
The Impermanence, Karma, and Bad Behavior of Why The Lucky Stiff - smokinn
http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-08-19.html
======
bballant
Zed will never understand _why and his simplistic depiction (not
understanding) of Buddhism is a testament to this. Moreover he doesn't
recognize _why as an artist. He does this in numerous ways but the most
obvious and most gauche is the refusal to call _why by his name, which is
_why, not Jonathan. In doing so, Zed pulls why out of his world and into his
own, which is not an artist's world, and then judges _why. This is unfair to
_why in the extreme.

It reminds me of an essay by Henry Miller called "Creative Death" which may
help explain _why to those of us who can't understand the state of mind and
the motivation of an artist like _why. Here are some excerpts, which run to
the end of this post:

For the artist in man is the undying symbol of the union between his warring
selves. Live has to be given meaning because of the obvious fact that it has
no meaning. Something has to be created, as a healing and goading
intervention, between life and death…

The process is a long and devious one. It is all a conquest of fear…

His war with reality is a reflection of the war within himself…

The ideas which germinate in the artist are unique and must be lived out. He
is the sign of Fate itself, the very symbol of destiny. For when, by living
out his dream logic, he fulfills himself through the destruction of his own
ego, he is incarnating for humanity the drama of individual life which, to be
tasted and experienced, must embrace dissolution…

It is what Nietzche described as the fusion in one being of two divergent
streams–the Apollonian dreamer type and the ecstatic Dionysian…

~~~
pyre
> Zed will never understand _why and his simplistic depiction (not
> understanding) of Buddhism is a testament to this. Moreover he doesn't
> recognize _why as an artist. He does this in numerous ways but the most
> obvious and most gauche is the refusal to call _why by his name, which is
> _why, not Jonathan. In doing so, Zed pulls why out of his world and into his
> own, which is not an artist's world, and then judges _why. This is unfair to
> _why in the extreme.

On the other hand, _why is just an online persona created and portrayed by an
actual person. When he says "I truly hope that Jonathan is ok," he's referring
to the actual person, not to the online persona... The persona is fictional. A
farce. A farce in the name of art, but a farce nonetheless.

It would be like Zed trying to talk about the guy behind 'Fake Steve Jobs' by
constantly referring to him as 'Fake Steve Jobs' rather than by his real name,
Daniel Lyons. If I said, "I hope that Fake Steve Jobs is in a good frame of
mind," most people will not take that to mean, "I hope that Daniel Lyons is in
a good state of mind." In the same way, saying, "Fake Steve Jobs is acting
like a dick," is not the same as saying, "Daniel Lyons is acting like a dick."

I seriously think that people are taking this "Zed and _why are two polar
opposites" idea way too far. Zed is basically saying that _why can do whatever
he wants, but to create a bunch of projects that people rely on (even if these
projects are your art) and then abruptly, without notice pull the rug out from
under these people is an asshole move.

Let's bring all this into a small example. Say there's this artist whose art
strikes such a chord with me that I invest every penny I own into putting on a
spectacular art show to showcase this artist's art to the world. Let's say
that the artist and I spend months and months planning the show and
collaborating on it. Then comes the big day of the show, and I go to the
location to find out that the artist has up and disappeared, taking all of his
art with him. Leaving me with nothing.

If the artist and I have no formal argreement that he has to show his art
there he has every right to walk out like this. But it is a very asshole move
to leave me hanging after I've invested all of my time in money into it, no?
Or do I just scratch my head, say "I just don't understand his art" and call
it a day?

This is the same case here. There are things like his twitter
account/tweets/blogs/blog entries/etc which pulling from the web isn't that
big of a deal. On the other hand, all of his software projects/code are things
that people have come to rely on and invest time into contributing to. He
basically giving all of those people the finger when he just cuts out
everything like this. Without taking the time to organize for these projects
to be taken over by someone else (or at least leaving the hosting up for
them), he's saying that all of those people, all the effort and time they've
spent mean shit all to him.

Being 'artsy' and 'artistic' doesn't excuse you from being an asshole. I mean,
Caravaggio (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravaggio>) was a 'ruffian' and a
murderer. While his art still stands on its own, he was a dick of a person.
Just because a dick of a person produces great art doesn't mean that we hand-
wave away all their misdeeds with nebulous phrases like, "You just don't
understand his art."

What if Caravaggio decided to pull a _why? Let's say that he broke into all of
the places that his paintings resided (cathedrals,churches,mansions,etc) and
destroyed every last piece of art that he had created. Should we excuse this
behavior as "Well, it's his art and this action is just an extention of his
art. You just don't understand his art?"

This has become a bit long-winded, so I'll just cut it here with this. Zed
isn't tearing down _why's art. But some parts of _why's art have crossed over
from just being 'just art' to being 'art plus' if you will. In this case, it's
'art + software project.' The fact that part of it is art doesn't mean one can
ignore that the other part is a software project.

