I'm just shocked at the reaction from the HN crowd in this post. The guy lives in the west but returns to Russia, then blames Ukraine for being invaded, actually kills a teen girl and writes shit about her in the very same post added to HN, and blames everyone around him for his situation. Yet HN loves him because he wrote a cool Javascript library. Blows my mind.

I didn't see any part of the post where he blamed Ukraine for being invaded. There was a passage where he stated he can't publicly support either side because he has friends (family?) on both sides, but that's all I read.

The manslaughter came as a shock, yes, and I think there's more to that story than he's telling us. He probably isn't a great human being.

None of that, however, is relevant to the fact that maintaining core-js in particular and FOSS in general is a thankless and awful job.

It's possible to support FOSS, and support remuneration for FOSS, without supporting specific individuals.

What's your reasoning for saying he's probably not a great human being? Assuming what he says is true. If he had no way of seeing that coming, how is that different from blaming / judging a train driver in any way for someone's suicide or going as far to as to say they killed them.

I'll admit it's conjecture based on limited data. However, the tone he takes when discussing the event seems accusatory towards the victims, rather than repentant or horrified, which is what I would expect.

I don't think it's particularly useful to expect that someone would react the same way you believe that you would, in all honesty.

This is like saying that you're not sad about your mother dying because you didn't immediately burst into tears. It's well understood that we all process grief differently and sometimes we even struggle or fail to process it.

So is it so unreasonable that one may process any notable or traumatic event differently? I can try to put myself in the shoes of someone who is sent to a gulag for 7 months under circumstances that appear to be unfair, and I can't imagine anything except how much it would fucking suck and how actually, I might have complicated feelings that range from anger to despair.

Whether I like this guy or not, or think he is a good guy or a bad guy, has absolutely no bearing on this. It's just not useful or helpful to police someone's reaction.

I agree that his tone could be better, but if this was really none of his fault (other than being at the wrong road at the wrong time), I could understand why he writes that way given the trouble it has caused him, significant time in prison, criminal record that he will never erase and debt that translated to US standards is way way higher than those 80k and it could end up way worse, too. Like of course, it's a tragedy what happened to the girl, I think a lot of people could relate to doing stupid things intoxicated when young, especially in countries where vodka consumption is high, I do not say that the tone is appropriate, but I could understand the place where he's coming from where the girls' irresponsible behaviour severely impacted his life, he is just quite angry. I wonder how many of the people in this comment section labeling him a killer (I don't say that you did) would speak with the same tone if they were put in the exact same situation given the lack of empathy with his situation.

Is anger not a reasonable response to someone's drunken stupidity fucking up your life and ending theirs?