Going through those links it's still not obvious what's happening. @rvagg has some kind of leadership position, has some strong opinions about codes of conduct (not the only one), and they're forking the project for that?

What?

It is unclear. Seemed like he has repeatedly used a language that some community members found offensive.

His stance against Code of Conduct, as evident by this Tweet: https://twitter.com/rvagg/status/887652116524707841 and follow up comments were considered inappropriate by some.

Even more details here: https://github.com/nodejs/TSC/issues/310

""" The TSC members were not able to reach a natural consensus on the steps forward so a vote was called on two specific questions:

(A) Should Rod be removed from the TSC: Yes or No (B) Should Rod be asked to voluntarily resign from the TSC: Yes or No

There are 13 members of the TSC. 10 members voted, two abstained, and Rod did not participate.

The vote came down 60% against removing Rod from the TSC and 60% against asking Rod to voluntarily resign. """

They had a vote to remove him, it failed. Move on!

Precisely.

I'm just wondering what would've happened if Rod was forced to resign and the other <50% voters who voted against it. Maybe a fork of NodeJS, but this time from Rod's fellows?

People are free to leave a community they feel unwelcome in.

If it's an open source software project, they are also free to fork the software and make their own project around it. While, obviously, two parallel projects divided by interpersonal issues isn't ideal and likely duplicates efforts, it's better than losing the work of either of the factions, so, given the existence of the social issues, it's quite possibly the best acheivable outcome.

Rod: "C'mon mate, did you even read it? This is worthy of discussion, not simplistic dismissal". It doesn't seem a heated or offensive discussion to me. He just posted an article and was willing to discuss it with the community.

Well at least they didn't delete the code of conduct:

https://github.com/ayojs/ayo/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

I don't see anything wrong with the tweets. I don't think Rod is a bad person, he's been involved with Node.js for years.

Try working on an open source project for 5 years and then we can talk about altruism.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the tweets too. And it seems the Node Technical Steering Committee had similar thoughts, since they rejected the proposal of expelling Rod.

The 60%/40% split on both proposed sanctions indicates that the TSC had no simple unified view of the type you infer.

Some people think and others just react, it's good to know that the majority of people on the Node.js technical committee are thinkers.

Wow, that's an incredibly rude and narrow-minded comment.

Why "rude"?

It's rude to suggest that the Yes-voters are non-thinkers.

> Try working on an open source project for 5 years

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what the people forking Node here are trying to do, though perhaps not with a particular time limit.

To be honest, for those not (already) involved in this whole debate, it is very difficult to make an informed opinion here.

What I see is a screenshot of a GitHub issue (https://twitter.com/ohhoe/status/899748838302302212) which was already redacted and does no longer provide any links. Tweet in support of "anti-CoC article" is there (https://twitter.com/rvagg/status/887652116524707841) but that alone would not assert a "harmful person" in my opinion.

I understand the fork is not on political reasons which may be very well grounded. But I don't think they are not explained to the public well enough. There must be a clear answer to "Why should I care?" but there is not. This will probably lead to ignorance and dismissal.

That "anti-COC" article is as anti-COC as James Damore's memo was anti-diversity.

What it does is highlight how speech codes can be used by the socially hyperfluent to bully and dominate the less fluent, by placing an unreasonable burden on a speaker to have 100% prediction accuracy of every potential negative response.

http://quillette.com/2017/07/18/neurodiversity-case-free-spe...

That SJWs call it a strawman is just another example of how they always refuse to follow their own rules of empathy and inclusion.

James Damore's memo was anti-diversity.

Maybe under diversity's new Orwellian definition

There's a huge difference between anti-diversity, and anti-forced-diversity for the sake of diversity.

I don't see why this is so complicated, other than perhaps it seems SJW types can't fathom the idea that hiring managers are actually capable of talking to a person, getting to know them, and then capable of deciding whether or not they're qualified for the job without checking off a list of what should be considered irrelevant qualifiers.... Skin color, penis girth, propensity for future development of diabeetus, etc.

Also, it's quite clear that you didn't read the memo at all. Maybe the Buzzfeed condensed op-ed on it. Did he have some inflammatory opinions that maybe aren't correct? Hell yeah, but they're his opinions, he said a lot of other stuff that was entirely poignant, relevant, and accurate.

This yes/no true/false BS has got to stop. You don't get to hone in on somebody's one solitary opinion that might open up conversation to a "non-safe space", cry misogynist/racist/rapist, and then auto-dismiss the rest of their arguments like you've discovered some sort of irl Konami Konversation Kode.

