"Please take this down and write your own book."

https://github.com/martinemde/learn-ruby-the-hard-way/issues/1

by bobbywilson0 • 16 years ago

170 171 16 years ago

github.com

mathgladiator• 16 years ago

At some level, you have to love zed. He gives and gives to the world, and the world just craps on him.

Of course, I have a feeling that his personal brand isn't going to be helped by this exchange.

protomyth• 16 years ago

Well, considering he is doing blank templates and did a "how to" blog post, I think he is being more reasonable than anyone should expect. What they did was rude.

[edit s/black/blank/]

mtsmith85• 16 years ago

I would disagree about his personal brand, actually. I think that this is an example of Zed -- part and parcel. (And let me say right from the start, I love this guy's work and all that he brings to the table.)

Zed has given immense amounts of code and work to the web community as a whole. It would be characteristically unlike Zed to not defend his work from what he views (and many others, I assume, including myself) as a savaging of his work.

So if you view it from that perspective? This is just par for the course with Zed. I, for one, appreciate someone who is so passionate about their work that they go to such lengths to defend it.

(Edited: Forgot me some commas.)

kenjackson6• 16 years ago

* I, for one, appreciate someone who is so passionate about their work that they go to such lengths to defend it.*

The ironic thing is that Zed's letter is similar to Bill Gates's letter to hobbyists 30 years, yet Bill has been historically flamed by the hacker community (requiring me to pay for software, is a larger crime than me stealing it). I wonder if identity politics play a larger role than ethical admiration.

Loic• 16 years ago

Zed has principles and follow them. His personal brand (I don't like the term, but I am not a native English speaker and have difficulties to come up with better) is not going to suffer, the opposite. He is just requesting respect for his work and the basic copy rights to be followed.

I like people with principles.

crux_• 16 years ago

I don't like the term either. Reputation is a nice substitute, although it lacks the connotations of treating a person as though they were a corporation-style entity with a marketing department.

... which, come to think of it, is one of the reasons I hate the phrase "personal brand."

nkurz2• 16 years ago

I've been disappointed with the tone of some of Zed's comments here on HN, but this one struck me as perfectly polite and reasonable. His brand quality just got a big boost for me. I appreciate principles. Not everyone has to like every brand, and appealing to the least common denominator isn't always the best strategy.

famousactress• 16 years ago

Really? I read it differently. I thought both Zed and Martin came off as passionate, and relatively well-reasoned. Nothing Zed said here seemed over the top or out of line considering the context. Hopefully people who read over the exchange imagine themselves waking up to the same scenario.

cowboyhero• 16 years ago

Speaking of brands .. if I were the guys running Engine Yard I'd be reaaaaally pissed right about now.

Jabbles• 16 years ago

Drama!

Seriously though, everyone should be aware that "free as in beer" and "free as in speech" are not the same thing. And they should be aware of which case applies.

charlief• 16 years ago

This was originally posted by martinemde looking for support and then flagged down here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1873881

khingebjerg• 16 years ago

Perhaps because of the provocative title. I actually think that it shows even less class from martinemde, that he posted that himself.

rbanffy11• 16 years ago

"I messaged you on Twitter and contacted you by email to try to give you knowledge of it. I was quite public about doing it as a _why day project. I made a good faith effort to let you know what I was working on. I even knew you were working on having a learn code the hard way thing and I wanted to contribute but there's no clear outline of your goals or how you expect people to contribute. This is my understanding of what you'd expect for contribution."

I tend to support the martinemde here. It seems he tried contact and was ignored. As much as Zed's coding skills are respected (I never looked into his code myself, but I trust my peers) I have to wonder if they are worth his toxicity.

"have some class", "guys like you are the reason I stopped doing Ruby", "Ruby hippie"... Come on...

tvon• 16 years ago

> It seems he tried contact and was ignored.

I don't think silence is consent in this case. The whole thing seems like an obviously bad idea to me...

jwhitlark• 16 years ago

"You didn't respond to me" does not lead to "I can do what I want with material you post". Good faith means honoring people's wishes until they tell you otherwise.

Aside: Normally I look for something like O'Reilly's statement "This book is to help you get your job done." The code is gone, so I can't tell where this would fall on the reasonableness continuum.

