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    1. 29

      I cannot help myself but to imagine a open source ideas incubator governed by:

      Antirez, Linus, Mike Pall (LuaJit), Rich Hickey (Clojure)

      Perhaps, they would find it difficult to work together, but they all have something in common:

      1. They cannot be easily manipulated
      2. they do not want to manipulate others
      3. They are visionaries
      4. They express themselves through software (on both technical and conceptual levels)
      5. They work very hard, for very long time, based on a believe and passion alone
      6. They are not afraid to challenge ‘status quo’

      The combination of the above, perhaps is rare, and finding a way to explore their combined wisdoms, quirks, and talents – would be very neat and beneficial to society as a whole.

      If such a cooperative is successful, I would also hope that they would figure out a way to find the next generation of folks so that the process continues.

      1. 5

        I like it, but maybe sub Mike Pall with Roberto Ierusalimschy because he seems to meet all the same criteria except has a wider range of projects he’s involved in and presents lots of white papers and research around his projects. [1]

        No offence to Mike Pall, of course, LuaJIT is still alien software in my book and “he” still could be an anonymous group of genius computer scientists sharing a pseudonym afaik.

        [1] - http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/%7Eroberto/cvpub.html

      2. 3

        Why are there no women in this list?

        1. 47

          While I agree with the sentiment, I think the short question comes off as aggressive. Instead, you can make a suggestion to avoid putting all of the onus on the previous commenter.

          For example, “I noticed your list doesn’t have any women. What about ___ or ___? They have a proven track record on $PROJECT.”

          It brings attention to talented women in the industry and provides people with a jumping off point to learn about their accomplishments. Asking questions calls attention to biases, but it doesn’t always inform.

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            Some random posters list if 4 of their favorite open source project leaders doesn’t need to add a token woman. Asking politely would have made it harder to see how completely ridiculous this is.

          2. -1

            You mistakenly assumed the sentiment is to call out a user instead of pointing out the systems that have led to there not being a lot of women for them to include.

            The question is about why there aren’t comparably a lot of women noted in open source and not meant to call out OP directly.

            Y’all are being defensive where it isn’t needed and taking this personally instead of as a time to reflect on why open source culture is how it is and how behaviors in the current system are the problem.

            Honestly, with 23 upvotes and 22 downvoting and having to share your defense, all we’ve done instead is identify the problem even more concretely than would have happened if y’all would have taken the comment for what it was and not for what it wasn’t.

            For those of you labeling this as “off-topic” specifically, I would argue that it isn’t. I’m asking about a list in response to a comment about a list. The list is the topic in context of this thread.

            Hopefully this comes to fruition, because it’s unfortunately too relevant here. https://lobste.rs/s/lpvcsm/proposal_for_moderation_policies_no_tone

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              Y’all are being defensive where it isn’t needed and taking this personally instead of as a time to reflect on why open source culture is how it is and how behaviors in the current system are the problem.

              If you wanted people to reflect on it, then posting a pointed question is not the way to go. Something similar to this would have been waaay better at getting people to think:

              I’d love to see a few women contributors on that list too. Do you know any who would fit that team?

              I’m not here to tone police comments because I actually agree with you that we should encourage women to join us in these endeavours, but you are not helping that cause. You are creating division by using bad wording and being more focused on being “correct”. Take this loss and let the issue die down. The trenches have already been dug here.

              1. 1

                If you wanted people to reflect on it, then posting a pointed question is not the way to go. Something similar to this…:

                I’d love to see a few women contributors on that list too. Do you know any who would fit that team?

                Your new question here has absolutely nothing to do with the one that was posted. monokrome was not looking for someone to offer up the name of a woman in tech, but to discuss the reasons why there might not be one on the list in the first place.

                I’m not here to tone police comments

                Seems to me that not only are you here to tone police, but also to police the content of the comment; to divert away from a meaningful and difficult discussion of under-representation (which you have no obligation to participate in), and instead re-frame it as a pedestrian question of “could someone please identify a women in tech”.

                1. 1

                  discuss the reasons why there might not be [a female programmer] on the list in the first place.

                  Why should this discussion happen on lobste.rs? I thought we only allow content related to programming?

            2. 4

              Well, it seems that I misunderstood your comment here. I imagine that many others did too. I think that is the key issue here. Having a comment that explicitly calls out the system instead of the list would have made a difference for me. Calling out just the list makes it seem like the problem is with the person who created the list.