That's terribad debating and awful human communication.

James Demore's firing really only proves that he was mostly right.

The way this fork has been presented clearly indicates this fork has no future.

If you indeed have problems with the way nodejs is run, the first thing you do with a fork is present it upfront in your fork, with some idea on how you're going to go forward. All you see here is one issue potentially discussing some bad policies or people. wishy washy.

And discussion in another thread is almost satirical -- discussing "lifetime" of a benevolent dictator "for life". [1]

There's no clear leadership or goals for this fork.

[1] https://github.com/ayojs/ayo/issues/2

They're flipping out because of a tweet, and all it had was a link to an article against codes of conduct.

"Additionally he discussed private information from the moderation repo in the public thread, which is explicitly against he moderation policy".

I don't like such secrecy. What's going on in there? Wasn't community so important, why can't we know?

So what if that guy doesn't like CoCs? It is fine for people to have other opinions. This is another case of people over reacting over small stuff like it happened with Brendan Eich or Douglas Crockford.

Oh gee, some people need to chill out.

While I definitely see where you are coming from, simplifying people's emotional reactions to things to "some people need to chill out" belittles their feelings in a way that isn't helpful. We can support folks who are being attacked unfairly (as @rvagg appears to be from a cursory review of the "evidence" against him) without belittling those who feel maligned.

Until you realize the same people that are crying out now have been doing this before. Kas Perch, one of the agitators,

https://twitter.com/nodebotanist/status/887724138516951049

used the same tactic against Crockford last year (Nodevember conf), also without any concrete evidence other than "he made me feel bad." If you go through regular tweets of the other heckers like Kat,

https://twitter.com/maybekatz/status/900414216888139776

they're breaking their own CoC daily, but that's apparently fine because hating on white/men/straight/christian is considered PC.

Why do you give these sick people lee way is beyond me. They are bullies and they should be recognized as such.

> They are bullies and they should be recognized as such.

100% agree. I've had to previously block both of these users you mentioned for harassment over Twitter.

It got to the point where one of them started taking out of context screenshots of my Twitter stream and attempting to rally other SJW twitter users to send harassing messages to me.

I did my own research weeks ago and found that Rod didn't do anything wrong. If anyone finds evidence to the contrary, please let me know.

So are they bullies that need to be stood up to or are they stressed out folks who need to chill? Given nothing else than what is here, I would err on reading those tweets as coming from a place of struggle, not a desire for domination. Folks being unable to follow their own rules when positions are swapped is true more often of these sorts of rules than one might expect.

Line that stood out to me: "Rod retweeted in support of an inflammatory anti-Code-of-Conduct article"

If you're not 100% onboard with the politics, you're a horrible person.

While I agree with this specific point, it seems that was the "least worse" of that person's actions.

What where his really bad actions? Can't find much info.

Using non-gender-neutral pronouns and assumptions of gender, according to a post on golem.de

https://forum.golem.de/kommentare/opensource/open-source-nod...

Thanks

Could you please provide examples?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15079139

So this person's crime was being against CoCs? I seem to remember the Ruby community being similarly against this...

I can tell that this will be a productive and level-headed comment thread.

The issues page says it all: https://github.com/ayojs/ayo/issues . This is not a software project. There will be no actual code written.

Indeed. I had a look at all the brouhaha on the node.js github yesterday (I love me some open-source soap-opera drama, especially when it involves non or barely-coding SJW's - it's my guilty pleasure) and had a quick look at the commit histories of the most vocal "This guy has to go!!!1!" proponents - the code-to-noise ratio is unsurprisingly low.

I'm sick of all this drama that people create around this bullshit around wrongthink and the like.

Didn't they ever learn as kids sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me?

Surely, in OSS tons of people are going to have different opinions about many things, as long as they are respectful who cares what they think?

Seriously some people in this world need to eat a bag of concrete and harden the fuck up.

ooh, are you saying that random people don't have a right to feel safe when voluntarily interacting with others online? Get ready for the angry hordes....

People shouldn't be harassed online, but they should be open to having their ideas, thoughts and beliefs challenged in a respectful way.

People shouldn't be harassed online, but they should be open to having their ideas, thoughts and beliefs challenged in a respectful way.

My point was based on sarcasm :) Reading all the noise on GH yesterday, those most vocal in having this guy kicked out are also screaming loudest about the "need to feel safe" - for me, this usually induces a gag reflex:

- "I am going to find where you live and do something nasty to you" <-- threat to safety - "I am not sure about the value of a CoC" <-- not a threat to safety

In my personal view, all these fucking "name and shame" SJW's that sit on their high fucking horses judging people are a shameless pack of vicious fucking bullies, shrouded in virtue-signalling.