Aside Aside: Zed's a nice guy in person; I'd guess the harsh online stuff is a tool to get things done. Linus doesn't have a rep. for being nice online, and perhaps that's how some guys put out so much code.

natep5• 16 years ago

If the license clearly states you cannot modify the work, then you cannot modify the work. It doesn't matter how many times you contact the guy with no response, the license was there since the beginning.

And you're only pointing out one side of the story. The chain of reaction was (mostly paraphrased)

1. ignore license and author's express wishes 2. "please stop and have some class" 3. "Don't be upset at me, I thought I was doing what you wanted" 4. "Thanks for taking it down, here's why I feel this way" 5. "No, really, I did you a favor and you should thank me" 6. "Guys like you are the reason I stopped doing Ruby." 7. "I speak for everyone, "good fucking riddance."" 8. "Exactly. You guys are all about love, and then you scream obscenities at me. Half-finished crap doesn't help me. I went out of my way to help people make a similar book [not sure about the timing, but he has], and you went and did things the opposite way" 9. Everybody else piles in

Now, I may have taken too many editorial liberties, but that's how I saw the conversation.

TL;DR - if you ask permission to violate someone's license and don't get an answer, that does not mean "Yes"

mcknz4• 16 years ago

But honestly Zed, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy I just didn't "lift" your whole book and put my name on it!

swannodette• 16 years ago

I hope sarcasm is intended here, if so- that's funny.

mcav• 16 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1868736

nkurz2• 16 years ago

Certainly it is intended to be sarcasm, but it's a meme that we should try to resist. Rather than regurgitating a reference to show cool insider status, we should look at the situation and reflect on how it is the same and how it is different. Flag it and move on.

mcknz4• 16 years ago

Thought it interesting how absurd the "Monica" situation seems, yet we often engage in essentially the same behavior ourselves.

That just doesn't sound as good on a bumper sticker.

EDIT: clarification

16s5• 16 years ago

You'd be amazed at how many dumb asses actually believe that. No idea what the word copyright means.

jasonkester• 16 years ago

This is a good illustration of how tone doesn't come across well in writing. Reading the comment by the original author, it sounded like a friendly request to please take the content down.

The guy whose site it was clearly didn't see it that way and responded as though he'd been viscously attacked. He ends up coming across as quite angry, when more likely he was just rattled and feeling defensive.

I guess the takeaway is to always take a step back before responding when you feel attacked. Chances are you're not being attacked nearly as harshly as you think.

mcknz4• 16 years ago

"have some class" was probably a little over the top, but I can understand the frustration.

pmjordan5• 16 years ago

I don't know, would you call copyright infringement a "classy" thing to do?

FraaJad3• 16 years ago

Taken in isolation, that might appear over the top, but as you can see from subsequent comments by martin on that thread and his attempts to elicit symapthy on HN by posting an inflammatory post [1] and tweeting about it [2], martin has clearly shown who has less class here.

On the contrary, Zed has chosen not broadcast this to the wide world though he is clearly the "injured" party here.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1873881 [2] http://twitter.com/#!/martinemde/status/589562699063297

jemfinch• 16 years ago

It's Zed Shaw. That pretty much rules out it being a friendly request ;)

With that said, such situations are exactly the sort that mildly unfriendly requests are appropriate for. I did the same thing when someone took my BSD licensed code, replaced my name in the copyright notice with his own, and put it up on github. Fundamentally, you're not making a request, you're giving a command.

Semiapies25• 16 years ago

And he didn't even involve a lawyer, so he's already doing the guy a favor.

kenjackson6• 16 years ago

The problem with Zed's response, IMO, is the end. Where he says to the guy to have some class and use his own words.

While I completely get what Zed is saying about asking permission. I don't think that "porting" a book is lacking class. It may turn out to be a futile effort, but in many ways I saw it as a tribute and maybe learning exercise. It would be a blast to do SICP in Java. For Java programmers the process of writing, and for others reading such a book would be a valuable experience.

I think if Zed would have just said:

"Hi, my book isn't public domain. You can't modify and redist w/o permission. And unfortunately, I don't think Ruby is the type of language you can just drop in as a replacement for Python. You may get the result to work, but it'll be suboptimal for Ruby and may even make my original text look worse as a result.

