlightened. I know this quote has been used already in Zed's defense, but I'll post it again in response to this particular comment. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire Please note: By arguing that Zed is being internally consistent, do not jump to the conclusion I am personally making a judgment on _why.

antonovka 17y ago

Zed Shaw trying to leverage more attention on the back of _why's mysterious disappearance. It's as saccarine and transparent as Crystal Pepsi. [Edit] I'm being downvoted into oblivion. Answer me this -- Shouldn't Zed Shaw be contacting _why directly and privately first, rather than posting this publicly shaming and incredibly presumptuous article? What possible benefit is there here? Given that Zed offhandedly switches between _why and 'Jonathan', he must know _why, right?

die_sekte 17y ago
I assume that it has gotten a little bit impossible to contact _why.
- antonovka 17y ago
  Zed didn't seem to try very hard before assuming the mantle of Internet Behavior and Buddhist Philosophy Police. [Edit] The downvotes truly boggle my mind. Since when did it become socially acceptable to public dress down a software community member without any facts, evidence, or corroborating information? Zed Shaw is trolling. He has nothing in the game (he 'cut all ties' to Ruby, remember?), no relation to _why, and no reason to be publishing invective from his bully pulpit other than a desire to inject himself into the conversation. He doesn't know what happened to _why, or what _why has planned, or whether the code is gone for good.
  - unalone 17y ago
    You're entirely right. As it happens, _why's email address was pretty well-known; furthermore, judging somebody so quickly after something's happened is brash and impertinent. Even if you were wrong, you're making well-reasoned points, and it's irritating that people are downvoting you and upvoting snark.
  - steveklabnik 17y ago
    It's as much as a response to the people responding to him on Twitter as anything else.

kwamenum86 17y ago

"Johnathan, I truly hope you’re doing alright, but that was a dickhead thing to do." Extremely judgmental especially since open source offers no warranties or guarantees and implicit in this is the very real possibility of the code simply disappearing. It isn't like there is some contract (social or otherwise) that requires people to leave their code up online.

cwan 17y ago
Yeah, that's fine, but if you think of open source as an intellectual gift of sorts, isn't what he did sort of like giving a kid a chocolate bar and yanking it away and throwing it in the trash mid bite?
- unalone 17y ago
  That's why it's stupid to think of open source as a gift. It's great, but you're not entitled to it.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - mtkd 17y ago
    If you create Open Source Software you are putting a contribution in to the community. That contribution is often derived from or utilises other OSS. I think of OSS as a movement. Publicly nuking your (popular) repositories is a step back for that movement. Any developer has every right to do it. However, for those of us who are trying to get large enterprises to embrace and contribute to OSS, our task is a little harder this week than it was last week.
    - unalone 17y ago
      I agree. The advantage here is that his contributions aren't gone. The only thing I know of that's seemingly gone for good is TryRuby. As for getting enterprises to embrace OSS: Wouldn't you say that the ability for people to do what _why did is a disadvantage? Commercial apps don't do things like that. I'm not knocking OSS, but that's certainly something to take into consideration.

anatoly 17y ago

Shorter Zed Shaw: "It annoys me that you're all talking about _why instead of talking about me, what I believe, what I did for the Ruby community, and how I left it. I'm going to try and change that."

antonovka 17y ago
I'm going to keep tilting at the windmill, here. Why are you downvoting these comments? How is Zed Shaw not simply trying to insert himself in the debate with base presumptions about _why and his motivations or the cause of his disappearance?
- ynniv 17y ago
  Zed is making the same comments that I would, so I upvote. Simple as that.
  - antonovka 17y ago
    Unfortunately, neither you, Zed, or I actually have claim to the assumed facts upon which he basis his suppositions and invective.
    - ynniv 17y ago
      As I see it, there are two possibilities: a) _why was hacked. a crime has been commited b) he did this for personal or "artistic" reasons, and other people got screwed Since (a) is unlikely, I can only assume (b). I understand the artistic mind - the need to create, and destroy, to find beauty in the world. I'm glad that people were touched by _why and are sad to see him go. I saw his persona as an artist, and never got personally involved with his projects because I like more professionalism in my code. It sucks to say it, but now I'm glad that I didn't.
- GHFigs 17y ago
  I downvoted the parent for snarky ad hominem that adds nothing to the site. I downvoted this comment for complaining about comment voting and perpetuating the notion that voting should be about whether you agree or disagree with it. They are just bad comments.

