Contributing to OSS considered “dangerous advice” | Hacker News Reader

Contributing to OSS considered “dangerous advice”

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52 pointsstarman10055 comments

Astounding. I work for a professional open source company, after many years of working for (not open source) companies.

Open Source is more inclusive, more altruistically driven, and better in every way I can imagine.

I am dumbfounded by the premise of the article. I have no idea what it could mean.

I don't understand what the problem was with her advice. Was it because she didn't start with "in my opinion" or some other qualifier?

There isn't any problem with her advice. There is a problem with the hosts. The suggestion that encouraging contributions to OSS might expose someone to being harmed in some way is absurd. You may as well say nobody should go to the grocery store - there might be a racist hiding in the frozen food section!

> The suggestion that encouraging contributions to OSS might expose someone to being harmed in some way is absurd.

Ironically enough, given the way this woman has been treated, and with CoC's that are explicitly open to being aggressively abused against "undesirables" of all sorts being increasingly ubiquitous in the OSS community, this suggestion is becoming less and less absurd by the day!

I'd like to understand this better.

Is the microaggression the implicit assumption that you should be able to handle the potentially negative people you encounter in the OSS community?

I think the microaggression is not explicitly stating that those negative experiences exist while making that broad statement ("contributing to OSS is a good way to get started"), and thereby disregarding/minimizing/ignoring the people who had those experiences, harming them.

Oy. An article or talk where every point includes a disclaimer (or even a YMMV) would be pretty tedious. Katie started her talk saying it was an anecdote and it's too bad that a blanket statement in the preamble isn't good enough.

Oh, I don't disagree, just passing on what I understood from the tweets :)

I always had my suspicions about Mrs. Paul!

"microaggressions" and "othering". What is this nonsense. Is this how people behave? Why is this considered acceptable? Someone musters the time and courage to come speak freely at your event, and this is how they are treated? Maybe all meetups should just be a cutout of Ghandi at the podium with a static code cheat sheet on the projector to ensure nobody is offended.

You'd be surprised how many people get their panties in a twist at the mere mention of Ghandi.

I don't understand how "tech involvement is harder for URM" as URM appears to mean "unaccompanied refugee minors"??

Can someone shed light on that?

URM = "Under-represented minority"

Cool, thanks.

I don't work in programming but know quite a few people through their contributions to OSS/software, but many of them I don't even know what sex they are, nevermind what characteristics they hold that are minority in their locality??

It seems really unlikely that any personal characteristic beyond your programming ability (and not even that necessarily, UX/support/bug reporting/etc.) could inhibit you from contributing to OSS?

I mean so people look at pull requests and say "does this smell like curry to you?".

Is it a genuine issue?

This whole movement for having CoC in open source projects came about as a side-effect of the use of CoC for physical conferences, meetups, workshops etc. etc.; stuff where "is X being unprofessional to the point of outright aggressing on others, or making them feel unsafe to be here" can be critically important, and even the level of "diversity" at an event can be easily assessed and alter perceptions of 'belonging', ease-of-cooperation and the like in rather clear ways. The people involved simply thought of CoC as "good", and just weren't thinking about "hey, does this stuff really apply to computer-mediated collaboration? Is this even relevant?" It simply wasn't on their radar.

I don't think it's that simple. Sure, some things might not translate to digital communication, but many do.

Yes, it happens quite a bit, at least if people dare to use their actual identities for their contributions instead of hiding behind something neutral.

I agree that people should be able to use their actual identities and receive the same treatment, but it's worth noting that in the programming world most people create accounts that either simply don't show their identities or obscure them. That does seem to be changing rapidly, though, and I wonder why.

I mean, right now in this very thread the 3 commenters are "0815test", "detaro" and "pbhjpbhj". For most people I've worked with on OSS, I couldn't tell any personal details if I tried.

(I do think this varies by community: in the Javascript world I usually see Github profiles with real names, a photo, location, and a bio... for C, you'll see mostly default photos, non-identifying usernames and no-nonsense bios)

>in the Javascript world I usually see Github profiles with real names, a photo, location, and a bio... //

But do you bother to do a join to see if the people are URM in their locality? Like you need to know if someone is in Nigeria, Nepal, Nebraska, or Nagasaki before you can say they're an URM? OR are we supposed to only care if someone is an URM in a particular area of USA -- which would be superironic.