Ther eare some people working on a clean room version with Ruby. If you're interested, I'd be happy to make an introduction for you. Again, I'll have to ask you to cease using my text for this project, but hopefully you can create a great Ruby book in some other manner." Or something similar, the result would have been a more civil dialog.

pmjordan5• 16 years ago

I doubt that would have helped. Being caught infringing on someone's copyright is embarrassing to say the least. Embarrassment and being given advice, no matter how well-meaning, will often not go down well. In fact, many people get extra annoyed when you're nice about this sort of thing.

I think Zed's initial approach was a close approximation of the best way to handle this. Although I probably would have left it at the original notice and then a mere "thanks for taking it down". (speaking as someone who has no emotional involvement in the situation, anyway. Who knows how I would have reacted to that level of abuse)

frio• 16 years ago

A learning exercise, maybe, but "porting" this book to Ruby is a bad idea. Ruby isn't Python, and it's "Learn Python the Hard Way", not "Learn Programming the Hard Way". It's a book tailored to a specific language, and created to teach that language... which is the point Zed makes.

Had Python simply been the language used to teach basic programming concepts, then yeah, I could understand. While I haven't read LPTHW, if it had a section on, say, threading and the GIL - then simply porting the demo code to Ruby would at best be confusing, and at worst thoroughly put a programmer off Ruby.

goosemo• 16 years ago

The guy has a dong api... class defense fail. https://github.com/martinemde/dicks

epo• 16 years ago

Given the circumstances I thought Zed was reasonably civil.

JoeCortopassi• 16 years ago

Totally agree. Trying to get a hold of someone, then assuming permission when they don't respond isn't ok. I'd be pissed to...

DanHulton• 16 years ago

Frankly, the older I get, the more respect I have for the guy.

A lot of folks would have responded with a lawyer or at least a legal nastygram. Zed didn't even mention the law, just asked (asked!) the guy to take it down, and took the time to refute and explain all the guy's misconceptions.

isleyaardvark• 16 years ago

I think the bigger takeaway is that martinemde should've realized he was in the wrong.

Semiapies25• 16 years ago

And when you wrong people, sometimes they say mean things in response. Sometimes (often), you should just suck it up and say nothing more than "Yes, I was wrong to do this. I'm sorry."

Semiapies25• 16 years ago

Or, when someone's pointing out that you're wronging him, don't even worry about interpretation of tone. Worry about whether you've done something wrong, and if you have, then 1) fix it, 2) apologize, and finally 3) don't do that again.

"Make excuses" and "berate the person for being angered by your wrongdoing" are not on this list.

rhizome3• 16 years ago

"How dare that person care more than I think he should."

tkeller• 16 years ago

I see what you're saying, but... it's copyright infringement and license violation. Politeness is not a requirement.

amadiver• 16 years ago

"If you want to write a similar book for Ruby then have some class and use your own words and write your own book."

I'd say that's harsh, and unnecessary. I'd feel attacked if that was directed at me, too, especially if I felt (rightly or not) that I'd kept things on the level.

No one needs to be polite, especially when they feel the need to protect their work. But in not doing so, they belie a certain amount of lack of empathy.

It's a shame posts like this get upvoted for the drama and this behavior is rewarded.

ay2• 16 years ago

How many times have you written a nice and polite words when the fruit of your passionate labor has been taken without your consent and dealt with in a way that you consider inappropriate ?

I've once had, and I can fully understand Zed, maybe, did experience a certain emotion in it.

If I were to deal with a similar situation coldly without a drama and emotion, I'd simply spend $6 (or how much the registered mail costs?), sent a DMCA takedown notice, and be done with it.

In any case - the real drama and theatre happens in the comments to the original communication.

Some guy made a mistake. Zed has asked to take it down. He took it down. The fact whether Zed has asked it with a twist or not, is o(1) compared to the quality of the subsequent comments on that page. That part is a real shame, in my opinion.

(edit: re-reading your comment, maybe I have misunderstood it - re. the fact that the done-with matters are promoted on HN "for the sake of drama" - well, as soon as we all remain civil and try to not step over each others' toes, I do not think it is a problem - and is actually a good case study. As soon as noone starts to throw tomatoes into some folk who happened to make an honest mistake and quickly corrected it.)

rubyrescue2• 16 years ago

"I'm a fucking Engine Yard programmer for fuck sake." - what an arrogant statement.

scott_s2• 16 years ago

I read it not as "I'm an amazing programmer because I work for Engine Yard," but "I work for a company that clearly depends on your work - I respect what you've done."

dsteinweg• 16 years ago

After hearing your interpretation, I realize that probably does make more sense within the context of the paragraph.