dylanz 17y ago

I'm assuming _why kept the free stuff up, but took down the stuff he had to pay for? I'd probably do that as well. Monthly hosting fee's and domain name uptake can be a PITA, and a money sink.

steveklabnik 17y ago
He did delete his Twitter and his GitHub, so it wasn't just paid for things.
- dylanz 17y ago
  Gotcha. Well, no harm in deleting your own Twitter account. It may be that he was on a paid plan at Github (personally, I'm on the $7/mo plan), and just deleted it instead of downgrading? You "can" downgrade accounts though, for what it's worth.
  - steveklabnik 17y ago
    Totally true. Just figured I'd mention it.
shabda 17y ago
There would be a few hundered people here on HN who would be glad to hosts _why's code/site/whatever.

bballant 17y ago

Zed will never understand _why and his simplistic depiction (not understanding) of Buddhism is a testament to this. Moreover he doesn't recognize _why as an artist. He does this in numerous ways but the most obvious and most gauche is the refusal to call _why by his name, which is _why, not Jonathan. In doing so, Zed pulls why out of his world and into his own, which is not an artist's world, and then judges _why. This is unfair to _why in the extreme. It reminds me of an essay by Henry Miller called "Creative Death" which may help explain _why to those of us who can't understand the state of mind and the motivation of an artist like _why. Here are some excerpts, which run to the end of this post: For the artist in man is the undying symbol of the union between his warring selves. Live has to be given meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning. Something has to be created, as a healing and goading intervention, between life and death… The process is a long and devious one. It is all a conquest of fear… His war with reality is a reflection of the war within himself… The ideas which germinate in the artist are unique and must be lived out. He is the sign of Fate itself, the very symbol of destiny. For when, by living out his dream logic, he fulfills himself through the destruction of his own ego, he is incarnating for humanity the drama of individual life which, to be tasted and experienced, must embrace dissolution… It is what Nietzche described as the fusion in one being of two divergent streams–the Apollonian dreamer type and the ecstatic Dionysian…

