Looks like a confused Swedish dude that when questioned about his use of English pronouns defaults to not wanting to get political. Is there more besides a misguided decision to avoid relevant political topics?
I think we should chastise people that insist on not getting political, but not necessarily boycott everything they do. Or at least we should apply the same moral demands to Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft or Google when choosing which browsers to support. Which of them is the least bad?
They refused to accept a PR from a random person with just one single word change for a string that only the developer himself is seeing.
I think the developer has all the rights not to accept such a PR which adds nothing to the program. And I think people that really care about gender inclusivity should stop focusing on this useless nitpicks, which makes inclusivity appear like made up by a bunch of trolls.
It’s pretty telling to focus on the dev’s right to reject inclusivity while simultaneously rejecting and deriding everyone else’s right to judge them for that.
And if it was such a useless change, why didn’t the dev reject it for that instead of saying it was “political”? He’s the one that declared the word itself, not the utility of the change, was the problem. Calling everyone else “trolls” for pointing that out is just disingenuous.
The hyperbole here is insane. My trans friend’s Japanese parents are supportive of him, but they have some trouble with pronouns. If you’re not a native English speaker and learned the standard pronouns, then I think it’s just naturally too confusing. Pretty much all of them are translating in their minds in real-time.
Someone submits a 1-line PR changing the gender used in a code comment
PR rejected on the grounds that the change is “politically motivated”
Submitter got mad, and proposed removing the rule against “politically motivated” changes, calling it “white supremacist,” which is closed
Someone wrote a blog post about it
Here’s my analysis:
Stupid change - don’t make PRs that simply correct an irrelevant typo in a comment somewhere; some people do this to put stuff on a resume (look at how much FOSS work I do!), and it just wastes everyone’s time
Stupid response - it should’ve been rejected because it’s a useless change, not because it’s “politically motivated”
Stupid proposal - do you really want to waste a bunch of time fighting over wording in a comment? Because that’s the kind of crap you get without a rule like this.
This is all about an irrelevant change to a comment? Why is this getting so much attention?
Fixing that makes sense because it’s wrong and misleading (it’s actually Manhattan distance), and a quick glace is insufficient to tell the difference.
But fixing a typo or something that wouldn’t be confusing is just noise and should only be fixed with other changes. For example, I intentionally misspelled Pythagorean in my comment above, fixing that to be the right spelling would be a useless change, even if the distance formula used the hypotenuse. It wouldn’t be an unreasonable policy to reject PRs that only fix spelling or similar to reduce noise for the maintainers.
Yep, I understand but disagree. Maybe it comes from working with so many ESL coders, but I’ll happily accept typo corrections because it’s not always obvious what words should be if you’re not steeped in the culture.
It wasn’t in documentation, but a code comment. No user would see this.
One part was a rejected change on the README, which was trying to remove this “white supremacist language”:
## On ideologically motivated changes
This is a purely technical project. As such, it is not an appropriate arena to advertise your personal politics or religious beliefs. Any changes that appear ideologically motivated will be rejected.
Someone changing “he” to “they” (original PR that started all this) in a comment as their only change could absolutely be seen as “politically motivated.” My understanding is that if changing the comment was part of some larger useful change, it would be fine (as would using “she” or “they” in a new comment), but just changing the gender of a pronoun in a comment is a useless change.
If the comment said “she,” would someone have been motivated to make this change? Probably not. Should changing this from “she” to some other pronoun (he or they) also be rejected? Yes, on the same grounds as changing it from “he,” it’s not a useful change and just wastes everyone’s time. If you’re in the code already, then go ahead, correct silly language like this if you care to.
They are political, because people (I’m not one of them) think they shouldn’t be allowed and there are only two genders (e.g. the current president of the US).
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Looks like a confused Swedish dude that when questioned about his use of English pronouns defaults to not wanting to get political. Is there more besides a misguided decision to avoid relevant political topics?