~~~
bballant
I completely disagree that _why was simply an on-line persona, "a farce". The
Fake Steve Jobs was satirical, first of all. _why was often funny, but it
wasn't satire. I think his work alone, often times personal, was a testament
to his authenticity as an artist. You may have only known him as an on-line
persona, but that doesn't mean that's all he was. There's at least one video
on the interweb of _why giving a talk, in the flesh and blood, and he calls
himself _why... Perhaps his friends all call him _why too.

I also think Zed saying he hopes Jonathan is ok is a bit of a platitude. I'm
sure Zed DOES hope _why is fine, but it rings hollow in the context of the
whole essay. Plus, who doesn't hope _why is ok. His biggest detractors aren't
monsters wishing him ill.

I have to say that you confuse being an artist with being 'artsy', which is a
mistake. I'm artsy, but I'm no artist. Not a single artist I know would
describe themselves as simply artsy. Much of my opinion on what it is to be an
artist, however, comes from the Henry Miller essay I referenced earlier. I
suggest reading it. It's in a volume called "Matters of the Heart".

I believe an artist has the right to destroy his own work unless he's sold it
or given it away. I'm not of the opinion that publishing work on-line is the
same as giving it away, and I'm certainly not of the opinion that _why taking
his stuff down is the same as breaking into a place to steal and destroy
things. There's a very big difference between what _why did and your
Caravaggio example. _why did nothing illegal, for instance.

In a way, _why reminds me of the French New Wave film-makers. They believed in
the "film-maker as auteur" and wanted complete control over their work. From
reading these forums, it sounds like most of _why's code was recovered, which
is fortunate, and I'm not aware of anything missing that others collaborated
on. I don't think he collaborated much with others if at all, but I don't
really know. I do acknowledge that, even with works created solely by _why,
there's a certain collaboration osmosis that occurs just by having it on the
internet with so many users/readers/extenders/whathaveyous, but in my eyes
that falls short of giving it away.

To me, _why considered his programs and their source code art equal to (more
important than?) his drawings, music, poems, and stories. It was all his art.
I'm extremely sad at the loss of so much of his amazing work.

~~~
bad_user
> _I'm not of the opinion that publishing work on-line is the same as giving
> it away, and I'm certainly not of the opinion that _why taking his stuff
> down is the same as breaking into a place to steal and destroy things_

Publishing work on-line IS giving it away. If you don't want that, just don't
publish it online. If not, it's like singing a song at a party and getting all
upset on your friends for memorizing it. Sorry, but the cat is out of the bag,
and you can't tell me that _why (being involved in an open-source community
and all) wasn't aware of that.

_why's taking his stuff down is also comparable to stealing/destroying things
... his work still lives on because other people bothered to make copies, but
he also took down the mailing lists / homepages of those projects, disrupting
the communities behind those projects, leaving nice people that invested time
and resources for those projects in the dark (I don't know how much
time/resources were external, but that's irrelevant).

Being an artist doesn't excuse you being dick (although it also doesn't negate
your achievements). But when you're being a dick, since you're living in a
society that would brake if all of us where dicks, then you should pay the
price for that.

~~~
bballant
We could go back and forth on this forever. I think it's a valid, if not
tiresome, debate -- if you publish something on-line, is it yours anymore? Was
_why's stuff art? Does it matter if we consider it art?

Maybe pulling things down is "comparable" to stealing, but it's not the same.
And the extent to which external resources were part of his work is not
irrelevant. There's tons of gray area here that's being glossed over.