But I certainly heard it the other way first. That's probably another good example of meaning being lost in text compared to spoken word.

pjscott• 16 years ago

On behalf of everyone who tries to communicate over the internet, I'd like to thank you for assuming the nicer interpretation. It's easy to misinterpret someone's tone, and written communication goes so much more smoothly when people avoid making angry assumptions.

martinemde3• 16 years ago

Thank you for this. It's been my intention this whole time to point out that I really enjoy all of Zed's work. And felt a attacked when I thought I was doing something good. I felt a translation was helpful, but I took it down immediately when I received a complaint. I like what Zed has done and use it daily. Working at Engine Yard is not something I see as being better than any other job, only that we're a prominent user of Mongrel, possibly the largest in the world.

rflrob• 16 years ago

Regardless of whether Zed's tone in the first post was too harsh or not, I think everything from "Guys like you are the reason I stopped doing Ruby" onwards was just fanning the flames unnecessarily.

JanezStupar2• 16 years ago

This is Zeeed Shaaaaw!!!

I have never met the guy, but I surely hope that I get the privilege some day, even if he just picks on me and tells me that my work is worthless piece of junk and that if it implodes in a second it would be a service to the world - because that might be single most insightful and sincere analysis one might receive.

Kudos to anyone with a pair, that is capable of speaking their mind in today's "politically correct" world ridden with hypocrisy.

forsaken• 16 years ago

Zed is actually really nice in person.

masklinn• 16 years ago

He doesn't come across badly here. Stern, but fair if a bit harsh. And the other guy comes across as a working device of non-standard proportions.

Semiapies25• 16 years ago

Seeing many of the responses make me wonder whether he's even really as ogrish online as some people suggest. Most of what I've seen pointed out by angry folks seem to be responses to things those people aren't citing.

Seeing the full exchange in this case, I'm hard put to see anything unusual with what Shaw said. Nice people and polite people get justifiably angry, too.

citricsquid• 16 years ago

Like it or not Zed is entirely right here. It's his work, the guy had no permission, it has nothing to do with being "politically correct" it has everything to do with no being a dick and respecting a persons ownership and the effort they put into something. Whether or not Zed is the biggest dick in the world is irrelevant.

Semiapies25• 16 years ago

Absolutely. It's one thing to take issue with the tone of someone voicing an opinion or reacting to your opinion, but it's another to whine that someone's not being friendly when he's telling you to stop stealing his work.

rhizome3• 16 years ago

Parent actually agrees with you, they're just saying that it would be PC forces that push back on Zed taking this tone, and kudos to him for not succumbing.

JanezStupar2• 16 years ago

I didn't mean to imply that I disagree with Zed. I have read about a couple of his skirmishes and he does seem to be usually right.

What I wanted to get across is that I respect the guy. He always starts out civil: "Sir, I warn you not to advance any further.", but when his counterparty fails to acknowledge the warning proceeds to tear them a new one.

As somebody once said about a former boss: "You may think he's an asshole, but you can't say hes wrong."

I also think that Zed just likes to beat people at their own game in a manner of: "So... You wanna play dirty? Ok let's play dirty. I'm gonna rip the eyes out of your head and piss into your dead skull!" :)

brettbender• 16 years ago

Love the entitlement evident in his reply, "I'm a fucking Engine Yard programmer for fuck sake. We promote mongrel as a stable deployment stack" - does he think the fact that they promote zed's work means it's okay to ignore zed's rights regarding his own work?

Also, how could anyone take issue with the maintainer of https://github.com/martinemde/dicks and http://dicks.heroku.com ?

parfe• 16 years ago

I don't think irony is the right word, but I got a good chuckle out of this martimeemde guy.

He is quite literally the embodiment of why zed left ruby. Someone profiting from Zed's work on mongrel yet at the same time giving Zed shit. Zed wrote a Python book and explicitly said it shouldn't be ported to Ruby. Then this ruby guy comes along and misappropriates the book and then whines that Zed isn't giving him enough for free.

steveklabnik2• 16 years ago

> Zed wrote a Python book and explicitly said it shouldn't be ported to Ruby.

