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Comment by threatofrain | Hacker News Reader

Why does one’s intuition bring up classiness of all values at play....

Well, this is precisely a class conflict: the lower-class values of liberty, competence, autonomy, and honesty on Raymond's side, and the upper-class values of purity, etiquette, exclusion of the wrong sort of people†, and getting along well with the right sort of people, on Ehmke's side — although you might say that her etiquette is "more honored in the breach than in the observance", in our modern mangling of the phrase.

The question is really which set of values will determine the future course of the Open Source Initiative: the values of foulmouthed mullet-wearing truck drivers or the values of refined ladies and gentlemen who couldn't possibly, oh, how simply dreadful.

† Personae non Gratae, you might say.

Out of interest, do you say that liberty, competence, autonomy, and honesty are lower class values because you believe the upper classes do not value these things?

I'd agree that ESR might have received a better reception for his point of view if he'd expressed himself differently though.

No, generally speaking, people agree in abstract terms on what virtuous principles are, such as honesty and courtesy; they disagree about what virtuous acts are, because in every act we resolve a conflict between conflicting virtuous principles, necessarily subordinating lower values to higher ones.

So you are saying ESR has a conflict between a virtuous principle which led him to use obscene language (is that autonomy?) and the upper class virtuous principle of courtesy, and he's subordinated courtesy because he's working class?

The GP said it already. The example virtues are honesty and propriety. If you value honesty over propriety, you'll speak honestly at the cost of speaking politely. If you value propriety over honesty, you'll either not speak or speak in a more polite/roundabout way to avoid conflict, even at the cost of honesty.

That's how it seems to me, anyway. God help us.

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