Zed (and other posters) seem to have a view of the issue that lacks nuance.
"He abandon us, he must be a dick." I'm not sure know why "dick" is the only
name Zed et al have for _why. Besides the fact that the word is grating and
low, it is bad form and, frankly, a little immature to use insults like that,
especially when you don't know the whole story. The HN community both
eulogized and demonized _why too quickly. Maybe it makes sense that hackers
only think in binary terms and pass such stark judgment.

Look, I'm disappointed that _why is gone. There have been good points made on
this forum about people who depended on the mailing lists, etc. And we can
speculate ad-nauseam the causes for his disappearance. Personally, I thought
his work was touching. As I discussed earlier, I also view him as an artist,
with motivations that I think are very different from those of a typical
hacker or engineer. But because we don't know the whole story, any judgment is
based on speculation. And so I must give _why the benefit of the doubt here
(and, clearly, defend him a little).

It's wrong to judge _why as Zed and others have, 'nuff said.

~~~
bad_user
Yes, well, to tell you the truth I regret his disappearance. That's why I have
a bad opinion about this.

I also believe in coding as an art form (although I'm surely not an artist),
and _why was a person to which I could relate to. We need such positive models
with the same aspirations as ours because we may start thinking that we are
crazy ... ever got a blank stare while you where explaining to someone else
that programming in itself is beautiful?

It would mean a lot to me if sooner or later he would reappear and provide an
explanation ... I could also relate to him being burnt-out.

------
doki_pen
The only thing that really bothers me about what _why did is that he killed
all the mailinglists without warning. I happen to know that there were a lot
of teachers on the Shoes mailing list trying to use shoes to teach kids to
code. It was the center piece of the new hackety hack designed for kids. It
seems completely irrational that _why would abandon these innocent people
without so much as a "sorry, I'm out". this makes me really worried for his
mental health. It is not rational behavior.

~~~
Goladus
Not to nitpick semantics, but 'rational' is not actually a very high bar. It
could be completely rational within a context that we don't know. It might be
irrational, it's hard to say.

------
antonovka
Zed Shaw trying to leverage more attention on the back of _why's mysterious
disappearance. It's as saccarine and transparent as Crystal Pepsi.

[Edit] I'm being downvoted into oblivion. Answer me this -- Shouldn't Zed Shaw
be contacting _why directly and privately first, rather than posting this
publicly shaming and incredibly presumptuous article? What possible benefit is
there here?

Given that Zed offhandedly switches between _why and 'Jonathan', he must know
_why, right?

~~~
die_sekte
I assume that it has gotten a little bit _impossible_ to contact _why.

~~~
antonovka
Zed didn't seem to try very hard before assuming the mantle of Internet
Behavior and Buddhist Philosophy Police.

[Edit] The downvotes truly boggle my mind. Since when did it become socially
acceptable to public dress down a software community member without any facts,
evidence, or corroborating information? Zed Shaw is _trolling._ He has
_nothing_ in the game (he 'cut all ties' to Ruby, remember?), _no_ relation to
_why, and _no reason_ to be publishing invective from his bully pulpit other
than a desire to inject himself into the conversation.

He doesn't know what happened to _why, or what _why has planned, or whether
the code is gone for good.

~~~
unalone
You're entirely right. As it happens, _why's email address was pretty well-
known; furthermore, judging somebody so quickly after something's happened is
brash and impertinent.

Even if you were wrong, you're making well-reasoned points, and it's
irritating that people are downvoting you and upvoting snark.

------
chewbranca
As a new father I have to chime in and say I'm very disappointed to see
hackety hack and shoes go away. It was exciting to see his talk from Art &
Code, and I was looking forward to using both of those tools to teach my
children.

In response to the article and comments, there are a lot of people here who
immediately dismiss the article because its written by Zed, and still others
who deem _why's actions acceptable because he's an 'artist'. Assuming _why is
ok and he just decided to log off, Zed is right in this case. _why has
transcended being an artist by creating art that does not only have aesthetic
beauty, but also has substantial value to the people who have used it and who
have invested time into it. The fact that he has created solid documentation
in addition to releasing his projects in a public distributed system geared
towards sharing and reuse is proof that he was at least interested in having
other people use his projects. Which means he has a social obligation to not
actively screw over his user base so he can be dramatic. Just wait, I can see
Eric Raymond writing a new chapter about the responsibilities associated with
releasing code to the open source community. Maybe this is a sign we need an
equivalent of archive.org for code so that nothing like this can happen again.