I think we should chastise people that insist on not getting political, but not necessarily boycott everything they do. Or at least we should apply the same moral demands to Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft or Google when choosing which browsers to support. Which of them is the least bad?
There is nothing political about acknowledging peoples’ existence.
Existence? Because somebody used a wrong pronoun?
They refused to use the right pronoun. One is a mistake. The other is a choice.
They refused to accept a PR from a random person with just one single word change for a string that only the developer himself is seeing.
I think the developer has all the rights not to accept such a PR which adds nothing to the program. And I think people that really care about gender inclusivity should stop focusing on this useless nitpicks, which makes inclusivity appear like made up by a bunch of trolls.
It’s pretty telling to focus on the dev’s right to reject inclusivity while simultaneously rejecting and deriding everyone else’s right to judge them for that.
And if it was such a useless change, why didn’t the dev reject it for that instead of saying it was “political”? He’s the one that declared the word itself, not the utility of the change, was the problem. Calling everyone else “trolls” for pointing that out is just disingenuous.
You’re right, words are meaningless and language has no bearing on society at large. after all, fuiebt eidiowb rhe efifo quifopim.
The hyperbole here is insane. My trans friend’s Japanese parents are supportive of him, but they have some trouble with pronouns. If you’re not a native English speaker and learned the standard pronouns, then I think it’s just naturally too confusing. Pretty much all of them are translating in their minds in real-time.
Language is extremely powerful. This is all part of the erasure (an integral part btw).
Hmm I don’t think you really understand what happened.
The developer wrote a comment (not visible to the end user) using the male form.
A random person opened a pull request without any useful changes, except for changing that comment from “he” to “their”.
The developer rejected that PR because it’s politically motivated and it doesn’t add anything else.
Right, except that’s not politically motivated, and is a useful change for people reading the code, both for women and non-binary people.
Calling pronouns “political” is the dogwhistle they always use
ugh transphobia rots people’s brains
it’s not too hard to just be a decent person ppl
I can’t see anything about this on DuckDuckGo. Do you have a link?
https://mkultra.monster/tech/2024/07/03/serenityos-and-ladybird
This was a little „write-up“ back when everything became more public.
I’m surprised this got any kind of attention.
Here’s the turn of events from my perspective:
Here’s my analysis:
“comments must be accurate,” is not a rule you should bend. Bending it even a little leads to last programming and shit code.
True, but that only applies if it’s misleading. For example:
// pythagoran theorem distance = abs(p2.x - p1.x) + abs(p2.y - p1.y);Fixing that makes sense because it’s wrong and misleading (it’s actually Manhattan distance), and a quick glace is insufficient to tell the difference.
But fixing a typo or something that wouldn’t be confusing is just noise and should only be fixed with other changes. For example, I intentionally misspelled Pythagorean in my comment above, fixing that to be the right spelling would be a useless change, even if the distance formula used the hypotenuse. It wouldn’t be an unreasonable policy to reject PRs that only fix spelling or similar to reduce noise for the maintainers.
Yep, I understand but disagree. Maybe it comes from working with so many ESL coders, but I’ll happily accept typo corrections because it’s not always obvious what words should be if you’re not steeped in the culture.
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Someone else posted a writeup about it.
It wasn’t in documentation, but a code comment. No user would see this.
One part was a rejected change on the README, which was trying to remove this “white supremacist language”:
Someone changing “he” to “they” (original PR that started all this) in a comment as their only change could absolutely be seen as “politically motivated.” My understanding is that if changing the comment was part of some larger useful change, it would be fine (as would using “she” or “they” in a new comment), but just changing the gender of a pronoun in a comment is a useless change.
If the comment said “she,” would someone have been motivated to make this change? Probably not. Should changing this from “she” to some other pronoun (he or they) also be rejected? Yes, on the same grounds as changing it from “he,” it’s not a useful change and just wastes everyone’s time. If you’re in the code already, then go ahead, correct silly language like this if you care to.
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They are political, because people (I’m not one of them) think they shouldn’t be allowed and there are only two genders (e.g. the current president of the US).