
Collaboration not Derision in the Node Community - apaprocki
http://strongloop.com/strongblog/collaboration-not-derision-in-the-node-community/
======
mintplant
From Joyent's blog post [1]:

> But while Isaac is a Joyent employee, Ben is not—and if he had been, he
> wouldn't be as of this morning: to reject a pull request that eliminates a
> gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered
> would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent.

For comparison, here is bnoordhuis's comment from the pull request thread [2]
that the post is referencing:

> Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that.

Honestly, Joyent's post strikes me as a horrible overreaction and attempt at
character assassination over what should have been a small matter. Rejecting
pull requests that only correct typos or comments has been standard practice
for the Node.js project for a long time now--this isn't the first one to be
closed for being too small of a change, a fact that Joyent, as the main driver
of the project, should be aware of.

bnoordhuis followed standard procedure, yet Joyent tries to cast him as being
intentionally sexist and a terrible person. Seeing such immature behavior
coming from their corporate blog--calling him an "asshole", saying he should
be fired, insinuating that they wish they could kick him out of the project--
has pretty much destroyed the respect I had for the company.

[1] [https://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-
pronoun](https://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun)

[2]
[https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015)

~~~
austinz
Ben was called a bigot and his rejection of the pull request was ascribed to
the "principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered" (from the Joyent
blog). The problem is, all of this is being extrapolated from his statement
"sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that", which could be seen as a
flippant dismissal of gender issues in the tech industry - or it could be
simply a curt response acknowledging standard practice ('rejecting pull
requests that only correct typos or comments'). Only Ben really knows Ben's
intention - and he didn't clarify it in either of the long comment threads on
github. (If he did make explicitly misogynistic follow-up comments please
correct me; I didn't see any myself.)

Maybe he was insensitive or tone-deaf, maybe he should have made an exception
(because perhaps commits like these have some sort of special significance
that goes beyond simply fixing spacing issues in comments), maybe people
should have talked to him and explained why others might have found his
actions questionable - and, some of this did happen - but the hysterical
response is really sort of scary. Wikipedia has an "assume good faith"
principle - maybe something similar would be a good idea for open-source
communities, so that problems and differences in opinion could be resolved
before escalation into a screaming match?

~~~
piscisaureus
Well, there you go:
[https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568172)

~~~
Lazare
Joyent is looking worse and worse as the dust settles.

~~~
austinz
Ben: "If this is what I have to deal with, then I'd just as rather do
something else."

After this all-smoke-no-flame shitstorm, one big company carrying out a
character assassination and publicly wishing they could fire him and his
current employer dangling a Damocles' sword over his job...I really can't
blame him.

------
rdtsc
My understanding of Node.JS and libuv community is as an outsider. I don't
follow what's going on unless it is on the front page of HN once in a while
and other forums.

But one impression I get from Node.JS and its surrounding community is
arrogance and immaturity. This is from top to down -- companies sponsoring it
(Joyent) and many of its vocal proponents. I see plenty of energy, enthusiasm,
but mixed with immaturity. "We don't know what are doing, but darn it! we will
be very vocal and do it with lots of enthusiasm".

One guy doesn't want to commit a trivial change. It blows up into a media
shitstorm. Reverted commits. Joyent's reaction is what surprised me -- "While
we would fire Ben over this". This guy doesn't even work for them.
Hypothetically firing people, hmm, so committed to Women's Rights, they are
hypothetically hiring and firing this person. Have they talked to him in
private? StrongLoop, a company I never heard of until this point, is a bit
more mature, that's good to see, but even they couldn't resist the veiled
threat.

What is sad, as a whole this episode just reinforced the (hopefully wrong)
stereotype I have of the community. Joyent instead of helping the community
(which I think they thought they did by writing that blog post), are hurting
it.

Buying into and spending time and money learning a platform/language is also
an implicit buy in/participation in the community. So far it screams to me
"stay away". Hopefully it will grow up at some point.

~~~
yapcguy
Remember how vicious the Node.js "community" were to outsiders who critiqued
event loop blocking?

Whatever the technical merits, I think this incident will do significant
damage to the perception of Node.js as a serious platform to build on.