~~~
scorpion032
It takes a HN thread and a free github account to restore everything he "took
down"

And it took, [precisely that](<http://whymirror.github.com/>)

Zed, you and other are arguing as if he actively deleted your own copies of
all that work and that he had an obligation to support it for ever.

------
anatoly
Shorter Zed Shaw: "It annoys me that you're all talking about _why instead of
talking about me, what I believe, what I did for the Ruby community, and how I
left it. I'm going to try and change that."

~~~
antonovka
I'm going to keep tilting at the windmill, here. Why are you downvoting these
comments? How is Zed Shaw not simply trying to insert himself in the debate
with base presumptions about _why and his motivations or the cause of his
disappearance?

~~~
GHFigs
I downvoted the parent for snarky ad hominem that adds nothing to the site. I
downvoted this comment for complaining about comment voting and perpetuating
the notion that voting should be about whether you agree or disagree with it.
They are just bad comments.

~~~
antonovka
No, my comment was intended to further elucidate the original comment as to
garner an explanation for the _reasoning_ behind your disagreement with the
comment.

Instead you dismissed it as "snarky". _Why_ do you disagree that Zed Shaw is
attempting to hijack the situation to garner attention?

~~~
GHFigs
You're missing the point by a wide margin. I voted because I felt they were
_lousy comments_. Whether I agree with them or not is hardly relevant, as I
don't think they're even worth paying that much attention to.

The whole idea that comment moderation should be based on whether you agree or
disagree with the message is a toxic one that has killed civil conversation on
dozens of sites, replacing it with thoughtless and instinctual groupthink that
frankly _makes everyone dumber_. (I won't even pretend to be above it at all
times myself, but I try, and would hope to not be alone in that.) Ultimately,
you can't stop everybody from voting that way, but you can discourage it, and
that's what my post was about.

------
sofal
I have used both Zed's code and _why's code and have benefited a lot from
both. That being said, I would much rather that Zed had left the Ruby
community in the same way that _why did than vice versa.

------
die_sekte
Zed, while offending, at least cares about other people. _why does not.

Edit: Woah, controversial comment.

Let me rephrase that: Zed cares more than _why about his projects' afterlife.

~~~
unalone
Which is an entirely different claim to make.

Zed likes pretending that he knows _why's name is Jonathan, when in fact every
person here who _knows_ _why says it isn't, and when _why didn't like people
speculating about his name to begin with. So Zed's a dick, too, and, typical
of Zedshawism, he doesn't get his facts right, choosing instead to trust a
specious Wordpress blog whose author is both unknown and a dick himself.

_why never said he was Buddhist. _why said nothing. The rest is speculation.
So judging his philosophy is a little bit stupid as well.

I agree with your second statement, which is that _why didn't treat his
projects well. But Zed isn't talking about other people. Zed's talking about
himself, as always. He's no Jason Scott, who devotes his life to archiving
other people's work. Instead, without anything to go on, he calls _why a
nihilist (only for him it's a capital-N Nihilist), a "Nihilist who was just
jerking people around and playing a long con on everyone," which is pretty
offensive in my book. He also calls _why a dick (er, he calls "Jonathan" a
dick), and he talks about how he's better than _why because he left up his
code after insulting the entire community.

I don't know if we'll ever hear _why's story, but I'm going to give him the
benefit of a little doubt. I won't lie, though: I think the guy had every
right to remove himself from the Internet. I'd understand his motivation in
removing everything, suddenly, without warning. Hell, the only reason I still
have this HN account is that there's no option to delete on this site. And
leaving gradually isn't leaving. Even when he completely vanished people made
it a drama: If he'd announced this a week ago, we'd have had a week's extra
drama.

So maybe Zed cared about his projects more than _why, but he doesn't care
about people. He cares about pretending he knows shit about philosophy and
psychology, and, stripped-down theme or no, about Zed's So Fucking Awesome,
enough that his ego gets to influence every story he decides to force himself
on. That's not caring about people, especially not caring in the way _why did.