Just to make it clear, Zed said that his book shouldn't be 'ported' to _anything_. An inspired work based on Ruby already exists, by @krainboltgreene, and Zed is aware and supportive.

aplusbi11• 16 years ago

I'm pretty sure Martin meant that respects and appreciates Zed's work as he uses mongrel, and that he was not in any way trying to be disrespectful to Zed in copying the book.

16s5• 16 years ago

Zed should have sent a DMCA notice to github.

16s5• 16 years ago

http://help.github.com/dmca/

For some reason can't edit my original comment. So replied to myself.

Semiapies25• 16 years ago

After a certain period of time, you can't edit a comment you've made. Not sure of the exact period.

xentronium2• 16 years ago

I'm probably gonna get downvoted, but now I'm quite sure that web really IS public domain. We just have to state it explicitly. From now on gonna use public domain license on any public work I produce. Who's with me?

nickpinkston2• 16 years ago

Well, there's copyright's all over the web, and anything without it is common law'ed into being copyrighted - so no.

Personally, I go by the mantra of "if you post it, anyone can use it how they like".

Sure, Zed is within his legal rights to ask for this, but I'm surprised no one is viewing this from the angle of the Ruby community losing a (possibly) valuable resource because "Zed's brand" has to be maintained... Seems like everyone is so sensitive about the sanctity of their ideas.

Semiapies25• 16 years ago

As linked elsewhere: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1739890

Copy & paste probably won't make a useful Ruby book.

"Seems like everyone is so sensitive about the sanctity of their ideas."

That's the pain of dealing with other human beings as if they are human beings and not just web sites or github repositories.

joshuacc• 16 years ago

Interestingly, Martin has now updated the readme https://github.com/martinemde/learn-ruby-the-hard-way#readme

He concedes both of Zed's main points:

1. That he didn't have a legal right to "translate" the book

2. That "translating" the book from Python to Ruby didn't work all that well anyway

The rest of the message boils down to a complaint that Zed wasn't nice enough in his takedown request. While Zed could have phrased things more nicely, he wasn't especially rude given the context of clear plagiarism and copyright violation.

16s5• 16 years ago

Not nice? He could have sent a settlement offer... pay me X dollars for damaging my reputation as an author and I will promise not to sue you. Some may argue that Zed was not "damaged" by this juvenile act, but a good lawyer would have no problem proving damage if push came to shove.

aplusbi11• 16 years ago

And he could have politely asked Martin to take it down. Zed was being "not nice" no matter how you look at it. He could have been worse, but that's like saying you shouldn't be mad because I punched you in the stomach instead of the face.

Edit: okay, the analogy is a strawman but seriously, just because someone could have been worse doesn't excuse their behavior. Telling someone they have no class is rude, especially when it's pretty clear that Martin wasn't trying to plagiarize Zed's book - he was just confused about its licensing.

kenjackson6• 16 years ago

I suppose the bar for Microsoft will now be that they didn't impose the harshest legal remedy against you, and since they didn't they're a charitable company? Unlikely, people are praising them for not fining them $30k per copy of Windows/Office made illegally.

rhizome3• 16 years ago

Not only that, but it seems very strange not to be aware of the tradition of bluntness from engineering types, and to interpret it negatively.

lhnz2• 16 years ago

If the guy credited him and Zed's book was free online, then I really think Zed is doing the coding world a disservice here...

lhnz2• 16 years ago

I'm getting downvoted, so I'll expand:

If you make ethical judgments directly from the license then Zed Shaw is right. But Martin hadn't really done much wrong. The book was free online, and it would be classed as fair use by many people if it had been made using music, film or tv. He also made sure to credit Zed for the text, and only an idiot would think that Zed was able to change his text to fit the code better so I don't think it would reflect back on Zed badly at all...

Then again, in my opinion, what is important is that there are more beginning code examples to read in Ruby. Bullshit over rights or hatred of whole programming communities be damned.

jpcx013• 16 years ago

Someone, please tell me where there is a copyright notice anywhere on http://learnpythonthehardway.org/ or on the PDF http://learnpythonthehardway.org/static/LearnPythonTheHardWa...

If he's so fanatical about copyright, why can't he post something about it?

The culture developers are used to on github is forking people's work and tweaking it (while still giving attribution to the author). It's not totally shocking that someone would accidentally apply this philosophy to this book. Telling someone he has "no class" for doing this is just being a dick.