deleted 17y ago
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pyre 17y ago
> Zed will never understand _why and his simplistic depiction (not understanding) of Buddhism is a testament to this. Moreover he doesn't recognize _why as an artist. He does this in numerous ways but the most obvious and most gauche is the refusal to call _why by his name, which is _why, not Jonathan. In doing so, Zed pulls why out of his world and into his own, which is not an artist's world, and then judges _why. This is unfair to _why in the extreme. On the other hand, _why is just an online persona created and portrayed by an actual person. When he says "I truly hope that Jonathan is ok," he's referring to the actual person, not to the online persona... The persona is fictional. A farce. A farce in the name of art, but a farce nonetheless. It would be like Zed trying to talk about the guy behind 'Fake Steve Jobs' by constantly referring to him as 'Fake Steve Jobs' rather than by his real name, Daniel Lyons. If I said, "I hope that Fake Steve Jobs is in a good frame of mind," most people will not take that to mean, "I hope that Daniel Lyons is in a good state of mind." In the same way, saying, "Fake Steve Jobs is acting like a dick," is not the same as saying, "Daniel Lyons is acting like a dick." I seriously think that people are taking this "Zed and _why are two polar opposites" idea way too far. Zed is basically saying that _why can do whatever he wants, but to create a bunch of projects that people rely on (even if these projects are your art) and then abruptly, without notice pull the rug out from under these people is an asshole move. Let's bring all this into a small example. Say there's this artist whose art strikes such a chord with me that I invest every penny I own into putting on a spectacular art show to showcase this artist's art to the world. Let's say that the artist and I spend months and months planning the show and collaborating on it. Then comes the big day of the show, and I go to the location to find out that the artist has up and disappeared, taking all of his art with him. Leaving me with nothing. If the artist and I have no formal argreement that he has to show his art there he has every right to walk out like this. But it is a very asshole move to leave me hanging after I've invested all of my time in money into it, no? Or do I just scratch my head, say "I just don't understand his art" and call it a day? This is the same case here. There are things like his twitter account/tweets/blogs/blog entries/etc which pulling from the web isn't that big of a deal. On the other hand, all of his software projects/code are things that people have come to rely on and invest time into contributing to. He basically giving all of those people the finger when he just cuts out everything like this. Without taking the time to organize for these projects to be taken over by someone else (or at least leaving the hosting up for them), he's saying that all of those people, all the effort and time they've spent mean shit all to him. Being 'artsy' and 'artistic' doesn't excuse you from being an asshole. I mean, Caravaggio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravaggio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravaggio) was a 'ruffian' and a murderer. While his art still stands on its own, he was a dick of a person. Just because a dick of a person produces great art doesn't mean that we hand-wave away all their misdeeds with nebulous phrases like, "You just don't understand his art." What if Caravaggio decided to pull a _why? Let's say that he broke into all of the places that his paintings resided (cathedrals,churches,mansions,etc) and destroyed every last piece of art that he had created. Should we excuse this behavior as "Well, it's his art and this action is just an extention of his art. You just don't understand his art?" This has become a bit long-winded, so I'll just cut it here with this. Zed isn't tearing down _why's art. But some parts of _why's art have crossed over from just being 'just art' to being 'art plus' if you will. In this case, it's 'art + software project.' The fact that part of it is art doesn't mean one can ignore that the other part is a software project.

sofal 17y ago

I have used both Zed's code and _why's code and have benefited a lot from both. That being said, I would much rather that Zed had left the Ruby community in the same way that _why did than vice versa.

simplegeek 17y ago

Zed, as much as I love you and your work, that also was a dickhead thing to say ;(

ianbishop 17y ago

A true budhist would throw a hissy fit first and then let his software fucking rot, right? The only difference between the disappearance of these two from the ruby scene is that _why will actually be missed. Fuck Zed Shaw.

crystalis 17y ago
I feel the conflict within you. Let go of your hate.

tjogin 17y ago

He keeps calling him Jonathan all the time, but it's not at all sure that's his real name (see: http://ozmm.org/posts/his_name_is_robert_paulson.html http://ozmm.org/posts/his_name_is_robert_paulson.html). And even if it is, it's kind of a dick thing to do, given that we know that _why never wanted to be known as anything but _why.

burke 17y ago
Actually, it is: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=774673 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=774673 , particularly http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=775578 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=775578 I agree though, dick move. Then again, this _is_ Zed we're talking about.
- blasdel 17y ago
  No, it's pretty obvious that they were close friends and coworkers, but not the same person.
  - burke 17y ago
    I'm starting to sympathize with http://xkcd.com/386/ http://xkcd.com/386/ more and more. I wish I could just stop doing this already. Umm, ok, let's recap, shall we?: 1) His sister. This ( http://www.advogato.org/person/whytheluckystiff/diary/14.html http://www.advogato.org/person/whytheluckystiff/diary/14.htm... ) says she was 14 in 2001. That makes her ~21 today. "Jonathan Gillette from Utah" has "Kristin Gillete" listed as a relative here: http://www.intelius.com/search-summary-out.php?ReportType=1&qf=jonathan&qmi=&qn=gillette&qs=UT&trackit=74&focusfirst=1 http://www.intelius.com/search-summary-out.php?ReportType=1&... . She's 21. 2) His wife. This page ( http://ftp.df.lth.se/pub/scene.org/music/groups/starving_but_happy/sbh-lp003-moonboots-elfin_princess_%28starvingbuthappy%2c_2004%29/moonboots-elfin_princess.txt http://ftp.df.lth.se/pub/scene.org/music/groups/starving_but... ) says Jonathan is married to Kylie, or at least was in 2004. She makes jewelry, and has a site hosted by _why: http://74.125.93.132/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=cache:snapd.net&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 http://74.125.93.132/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=c... 3) His band. See http://ftp.df.lth.se/pub/scene.org/music/groups/starving_but_happy/sbh-lp003-moonboots-elfin_princess_%28starvingbuthappy%2c_2004%29/moonboots-elfin_princess.txt http://ftp.df.lth.se/pub/scene.org/music/groups/starving_but... again. He plays in a band called (both) "Starving but Happy" and "The Child Who Was A Keyhole". See http://www.myspace.com/thechildwhowasakeyhole http://www.myspace.com/thechildwhowasakeyhole . Compare picture of _why (http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottlaird/31366517/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottlaird/31366517/ ) to http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=40210738&albumID=191117&imageID=957700 http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewIma... and http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=40210738&albumID=191117&imageID=85996 http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewIma... -- the guitar is pretty easy to identify as the same. 4) The why@rysa.inetz.com thing. 5) This site (http://members.tripod.com/soccer_riot/ http://members.tripod.com/soccer_riot/ ) was made by _why (pre-why, as far as I can tell). If he is just close friends with Jonathan Gillette, it's apparently to the point that it didn't seem relevant to point out that he was producing the audio clips for the site. Open dolphins.ram in pretty much any media player and you'll see "Jonathan Gillette" as its author. 6) Why did jgillette make several very informed posts to ruby-talk, then completely quit developing ruby (apparently...)?