~~~
travisjeffery
Zed's material on Buddhism was a response to John Resig's "Eulogy to _why" in-
which he excuses _why's behavior with an analogy to a Buddhist tradition.

~~~
unalone
I know, but he pins it on _why and uses it as an excuse to call him a filthy,
awful Nihilist.

I agreed with Resig's eulogy, actually: It seems like _why would view his role
in those terms. So what happens is, all of us see only _why disappearing and
taking everything with him. In that context, he's being a nihilist. But from
_why's perspective, he changed the community he was in for the better, and has
chosen to go on. So he has left things behind - the salvaged programs, the
Guide - and has himself moved on to something. We don't know what that
something is. It's nihilist if you assume that his point was to disappear and
destroy, but if he's moving on by using the things he's learned as _why, then
it's a transformation and a celebration in just the way Resig described.

~~~
GHFigs
This is why Zed describes _why as a good person currently being a dick. He is
explicitly very supportive of the notion of destroying parts of your life that
are causing you suffering, but what he is calling out is the unnecessary harm
he has caused to others, and Resig's mischaracterization of it.

Resig is well-meaning, but he's abusing the analogy by relating _why's work to
a sand mandala. A sand mandala is not just symbolic--it's ceremonial, it's
expected, and nobody gets hurt when it's destroyed. _why's disappearance was
not ceremonial, was not expected, and did hurt people. It reflects the notion
of impermanence, but that that is neither the totality of Buddhism nor an idea
exclusive to Buddhism. Absent the notion of karma (or some other check),
impermanence implies Nihilism, and it's a gross distortion of Buddhism to
suggest that any suffering you cause for others in the name of impermanence is
ok as long as you grow individually.

Zed is doing what so many are unwilling to, which is to point out that even
though we all love _why and can all agree that he had the right to do what was
good for him, it's _still_ a dick move to hurt people in the process, and he
could have handled it better. _why could have accomplished the same thing
without hurting anybody. _That_ might have rightly been called a Buddhist act,
and fit for praise. But what is actually happening is that people forgive _why
for the trouble that his exit has caused because they _like him_.

~~~
antonovka
_Zed is doing what so many are unwilling to_

Rush to judgement? Yes, I'm unwilling to do that, especially publicly and
without any reasonable justification for my own self-involvement with the
issue.

~~~
GHFigs
Where is the "rush to judgement"? Zed's post is mostly in response to Resig's
"eulogy", which itself assumes that _why pulled his stuff deliberately. He's
only agreeing with that premise ( _with praise_ ) and disagreeing with the
all-positive conclusion wrought from that premise. Again: the only unconfirmed
assumption here is one that _most people_ including _the author being
responded to_ have made.

Also, we're talking about something Zed posted to his own personal blog. Is
Zed not allowed to post what he thinks to his own personal blog? What
"reasonable justification" is required to publish your own opinion on the
internet?

------
kwamenum86
"Johnathan, I truly hope you’re doing alright, but that was a dickhead thing
to do."

Extremely judgmental especially since open source offers no warranties or
guarantees and implicit in this is the very real possibility of the code
simply disappearing. It isn't like there is some contract (social or
otherwise) that requires people to leave their code up online.

~~~
cwan
Yeah, that's fine, but if you think of open source as an intellectual gift of
sorts, isn't what he did sort of like giving a kid a chocolate bar and yanking
it away and throwing it in the trash mid bite?

~~~
unalone
That's why it's stupid to think of open source as a gift. It's great, but
you're not entitled to it.

~~~
mtkd
If you create Open Source Software you are putting a contribution in to the
community. That contribution is often derived from or utilises other OSS.

I think of OSS as a movement. Publicly nuking your (popular) repositories is a
step back for that movement.

Any developer has every right to do it. However, for those of us who are
trying to get large enterprises to embrace and contribute to OSS, our task is
a little harder this week than it was last week.

~~~
unalone
I agree. The _advantage_ here is that his contributions aren't gone. The only
thing I know of that's seemingly gone for good is TryRuby.

