Was what the devs did great? No. Does the whole project need to be outcast/abandoned due to what language they use? No. There needs to be nuance with these issues. Open source does not owe individuals anything and that is why it is provided without warranty. On the flip side, individuals can choose not to use it.
We should be promoting open source software and not have infighting when open source software doesn’t have much mass market appeal to begin with.
We should be promoting open source software and not have infighting when open source software doesn’t have much mass market appeal to begin with.
Just as a side note, I want open source software / free software to have appeal because it is good for people. If the way the promote it to the masses is enabling awful people, I’m really not interested anymore.
Letting fascists loose on github doesn’t make open source software more appealing. Look at how much worse twitter is to be on after relaxing the moderation standards. Now imagine that for open source. We need to make sure open source is approachable to everyone and that means being careful with our language and not being dismissive when someone opens a PR to make the language more approachable to all
Absolutely this. Twitter-level toxicity coming out in this thread from outside instances is already a bad indicator of the kind of communities that are peripheral to open source.
Non-technical is not the same as political, not even close. I explicitly chose that term because it’s not considered subjective by anyone, but especially not by the people who think gender-neutrality is somehow NOT political. If you claim that it is, they just quip back with “a person’s right to exist is not a political issue but a human rights one”, which of course was never even the debate, they just twist things around to fit their narrative.
I explicitly chose that term because it’s not considered subjective by anyone, but especially not by the people who think gender-neutrality is somehow NOT political.
All words are subjective. “Non-technical” is not really the magic word you think it is. Could you clearly define it? I can’t personally.
No, I’m actually with them on that one.
The he / they issue in of itself is tiny, I agree, and if they’d just changed it from gendered to gender neutral language then nobody would’ve even cared. Most of us tend to write in a gendered way out of habit or because we think about our own gender, and in a casual conversation that isn’t that important. But this is about a piece of software that, surely, is not just meant for male audiences. It’s just unprofessional to address someone as male by default. Most importantly though, being this stubborn on having the user specifically male is just a weird hill to die on, but even weirder if that particular action is the one that is actually causing the drama - which they allegedly claim wanting to prevent by dismissing “politics”. And I’m sorry, but changing a “he” to “they” is not politics, it’s just including non male users. Nothing more, nothing less. So why is it such an issue to not just address specifically male users? It really only would be because those people hold some very questionable views, which, in my opinion, clash heavily with the whole concept of free and open source software, which is supposedly for everyone. So if your actions and views are this flawed, how can you be trusted on such an important project?
Also, in regards to this news… “no code from rivals” also is just a stupid thing to say and do. There’s plenty of good open source code that they could and probably even SHOULD use. But whatever. I’m not gonna support this project and predict it will fail anyway.
And then another, where a trans woman is called “spam.”
With comments like this it’s clear the author is just overreacting. They were clearly calling the PR spam, not the person. (And this is coming from someone who was definitely angry with them for denying the original PRs and stuff.)
Boring hit piece that way overblows some issues on the topic.
The piece was definitely slanted.
Was what the devs did great? No. Does the whole project need to be outcast/abandoned due to what language they use? No. There needs to be nuance with these issues. Open source does not owe individuals anything and that is why it is provided without warranty. On the flip side, individuals can choose not to use it.
We should be promoting open source software and not have infighting when open source software doesn’t have much mass market appeal to begin with.
Just as a side note, I want open source software / free software to have appeal because it is good for people. If the way the promote it to the masses is enabling awful people, I’m really not interested anymore.
Letting fascists loose on github doesn’t make open source software more appealing. Look at how much worse twitter is to be on after relaxing the moderation standards. Now imagine that for open source. We need to make sure open source is approachable to everyone and that means being careful with our language and not being dismissive when someone opens a PR to make the language more approachable to all
Absolutely this. Twitter-level toxicity coming out in this thread from outside instances is already a bad indicator of the kind of communities that are peripheral to open source.
Non-technical discussion should just be banned.
That is literally the comment that started all of this. Prepare to be convicted and sentenced in the court of public opinion.
I am serious, the only comment by the dev in question was “This project is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics.”
Non-technical is not the same as political, not even close. I explicitly chose that term because it’s not considered subjective by anyone, but especially not by the people who think gender-neutrality is somehow NOT political. If you claim that it is, they just quip back with “a person’s right to exist is not a political issue but a human rights one”, which of course was never even the debate, they just twist things around to fit their narrative.
All words are subjective. “Non-technical” is not really the magic word you think it is. Could you clearly define it? I can’t personally.
No, I’m actually with them on that one. The he / they issue in of itself is tiny, I agree, and if they’d just changed it from gendered to gender neutral language then nobody would’ve even cared. Most of us tend to write in a gendered way out of habit or because we think about our own gender, and in a casual conversation that isn’t that important. But this is about a piece of software that, surely, is not just meant for male audiences. It’s just unprofessional to address someone as male by default. Most importantly though, being this stubborn on having the user specifically male is just a weird hill to die on, but even weirder if that particular action is the one that is actually causing the drama - which they allegedly claim wanting to prevent by dismissing “politics”. And I’m sorry, but changing a “he” to “they” is not politics, it’s just including non male users. Nothing more, nothing less. So why is it such an issue to not just address specifically male users? It really only would be because those people hold some very questionable views, which, in my opinion, clash heavily with the whole concept of free and open source software, which is supposedly for everyone. So if your actions and views are this flawed, how can you be trusted on such an important project?
Also, in regards to this news… “no code from rivals” also is just a stupid thing to say and do. There’s plenty of good open source code that they could and probably even SHOULD use. But whatever. I’m not gonna support this project and predict it will fail anyway.
With comments like this it’s clear the author is just overreacting. They were clearly calling the PR spam, not the person. (And this is coming from someone who was definitely angry with them for denying the original PRs and stuff.)