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I'm honestly getting quite sick of these kinds of things in open-source. Names like 'upskirt' and 'pantyshot'[0] are inappropriate names that are offensive and

I'm honestly getting quite sick of these kinds of things in open-source. Names like 'upskirt' and 'pantyshot'[0] are inappropriate names that are offensive and unwelcoming to a particular gender, but when we reach the point where we are complaining about a wholly gender neutral name that only offends people offended by the word "sex" we're reaching the point of inanity, especially when the package in question is a black box where you give it a first name and it tells you the likelihood that the name is male or female. If someone is offended by that name, then they should also be offended by the entire raison d'etre of the package in question since it further reinforces the notion of a gender binary. Gender identity exists on a spectrum, so getting offended by the name of an open source project that guesses gender identity based on a name but not being offended by the fact that the project reinforces the gender binary is supremely ironic. As an open source developer, these kinds of discussions bother me immensely because it elevates some topic of discussion as being more important than the code and technical decisions. Any discussion that is not about code, technical decisions, API design, algorithms, abstraction boundaries, accurate documentation, etc. can generally be categorized as bikeshedding. I don't value bikeshedding. I don't want open source to be welcoming of bikeshedding where bikeshedding discussions of any kind are given the time of day. A certain amount of discussion around of appropriate naming is warranted, but there is a line that you cross where making software welcoming to easily offended people starts making the process fraught for people just trying to make technical decisions because they now have overly sensitive people in their midsts that they must cater for. Making technical discussions fraught hurts open source a lot more than the gain you get from being welcoming to people who are easily offended. The Ben Noordhuis debacle [3] springs to mind. libuv is a project where Ben is the #1 committer to the project with 1071 commits (35.6% of the total) and his commits are likely to be the overwhelming majority of new features and non-trivial code changes. Ben's sin was simply one of not allowing commits with no technical value. If the change had come in as part of a larger pull request where actual code was changed, I'm sure there would have been no controversy at all. Instead Alex Gaynor did a drive-by single commit to libuv (his only commit to date) and the whole thing blew up and Ben was made out to be the bad guy by many people who probably never made a commit to libuv and probably never will. This resignation letter from a Debian TC member[1] is what I think of every time we leave room for discussion about anything but technical issues. Open source used to be about code first and foremost and we all lose when (code < people's feelings) evaluates to true. I'm honestly at the point where I apply the follow heuristic to the opinions of people when it comes to bikeshedding about open source: function validOpinion(person, opinion) { if (hasPublishedOpenSourceCode(person)) { return opinion; } else { throw new Error('Invalid opinion'); } } If you don't publish open source code, your opinion does not matter. [0] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/when-software-offends-the-pantyshot-package-controversy/509 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/when-software-offends-t... [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2014/11/msg00071.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2014/11/msg00071.html [2] http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=137392506516022&w=2 http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=137392506516022&w=2 [3] https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538615 https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538...

dragonwriter 12y ago
> but when we reach the point where we are complaining about a wholly gender neutral name that only offends people offended by the word "sex" we're reaching the point of inanity We reached that point a long time ago, which is why the Latin-Greek hybrid "hexadecimal" is even a thing.
- nicky0 12y ago
  The fact that nobody gives a shit about mixing Greek and Latin is a good thing.
danso 12y ago
I didn't submit this as a means to spark yet another debate on HN about gender dynamics or political correctness, but an example of a well-handled controversy by an open-source maintainer. Let's ignore the details of the controversy. What we have here is someone who has made a useful gem and, after a couple of years, is told out of the blue that it's somewhat offensive. Someone else then submits a pull-request that "fixes" the problem. Meanwhile, the Github issues section has been basically vote-brigaded into a trollfest, to the point where many people would've just shut down the repo or not attempted any rational thinking because of how offensive and standoffish the debate had become. But instead, the OP accepts the pull request and writes a very level-headed post about why he both agrees and disagrees with the sexism complaint. Even though such a complaint is one that he could've taken personally, he doesn't, and instead, he applies empathy and rationality when making his decision. Whether you like the outcome or not, I think this is a prime example of civil discourse and action in OSS: a level-headed maintainer, and someone who makes a pull-request as proof of concept.
- throwaway43232 12y ago
  Totally agree. I think the maintainer here did a stellar job. The only thing that I don't think was considered in his response, and is the reason I came here to comment, is that I don't think we're fully thinking through the unintended consequences of placating everyone who is offended by something no matter how minor. A environment that is overly sensitive and where people are easily offended is an environment that is not welcoming of people on the aspie-autistic end of the spectrum, especially on the internet where you don't know whether someone is neurotypical or not. People who are neurotypical tend to assume that everyone else is neurotypical as well. Open-source was and has always been a place where those on the aspie-autistic end of the spectrum can and do excel. Elevating feelings over code and being technically correct creates and environment that is fraught for those people who generally have less empathy and don't really get offended themselves. Between making open source welcoming to people who are neurotypical and making it welcome to people on the aspie-autistic end of the spectrum, we all lose by favoring the former. The overwhelming majority of truly valuable contributions in our field are done by people who are neurologically aspie-autistic.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> but when we reach the point where we are complaining about a wholly gender neutral name that only offends people offended by the word "sex" we're reaching the point of inanity We reached that point a long time ago, which is why the Latin-Greek hybrid "hexadecimal" is even a thing.

nicky0 12y ago
The fact that nobody gives a shit about mixing Greek and Latin is a good thing.

danso 12y ago

I didn't submit this as a means to spark yet another debate on HN about gender dynamics or political correctness, but an example of a well-handled controversy by an open-source maintainer. Let's ignore the details of the controversy. What we have here is someone who has made a useful gem and, after a couple of years, is told out of the blue that it's somewhat offensive. Someone else then submits a pull-request that "fixes" the problem. Meanwhile, the Github issues section has been basically vote-brigaded into a trollfest, to the point where many people would've just shut down the repo or not attempted any rational thinking because of how offensive and standoffish the debate had become. But instead, the OP accepts the pull request and writes a very level-headed post about why he both agrees and disagrees with the sexism complaint. Even though such a complaint is one that he could've taken personally, he doesn't, and instead, he applies empathy and rationality when making his decision. Whether you like the outcome or not, I think this is a prime example of civil discourse and action in OSS: a level-headed maintainer, and someone who makes a pull-request as proof of concept.

throwaway43232 12y ago
Totally agree. I think the maintainer here did a stellar job. The only thing that I don't think was considered in his response, and is the reason I came here to comment, is that I don't think we're fully thinking through the unintended consequences of placating everyone who is offended by something no matter how minor. A environment that is overly sensitive and where people are easily offended is an environment that is not welcoming of people on the aspie-autistic end of the spectrum, especially on the internet where you don't know whether someone is neurotypical or not. People who are neurotypical tend to assume that everyone else is neurotypical as well. Open-source was and has always been a place where those on the aspie-autistic end of the spectrum can and do excel. Elevating feelings over code and being technically correct creates and environment that is fraught for those people who generally have less empathy and don't really get offended themselves. Between making open source welcoming to people who are neurotypical and making it welcome to people on the aspie-autistic end of the spectrum, we all lose by favoring the former. The overwhelming majority of truly valuable contributions in our field are done by people who are neurologically aspie-autistic.