
Rubyists, we must do better - damagednoob
https://timriley.info/writing/2020/06/08/rubyists-we-must-do-better/
======
jiofih
The entitled generation is now adult, and they demand safe-for-work cereal
names, movies and open source libraries. You must comply lest you be added to
the big social media blacklist of people-who-did-not-agree-with-us.

What should be considered offensive is to distract from what really matters
right now (the BLM movement) to discuss a stupid name for a code linter. A
very daft display of privilege.

~~~
hackissimo123
"adult"

------
robotmay
What a ridiculous argument to be having in times like this. It's clearly named
for the movie Robocop, and even if it wasn't: not all countries suffer from an
abusive militarised police force like the USA does.

I can understand the appeal to move away from master/slave and
blacklist/whitelist naming conventions, but you have to draw the line
somewhere and I think objecting to the name of a project just because it
contains the word "cop" is way past that line. We use the term "cop" in a
different context in the UK
([https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...](https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/cop_2)),
so why should someone in Bulgaria care about the American usage of the word?
Should I be abusing someone to have "fanny packs" renamed because the term
could be deemed sexist in the UK?

~~~
jhanschoo
Regarding whitelist/blacklist I haven't seen evidence that

1\. It originates from a racist usage. 2\. It is primarily used with reference
to racist ideas.

I still think that there may be reason to change it: e.g. allowlist/blocklist
may be more easily understood, but whitelist/blacklist may be more easy to
recall (since it is more standard terminology).

Interestingly, along the same lines as whitelist/blacklist, certain Chinese
and Japanese have historically called Caucasians red-haired peoples, with
connotations of otherness. One wonders if in another century someone would
argue to change the colors of the red-black tree.

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rvz
Good that the author did not succumb to such frivolous requests from delicate
sunflowers in changing the name when it is only and only based primarily in
context to the 'Robocop' film and nothing else.

This PC-nonsense has to stop.

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kalium-xyz
The spread of the Americans culture worries me, in a lot of countries the
police are your friends and they do actually maintain social order yet still
people will parrot these and other movements calling out agaisnt the police
causing social disorder.

~~~
Cthulhu_
I think some parties are taking the protests and broadening their spectrum;
from protests against police violence to becoming against the police entirely.

That last one isn't going to work in practice, regardless of your own
libertarian or anarchist ideals.

~~~
zimpenfish
Camden, NJ, has seen some success disbanding the police force and
reconstructing it as a community force.

[https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/what-happened-to-
crim...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/what-happened-to-crime-in-
camden/549542/)

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luckylion
Rubies are often mined using slave labor. I hope they consider renaming the
language, surely they don't want to stand with slavers?

/s

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fsloth
I don't understand why anybody would like to change the name of a technical
product for an unrelated political issue in a specific country.

This is extremely biased and prejudiced!

Globally not all police are like in the US.

I admire the police in my country (Finland). They are professional and
courteous.

~~~
ysavir
> I admire the police in my country (Finland). They are professional and
> courteous.

This is a great point and one that needs to be heard more throughout this
debate.

Changing RuboCop's name due to BLM isn't just inserting politics into
software, it's inserting _American_ politics into software. "Cop" might be a
negative here, but positive in other places. Demanding a name change of an
internationally-used tool due to a localized problem is nothing short of
cultural imperialism.

Its great that American policing is finally coming under scrutiny and that
we're starting to see institutions bend to the pressure of change. But it's
critical that we keep a level head during this time and separate the modern
culture of American policing (a negative) from the idea of a police force (a
positive). I'd love to see a shift in this communication, not just in the Ruby
community in a worldwide a community; a shift from "All cops are bad" to "Here
is what good cops look like". Places that are proud and admiring of their
police forces need to speak up about it and why they feel that way and lead
the rest of the world by example.

~~~
krainboltgreene
Please explain to me how renaming a package from "rubocop", which is based on
a movie about american police and american politics, to something like
"rubyopinion" is "injecting politics"?

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ritchiea
The funny thing here is that RuboCop is an obvious pun on Robocop which is a
satire of privatized police forces and corporate corruption.