But then again, its Zed D Shaw. He earned that middle name.

FraaJad3• 16 years ago

Before you attack someone's name you should do your homework.

1. he has his name on the book. That is sufficient to claim copyright. There is no need for additional copyright notices.

2. The source to the book was not on github. The martinemde guy put up the code on github. The original source lives in a fossil repository.

johnny22• 16 years ago

dctoedt• 16 years ago

In the U.S., and AFAIK in much of the rest of the world, copyright arises automatically, without the need for either registration or a copyright notice, once the "original work of authorship" is "fixed" in a "tangible medium of expression" (which can include saving to disk). See generally http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Obtaining_copyright

aconbere• 16 years ago

page 4 of the pdf: "This book is Copyright (C) 2010 by Zed A. Shaw. You are free to distribute this book to anyone you want, so long as you do not charge anything for it, and it is not altered. You must give away the book in its entirety, or not at all"

gcampbell• 16 years ago

The License is located at the bottom of page 4:

"This book is Copyright (C) 2010 by Zed A. Shaw. You are free to distribute this book to anyone you want, so long as you do not charge anything for it, and it is not altered. You must give away the book in its entirety, or not at all."

In Creative Commons terms, it's basically cc by-nc-nd: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

16s5• 16 years ago

You don't understand how much you don't understand about copyright.

voodootikigod• 16 years ago

The worst part of this situation is how martinemde is portending himself to be a "translator" like from English to Spanish, ignorant of the fact that you even need permission to do that. http://twitter.com/martinemde

Also its pretty crappy how the Ruby Protection Squad came to his rescue with blind hate for Zed throwing comments like "Wow didn't even know who Zed Shaw was, now the first thing I learned about him is that he's a total d-bag" - http://twitter.com/PeteTheSadPanda/status/598669095084033

Yes Zed doesn't always say things gently, but what he did say was 100% truth. Regardless of if you like what he says you have to respect 1. the truth and 2. who was really in the wrong here.

Final note: this guy could have buried it by just deleting the whole repo, but left it up to seem like the "martyr" - that is what kills me the most.

brown9-2• 16 years ago

I think your first point here is excellent, but do we really need to care about what some random (as far as I can tell) Twitter user thinks about Zed? On the Internet you can find a negative comment about anyone by someone, somewhere.

andjones• 16 years ago

Although I understand the author's desire to not have his work copied, I think he stepped across the line when he used a personal attack:

"Guys like you are the reason I stopped doing Ruby."

ddemchuk• 16 years ago

Why do people take the time to digitally bicker with veteran trolls? We're all professionals, this isn't something you want your name attached to on the "nothing is ever forgotten" internet.

mdonahoe• 16 years ago

Interesting. On the page about the book[1], Zed also links to How To Think Like a Computer Scientist, another popular book for learning Python.

Allen Downey was the first author on that book, but initially he wrote it in Java:

"I released the book under the GNU Free Documentation License, which allows users to copy, modify, and distribute the book.

What happened next is the cool part. Jeff Elkner, a high school teacher in Virginia, adopted my book and translated it into Python. He sent me a copy of his translation, and I had the unusual experience of learning Python by reading my own book."[2]

It's funny that the same thing is happening here, but Zed has a very different reaction than Allen's.

[1] http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index [2]: http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/html/book001.html

JshWright2• 16 years ago

It would only be "the same thing" if Zed chose to release his content under the GNU Free Documentation License, which he did not.

It's his content, and he can do with it what he choses. If he doesn't want folks to "copy, modify, and distribute" his content, that's fine with me (not that it matters, since it's _his_ content).

jpcx013• 16 years ago

Really? You see no similarities between these 2 cases?

I only see one big difference. One author cares about only himself and his own little world

nowarninglabel• 16 years ago

A different reaction for a different license. Notice that 37 days ago a fellow hacker realized that the license didn't allow for porting into Ruby though they wanted to do so: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1739890

steveklabnik2• 16 years ago

The "good riddance" posts really sadden me. I've generally found the Ruby community to be a great place, and then comments like these come along...

grandalf• 16 years ago

Disclaimer: I'm commenting on this thread only to help Zed generate more publicity/buzz for his book, which was surely the reason why he was a dick to Martin about it :)

People understand clearly when someone like "The Situation" acts like a dick to gain notoriety, but many programmers seem not to be able to understand when a programmer does it. This is very effective schtick, and Zed has inspired a few others of late.