If somebody goes around in projects making threats or being grossly offensive in a general sense of the word, by all means address the situation. However, this situation - like countless others - is simply a concerted bullying effort.

I am not involved in node.js in any way, and stay very, very, fucking far away from any kind of open source participation after going through something similar with Sun and OpenOffice.org many years ago but this kind of bullshit makes me rage.

Sorry, I knew you were being sarcastic. I responded because I wanted to pre-empt potential down voters.

I agree with what you said above. Most people who bleat about safe spaces are the kind you need a safe space to get away from them.

This is probably the best possible course of action at this stage, even if I'm extremely skeptical about the longevity of the fork. The ideal scenario is to compartmentalize people who can't get along, like you would in a workplace - having two separate forks that absorb each other's changes is not too far off from that.

There's another reason too; there's a theory going around that there's a sizable pool of potential competent contributors who are currently staying away from the Node.js project (and other projects) because they feel excluded (and this is commonly used as an argument as to why policies need to be changed). This fork is going to show whether that group of people really exists; if it does, then the fork will thrive, but if it does not, then it will die.

I don't think there's much to do about this now other than wait and see it play out. The results of this fork will become obvious soon enough, and it seems that this at least will get everybody off each other's backs for a while.

EDIT: Also, let's dial down the vitriol in this thread a little. There's no point in getting outraged over something that'll resolve itself.

Open a perfectly fine PR that fixes/accomplishes something but prefix PR comment with: "Hey guys,"

Sit back and watch as you're bombarded with threats and comments about being pro-rape, a straight white male and the like

I've faced this exact scenario a few months back when I asked some questions on Preact's Gitter. Pathetic. English is not even my first language, I swear I didn't know I'd be offending someone by saying "hey guys" :/

It seems that as much as Silicon Valley preaches about being inclusive, they have a strict american-centric view of absolutely everything.

I'm also not a native english speaker and it feels like I'm walking on eggshells constantly.

This. A million times.

Especially since in other countries, terms like guys aren't so heavily gender-specific.

In some languages (I'm saying about russian) there is a written rule for such statements: if just one out of the whole auditory is a guy, you must say "Hey, guys".

can you post a link to the rule, please

Make sure you use proper [1] CoC next time you start new project. Proper as in not easy to abuse for political reason or just because some SJW decided you are wrong.

[1] https://github.com/fantasylandinst/fcop

The more I code, the more I appreciate projects and languages that are not based on a democratic committee and have a consistent unique single minded vision.

I'd rather stick to a language/framework that aligns with my own preferences, than stick to one that tries to please to a large group of people.

I feel this is the major problem with Javascript, Node, etc.

I totally agree with this... A unified vision is important in a project, that's not to say that there is a single correct way of writing something, but that for consistency and sanity each way should be unified.

The democracy exists through consumption by end users and layers in between... no internal conflicts, choice and democracy for the consumer, how is that a bad model.

People using node.js and not wanting this kind of bullshit should go on github and open an issue to remove the CoC. I would back it up for sure.

The code of conduct is unrelated to what I'm talking about.

I'm criticising design by committee.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee

For those asking what the reason of the fork is it looks like it has something to do with a code of conduct violation by one of the node developers that the steering committee voted to ignore. I have no idea what the story behind it as it doesn't seem like anyone has actually published the full story.

Regardless of the reason, this seems like a premature announcement of the project. There isn't a roadmap, list of distinguishing features, or the guiding principles. More information is definitly needed here.

Yes. Anyone can "fork" any code for any time and reason. Anyone can announce that they're doing it.

What makes this newsworthy? Is it a credible fork? What's the reason for the fork? Who is contributing?

> Current Project Team Members

> To be written

Hmmm.

Newest development: https://github.com/nodejs/board/issues/67

"We don't like the outcome, so we have to change the rules." Please note that @ag_dubs that started the shit stirring after Rod's post sits on that board and was part of that decision. Still we don't know what Rod did to her in the first place.

The previous fork was successful because a lot of the developers went with the fork and it was fulfilling an unserviced need in the community for a node built on newer versions of v8. Does anyone know if this fork has much of a chance of survival?

didn't follow the node development closely, what was this fork?

It was called io.js.

And this one is pronounced the same way?