doki_pen 17y ago

It's so easy to judge someone without walking in their shoes. You (and I) have no idea what this person is going through emotionally. He could have some serious problems.

doki_pen 17y ago

The only thing that really bothers me about what _why did is that he killed all the mailinglists without warning. I happen to know that there were a lot of teachers on the Shoes mailing list trying to use shoes to teach kids to code. It was the center piece of the new hackety hack designed for kids. It seems completely irrational that _why would abandon these innocent people without so much as a "sorry, I'm out". this makes me really worried for his mental health. It is not rational behavior.

oscardelben 17y ago
Let's wait some days to see (if we'll ever see) what's happened.
Goladus 17y ago
Not to nitpick semantics, but 'rational' is not actually a very high bar. It could be completely rational within a context that we don't know. It might be irrational, it's hard to say.

embeddedradical 17y ago

This is bull. The idea of karma is an illusion too. The man who stabs you in the gut and laughs, is a buddha. mu.

chewbranca 17y ago

As a new father I have to chime in and say I'm very disappointed to see hackety hack and shoes go away. It was exciting to see his talk from Art & Code, and I was looking forward to using both of those tools to teach my children. In response to the article and comments, there are a lot of people here who immediately dismiss the article because its written by Zed, and still others who deem _why's actions acceptable because he's an 'artist'. Assuming _why is ok and he just decided to log off, Zed is right in this case. _why has transcended being an artist by creating art that does not only have aesthetic beauty, but also has substantial value to the people who have used it and who have invested time into it. The fact that he has created solid documentation in addition to releasing his projects in a public distributed system geared towards sharing and reuse is proof that he was at least interested in having other people use his projects. Which means he has a social obligation to not actively screw over his user base so he can be dramatic. Just wait, I can see Eric Raymond writing a new chapter about the responsibilities associated with releasing code to the open source community. Maybe this is a sign we need an equivalent of archive.org for code so that nothing like this can happen again.

pwmanagerdied 17y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20080211232452/http://hacketyhack.net/ http://web.archive.org/web/20080211232452/http://hacketyhack... It doesn't seem to have caught Shoes (too new?), but seems after a glance to at least have most of the important stuff for Hackety Hack. When you consider that (helped but not entirely due to to DCVS) the source code is all over, it doesn't seem to me that much was actually lost -- just a little misplaced.
scorpion032 17y ago
It takes a HN thread and a free github account to restore everything he "took down" And it took, [precisely that](http://whymirror.github.com/ http://whymirror.github.com/) Zed, you and other are arguing as if he actively deleted your own copies of all that work and that he had an obligation to support it for ever.