It seems so antithetical to the concept of contributing to OSS, any insights in to the people who are being prejudiced about people's code contributions?

I believe in being careful with words, for sure, but having to modify and monitor every piece of publicly accessible content because it may be triggering or aggressive is just too much. I feel like I must mention that I am a left-wing, very liberal woman but I disagree with the culture we seem to have created where we must talk softly around the issues for fear of offending someone.

We, as a people, must be able to accept criticism and learn to live with hardship. The world isn't a bunch of unicorns and marshmallows. Life can be hard and the more resilient you are, the better you'll be able to deal with those hardships. You're not going to strengthen and grow as a person if everyone around you kowtows for fear of upsetting you.

The argument is not that the advice is aggressive in itself, but that it should have been accompanied by a warning about the potential bad experiences in contributing to OSS, much like one might warn that a beach we're recommending can have particularly strong currents.

EDIT: actually I'm wrong; the argument is both that it should have been accompanied by a warning, and that not doing so (and stating it in a generalized way) ignores the experience of people who already had a bad experience contributing to OSS.

It's not like the beach analogy unless you think bad experiences are somehow intrinsic to OSS.

It seems more like "$beach is a lovely clean beach" and someone gets upset because they went there and someone had dropped a piece of litter.

This is non-news. Someone who shouldn't be in charge of enforcing CoC comes into contact with someone who has the good fortune of possessing common sense.

Its important to try to be as inclusive is possible - the community engagement person is wrong, but ultimately with their heart in the right place.

Its also important to use your brain, read the room, and if something makes someone uncomfortable, let their voice be heard.

Next.

Haven't seen that much constructive examples of applied CoCs to be honest. But I agree, non-news.

can someone explain this in plain English? I read the tweets but I don't get it. Thanks.

It's pretty hard to explain.

Some meet-ups and projects had a problem with people being fucking arseholes. They developed "codes of conduct" to help them deal with those harassing abusive people.

This woman gave a talk to this meeting. She described her experience of working in open source. She was careful to say it worked for her but might not for other people; she was careful to say that it was anecdotal.

Someone at this meeting thought that she should have given stronger warnings about open source. That person is saying that by not giving the bigger warning the speaker was performing a micro-aggression against all the other people who've had poor experiences in open source because she was supposedly erasing their experience.

They're saying the speaker violated the code of conduct.

When the speaker asked for clarification the meeting organisers didn't apologise for making a mistake; they persisted in their description of the speaker as someone who violated the CoC.

So, that's roughly what the meeting organisers think. Clearly, they're wrong. Micro-aggressions are a thing and they're something we should be mindful[1] of, but this isn't an example of a micro-aggression. And there's a difference between a woman saying "I had a good experience in open source, but other people might not" and for example a man saying "there are no problems in open source development you just need to toughen up".

[1] Mostly because people who are oblivious to micro-aggressions tend to be taking discriminatory actions that potentially leave their companies open to lawsuits.

So we're supposed to simply know what other people's past, present, and future experiences may or will be?

Wouldn't using indicators like class, race, and gender to make these assumptions be a micro-aggression in and of itself?

E: To be clear I am honestly curious. This whole argument gets into a circular reasoning of "oh you should just know you silly cis het male, if I have to tell you it won't make a difference/defeat the purpose."

> we're supposed to simply know what other people's past,

Can you tell me how I can reword "be mindful of" to avoid the implication that you need to know anything at all about other people? Because that's not what I wanted to say. What I wanted to say was "being aware of micro-aggressions is a small part of not being a complete cunt".

The issue I have is the goal posts are constantly moving in an ever frustrating way.

In one setting being mindful of one aspect that may affect the group will be acceptable but may be perceived as a slight with another group of listeners.

It truly feels like a no-win situation.

Yes, I do think micro-aggression is real, but when disparate groups, even if they are morally or politically aligned, have vastly different definitions it becomes a tool to oust instead of include.

I don't think the problem is with how you worded it. I think the problem is with what happened at the meeting. How was the presenter supposed to know, before receiving feedback, that someone would consider her words to be "othering"?

But DanBC explicitly said the person admonishing the speaker was wrong, so how are you expecting him to answer that?

I wasn't. I was agreeing with DanBC, not arguing with him.