That won't be confusing in conversation.

io.js

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Node.js#History

The previous fork was io.js, it's contributions have now been brought back under the Node.js umbrella. This new fork is almost a non-story by comparison, if it gets even a minor level of traction amongst developers I'll be surprised. Even the repo creator has half-arsed the readme.

io.js forked 2014, planning to keep io.js up-to-date with the V8 engine. Node.js foundation was later founded and later in 2015 io.js and node.js merged into Node 4.0.

This fork adds nothing, it's just a "politics" thing, I doubt it will survive past a few weeks

I'd be surprised if it survives into 2018 as anything more than "we copy commits from upstream and consider ourselves a different project".

First: I like the name!

That said, it is a bit unfortunate to fork or at least to try to fork a project like Node.js over these reasons. Although it is quite likely that the fork was mainly created to pressure the Node-devs to remove rvagg from the project after all.

What puzzles me: Even if we agree that rvagg violated the Code of Conduct, I am not sure that this should be enough to remove him from the TSC (Technical Steering Committee). Here are the alleged violations, so that you can decide for yourself: https://twitter.com/ohhoe/status/899748838302302212.

"Rod should have predicted the kind of response this tweet received"

I was on the fence until I hit that part. The tacit admission that they're holding him responsible for what other people are saying on Twitter is all I need to know. They wanna feel like righteous warriors defeating evil.

Heads I win, tails you lose situation. If you say something uncivil, you are guilty. If you are perfectly reasonable and somebody trolls and curses you out on twitter, you are still guilty, because you "should have predicted" they'd do that if you disagree with them.

Since the comments say this is probably due to political reasons, I feel like this fork would mean a lot more if it included contributions that were rejected by nodejs as well as a communitity of contributors to keep this fork active.

If we applied this CoC to Linux, Linus is probably long gone by now.

There was a CoC on Drupal and surprisingly it wasn't until a few months ago it became a serious issue. Sometimes people can put the smarm aside and be legitimately helpful.

I've been clicking around on twitter and github for five minutes and there seems to be zero specifics about what actually happened.

What's with the secrecy? Not saying this is a non-issue, but the best way to present your issue as a non-issue is to be this vague about what you're complaining about.

Would you rather use good code by a shitty person or shitty code by a good person?

Good code. Shitty people are replaceable. Good code are priceless.

Good code from a shitty person every time.

A person's politics are immaterial to the outcome.

If reiserfs was the best fs around, you bet I'd still be using it.

Are they seriously forking the project because they don't like one person involved in it?

And that the rest of the community is supporting his alleged abusiveness (e.g. by voting to keep him on board). It's not just because they dislike him, it's because the community in general seems fine with his kind of behavior.

Not that I am supporting it, just explaining why in their view this is bigger than just him.

Blog post: https://medium.com/@mylesborins/effective-immediately-i-am-s...

Every time I see something about NodeJS, an image of a flaming dumpster overflowing with left-padded trash comes to mind.

I've never seen a technology deep sixed not by its technology, but by its politics and ideology.

Node.js can, of course, merge in any changes of merit that this fork produces. Especially since the fork isn't for technical reasons they are unlikely to diverge in fundamental ways... Atleast until the fork is abandoned entirely for providing no value over node.js -- especially if they don't keep up with the upstream progress.

And, of course, so can the fork with all changes of merit that the mainline project produces. In the end, the decision between the two will be based on momentum and politics (as in: will the fork produce enough shiny Medium posts and HN buzz to get people to switch to them, or pressure Node into backpedalling and getting rid of Vagg?), unless the fork actually can't find enough competent technical people to just keep track of and merge the mainline changes.

I was assuming the fork wouldn't consume code from the project that they disliked for political reasons, since it would indicate an admission that the main-project was being successful and executing with their current policies and staff.

> Humans are more important than APIs and Benchmarks.

https://github.com/ayojs/ayo/blob/zkat/values/VALUES.md

What, again?

If it ends up having a similar impact like IO.js, I would say, why not. Fork it every other month, I wouldn't care.

If this is less "technical issues need to be resolved and we need to be agile" and more "I hate the other person so I won't work with him/her" though, then it would just cause problems all around the community.

Why, again?

rvagg responds:

https://github.com/nodejs/CTC/issues/165#issuecomment-324798...

This literally already happened once over a minor argument and a week later they got back together. Why...?

Specific issues causing Ayo's creation: https://thenewstack.io/node-js-forked-complaints-repeated-ha...

I have yet to find any good reason for this fork, but I wish the forkers all the best. If they can actually make something better, I'm sure we'll switch. Until then I see no reason to not support Node.