~~~
Lazare
It already has in my view. Joyent is not coming across as an organisation I'd
trust to back an important project.

------
adriancooney
> If Ben can’t learn, we’ll fire him.

That statement feels a little to intimate for an outsider to the company. Ben
made a mistake but to single out and threaten him like that in public would
surely alienate him further.

This entire situation has gotten extremely out of hand. It shows how activists
can turn into extremists when faced with an adversary. I'm in no way
advocating what Ben did but it's despicable how everyone jumped onto the
bandwagon to exacerbate and publicize what should have been a minor event
dealt with on employer-employee basis, not a public shaming.

~~~
ijroth
I wrote that. I didn't mean it literally. It’s a response to Bryan saying that
failure to be sensitive to gender issues would be a firing offense at his
company. We take it really seriously, and I’d like to point out that two of
our senior leaders are women and we are proud to employ talented women
engineers. If this remained an issue, I’d need to find a way to rectify it
with Ben, and that could get as serious as firing. But he understands now. In
the rest of my post I make the point that jumping to firing him publicly was
not giving him a sufficient chance nor crediting him for his efforts
elsewhere.

~~~
paulrademacher
You didn't fire him publicly. You only belittled him in public.

> If Ben can’t learn, we’ll fire him. [Edit: See comment below. This is not
> meant literally.]

Your correction doesn't make the statement much better. This whole debate is
about how _words matter_ , and yet your words put him on notice in a public
place. All of Ben's friends now know his employer will fire him if he "can't
learn." Is he so stubbornly misogynistic that that should be in question?

You could have conveyed the same message by saying "he was following the
commit rules, no offense intended, won't happen again" and left it at that.

------
bcoates
The guy who wrote the initial pull request should get some sort of medal for
efficiency in trolling, it's not common that you can make this many alleged
professionals look like idiots with a 3 character patch.

------
aroman
I'm sorry, but the entire notion that using masculine pronouns somehow implies
sexism is complete bullshit.

That's how the English language works. "He" is used as both neuter and
masculine. There is no "it" pronoun.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop fighting about this. Unless
someone actually did something sexist, this is a linguistic bikeshed to end
all bikesheds.

Childish community behavior aside, the entire argument is a moot point. There
is NOTHING sexist about using "he".

If you feel otherwise, please, please educate me.

~~~
ispivey
There's a bunch of research suggesting that using "he" as a neuter pronoun
makes women feel excluded: \- First experiment/study I found:
[http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12...](http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1288&context=theses)
\- Links to more research on the subject: [http://alyx.io/educational-
resources/gender.html#generic-mas...](http://alyx.io/educational-
resources/gender.html#generic-masculine-pronouns)

Douglas Hofstadter wrote a good piece of satire explaining why it's oppressive
by s/man/white, etc:
[http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html)

Contrary to what you say, "they" was used as the singular neuter pronoun for a
long time, until a concentrated effort to force it out of use in the 1800s.
Some examples from a previous thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6824352](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6824352).
Some history here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they)

Given it's possibly (likely) ostracizing and there's nothing categorically
wrong about using "they" as a singular neuter pronoun, I think you're on the
wrong side of this.

People should certainly stop fighting; the answer is to just roll with "they".

~~~
aroman
Thanks for all those links — I wasn't aware of those studies (especially not
about the deliberate effort to force the singular "they" out of use) and I
think they have definitely influenced my conscious personal writing style (I
do tend to avoid gendered pronouns anyway).

I will agree that I was on the wrong side of this in the sense that "he" is
more or equally preferable to "they", but I made another point too — that this
entire topic is a giant bikeshed.

You say "people should certainly stop fighting", but do you then imply that
fighting for "they" is justified? Personally, I don't think it is.

------
kmeluna
From the blog post:

> If Ben can’t learn, we’ll fire him.

Reforming the use of English pronouns has nothing to do with the employee's
professional activities.

No one should be threatened for either supporting or not supporting a
political cause or brand of activism.

