

Why I'm Renaming a Gem - danso
http://findingscience.com/ruby/2014/11/17/why-im-renaming-a-gem.html

======
throwaway43232
I'm honestly getting quite sick of these kinds of things in open-source.

Names like 'upskirt' and 'pantyshot'[0] are inappropriate names that are
offensive and unwelcoming to a particular gender, but when we reach the point
where we are complaining about a wholly gender neutral name that only offends
people offended by the word "sex" we're reaching the point of inanity,
especially when the package in question is a black box where you give it a
first name and it tells you the likelihood that the name is male or female. If
someone is offended by that name, then they should also be offended by the
entire raison d'etre of the package in question since it further reinforces
the notion of a gender binary.

Gender identity exists on a spectrum, so getting offended by the name of an
open source project that guesses gender identity based on a name but not being
offended by the fact that the project reinforces the gender binary is
supremely ironic.

As an open source developer, these kinds of discussions bother me immensely
because it elevates some topic of discussion as being more important than the
code and technical decisions. Any discussion that is not about code, technical
decisions, API design, algorithms, abstraction boundaries, accurate
documentation, etc. can generally be categorized as bikeshedding. I don't
value bikeshedding. I don't want open source to be welcoming of bikeshedding
where bikeshedding discussions of any kind are given the time of day.

A certain amount of discussion around of appropriate naming is warranted, but
there is a line that you cross where making software welcoming to easily
offended people starts making the process fraught for people just trying to
make technical decisions because they now have overly sensitive people in
their midsts that they must cater for. Making technical discussions fraught
hurts open source a lot more than the gain you get from being welcoming to
people who are easily offended.

The Ben Noordhuis debacle [3] springs to mind. libuv is a project where Ben is
the #1 committer to the project with 1071 commits (35.6% of the total) and his
commits are likely to be the overwhelming majority of new features and non-
trivial code changes. Ben's sin was simply one of not allowing commits with no
technical value. If the change had come in as part of a larger pull request
where actual code was changed, I'm sure there would have been no controversy
at all. Instead Alex Gaynor did a drive-by single commit to libuv (his only
commit to date) and the whole thing blew up and Ben was made out to be the bad
guy by many people who probably never made a commit to libuv and probably
never will.

This resignation letter from a Debian TC member[1] is what I think of every
time we leave room for discussion about anything but technical issues. Open
source used to be about code first and foremost and we all lose when (code <
people's feelings) evaluates to true.

I'm honestly at the point where I apply the follow heuristic to the opinions
of people when it comes to bikeshedding about open source:

    
    
        function validOpinion(person, opinion) {
            if (hasPublishedOpenSourceCode(person)) {
                return opinion;
            } else {
                throw new Error('Invalid opinion');
            }
        }
    

If you don't publish open source code, your opinion does not matter.

[0] [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/when-software-
offends-t...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/when-software-offends-the-
pantyshot-package-controversy/509)

[1] [https://lists.debian.org/debian-
ctte/2014/11/msg00071.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian-
ctte/2014/11/msg00071.html)

[2] [http://marc.info/?l=linux-
kernel&m=137392506516022&w=2](http://marc.info/?l=linux-
kernel&m=137392506516022&w=2)

[3]
[https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538...](https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538615)

~~~
danso
I didn't submit this as a means to spark yet another debate on HN about gender
dynamics or political correctness, but an example of a well-handled
controversy by an open-source maintainer.

Let's ignore the details of the controversy. What we have here is someone who
has made a useful gem and, after a couple of years, is told out of the blue
that it's somewhat offensive. Someone else then submits a pull-request that
"fixes" the problem. Meanwhile, the Github issues section has been basically
vote-brigaded into a trollfest, to the point where many people would've just
shut down the repo or not attempted any rational thinking because of how
offensive and standoffish the debate had become.

But instead, the OP accepts the pull request and writes a very level-headed
post about why he both agrees and disagrees with the sexism complaint. Even
though such a complaint is one that he could've taken personally, he doesn't,
and instead, he applies empathy and rationality when making his decision.

Whether you like the outcome or not, I think this is a prime example of civil
discourse and action in OSS: a level-headed maintainer, and someone who makes
a pull-request as proof of concept.

~~~
throwaway43232
Totally agree. I think the maintainer here did a stellar job. The only thing
that I don't think was considered in his response, and is the reason I came
here to comment, is that I don't think we're fully thinking through the
__unintended consequences __of placating everyone who is offended by something
no matter how minor.

A environment that is overly sensitive and where people are easily offended is
an environment that is not welcoming of people on the aspie-autistic end of
the spectrum, especially on the internet where you don't know whether someone
is neurotypical or not. People who are neurotypical tend to assume that
everyone else is neurotypical as well. Open-source was and has always been a
place where those on the aspie-autistic end of the spectrum can and do excel.
Elevating feelings over code and being technically correct creates and
environment that is fraught for those people who generally have less empathy
and don't really get offended themselves.

Between making open source welcoming to people who are neurotypical and making
it welcome to people on the aspie-autistic end of the spectrum, we all lose by
favoring the former. The overwhelming majority of truly valuable contributions
in our field are done by people who are neurologically aspie-autistic.

~~~
nona
> The overwhelming majority of truly valuable contributions in our field are
> done by people who are neurologically aspie-autistic.

Well, let's assume for a sec that you're right about this (I personally don't
think so). I don't know how many neurotypical people we lose by favouring
aspies. If we assume a prevalence rate of 1% or 2%, or even 5%, it may mean
losing a good chunk of the neurotypical 95% – we _are_, after all, chasing
away a good number of developers (check for example the stats for women in
opensource, but I'm sure we chase away quite a number of men as well who
prefer to stay away from toxic environments). Are you saying that these 1-5%
provide more contributions then that huge chunk of the 95% that are, in your
words, "overly sensitive"?

~~~
throwaway43232
> Are you saying that these 1-5% provide more contributions then that huge
> chunk of the 95% that are, in your words, "overly sensitive"?

Not at all. The 1-5% are usually the ones working by themselves creating a
project from scratch and then maintaining those projects as others join the
project. The capacity to remain highly focused on solitary tasks (like
starting and building an open source project until it is useful enough for
others to get involved) is more common in people on the aspie side of the
spectrum.

The other 95% are not overly sensitive. Maybe just 1-5% are overly sensitive
and lack the capacity to function with abrasive and insensitive people. The
middle 90-98% plus the 1-5% that are the linchpins of any open source project
are responsible for most of the open-source world.

We basically only lose the overly-sensitive ones (men and women), which is an
acceptable loss until we start seeing open-source projects of significant
technical importance written largely by people who are overly sensitive. I
don't see that happening because overly-sensitive people are generally pre-
occupied with being overly sensitive instead of getting things done. When I
read complaints by someone being overly sensitive, I check their github
profile and look for other technical contributions. Typically there isn't much
to look at. Technical contributions entitle you to your opinions.

Lastly, I honestly have nothing against people who are overly sensitive so
long as they either stop being overly sensitive or at least keep their overly
sensitive thoughts to themselves and focus on the technical issues of the task
at hand. I just exhausted of people derailing technical discussions because
they are overly sensitive.

Anyways, I'm being overly sensitive about overly sensitive people in open-
source, which is a massive waste of my time. Back to coding.

~~~
nona
I suspect you vastly underestimate the number of what you call "overly-
sensitive" people – I'd call them the norm. For example, there's only 2-5%
women in Debian or Ubuntu. Where did the other 48% disappear to? Certain
cultures are severely underrepresented too.

It's open source, meaning mostly volunteers: why would anyone want to put up
with "abrasive and insensitive" people for fun?

