
Transphobic maintainer should be removed from project – Issue #941 - smacktoward
https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941
======
coldtea
What I see is idiotic intruders to an Open Source project, bringing their
political agenda and wanting to blacklist a person because of what he
believes.

I don't give a fuck if a project member is a gay communist atheist or a
religious KKK member as long as he doesn't try to advertise that from within
the project code, forums etc.

But I do take offense of people coming out of nowhere and saying about a
contributor "he has opinions we don't like, we want you to throw them out of
the project". Those people should be shown the door. They could start their
own project and dictate terms there.

Wanting everyone regardless of their beliefs is inclusive. Wanting only people
with certain beliefs is exlusive. Guess which hurts participation more?

~~~
smacktoward
I submitted this because I personally think the situation is more complicated
than that.

I tend to agree with the notion that people shouldn't be run out of projects
(or organizations, or jobs) just because of their private beliefs, even when
those beliefs offend me. It's too easy to imagine the mechanism that ran them
out of town being turned around to run _me_ out of town, should _my_ beliefs
fall out of fashion.

But as you note, there is a line where private beliefs stop being private and
start being public. You put the line here:

 _> as long as he doesn't try to advertise that from within the project code,
forums etc._

... but the developer in question was publishing the opinions in question on
Twitter, which isn't exactly a private space. If you say something on Twitter,
you are saying it in public. If you are a high-profile member of a project,
the fact that the space doesn't have the project logo on it doesn't
necessarily mean people aren't going to look at what you say and connect it
back to the project. And it doesn't strike me as implausible that, if you're
one of those developers and what you're saying is offensive to a group of
people, those people are going to assume that the project you're the face of
isn't a space where their contributions would be welcome. And that's going to
hurt contribution to the project.

So I'm of two minds on this particular case, I guess. Which isn't very
helpful, but does make it a question that I think could benefit from wider
discussion. We as a culture have to hash out exactly where in these new online
spaces we've created these new lines are appropriately drawn.

~~~
coldtea
> _... but the developer in question was publishing the opinions in question
> on Twitter, which isn 't exactly a private space._

That's still OK with me. Twitter might not be a private space, but his opinion
is his own to broadcast in his Twitter stream.

As long as he doesn't attribute this opinion to the project or anything.

> _If you are a high-profile member of a project, the fact that the space
> doesn 't have the project logo on it doesn't necessarily mean people aren't
> going to look at what you say and connect it back to the project._

Even if it means that, they shouldn't (connect what one person says with the
project). What if it was his political or religious opinions? Shouldn't he be
able to say he is an atheist / democract / devout / republican whatever in his
Twitter stream? Post jokes about Obama or Bush, etc? Pro or against the death
penalty? Etc.

If that's allowed, then why wouldn't be having an opinion about sexuality
(which is another topic people see as political/religious/moral/whatever).

I find that the reason some people ask (and get) people fired from their jobs
or thrown out of projects because of their view on such issues, is not because
such issues are more clean cut than the others mentioned, but because they can
get away with it.

In conservative places they hurt people with progressive opinions, in
progresive places they hurt people with conservative opinions. And that's what
I dislike the most, people seeing so that active harm happens to others they
disagree with (as opposed to those others just stating their opinion). For me
that's worse than being a bigot -- it's being a bad human.

~~~
comrh
His twitter bio has "@opalrb core" in it, making him a representative of the
project though.

~~~
coldtea
Yeah, that sounds like it should be a project twitter account.

That would be in violation of a project's public image even if he just posted
cat pictures...

~~~
duncan_bayne
It seems like splitting Twitter accounts - one for Opal-related stuff, the
other for personal - would be the right thing to do. I've asked for
clarification here:
[https://github.com/CoralineAda/contributor_covenant/issues/5...](https://github.com/CoralineAda/contributor_covenant/issues/59)

~~~
rewqfdsa
Why shouldn't I be able to mention biographical details in a personal account?
I should be able to mention being from Milwaukee, liking hot dogs, or working
on Redis if I want to.

~~~
coldtea
You should.

You just shouldn't name that account with the name of a project that's not
yours and you're just one of the people that work on it, giving a false sense
that yours is some kind of project account.