There is no consensus in society about how pronouns should be used or their
cultural significance [1]. No one should have their livelihood threatened for
either agreeing or not agreeing with one position or another or not having an
opinion on the topic, or applying their professional, technical judgement.

Without commenting on the details of the kerfuffle, from a broader
perspective, the workplace should not be a place for political coercion.

One editorial recently suggested that:

"[E]mployers coercing employees to express their employers’ political views is
“the most undercovered story of the year.” [2]

"Already, American employers are increasingly using the captive audience
technique to force their employees to learn about the employer’s political and
religious views. During these sessions, employees may be forced, at the risk
of losing their jobs, to listen to their employer’s perspective on the latest
political and religious issues of the day." [3]

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-
onlanguage-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-
onlanguage-t.html)

[2] [http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-
animal-a/2012_12/...](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-
animal-a/2012_12/the_most_undercovered_story_of042089.php)

[3] [http://yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal-pocket-
part/v...](http://yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal-pocket-
part/volume-120/addressing-political-captive-audience-workplace-meetings-in-
the-post%11citizens-united-environment/)

[4] Efforts to keep politics out of the workplace:
[http://votesmart.org/bill/1711/](http://votesmart.org/bill/1711/)

~~~
acdha
> No one should be threatened for either supporting or not supporting a
> political cause or brand of activism.

You should read before commenting: the problem wasn't his choice of wording
but rather how he turned a trivial change into an argument and reverted
another committer's action complete with a threat.

If he didn't want to get involved, simply ignoring it was by far the easiest
course of action. Instead, he twice chose to escalate to an unnecessary level
of confrontation.

~~~
yetanotherphd
_You_ should read before commenting. Ben never threatened anyone. Stop
spreading this falsehood.

~~~
acdha
See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6834047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6834047),
in particular the IRC comment:

    
    
        bnoordhuis> isaacs: ^ don't ever fucking pull a stunt like that

------
JohnTHaller
For context, here is the entirety of what Ben Noordhuis has publicly said on
the matter thus far:

"Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that."

\-
[https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538615)

"@isaacs may have his commit bit but that does not mean he is at liberty to
land patches at will. All patches have to be signed off by either me or Bert.
Isaac, consider yourself chided."

\-
[https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482dcc8d1c41c14333fcb48)

"Hi all, let me try to clear up a few things.

Why I rejected the pull request. Us maintainers tend to reject tiny doc
changes because they're often more trouble than they're worth. You have to
collect and check the CLA, it makes git blame less effective, etc.

That's why the usual approach to such pull requests is 'no, unless' \- in this
case the 'unless' should probably have applied. To me as a non-native speaker,
the difference between 'him' and 'them' seems academic but hey, if it gets us
scores of female contributors, who am I to object?

Why I reverted the commit. In hindsight, I should have given Isaac the benefit
of the doubt because I don't doubt that he acted with the best of intentions.
On the other hand, if another committer jumped the line like that, I would
have done the same thing. We have procedures in place and no one is exempt
from them.

To the people that felt it necessary to call me a misogynist: I volunteer in a
mentorship program that gets young people - especially young women - involved
in technology. How many of you go out and actively try to increase the number
of women in the field?

I'm probably going to step back from libuv and node.js core development. I do
it more out a sense of duty than anything else. If this is what I have to deal
with, then I'd just as rather do something else. Hope that clears things up.
Thanks."

\-
[https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568172)

------
itafroma
Most of the new guidelines[1] are technical, but the one relevant the events
of the last day or two is on line 78:

    
    
        +* When documenting APIs and/or source code, don't make assumptions or make
        +  implications about race, gender, religion, political orientation or anything
        +  else that isn't relevant to the project.
    

[1]:
[https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/39db22594df13e8423af3...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/39db22594df13e8423af3e923ec15b8dc47a5234)

~~~
jdunck
That commit was made in response to this incident. No commit process was
previously documented.