As for getting enterprises to embrace OSS: Wouldn't you say that the ability
for people to do what _why did _is_ a disadvantage? Commercial apps don't do
things like that. I'm not knocking OSS, but that's certainly something to take
into consideration.

~~~
carbon8
_"Commercial apps don't do things like that."_

They do. Companies go out of business. They kill products. I went through it
in a couple situations when I worked in IT.

In one instance, a vendor was sued by another company and had to immediately
pull distribution of an app that we depended on, and the alternative was
unusable. That particular example also provides an example of the value of
OSS: the app was open source, so we were able to keep using it and tweaking it
for years.

------
teh_pete
I don't know why everyone thinks all of _why's code is gone, which is Zed's
main complaint. He left his Rubyforge page up, with all of his code, and
anything your project depended on can still be installed. He also had it all
on github, so anyone with a checkout has full commit history.

~~~
bmelton
That may be true, but tryruby.hobix.com is GONE, and that is a travesty of the
highest proportions.

That was the page I learned my first bits of Ruby on. That was the page I
introduced 8 friends to Ruby for the first time. It was the page I single-
handedly got our contract renewed, by proving a piece of functionality was
possible and easily done.

I think for many, it was an easy way in to Ruby. Someone must replace this
immediately.

~~~
pygy
There was a tryruby repository at Github, but I don't know if it was all that
was needed to run it.

One of the things that bother me more is the fact that he also pulled the plug
on all the mailing list of his projects, which would have been the right place
to discuss what to do with the code.

~~~
bmelton
For what it's worth, this impacts me enough that I've looked, and I couldn't
find it. If I had, I likely would have already been fast at work trying to put
up a replacement, if only to have something to link to the people who are sure
to ask me what happened to it.

My wife actually noticed yesterday that it was gone before I got around to
reading all the comments on HN about Why's departure. I eventually told her
that he was basically dead. Her response? "How am I going to learn Ruby now?"

I of course have installed a local interpreter, but she really liked the
lessons.

------
icey
I liked the part where Zed suddenly thinks it's important to play nice.

~~~
prospero
My take is that Zed thinks there are some things that transcend personal
issues, which doesn't seem to be a sudden development.

~~~
icey
Didn't Zed just have a whole essay about how it's the author's right to do
what they want to with their code [1]? _why had absolutely zero obligation to
anybody with his contributions.

People should be allowed to take things offline if they choose to, it's
laughable that Zed is suddenly high and mighty because someone took their ball
and went home.

[1] <http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2009-07-13.html>

~~~
steveklabnik
As he says, you have the right do do whatever you want, but that doesn't mean
that people won't think that you're a dick for it.

<http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/3412630996>

------
tjogin
He keeps calling him Jonathan all the time, but it's not at all sure that's
his real name (see: <http://ozmm.org/posts/his_name_is_robert_paulson.html>).

And even if it is, it's kind of a dick thing to do, given that we know that
_why never wanted to be known as anything but _why.

~~~
burke
Actually, it is: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=774673> , particularly
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=775578>

I agree though, dick move. Then again, this _is_ Zed we're talking about.

~~~
blasdel
No, it's pretty obvious that they were close friends and coworkers, but not
the same person.

~~~
burke
I'm starting to sympathize with <http://xkcd.com/386/> more and more. I wish I
could just stop doing this already.

Umm, ok, let's recap, shall we?:

1) His sister. This (
[http://www.advogato.org/person/whytheluckystiff/diary/14.htm...](http://www.advogato.org/person/whytheluckystiff/diary/14.html)
) says she was 14 in 2001. That makes her ~21 today. "Jonathan Gillette from
Utah" has "Kristin Gillete" listed as a relative here:
[http://www.intelius.com/search-summary-
out.php?ReportType=1&...](http://www.intelius.com/search-summary-
out.php?ReportType=1&qf=jonathan&qmi=&qn=gillette&qs=UT&trackit=74&focusfirst=1)
. She's 21.