              As for tone policing, I do believe systemic biases exist and need to be discussed. However, I think the way we discuss them is important.

              I like lobsters a lot and I don’t like seeing discussions devolve into a locked in flame war. My comment was meant to provide constructive feedback and to take air away from destructive comments. My goal isn’t to prevent you from speaking, but to make it easier for your to be heard, if that makes sense.

        2. 32

          Cynical answer: building rep in the open source world takes a lot of time, and it’s been historically so woman-hostile that women haven’t been given a chance to build serious rep.

          Hopeful answer: Jessie Frazelle, maybe? My niche is dominated by academics so I don’t know a lot of FLOSS names outside of formal methods.

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            Speaking of Jessie Frazelle, I’ve recently learnt that she’s teaming up with a few other brilliant people at https://oxide.computer/, where you’ll find (among others) Bryan Cantrill and Steve Klabnik.

            1. 3

              Well, that’s cool :)

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            Even the women who have built names for themselves in tech, are less likely to be known by men. So there’s that. I can think of a bunch of amazing people but not specifically in open source…

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              Strange assumption. What are open-source projects run by women that people should know about?

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                Cynical comment: Not identifying as a woman, but having “seen some things” over the years, I can’t help but think that some of the reasons we don’t find so many woman leading open source (surely there are many, though!) is because it’s dangerous to put yourself out there as a woman. How many sexual violence threats do you think a woman would receive if they were the maintainer of Redis, very opinionated, and shutdown ideas because they didn’t fit the direction she wanted to take? I bet the number is not 0.

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                  You-ain’t-seen-cynical-yet comment: How many death threats do you think a man receives if they’re the maintainer of Redis, very opinionated, etc? The number is very not 0. Anyone who has ever done anything significant has been on the receiving side of some harassment. Today’s effortless communication magnifies the effect, but I’m sure there were people writing “Ο Ευριπίδης τρώει σκατά” on the walls in 420 BC. The difference is whether you let it derail you. The successful ones are the ones who ignore that shit. So why do those who persevere tend to be “privileged”? A very simple psychological reason. Perceived-privilege means having no other face-saving option. If you bail out from a visible position after receiving some harassment and you say “I quit because I felt threatened as a woman” or “I quit because I felt threatened as a person of color” or whatever, there’s a fair chance you’ll be the subject of articles praising your heroism in exposing the harsh reality faced by members of $GROUP who dare to lead. Do the same thing as a straight white male, and, well, you’re a quitter. The narrative expects success from you, it expects you to keep your problems to yourself, and you’d better not have any insecurities. Underdogs are expected to battle with self-doubt; on you, it’s childish and absurd, so forge ahead or be a failure forever.

                  1. 9

                    Or maybe it’s because those groups are often at risk in their every day life and take threats on themselves seriously due to past experience?

                    1. 2

                      That would be a pretty big mistake. Regardless of who you are, the supply of people willing to make threats still outnumbers the supply of people capable of carrying them out a million to one. The harm here comes from labels themselves.

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                        I think you’re arguing in good faith, so I’ll provide a good faith response. The problem isn’t one of existence but degree. I’ve been the target of internet outrage mobs and serial harassers, and both are terrifying. I lived through them, yes, but it’s absolutely awful to have someone constantly email you screeds from new, unblocked email addresses about how you’re awful and deserve to die. I’m also a straight (((white))) male and have only really gotten attacked over things I wrote, not my identity. Would I have muscled through it and continued writing if I had gotten 10x the amount of online harassment? I don’t know, maybe I would have managed, maybe it would have been too much for me. But there’s certainly some magnitude of abuse that would have gotten me to stop drawing attention to myself. Women and minorities get more abuse online, so it’s more likely to cross that line.

                        Summary: everybody has tolerance level, there’s probably no significant difference in what the tolerance level is for men and women, but women get so much more abuse online it’s more likely to cross that tolerance level.

                        1. 3

                          Different people do have different tolerance levels; it’s easy to see that some people withstand massive abuse, and some don’t, and the differentiating factor is self-esteem, or confidence, or arrogance, however you want to interpret it. So why do the ones with that confidence tend to look alike? Freely granted, one reason is because there is injustice in the world, and a track record of success builds confidence.