------
krrishd
I think it was pretty classy of Ben not to comment on some of the hateful
comments in the commit that, instead of adding to discussion or trying to
prevent future error, simply were personal attacks at him.

~~~
dmpk2k
I can't say I'm surprised though. bnoordhuis lacks tact; poke other people
enough and eventually you'll get an angry mob. The parent article talks about
learning, but glosses over that bnoordhuis' behaviour that set this all off
_isn 't unusual_ for him. Learning? No. Class? No.

That said, this is a tempest in a teacup. bnoordhuis upsets someone again,
news at 11.

~~~
selmnoo
Uhm, Ben lacks tact? Says who? I think you guys are maybe confusing the tough
Dutch culture as being insensitive to some hot issues. Ben is an extremely
smart, extremely prolific programmer. When you're out and about like him
you're bound to get yourself tripped somewhere along the way.

As an aside, while Joyent has exposed itself as being extremely unprofessional
and prone to jumping on the gun, I'm saddened that Strongloop is quick to say
things like "If Ben can’t learn, we’ll fire him" too ... and this is just
after all of this happened. My goodness people, stop sitting on your high
chairs and speculating firings, it's not a fucking game.

~~~
mseepgood
> I think you guys are maybe confusing the tough Dutch culture as being
> insensitive to some hot issues.

I've read that the Netherlands have a racist Santa Claus tradition and even
some politicians are defending it against change. :/

Edit: found the article [http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/protests-
sparked-...](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/protests-sparked-by-
dutch-santas-helper-black-pete/story-e6frg6so-1226761889114)

~~~
X-Istence
Way to go making a comment about a culture and tradition you are unfamiliar
with based upon a newspaper article that doesn't go into the history behind
said tradition!

------
aaronem
Having recently been considering Node for a major new project in my
organization, I'm greatly encouraged to see that the folks in its developer
community so thoroughly refuse to let themselves be distracted by
irrelevancies from such a laserlike focus on improving their code.

------
eliteraspberrie
Way to throw your people under the bus. I wouldn't work for a company like
this -- not to mention Joyent, after that bit of libel they call a blog post.

------
dreamfactory
Are these people illiterate? Are they not aware that in the English language
masculine pronouns are correct for both gender-specific and gender-neutral
uses? Mankind refers to everybody. It may seem awkward, particularly to over-
literal types, but so is our spelling, grammar, and pronunciation generally.

~~~
Brakenshire
Mankind is gender neutral, it's highly debatable whether he, him or his are
also.

~~~
dreamfactory
> gender neutral, it's highly debatable whether he, him or his are also

Not in the English language. It's debated by some whether this might have a
subliminal effect and reinforce social gender stereotypes (though no evidence
for that hypothesis as far as I'm aware) and therefore whether masculine
prepositions _should_ be treated as neutral but that's in the same category as
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_spelling_reform](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_spelling_reform).

There's nothing wrong with that of course and it can be an interesting
hypothesis to pursue - but I find it depressing that a self-proclaimed
educated and science-based open source tech community so easily engages on a
witch hunt based on pure speculation.

------
ricardobeat
I think the community would do better without these corporate fingers poking
on it.

~~~
mmaster5
Put node in neutral territory.

------
brianmcdonough
I love this post. I work with engineers on a daily basis and the one thing I
find so foreign is an unhealthy attachment to perfection, as if such a thing
existed. The easy thing to do is deride someone. The hard thing is to reach
out. Nice article written in support of a hard working guy. Upvote.

------
xs_kid
It's just me or there are some (a lot of) tension between Joyent and
StrongLoop about the management of the project?

------
drderidder
The vindictive reaction from Joyent on this was just atrocious. Perhaps it's
time for node to find a new home.

------
namuol
As poorly as Joyent may have responded, and as badly they might have
misunderstood this entire situation, I am convinced that everyone involved
here (on both sides) had nothing but good intentions, and that until we
acknowledge these things and make up, this is going to become needlessly
harmful to the community at large.

Pause, reflect, forgive... nobody here is a monster.

~~~
waterlion
I would dearly love to agree (see my other comments if you don't believe me).