~~~
CookieMon
I think there's a miscommunication in this thread.

@opalrb _is_ the project's account, and is not the account Elia was tweeting
from. His personal account is named with his own name, not the project's. The
complaint was about what he said on his personal account.

When comrh said "His twitter bio has "@opalrb core" in it" they mean that in
the description for Elia's personal account he calls himself a "Ruby hacker
and @opalrb core" (and a bunch of non-code related things).

If I'm imagining this misunderstanding then please ignore.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Yeah, that's my understanding too - which I wouldn't have described as
representing the project.

------
duncan_bayne
This is troubling for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that there
is some support for the idea that being transgender is itself a mental
disorder, unlike say homosexuality.

[http://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/11/surgical-
sex](http://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/11/surgical-sex)

"As for the adults who came to us claiming to have discovered their “true”
sexual identity and to have heard about sex-change operations, we
psychiatrists have been distracted from studying the causes and natures of
their mental misdirections by preparing them for surgery and for a life in the
other sex. We have wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our
professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to
study, cure, and ultimately prevent it."

------
mdekkers
Who let the Social Justice Warriors out? Whilst I really don't care what
people do in their own time, and with their own sexuality (their business) I
see a lot of people in that thread essentially saying "I was going to
contribute, but now I won't"...

Sigh. My grandma used to tell me that when she was angry with me, and I didn't
fall for it then. Also, it is open source - meaningful code contributions
count. The rest is secondary, noise, or fluff. Do I believe the guy is a dick
for his views on transgenders - certainly. Does it mean I believe he has to be
booted out of a project, his job, be publicly shamed, and be punished?
Certainly not - after all, he has as much right and freedom to express his
views and opinions as transgender people have to flaunt their sexuality, and
the SJW have to go on rampaging crusades.

------
CookieMon
Owch, before this it wouldn't have occurred to me that a "Code of Conduct"
would be crafted for the purpose of giving identity politics some leverage
into open source projects, for twitter mobs to better harass developers. I
would have taken the idea at face value - a codification of "don't be a dick".

They seem to have a twitter smear campaign running in parallel to bring in
random people to pile on. Unless the dev has said something else, I can't see
any _hate_ from him (though I disagree with his view).

~~~
duncan_bayne
Actually, the contributor charter that Coraline herself created only applies
to statements made when representing the project:

"This code of conduct applies both within project spaces and in public spaces
when an individual is representing the project or its community."

The problem I have with this is that the contributor is being crucified for
stating his opinion when doing neither of those things.

~~~
CookieMon
You don't think they're going to claim he's representing the project on
twitter by mentioning his involvement in his twitter description?

This could be a genuine effort to improve things, but the portrayal of him has
not seemed honest so far, which leaves me assuming their call for CoC is so
bullies can go:

 _" you have a different opinion to me, so I'm going to stop you from being
able to mention that thing you spend your time on"_

I guess I'll reserve judgement until it happens - cool heads will be the ones
deciding what constitutes "representing the project".

~~~
duncan_bayne
I've asked the question explicitly on the covenant GitHub:

[https://github.com/CoralineAda/contributor_covenant/issues/5...](https://github.com/CoralineAda/contributor_covenant/issues/59)

Will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes of it.

~~~
CookieMon
That was a good idea. Opal now seem to be getting back to coding under a CoC
which lacks that clause.

It looks like the clause was hammered out during the Opal discussion and the
version on the covenant website was updated but not the master branch of the
covenant git repo, so when Opal grabbed the standard CoC they got version 1.0
without the new "Elia clause" in it.