                          But that can’t be all either, and here is where my dark fear lies: by labeling people as disadvantaged, we disadvantage them. Psychology is a terribly powerful force. If you believe that the problems you face are the same problems shared by all human beings, trying to make something of our lives in an indifferent universe, then any successful human being can be a role model to draw strength from. If you believe that your problems are special, that only a few share your circumstances enough to understand, then you’re reliant on a role model who is “like you”. That mode of thinking used to be the province of moody teenagers, and growing past it was the sign of an adult — but now it’s just normal, and labeling strongly encourages it. All I want is a world where people tell themselves “I am a human being. I have been blessed with intelligence that can overcome any problem. I cannot ask for any more.”

                          1. 1

                            So, is your solution is to just ignore the problem and not talk about it? If so, I think that there has been enough proof to show that only makes the problem worse.

                            1. 2

                              No, just the opposite. If I just wanted to ignore problems and not talk about things, I think I could do that perfectly well on my own, without the aid of the internet. But because I have a foolish compulsion to try to make a positive difference in the world and help other human beings, you see me here. Thankfully for all involved, mostly that compulsion expresses itself as tens of thousands of hours of technical volunteering, but occasionally a bit of freelance philosophizing bubbles up. Agree with me or disagree with me, but kindly don’t misrepresent me.

                  2. 5

                    Less death threats than a woman receives. I’ve had multiple people threaten to murder me just because I was streaming video games on Twitch, and I’ve never had more than a dozen or so viewers. If a woman was maintaining something as big as Redis, they’d be getting more death threats than Antirez.

                    Nobody should be getting death threats, but that’s just the truth.

                  3. 2

                    I think it’s much more likely that people quit silently all the time, whether they’re URMs or not. It just doesn’t get publicized so much, so it’s not as visible. But when people quit publicly, it’s much more visible, so it’s what we tend to focus on.

              2. 3

                I am choosing not to answer this because (1) it’s beside the point, and (2) as I said in the remark you’re replying to, nothing comes to mind. I’m not clear why you felt the need to ask for something that I already said I don’t have.

            2. 2

              Yeah, the way women are treated in open source doesn’t help the situation.

          3. 1

            I was hoping people would see it this way but it seems everybody takes it defensively instead of identifying problems. Thanks for not being one of them :)

        3. 11

          What do you hope to gain by asking such a pointed question that comes across as very aggressive?

            1. 1

              To be clear: This is not trolling or off topic. This is a reply to a post that directly mentions the comment which it was replying to, and the content that this comment represents is exactly the kind of content that the link represents. I am not trolling, but want you to be aware that this behavior is being noticed.

              The constant flagging of comments only proves that flags can’t be used to do anything like banning people, because people are too immature, defensive, and unreasonable to flag properly.

        4. 34

          And here you see why Antirez wants out.

          1. 15

            Exactly, too many people in the industry spend their time stirring up controversy. Those folk do not provide solutions and just cause people like Antirez problems and a heacache. They complain and paint people that provide tremendous benefit to the company in a bad light.

        5. 18

          Go ahead, make your nomination.

        6. 11

          Why are there no Uzbekistanis on this list?

          1. 29

            Алекса́ндра Аса́новна Элбакя́н isn’t Uzbekistani but Kazakhstani (so not part of the usual US/Europe community), but definitely matches the criteria in the list, through Sci Hub challenges the status quo in ways that - in the long term - may exceed even Linus’ contributions and is even a woman (see the question up-thread for why that matters). So, there’s my nomination.

            1. 6

              I don’t know, in the long run, if Sci Hub will be more influential than Linux. But as of 2020 it’s absolutely more influential than Redis, LuaJIT, and Clojure.

            2. 3

              Hahaha, thank you for this answer :)

          2. 6

            Uzbekistanis make up 0.4% of the world population. Women make up ~50% of it.

            1. -2

              Women make up ~50% of it.

              What are you implying exactly?

        7. 1

          Because Redis, Linux, LuaJit, nor Clojure were made by women.

        8. [Comment removed by author]

        9. -9

          Because none of them has come out as trans yet.

          1. 6

            Per my sister comment, I don’t think a short, quipy comment helps further this discussion. This comment thread is potentially sensitive and I do not think we should escalate it.

            1. 6

              There is nothing we as users can do. This site is just going to continue going down the shitter unless the admins/mods start enforcing rules, or replacing the terrible, terrible, upvote-comment-tree comment format with a traditional forum layout. If I was running this site, I would ban this person (and everyone who wrote a snarky reply) for 7 days, leave the comment in-tact, and prevent people from replying to it. It’s simple and gets the message across.