But I'm not here to tell people what they should not be offended by. Telling
people "you shouldn't be offended by X" is as bad as "we should keep politics
out of software."

Instead of "keeping politics out of software" how about we try to listen to
each other and be civil to each other even when we disagree? Which I think
this posts articulates the argument for very well. I'm a lefty but this goes
for all sides.

~~~
onli
No. This attitude of attacking developers because of political insensibilities
of clueless people is not acceptable. The author is dead wrong in that
article. Not the ruby community has to be better, these people have to be
blocked from it. There is no point in being nice to people so unreasonable and
just plain in the wrong, this position does not deserve to be heard.

~~~
ritchiea
To me "be civil to each other" means don't attack people because of your
political perspective. It's ok to have a political idea about say, the name of
an OSS package, but if you request a change be kind about it, lay out your
reasoning and don't expect that you are going to automatically get what you
want.

------
seek3r00
And still we let GitHub block Iranian citizens from accessing their repos.

I’m pro BLM, and I’m really outraged by the behaviour of police across the US.

But this has nothing to do with software names, and it is so a US-centric
point of view.

------
LandR
This is absurd.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Which part?

~~~
Insanity
The idea that a globally used library should be renamed because of the issues
in one country today.

Many countries have had issues with the police for decades, but no one cares.
And there's plenty of countries with good police.

------
denysvitali
I do care about all of the BLM movement, I really do. I can't stand racism or
any other sort of hate towards minorities or any other group of people.

That being said, can we please keep politics away from software development?
We already have good fights to battle, and changing whitelist / blacklist or
master / slave isn't really helping to the cause.

This matter obviously is not only related to Rubyists, Rustaceans, Gophers or
any other programmer group anyways.

I don't see the point in moving politics to software: if you really want a
change you should vote for better leaders and fight in different ways. I don't
think anybody will ever be offended by reading "whitelist" or "master". Truth
is that nowadays everybody gets offended by anything.

Please, do not answer to this comment if you intend to make the discussion
political. I feel that it is right to speak up for your rights, but I feel
that it is best if we generally keep the discussions apolitical, whenever
possible

~~~
acidbaseextract
In my more paranoid moments I suspect that some of these disputes are false
flags meant to discredit the social justice movement. In particular, some of
the issues raised seem purpose built to piss people off without hope of
achieving real inclusiveness or equality goals.

That I can't tell if that's the case or not is equally alarming.

~~~
tvmalsv
I offer another option: bad actors that are taking advantage of the disputes
to further their own agendas. Only, it's not an option, it's more of a
documented reality. And it's even _more_ alarming.

------
danfritz
This reminds me of the Factory Girl vs FactoryBot after #metoo movement.

I'll go create a gem called covid now and wait for the fireworks...

/s

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abstractbarista
This whole issue is incredibly stupid. The naming does not offend me, and
anyone who is offput by it needs to learn not to be.

------
benjaminjosephw
I think the real issue here is that maintaining communities of diverse people
is hard work. It's not what a lot of maintainers sign-up for originally. It
can be exhausting to try to keep the community aligned to a code of conduct in
a way that's fair and allows open discussion. Worst of all, few people want to
do this but it comes with the territory of a large open-for-contribution
project.

Perhaps the solution is for each community to fund a community manager role.
Maybe community management as a service would make sense if each individual
project doesn't require a full role itself (a startup opportunity perhaps).
Does anyone know of any open source projects that currently employ a community
manager?

------
jb3689
It's just incredible to me how many people want to introduce churn amongst the
entire Ruby community over this. We're talking about thousands of hours at
least just to make the change and probably a lot more in following broken
links. I could understand if the name was offensive in isolation, but it's not
and hasn't ever been. Now suddenly external forces change that? Good luck to
the folks who want to fork the project. It's super hard and will drain the
life out of you

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josefrichter
the 'copy' command should be removed from all operating systems and software
too!

~~~
tvmalsv
Nah, just replace it with the community_scribe_of_appropriate_self_hatred. It
can be aliased to 'scribe' if it helps, though it loses some of it's power.