What's the reason they forked/main difference from Node.js?

From an issue:

> I'd be open to re-merging if and when the problems plaguing Node.js are resolved. Problematic people removed; use of "policy" as an excuse ended; power structures reorganized to emphasize community over tech. So far though it seems like there's little desire to fix these problems from those with the power to do so.

Silly node, emphasizing tech.

Tech is nothing without people behind it. I don't think it's stupid to take a few moments to think about whether driving away some members of the contributing community away is worth it for what was said.

emphasize community over tech

...speechless.

client: Why is there only clear text and flashing ads on my screen?

developer: Oh, yes - we implemented the new ayo libraries!

client: This looks like shit. Give me my site back!

developer: but, you don't understand! The new libraries are great, they emphasize community over tech!

client: [......]

client: [calls her P.A.] Richard, go find me a new tech team.

'This project is bound by a Code of Conduct.' in bold has probably something to do with it..

That same comment is in the Node.js readme as well. And if Ayo.js was objecting to the code of conduct, then they would have removed it when the edited the rest of the readme.

https://github.com/nodejs/node

I think they don't want it removed, they want it enforced and some people kicked out?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15079139

Lack of seaworthiness in nodejs

We are fixing too many problems by forking, please stop!

What is the reason for the fork ?

Seems to be disagreement on either architecture, failure to implement specific features or fix specific bugs, and angers over the policies of the node.js maintainers.

From the issues, it sounds like there is some sort of political dispute.

https://github.com/ayojs/ayo/issues/4

From an issue:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15079139

SJW rage, it seems.

SJW rage is good, actually.

Here we go again... ?

Then again, this doesn't seem anywhere near as crazy as the IO.js days.

Why not Aye.js? IYKWIM

Aye! Oh!

Ever since SCSI I can't say that anyone will have success trying to encourage people to pronounce their project names in a certain way.

Good luck to them though and anything that improves the node space is welcome in my book. Forks included.

Relevant wikipedia article:

> Almost a full day was devoted to agreeing to name the standard "Small Computer System Interface", which Boucher intended to be pronounced "sexy", but ENDL's Dal Allan pronounced the new acronym as "scuzzy" and that stuck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI

Scuzzy has more character to it.

I'll never pronounce GIF as JIF though.

Sounds like BS.

Possibly relevant:

Eric S. Raymond: Why Hackers Must Eject the SJWs (2015)

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6918

Oh brother.

The awesome-django issue here is full of BS. https://archive.is/dgilk

Good christ, I can't believe I'm responding to an ESR blog post, but this "djangoconcardiff" account joined Github [1] the same day every comment in that thread was posted… which was, by the way, months after the DjangoCon in Cardiff wrapped up. How do people not see that whole incident as the bad-faith troll that it clearly is?

[1]: https://archive.is/UDFZt#selection-193.0-193.16

It clearly is bad-faith. Is it just a random troll? Not likely, since there are several other similar incidents.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15079139 and marked it off-topic.

Oh good, I'm glad these SJWs won't be involved in Node.js anymore. Thanks!

Amen

Brace yourself. SJWs are coming after software projects this year.

I'm pleasantly surprised PHP has remained largely SJW free, probably because it's not trendy.

I imagine microcontroller software development stays free of them too, largely because of the barrier to entry.

> I imagine microcontroller software development stays free of them too, largely because of the barrier to entry

The barrier to entry on maintaining a project like Node is large enough...my guess that nothing useful in terms of code or concepts will come from this fork.

Only screams and tantrums.

That's why I think entering development should be harder. This "everyone can code" trend only resulted in worse job candidates and a lot of people doing politics instead of coding.

I think that is wrong way to think about it. If, say, we do enforce some "barrier to entry", it would probably be some education and certification to be eligible for software development. The SJWs will make sure that they will be prioritized to be eligible for those certificates, even if it means to change the eligibility criteria to do so. And then they can basically use it to kick everyone out of software development, except for SJWs.

I think we should keep it as it is and wait it out. They will find something else in a couple of years and move on.

I enforce a "barrier to entry" myself when I interview someone though. If they're less than highly competent, I don't allow them to join the company I'm interviewing for. Others have this mentality of "letting everyone in, we'll train them later", especially if doing so serves other (non-technical) political or social agendas.

He seems like a candidate for being a douchey provocateur. Tech-libertarian too?

It's hard enough having the JS community taken seriously with the zeitgeist framework changing too quickly.

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