2) His wife. This page (
[http://ftp.df.lth.se/pub/scene.org/music/groups/starving_but...](http://ftp.df.lth.se/pub/scene.org/music/groups/starving_but_happy/sbh-
lp003-moonboots-elfin_princess_%28starvingbuthappy%2c_2004%29/moonboots-
elfin_princess.txt) ) says Jonathan is married to Kylie, or at least was in
2004. She makes jewelry, and has a site hosted by _why:
[http://74.125.93.132/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=c...](http://74.125.93.132/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=cache:snapd.net&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)

3) His band. See
[http://ftp.df.lth.se/pub/scene.org/music/groups/starving_but...](http://ftp.df.lth.se/pub/scene.org/music/groups/starving_but_happy/sbh-
lp003-moonboots-elfin_princess_%28starvingbuthappy%2c_2004%29/moonboots-
elfin_princess.txt) again. He plays in a band called (both) "Starving but
Happy" and "The Child Who Was A Keyhole". See
<http://www.myspace.com/thechildwhowasakeyhole> . Compare picture of _why
(<http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottlaird/31366517/> ) to
[http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewIma...](http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=40210738&albumID=191117&imageID=957700)
and
[http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewIma...](http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=40210738&albumID=191117&imageID=85996)
\-- the guitar is pretty easy to identify as the same.

4) The why@rysa.inetz.com thing.

5) This site (<http://members.tripod.com/soccer_riot/> ) was made by _why
(pre-why, as far as I can tell). If he is just close friends with Jonathan
Gillette, it's apparently to the point that it didn't seem relevant to point
out that he was producing the audio clips for the site. Open dolphins.ram in
pretty much any media player and you'll see "Jonathan Gillette" as its author.

6) Why did jgillette make several very informed posts to ruby-talk, then
completely quit developing ruby (apparently...)?

------
doki_pen
It's so easy to judge someone without walking in their shoes. You (and I) have
no idea what this person is going through emotionally. He could have some
serious problems.

------
ianbishop
A true budhist would throw a hissy fit first and then let his software fucking
rot, right?

The only difference between the disappearance of these two from the ruby scene
is that _why will actually be missed.

Fuck Zed Shaw.

~~~
crystalis
I feel the conflict within you. Let go of your hate.

------
simplegeek
Zed, as much as I love you and your work, that also was a dickhead thing to
say ;(

------
fogus
I shudder to think how much chatter this is going to generate. Zed bashing on
_why... worlds collide. The only thing that would be better is if he somehow
brought up Erlang in the argument.

~~~
joe_the_user
Except that Zed isn't "bashing", he's making an intelligent, _measured_ well
thought-out argument - for once. Perhaps the only thing that will happen is
the brains of those expecting insanity will explode...

~~~
unalone
He's bashing. Calls _why Jonathan instead of giving him the courtesy of an
alias, presumes to know _why's motives, calls him names repeatedly.

~~~
MaysonL
Given that "Why the Lucky Stiff" is a persona - a mask, that this guy has worn
for a while, and that seemingly, he no longer wishes to wear, what are we
supposed to call him? Jonathon, if that's his "official" name, seems as good
as anything else, since he seems to have resigned from the "Why" role.

~~~
unalone
It's not his name. Zed posted a link on Twitter to somebody named Jonathan and
insisted it was _why. It wasn't.

We're talking about why the lucky stiff. We don't know anything about the man
that wore the mask. He was very good at keeping his personal life a mystery.
So calling him why the lucky stiff makes sense, at least until/if we learn
more about what's going on.

------
embeddedradical
This is bull. The idea of karma is an illusion too. The man who stabs you in
the gut and laughs, is a buddha. mu.

------
dylanz
I'm assuming _why kept the free stuff up, but took down the stuff he had to
pay for? I'd probably do that as well. Monthly hosting fee's and domain name
uptake can be a PITA, and a money sink.

~~~
steveklabnik
He did delete his Twitter and his GitHub, so it wasn't just paid for things.

~~~
dylanz
Gotcha. Well, no harm in deleting your own Twitter account. It may be that he
was on a paid plan at Github (personally, I'm on the $7/mo plan), and just
deleted it instead of downgrading? You "can" downgrade accounts though, for
what it's worth.

~~~
steveklabnik
Totally true. Just figured I'd mention it.

