Hacker News Reader

Comment by weboob | Hacker News Reader

Or wetbook, comparaboob, or boobsize? http://weboob.org/applications/

Oh dear, it's clearly intentional and, frankly, not that funny. The concept is kind of neat, but I don't think I will use these people's software.

It's a great filter for those that care more about names than code.

It's not a question of caring about names over code, it's a question of dealing with software written by people who are at best emotionally immature and are likely to have negative values of half the population. This is a warning sign about the quality of the code too. Cultural assumptions can make a big difference in the design of a program.

I also wouldn't use software written by white supremacists no matter how well-written it is.

Why it's a good filter. It deters a large portion of those that attack someone based of silly jokes the authors may have made in the past or present and would judge without speaking to the person before hand to get a better view of who they actually are.

Judge the code for technical merit and not the assumed character of the author. Denying work based on social correctness only curbs engineering and scientific progress in the long run over bikeshedding matters.

Facebook is a great piece of software. Facebook is also breaking any privacy rules they can get away with breaking. Which way should we judge them? Sorry, for some people it's both.

You probably don't use a lot of things, right? Did you do a background-check on the thousands of developers that contributed to all the software you use? Did you check the smartphone you use wasn't built in modern slavery facilities? Did you check in what conditions all the raw material needed for it was extracted, what countries and their political situations? Did you check the ethics for all the chain of the food you eat?

The fact that I'm a bad person doesn't change the same argument even you are making - it's a murky world out there.

You're comparing a tool which you have source for and control over with a service which is out of your control. The comparison is of apples and oranges.

Compare something like flow [1], reason [2], or prepack[3] as it's tools which serves you rather than the company behind it with access to the source which is the same as the case for weboob if you want to compare against facebook. I don't see an issue with using them though as they don't collect data on you.

[1]: https://github.com/facebook/flow

[2]: https://github.com/facebook/reason

[3]: https://github.com/facebook/prepack

[4]: https://github.com/majestrate/XD

I have seen engineers on programming meme communities that identify themselves as Microsoft employees saying deeply disgusting racists jokes such as hanging Native Americans and African Americans from "red-black trees", and making fun of an internal linting tool that deals with terminology like "master/slave".

Because those jokes crossed the line and I confronted them and now you won't find them (they deleted them).

I know that behind the veil of strict HR policy compliance there are a lot of racists there.

And I am afraid the problem is not Microsoft specific... open source projects have this problem too.

For example the former Debian Project Leader, Sam Hocevar has been accused of being part of GNAA (not going to expand the acronym, you can look it up). Here he is wearing a GNAA t-shirt: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sam_Hocevar_Solution...

You can also read this thread to understand how racists are handled in the Debian project: https://debian-vote.debian.narkive.com/2R2X1Ga7/question-for...

I want to know why WebContentEdit is the only one that doesn't follow this pattern

Given the long list of contributors, maybe not all of them adhere to the same standards.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com