I don't know whether that was luck or foresight, but I see people are now
pushing Opal to adopt for v1.1:

 _" This is a necessary change, version 1.0 of the contributor covenant fails
to address the situation which started this: the gross misconduct of one of
your core maintainers spewing a veritable mountain of hate and ignorance about
LGBT people on a social media platform where he constantly ties himself to
your project and refers to himself as a core maintainer."_

Misdirection like that doesn't lessen my worry that the clause is there to
open OSS to bullying from outside. Having read what the tweats actually said,
it has me nodding with rewqfdsa that "this isn't happening in good faith"
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9743357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9743357)).

Even with cool heads deciding what counts as "representing the project", the
clause lets outside mobs gum up a project with drama until the contributors
learn to self-censor in all aspects of life. When some poor maintainer doesn't
give the "represents" ruling that the twitter mob desires, that person in the
middle will start being personally smeared all over the internet as
"supporting a mountain of hate and ignorance about LGBT people" etc in an
effort to make them relent.

So good idea for asking, v1.1 Code of Conduct is looking like a submarine
poison pill. It's a shame nobody will read closed issues (locked too).

~~~
duncan_bayne
I've opened a pull request to clarify the language in the CoC, with the stated
intent of avoiding this sort of problem:

[https://github.com/CoralineAda/contributor_covenant/pull/74](https://github.com/CoralineAda/contributor_covenant/pull/74)

------
flarg
Having spent several years living with a self-confessed homophobic person, I
saw their attitude turn around (70%) when they met my gay friends. Maybe the
people on the github discussion should try to "educate" the transphobic
maintainer instead of hammering away at them.

~~~
chazu
My thoughts exactly. The way to change people's bigoted attitudes is to
demonstrate that they're wrong, not to drive them into exile.

------
marak830
Ok i cannot stop reading. Someone buy meh a beer(hell if he is in japan i
will). I would have lost patience a long time ago(and im onlt 1/3 through).
Honestly, that guys doing an amazing job.

~~~
dudul
I agree. I don't understand how he finds the patience to calmly explain his
position to this mob. Kind of pointless though, sjws have never been convinced
by logic and arguments. I sometimes wonder if they actually realize how close
their methods are from the ones that were used in Soviet Russia.

------
A_COMPUTER
It seems like it wasn't all that long ago that people were up in arms about
companies considering everything an employee said on their own time to
potentially represent the company. This is why companies did that, because
interlopers come along and threaten you bad publicity if you don't do
something about the person with the wrongthink.

There was never a general reciprocity principle at play with these people, it
was always about who has power over whom. if they have power, they punish
people they dislike. If they don't have power, they appeal to fairness until
they can get into a position of power. Don't give them power by acceding to
threats.

------
duncan_bayne
An update to my involvement in this discussion: my request for explicit
clarification of the term 'representing' was closed without useful comment, so
I've opened a pull request to clarify the language in the charter itself.

Discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9748555](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9748555)

------
dudul
Favorite SJW tactic. Publicly shame someone when they disagree with them and
go after their job/reputation/etc.

------
thiht
"He doesn't think like me, fire him"

How is that called again?

------
programmernews3
What I see here is a software project using a community-centric development
model not willing to do anything about a core dev publicly acting in such a
way to act alienating to the community. I don't think he should necessarily be
removed from the project, but to act like it's not of concern to the project
at all is a bad way to handle it.

~~~
prodigal_erik
I suspect the number of people alienated by a project getting into thought
policing is far higher than the number of people alienated by this particular
issue.

------
leaveyou
In the past the "transphobic" would mob the people against the "trans".. today
is the other way around. We evolved so much. When will the anti-witch hunt
start ?

------
vmorgulis
"384 comments"

------
tree_of_item
What's really awful is that most of the people posting in that thread aren't
ever going to use or contribute to Opal, they just want to remove someone who
doesn't share their worldview.

------
marak830
Holy hello-kitty-on-rocketship thats a lot of self satisfying circle jerk.
Look the giys views suck, but it hasnt (from what i read), come up at all in
any way related to the product. Gods i feel sorry for that meh guy, hes pretty
much speaking to himself, as no ones listening.