But Bryan Cantrill's, and Joyent's behaviour seems very cynical, manipulative,
and childish. He used deliberately inflammatory language, and would have, at
the very least, been aware of the fact that it might not be so black and
white. He will have known that he started a witch-hunt and did nothing, as far
as I can tell, to try and quell it.

No-one is a monster, but some people are either playing games or have
spectacularly poor judgment. Not the kind of company you want to work with
either way.

Joyent has severely blotted its copy-book. For that reason if I'm ever in a
position to make purchasing decisions I will exclude Joyent.

------
dbond
Are there any pieces anywhere about comment gendering being an issue to female
programmers? (My short googling failed me)

~~~
astrodust
It's not an "issue" so much as a pervasive problem. Presuming default-male is
bad form, and it has a subtle excluding effect.

Replacing "him" with "the user" might seem inconsequential, but it's a tiny
step in the right direction. A few million more like that and we'll be getting
somewhere.

------
smewpy
Great response from StrongLoop, it was ridiculous over-react from Joyent to
publicly pull out the pitchforks.

------
rpedela
I think the article is missing a lot of context. What was the offending issue?

~~~
itafroma
The original issue was a pull request[1] made to the libuv code base to change
"him" to "them". It was rejected[2] by one of the committers, Ben Noordhuis,
as being too trivial.

That decision was reversed by Isaac Schlueter (another committer) and
committed[3]. Noordhuis reverted that commit[4], chiding Schlueter for not
following procedure, but that revert was quickly reverted itself.

Bryan Cantrill of Joyent, one of the sponsors of the project and Schleuter's
employer, wrote a blog post[5] indicating that had Noordhuis been a Joyent
employee, he would've been fired. This post here is a response to that post.
Strongloop is Noordhuis's employer.

[1]:
[https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015)

[2]:
[https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538615)

[3]:
[https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/47d98b64c45db8335bf7e...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/47d98b64c45db8335bf7e065351e385cae32323d)

[4]:
[https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482dcc8d1c41c14333fcb48)

[5]: [http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-
pronoun](http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun)

~~~
dmourati
Not exactly. There are two Isaacs. Isaac Roth at StrongLoop, author of the OP,
he didn't come into the story until today. Isaac Schlueter works for Joyent,
and originally committed the requested change.

~~~
richardfontana
Roth is actually Issac, not Isaac.

~~~
dmourati
Duly noted. Thanks.

------
ksec
THIS IS GREAT! There goes the reputation of Joyet.

Wait a min. I remember something about Lifelong Free Hosting drama not long
ago. ( Correct me if i am wrong. )

A Company to look at what NOT to do and how NOT to run.

------
hackula1
> But if he can, we’ll get Node v0.12 delivered a lot faster and have a
> stronger community.

And of course, Strongloop could not help but make another half way claim that
they are the ones "in charge" of node. This current stuff aside, I just cannot
believe their lack of shame when trying to take commercial credit for a
community project.

------
jmspring
It is interesting following this particular discussion about gender pronouns
in Node.js. I am curious how other, more mature, products have handled
similar. GitHub and easily viewed pull requests make some of this much more
visible than say in the old days of sites like sourceforge.

------
Oculus
What would it take for Node to be taken out from under Joyent's arm to be
setup as its own project?

~~~
janjongboom
Joyent has izs, that's mainly it. Strongloop does biggest part of development,
and before Strongloop it was Cloud9.

I guess putting node in a foundation would make the most sense.

------
rok3
Great to see that someone took the time to create a well thought-out, positive
response to this situation.

[https://gist.github.com/creationix/5fb9e94fd8d80268c047](https://gist.github.com/creationix/5fb9e94fd8d80268c047)

------
jamesaguilar
Did you send this as a private teaching moment first?

~~~
ijroth
I actually did.

~~~
jamesaguilar
That is good of you. No more questions. Generally I agree with your
assessment, however when confronting systemic biases sometimes it's necessary
to speak out publicly. However, that can be done outside the context of a
particular person-to-person encounter.

------
Artemis2
This story is getting annoying.

~~~
waterlion
Not quite as annoying as having hundreds of raging angry people name-calling
and character-assassinating you over a mistake.

