Debian developer demoted, quits after two decades with project

https://itwire.com/open-source/debian-developer-demoted,-quits-after-two-decades-with-project.html

by mbreese • 4 years ago

56 22 4 years ago

rurban2• 4 years ago

mostly over this: https://www.preining.info/blog/2015/10/looking-at-the-facts-...

eg he called SJW's at debian leadership "brainless feminists". you could have made much better and more grounded arguments.

krageon• 4 years ago

Much better and more grounded arguments were made. This article is honestly a grounded view of someone who is being incredibly toxic for a community that is honestly concerned with improving (after perhaps a suboptimal history).

rurban2• 4 years ago

the linux community improving? hardly. the figureheads got better, but the minions are still toxic.

the debian community improving? no, it's on a downwards spiral since.

bitwize• 4 years ago

We as a community do not tolerate verbal abuse or marginalizing[0] language anymore. Grow up, live in the fucking now (and not the 90s/2000s when open source was a good ole boys' club) and adjust your attitude -- or face the consequences. It doesn't matter how long you've been in the community or how much you contribute; you are not entitled to leadership or prestige if you're a bigoted asshole.

[0] There was a great bit in the series Rules of the Game where a character says "Don't use words like 'hottie' or 'lush'; it's marginalising." The choice of "marginalising" over "offensive" is a clever one; offensive language is subjective, whereas marginalizing language objectively reinforces existing power structures designed to exclude.

mhh__3• 4 years ago

Who does Linus marginalise? I can accept "someone" as an answer but I think that word has a darker connotation which is deeply unfair to ascribe to Linus given that he is rude and obnoxious sometimes but I don't think he's ever rude and obnoxious about (say) Chinese people or amputees.

hulitu2• 4 years ago

We as a community do not tolerate verbal abuse or marginalizing[0] language anymore. Grow up, live in the fucking now (and not the 90s/2000s when open source was a good ole boys' club) and adjust your attitude -- or face the consequences. It doesn't matter how long you've been in the community or how much you contribute; you are not entitled to leadership or prestige if you're a bigoted asshole.

English might not be my native language but, in my opinion, this statements contradicts itself.

4gotunameagain3• 4 years ago

It is sad that one of the most prestigious Linux distributions, and the one I have been using daily for a decade, is apparently being run over by contemporary politics which are incredibly irrelevant to the nature of the project.

mhh__3• 4 years ago

Projects have culture as well as technology. Sometimes you do need to keep an eye on the former.

In this case I don't know enough about Debian to say, but the idea that "politics" is by definition irrelevant to software projects by virtue of ignoring this cultural/human aspect is why people don't like nerds (which I do think is a very hurtful stereotype mostly peddled by jealous/confused morons, but it's not always wrong)

4gotunameagain3• 4 years ago

The relevant culture is the belief in free and open source software, in openness and transparency, and a community oriented approach, as stated in the Debian Social Contract.

All of which are quite irrelevant to the incredibly exaggerated gender and identity politics landscape of the US right now

mhh__3• 4 years ago

My thoughts: Linus's conduct isn't great, people who make a huge fuss about it often need to touch grass.

I pay actual money every month to organizations that could be described as part of the woke-conspiracy, I believe in them, but some parts of this culture are simply ridiculous. They mean well but all this analyzing/micro-aggression crap is a coping mechanism that I can only feel leads to a weak mind.

I remember asking someone, from a position of genuine curiousity (albeit slightly morbid because I was surprised and felt it was subtly quite misandrist), why they felt having any men in an event for women to write code in made her feel threatened, and I got insta-talked-down-to by a moderator. This was at a university, they build these environments to try and help, but they end up separating people from arguments/other culture which I think just makes people lazy, dumb, and arrogant. I'm not in the "burn the whole rotten system down" camp, but it was eye-opening.

mxmilkiib2• 4 years ago

To understand women (and often also non-binary) only spaces, I guess one'd need to learn about trauma.

Imo the phrase "subconscious bullying" I think about covers "micro-aggressions" and was available before, but, idk, using that probably makes those accused of it less likely to engage.

belorn2• 4 years ago

There used to be a saying that left voters were simply right voters that has yet to be the victim of a crime, commonly with the subtext that people who are victim of crime by low social economic demographics are only acting rational based on that trauma.

staticelf• 4 years ago

I strongly believe that the projects that adhere to woke people like Debian seems to do will slowly be disfavored by developers and the most skilled ones will join other projects and they will then thrive while projects filled with SJW will slowly succumb to meaningless discussions, projects and become more and more irrelevant.

In order to make progress you can't throw out people because their opinions differs from yours. Identity politics is something that destroys productivity and prohibits challenging thoughts since it basically requires everyone to think and act in the same way.

Just look at Mozilla, Firefox usage it's the lowest it's ever been and their focus seems to be on everything except what's relevant to their core business.

Debian developer demoted, quits after two decades with project

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