20 years ago, when I shared some code with the world, because it worked for me and i hoped others might benefit from it; that was all i was doing. Today, it seems, there's implied responsibilities to your users in that situation.
Not only must the code be well organized, run perfectly, and handle all users needs; I myself must be of proper moral character, never have publicly uttered words that could be considered objectionable, and fully willing to endorse the fashionable fascism of the day.
... I don't buy it. I think that "hey this solves my problem" is viable and code doesn't carry the stain of its creators. We don't need to know or care who wrote our favorite text editor, they might be wonderful people or they might be gnarly gnomes dripping ichor; "here's the tool, it works" is sufficient knowledge to judge the tool.
>I myself must be of proper moral character, never have publicly uttered words that could be considered objectionable, and fully willing to endorse the fashionable fascism of the day.
Your sentiment is increasingly common. However, Hans Reiser's conviction for first degree murder of his wife has not eliminated his name from various filesystem projects, let alone caused the code to vanish, so maybe there should be a bit of cognitive dissonance there?
Yeah but that's not a controversy - because nobody is defending him. So ironically it's "safer." If someone is a controversial figure, you can score points and grab attention and praise by removing their code from your project. If someone is uncontroversial - even uncontroversially bad - what are you indicating that way? That you, too, frown on murder?
My impression is that ReiserFS was just sort of gently dropped due to disuse, disinterest and lack of maintenance. That's about what I'd expect - nobody wants to touch it, but nobody expects anyone to signal their disgust either, because it's not in doubt.
...yet. It persisted as an awkward anecdote in the industry.
But more importantly, the story of Hans and Nina Reiser is of the kind that the various forms of fashionable fascism over the past two decades did not find interesting. It's not the act that makes people make other people remove references from software projects - it's how the act ties into current hot topics.
The story seems to me very easily tied into current hot topics - I'm not going to regurgitate the details which are on Wikipedia, but they are pretty disturbing and link to some key themes for MeToo.
Possible alternative hypotheses I'd consider to your logic - maybe people don't care because it's old news? Maybe people just think of the comedian when they hear the name? Maybe people do care and it just hasn't hit HN?
I couldn't agree more. If I ever decided to make any of my work public, it would be under "Good luck with that" license (https://github.com/me-shaon/GLWTPL)
I feel like more and more developers are opting for the second form. I'm reminded of litestream (https://github.com/benbjohnson/litestream) for example that is closed to contribution
Github is adding the discussions feature, which adds a sort-of forum to repos (needs to be enabled)
(although generally a "just wanted to say thanks" "issue" is also well-received, even if thats not what issues are for. Or reaching out through any other channel, if the dev advertises one)
Not only must the code be well organized, run perfectly, and handle all users needs; I myself must be of proper moral character, never have publicly uttered words that could be considered objectionable, and fully willing to endorse the fashionable fascism of the day.
... I don't buy it. I think that "hey this solves my problem" is viable and code doesn't carry the stain of its creators. We don't need to know or care who wrote our favorite text editor, they might be wonderful people or they might be gnarly gnomes dripping ichor; "here's the tool, it works" is sufficient knowledge to judge the tool.