Bottom line: Zed is a nice guy and Martin is a nice guy.

sp4rki5• 16 years ago

Why are a lot of people missing stuff like this: "have some class and use your own words and write your own book" and this "Guys like you are the reason I stopped doing Ruby"?

I agree with Zed that the idea was borderline useless since both languages have their ways and a direct translation lacks focus anyway. I also agree that it's Zed's work, and he granted use of his work with a license which doesn't allow this type of derivate work. Zed was totally in the right here, and Martin was totally in the wrong.

That being said, that doesn't automagically grant Zed the right to be a douche and insult the guy, specially since not only he complied with Zed's request, but tries to explain that he did so in good faith. There's no 'tone' here, it was obviously an insulting and condescending attack towards Martin. A simple "Hey what you're doing is not permitted by my license, take it down" or "You're infringing my copyright, take this down" would have been more than enough. The reality is that Zed loves to pick a fight and demean people, and in this case Martin made a mistake in good faith and did not deserve such disdain.

Semiapies25• 16 years ago

When you act in a classless way, whether that's making fart noises in a restaurant or plagiarizing someone's work, you risk the pain of being told to act with more class.

aplusbi11• 16 years ago

This wasn't plagiarism. At no point did Martin attempt to pass this off as his own work. This was an homage, very much in the spirit of open source - the only problem was that the book is not open source.

sp4rki5• 16 years ago

Two things:

1) It was not plagiarizing, it was copyright infringement, and they are both not mutually inclusive and are completely different. Martin didn't appropriate the content or idea of the book and called it his own, he publish the start of an attempt of a 'book hack' stating the original author and intent.

2) Do you equate fart noises with a person making a mistake in the name of providing something useful to the community? The dude made a mistake, a mistake that in no way reflects on his amount of class, but does reflect on his drive to provide something useful to the Open Source community. Sure he should be corrected, as he did make a mistake, but he should not be degraded in any way as has been done in this case.

PD: Who has more class, the person who farts in a restaurant, or the person that calls him on it publicly without knowing the reasons for him doing it and does so with intent to degrade such person?

darklajid3• 16 years ago

For me the most interesting part was reading this, pondering about text as medium that lacks a lot of - erm - subtext _and_ I guess it's especially interesting if english is not your native language. That by itself usually leads to "wait a minute, what is the author trying to say here" moments more often.

What I mean: Write german and I tend to interpret a lot more - I assume that I _know_ the language really well and therefor just _know_ what you're trying to say here. Maybe it's an advantage to read most of my internet stuff in english: Less "Someone's wrong on the internet" moments and more "Did I get this right" reflection.

On-Topic: I respect Zed's work, tried the book recently and liked that quite a lot either. I do wonder if the tone was necessary though: Except for the "WTF? I didn't _meant_ to violate copyright" I couldn't read anything insulting in the author's comments, while "lacking class" and "I left ruby because of people like you" is - personal.

Yes, it was wrong. Others commented that he could even hired a lawyer (seriously? For a no-profit, partly done, public github project? Overkill?), but I really think this could've been solved in private, easily, without much hassle.

For me, for the most part, the original author sounds/reads like a real, authentic (ex-?) fan of Zed..

tommorris2• 16 years ago

I call bullshit. Text can be perfectly expressive, in fact often more expressive than other media. You just need to be able to write well - and e-mail has exposed us on a daily basis to the fact that most people haven't figured out how to write and communicate very well.

Obligatory plug - I wrote about this recently: http://blog.tommorris.org/post/1307196373/im-getting-absolut...

darklajid3• 16 years ago

Nice way to promote your own blog.

Quote: "Do the people who propose these theories not get letters in the post? Do they not send each other Christmas cards?:

See - that's the part that shows that you fail to understand the problem. At all. I can send my mum, my SO or my brother short notices - and they will get what I mean. Because they already know me. They know my style of talking, my sense of humor and my way to argue. I'm not going to send you a christmas card over the internet, without previous encounters.

See - if you present this text of yours here, I'm lost. Are you _serious_ about that "bullshit"? I'm not sure. I don't know you and it doesn't make much sense to me. Either you are serious and we have to disagree a lot and I just don't (so far) get what your problem with my position is, or you just make a joke. Maybe you are chuckling in your chair and just want to spread some HN link love. Maybe you actually DO believe that emotions and intents are clearly visible in text.