              1. 2

                Could you link to the comment you’re referring to? I can see a couple candidates and don’t want to misunderstand you by guessing.

                Also, what specific rule would you like to see added and enforced?

                1. 1

                  “Why are there no women in this list?” is rather passive aggressive and in no way constructive, I think it warrants a temp-ban. It’s a zero effort cheap shot. Look at the comments that spawned from it. Would be a tragedy if lobste.rs became like HN, Reddit, or, godforbid, Twitter. </2 cents>

                  1. 2

                    Not to mention that the poster’s Twitter account is suspended – that takes some effort.

                  2. 1

                    moved reply to meta thread for the sake of conversation there: https://lobste.rs/s/lpvcsm/proposal_for_moderation_policies_no_tone#c_fu0xzl

                2. 1

                  Sorry I shouldn’t have used the word “rule”. I don’t think specific rules are strictly necessary. All I’m saying is, you’re admin, it’s your site, you have all the power and can do basically whatever you want. I feel like punishing the bad actors in a public way would fix a lot of things.

                  SomethingAwful and Facepunch had pretty good mod teams and tooling if you want something to go off of.

              2. 1

                Well, now we know why N64N64 isn’t a mod.

          2. 2

            What is your problem?

        10. [Comment removed by author]

      3. 2

        RMS fails the second criteria? If not, why did you choose not to include him?

        1. 25

          I can imagine those four working well together. I cannot imagine them working well with RMS.

        2. 1

          This comment is especially funny when juxtaposed with https://lobste.rs/s/gigoo8/end_redis_adventure#c_tf95fm - as RMS is well known for his ‘gross’ approach to sexual advances.

      4. 1

        While I understand the idea, I wonder whether such a thing is in general a good idea. You know, when someone is good and successful at X, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are also good at making others good and successful at X.

        This is based on a complete assumption. What if these people got successful because they went their own road. I think that’s what these people have in common. Following the steps of one of them closely (which might be the main thing they can provide) might be the complete opposite.

        Without wanting to go too far from that thought, I also see that in day to day work, that is people assuming they do the right thing based on someone else having done the same thing. While this of course might be true and is a good approach in many situations, it might not be.

    2. 12

      I don’t generally look at programmers as personally inspirational or “heroes” (not out of cynicism, but mostly just because programming is a career to me and a career is only a part of a meaningful life) but antirez is the first exception I always make. I remember getting started in the field professionally a decade ago working with redis, reading stackoverflow questions, and seeing replies from him to nearly all of them - it still blows my mind how he could be seemingly singlehandedly the author, designer, and community support for such a ubiquitous thing. A prolific coder who genuinely put himself into redis (which has been useful for me my entire career including as recently as this week). Kudos to a job well done!

    3. 11

      What is he referring to when he say “underground programming world”?

      1. 30

        this was also asked on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23689615

        quoting antirez:

        Yep it’s the open source, and in general the “spontaneous” development world, that happens without big money, just for hacking. This “place” once was kinda free and not observed much. Now you can’t say anything, if you don’t respect a good practice (LOL) people yell at you on Twitter. Even saying that commenting is a good idea is a problem. Not cool.

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          So true: Imagine yelling at the mason that build you a house for free.

          Even for a paid work it would not acceptable.

          1. 4

            In this analogy, if you think the mason is building your house wrong, it would be right to say something to him.

            It wouldn’t be right to yell. But given the context of people complaining on twitter, seeing yelling might just be projecting.

        2. 8

          Probably referring to things like this http://antirez.com/news/122

      2. 4

        Interesting wording.

        I thought about using “anti-commercial” for some of my projects, but felt it would require more explanatory text around it than I care to write.

        1. 3

          Maybe license it under a freeloading-corporate-hostile license [edited, was “business-hostile”], like https://licensezero.com/licenses/parity ?

          I wrote about the reasoning to do so a while back: https://blog.joeardent.net/2017/01/say-no-to-corporate-friendly-licenses/

          1. 2

            But Parity is not business-hostile, quite the contrary! A lot of the thinking behind LicenseZeros licenses, especially around prototyping and such is precisely in the license for companies. They just don’t get to use it for free.

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              I understand that’s the point, but that still means they deal with it on your terms, and you don’t need to grant any other licenses to anyone.

            2. 1

              Edited for clarity :)