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Ben Noordhuis reverted a commit that had removed gendered language from libuv documentation: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40e https://github.com/

Ben Noordhuis reverted a commit that had removed gendered language from libuv documentation: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40e https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40e Joyent received a lot of flak because people believe that Ben was a Joyent employee (he actually worked for Strongloop). Joyent came out with a post separating themselves from Ben, saying that they were in support of gender neutral language: https://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun https://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun

throwaway90446 12y ago
Which is all well and good, but the author of that blog post, the one who stated he would not hesitate to fire Ben if he were an employee, has no problem mocking bisexuals in public presentations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGkVM1B5NuI#t=3059 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGkVM1B5NuI#t=3059 To date, Bryan Cantrill remains CTO of Joyent. The corporate position appears to be that blatant homophobia by employees is acceptable, but improper pronouns are terminable offenses.
- afandian 12y ago
  That's extraordinarily hypocritical when you compare it to his blog post. That joke was completely inappropriate. http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun
- astrodust 12y ago
  That does seem like an inappropriate joke, bad taste no doubt, but a firing offense? Only if this was representative of a pattern.
  - philh 12y ago
    throwaway wasn't suggesting that Bryan should be fired for that.
- makomk 12y ago
  I'm not sure I'd call that "mocking" bisexuals, it's closer to mocking the shitty way other people treat them.
- netstag 12y ago
  Never heard of him or Joyent till now, but I tried watching that video, skipping along and had a hard time not finding him being offensive. He even goes on to make light of nazis and mock a past co-workers "galactic butt", so then I just skipped even faster. What's sad is that he seems to be talking about introducing 'drag' within the company and yet I doubt he realizes the irony given 90% of his talking content is just that.
afandian 12y ago
I think that's quite one sided. He rejected the commit because the author didn't sign the contributors agreement. He was following the rules. His crime was the tone of voice. I don't think it's worth forcing someone off a project for that.
- Dewie 12y ago
  > I think that's quite one sided. IMO argentpyro explained the incident in a pretty neutral manner.
  - afandian 12y ago
    Actually reading that particular conversation about the commit (there were several) does demonstrate the reasons for reverting the commit. (And the amazing speed at which things escalated)
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- untog 12y ago
  I don't believe that was the reason he used in the discussion thread. His reply was: "Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that."
  - shawndrost 12y ago
    He went into more depth later: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568172 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568... Among other things that might change your impression of Ben: 1) The work that the PR required from him was much more than clicking the merge button. 2) He's a non-native speaker of English and at the time he reverted the commit, he was under the impression that the difference was academic. 3) In his spare time, he teaches young people (especially women) to code.
    - 12y ago
philh 12y ago
The thing that annoys me most about this post is that > to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered is not what Ben was doing, and nothing Ben said on the subject could have given that impression. "Empathy is a core engineering value", and when you ascribe untrue motivations to people, you are completely failing at it.
- mcantelon 12y ago
  The business context of the post is interesting: IIRC at the time there'd been friction between Joyent and Strongloop (who Ben works for) and each company had two core contributors (one of whom was Ben). After the commit controversy Ben, IIRC, stopped contributing to core for awhile.
oso2k 12y ago
I honestly believe it was a malevolent attempt by Joyent to oust Ben for joining StrongLoop.

throwaway90446 12y ago

Which is all well and good, but the author of that blog post, the one who stated he would not hesitate to fire Ben if he were an employee, has no problem mocking bisexuals in public presentations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGkVM1B5NuI#t=3059 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGkVM1B5NuI#t=3059 To date, Bryan Cantrill remains CTO of Joyent. The corporate position appears to be that blatant homophobia by employees is acceptable, but improper pronouns are terminable offenses.

afandian 12y ago
That's extraordinarily hypocritical when you compare it to his blog post. That joke was completely inappropriate. http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun
astrodust 12y ago
That does seem like an inappropriate joke, bad taste no doubt, but a firing offense? Only if this was representative of a pattern.
- philh 12y ago
  throwaway wasn't suggesting that Bryan should be fired for that.
makomk 12y ago
I'm not sure I'd call that "mocking" bisexuals, it's closer to mocking the shitty way other people treat them.
netstag 12y ago
Never heard of him or Joyent till now, but I tried watching that video, skipping along and had a hard time not finding him being offensive. He even goes on to make light of nazis and mock a past co-workers "galactic butt", so then I just skipped even faster. What's sad is that he seems to be talking about introducing 'drag' within the company and yet I doubt he realizes the irony given 90% of his talking content is just that.

afandian 12y ago

I think that's quite one sided. He rejected the commit because the author didn't sign the contributors agreement. He was following the rules. His crime was the tone of voice. I don't think it's worth forcing someone off a project for that.

Dewie 12y ago
> I think that's quite one sided. IMO argentpyro explained the incident in a pretty neutral manner.
- afandian 12y ago
  Actually reading that particular conversation about the commit (there were several) does demonstrate the reasons for reverting the commit. (And the amazing speed at which things escalated)
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
untog 12y ago
I don't believe that was the reason he used in the discussion thread. His reply was: "Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that."
- shawndrost 12y ago
  He went into more depth later: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568172 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568... Among other things that might change your impression of Ben: 1) The work that the PR required from him was much more than clicking the merge button. 2) He's a non-native speaker of English and at the time he reverted the commit, he was under the impression that the difference was academic. 3) In his spare time, he teaches young people (especially women) to code.
  - 12y ago

philh 12y ago

The thing that annoys me most about this post is that > to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered is not what Ben was doing, and nothing Ben said on the subject could have given that impression. "Empathy is a core engineering value", and when you ascribe untrue motivations to people, you are completely failing at it.

mcantelon 12y ago
The business context of the post is interesting: IIRC at the time there'd been friction between Joyent and Strongloop (who Ben works for) and each company had two core contributors (one of whom was Ben). After the commit controversy Ben, IIRC, stopped contributing to core for awhile.

oso2k 12y ago

I honestly believe it was a malevolent attempt by Joyent to oust Ben for joining StrongLoop.