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Comment by brianpgordon

7 years ago

It seems strange to me that you're so concerned with how we should try to be more respectful to Rich given the querulous and disdainful tone of his post.

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brianpgordon

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marcus_holmes  7 years ago

He wrote the software, he gets to have whatever attitude and tone he feels like. If you don't like it, don't use his software.

  • brianpgordon  7 years ago

    I took what I see as a moderate position lightly criticizing his tone, but because you're going way farther than that and asserting that he can be as much of a jerk as he wants, let's address that argument.

    I think it's nonsense. Rich is probably among the most brilliant software engineers on the planet but that has no bearing whatsoever on whether he needs to be polite and show human empathy and decency like everyone else does. You can be toxic and hostile and people will put up with it if you're useful enough (c.f. Linus) but we shouldn't be lining up, comment after comment after comment, to cheer that kind of behavior on.

    Again, I don't think this is a big deal. I think that his rant is just a small indiscretion and we're all human, but I'm dismayed to see such an outpouring of support for exactly the position that you're putting forward. What I'm saying isn't "nauseating PC culture" as one GitHub commenter put it; it's just not being an asshole.

    • gizzlon  7 years ago

      I found the original rational, useful and straight-forward. It's not an "indiscretion".

      So, yeah, your comments are approaching "nauseating PC culture" because you can't read something like the original without being offended some how.

  • icebraining  7 years ago

    Well, he and other 147 people, according to the GH contributors page. Though, granted, none with anywhere near the same level of contributions to the core.

cellularmitosis  7 years ago

I didn’t read disdain at all, so I’m interested in which parts tickled your disdain detector.

  • brianpgordon  7 years ago

    Mainly:

    > As a user of something open source you are not thereby entitled to anything at all. You are not entitled to contribute. You are not entitled to features. You are not entitled to the attention of others. You are not entitled to having value attached to your complaints. You are not entitled to this explanation.

    Also see my response on the gist itself:

    https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba95...

    Feel free to use my HN comment as an upvote/downvote proxy since gist doesn't support upthumbs/downthumbs on comments.

    • firepoet  7 years ago

      Thanks for being one of the few voices of humanity in this exchange. This whole situation just feels.. icky.. to me. I wish I knew what long term effects Rich's statement will have on the community, but I can't help but think that it will probably verge towards the opposite of embracing diverse viewpoints. That makes me quite sad.

      1 reply →

    • cellularmitosis  7 years ago

      Thanks for your perspective, I can see how you really can read two tones into his statement.

      Side note: it appears gist links aren't stable? I think halgari had the same issue when trying to link to his response.