If the last point is true I wonder if you had any classes/lessons where you were told to determine the authors intention - and if you have enough confidence to claim that yes, you knew _exactly_ what Mark Twain was trying to tell you in each of his books.

Er - I guess that was a long way to say: I call bullshit on both your argumentation and your motives. Feel free to read this with the image of me being amused, bewildered, confused, angry, annoyed or just neutral. Have fun.

ohyes2• 16 years ago

This is clearly not plagiarism. At no point did the translator take credit for the original work. There is a definition for plagiarism; it involves taking credit for someone else's original work.

Zed would probably have done better by simply quoting the license and asking him to take it down (because of copywrite infringement) instead of incorrectly accusing him of plagiarism (which implies he was doing the translation in bad faith).

ohyes2• 16 years ago

Factual correctness warrants down vote? Seriously?

"the wrongful appropriation, close imitation, or purloining and publication, of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions, and the representation of them as one's own original work." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism).

This was not plagiarism.

frou_dh• 16 years ago

It must suck to have your everyday online activities tracked, and your character traits debated at length by strangers.

Look at the title of this HN post, pure celebrity drama-bait.

martinemde3• 16 years ago

Please see the README on the front page of the project with my update.

https://github.com/martinemde/learn-ruby-the-hard-way

I've calmed a bit since the original postings. I can see why he was upset and I know that the right thing to do was to remove the book. I had good intentions and I did this out of homage, not to steal or claim any credit.

I've always been a fan of Zed's work. I will continue to be despite getting defensive about this.

Semiapies25• 16 years ago

This update would be better without the remaining defensiveness, but it is a much less wrong response.

I'm bewildered, though, at your saying that you're surprised at all the attention this has received when you've tried to publicize this incident.

martinemde3• 16 years ago

I found the whole incident rather funny. Zed published a post about the issue, I published the issue since Zed didn't link it. I've never submitted to Hacker News and figured it'd get buried. I didn't expect top story on hacker news.

sblom• 16 years ago

Wow. I really want to be on Zed's side here, but while his message is 99% legit, his delivery leaves something to be desired.

xentronium2• 16 years ago

Original author (martinemde) had good intentions but was stopped by a fact he was dealing with a douchebag.

Lesson #1: don't deal with douchebags.

Zed thinks he's making something of extraordinary quality that's going to suck when crowdsourced. I am 100% sure he's wrong because wikipedia is crowdsourced and wikipedia is awesome.

natep5• 16 years ago

Did you notice that the book has an issue tracker? How many other books have one of those?

Also, Wikipedia may be awesome, but what percentage of Wikipedia clones are awesome?

sequoia• 16 years ago

I think Zed's approach reflects an attitude like 'I shouldn't have to hold your hand re:copyright.'

I'm guessing Zed's rancor isn't just about this incident, but the 'net-wide confusion about copyright vs cc copyright vs gpl vs whatever, particularly among the newer generation of web developers (like me). I am sympathetic to his feeling of "I shouldn't even have to tell you this."

Semiapies25• 16 years ago

Agreed, and I think it's a justified rancor. There are some things you're expected to know as a literate person in this day and time, and some guy can't just expect his ignoring them to be covered with a shrug and a "my bad" when he's called on it.

BCGC• 16 years ago

Wow. There are people who will steal* and then have the guts to argue they are right.

I did not read LPTHW before this.

Now I read it and it's indeed hard work.

Wow.

meemo• 16 years ago

There's faults on both sides. The guy is clearly in the wrong by failing to follow the copyright restrictions, but it was probably an honest mistake. Since he's spending to much time on the book, he's probably a fan of Zed's work. And he may be thinking he's adding value to the book. On the other side, Zed was completely within his rights to ask the guy to take repository down, but didn't need to make any assumptions about the guy's intentions or "class".

natep5• 16 years ago

Nobody's going to notice this comment now, but Martin Edme has posted a formal apology.

Zed, it seems, will not apologize, based on recent twitter updates:

Hilarious hypocrisy how I'm called a "dick", "asshole", "d-bag", and "cock" because I said someone should have some "class".

33 minutes ago via web [1]

[1] http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/774156132024320

"Please take this down and write your own book."

Related Stories