Speaker said something very innocuous to the everyday, reasonable and sane observer, but someone took offense because they're too sensitive and is using some Code of Conduct as their "reasoning."

While I completely agree there is aggression in the tech world, and much of it aimed at women, this context-less nit-picking is getting out of hand. CoC's shouldn't be used as a weapon against well-meaning people who actually did nothing wrong.

She suggested people 'contribute to OSS'; the organisers told her it was against the event's code of conduct because it was a form of 'micro-aggression' and 'othering' (whatever that means).

It took me a while to work out what the problem was too - but you need to read the screenshots in the first tweet, or at least the last one. (I clicked and the first one opened without indication of more, and seemed innocuous.)

You very clearly do get it, since you posted it to HN.

no. but I can summarize. it seems (after I read the whole HN thread) that the issue is that many OSS communities are pretty hostile places and the speaker didn't mention that.

Ah, so we should not work towards inclusiveness because it could be scary.

Here's one of my opinions: Everything anyone ever says is their own opinion based on their own experiences.

Here's another: We'd all be better off if we held the opinion above, and remembered it when assessing what people say. We'd be able to interpret statements like "Contributing to OSS is awesome!" as "In my own experience, contributing to OSS has been awesome", where such an interpretation doesn't erase or override one's own opinions and experiences. Not saying this is easy to do, just that it is beneficial.

You get that automatically if you try to be charitable when interpreting somebody's words. More often than not, this will put you on the same page as the person you are talking to.

Actually, I think it's easier to remember it's always an opinion than to always be charitable. Maybe I really don't like a person and so it's very hard to be charitable in a given moment, but that person's statements are still their opinion and don't get to override my own experiences.

No, sometimes people are trying to state facts about the world. Those aren't opinions. Sometimes they're wrong.

Regardless what they think they are doing, they are still stating their own opinion. If we can try to interpret things in this way, even "I am stating a fact" becomes "I believe I am stating a fact."

You have erased the usefulness of the distinction between facts -- which are statements about the world that we believe to be true -- and opinions.

The burden of proof is different.

Setting the term "facts" aside for a moment, I don't perceive a difference between "statements about the world that we believe to be true" and "opinions."

When people make statements about the world that they believe to be true, all of their subsequent actions reflect that high priority belief, and disproof causes major re-evaluation of everything.

When people express opinions, they may not act subsequently in ways that are in accordance with the opinion, and may change the opinion with more or less disruption to the rest of their actions.

I used to like cottage cheese, and don't anymore. This has no major effect on anything except my consumption of cottage cheese. I believe in everyday physics so much that I consider them facts, and would have to restructure everything in my life should gravity re-adjust to being 5% stronger tomorrow.

I suppose this is the natural consequence of making "microagressions" a thing. What a time to be alive.

I think microaggressions are definitely a thing, but the term is being misused here.

I'll go further: it's very common for abusive people to intentionally misappropriate the vocabulary of people they abuse. This ranges from "telling me to clean up after myself is a microagression" to "we're going to name our fascist party socialist LOL."

Someone's waving their power around, plain and simple.

EDIT: also, this thread is going to be baaaaaad.

Perhaps, but I think sometimes we are very eager to label people as abusive or toxic as a shortcut to understanding them. So I would avoid being too casual with permanently categorizing behavior of abusers.

I have also seen mental illness lead to behaviors that one could call abusive, gaslighting, etc. The wrong kind of label doesn't get those people where they need to be.

I agree, but one persons microaggression is anothers milliaggression.

So perhaps the best way is openness and receptive communication on all sides.

A: maybe you didn't mean it, but when you said _____, I felt it was subtle a slight to ____ or I had a bad experience with that.

B: hmm, you're right I didn't mean it. I will take that into consideration.

Bad reactions include:

A: I'm going to be silently angry at B and write snide things on social media. I will label them with loaded terms.

B: This is outrageous! What has the world come to with this politically correct BS?! Suddenly I have to think about what I say?!

Microaggressions are definitely a thing and one misuse of the word does not invalidate the concept. If you see a misuse of the term 'sexism' it's not okay to say "I suppose this is the natural consequence of making 'sexism' a thing." The same is true here.

I'm flagging this because the inevitable HN thread will consist only of people tripping over themselves to mock the people involved, and zero serious discussion.

I don't think you should flag it until the discussion devolves. So far, it's pretty reasonable.

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