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Comment by jszymborski | Hacker News Reader

I love Mr. DeVault's work, and think he consistently shows integrity in his work, to say nothing of his incredible productivity and engineering.

That said, in my time following his blog and Mastodon toots, he's prone to making these hot-takes that take down successful projects that do a lot of public good, but don't tick every check. His repeated criticism of Mozilla is a good example of this.

It often feels like cutting off ones nose to spite the face. Without the Mozillas and OpenWhispers of this world, we've no hope for the DeVaults which create incredible feats of engineering that tick all the ideal boxes but lack some of the creature comforts (e.g. sr.ht, wayland, etc..)

I'm optimistic for the future, and the projects started by Moxie and DeVault are a large part of it.

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I appreciate your feedback, and I try to be more balanced with this kind of article these days, and publish them less often. However, I'd like to point out that I've always strived to find other resolutions to these problems first - I spoke with Moxie and others involved in Signal at length before writing this article, and only wrote this as a last resort. With organizations like Mozilla, I have also spoken directly to some of those responsible, though it's more difficult with a larger organization, and waited until a long-term pattern of bad behavior had been established. I make these criticisms because I want them to live up to the ideals they proclaim - it's with the hope that they'll change for the better.

> I make these criticisms because I want them to live up to the ideals they proclaim - it's with the hope that they'll change for the better.

Thanks. It's important that projects are held to high standards, even if they're hard to achieve. Otherwise there'd be no pushback against pure pragmatism.

I'm sorry you're getting downvoted. Though I disagree with some of your stances on OWS and Mozilla, your articles are always thoughtful and there is never a doubt you're earnestly fighting for a better world w.r.t software.

I've been seeing him get downvoted frequently, often for well written and thought out comments. I suspect there is a non-negligible number of people who just vote based on username.

Do you have any examples of well-written and thoughtful comments by ddevault that were downvoted?

Many of the comments I see from him violate the guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Many of his blog posts (4 out of the last 5 submissions from drewdevault.com) are ill-informed and angry rants about a technology or company. These discussions generate a lot of heat but little light; it’s not surprising that they are downvoted.

>Many of the comments I see from him violate the guidelines at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Having gone back and re-read many, I have to agree about most of the downvoted items though not all. I do agree with most of them though, so that's why I felt this way.

That being said, most of the comments I saw that could be considered to be breaking the guidelines do have substantial content, but are ended with/include non-negligible snark.

> Many of his blog posts (4 out of the last 5 submissions from drewdevault.com) are ill-informed and angry rants about a technology or company. These discussions generate a lot of heat but little light; it’s not surprising that they are downvoted.

None of these were posted here by ddevault. His statement about writing them is above, so presumably you've seen it already.

I would like to add, I use much of ddevaults software on a daily basis, and have found it to be some of the absolute best I've ever used. As such, I tend to give what he says at least a moment of thought.

Also, I still stand by my earlier statement, as [0] was at at least -2 before I originally found it.

I honestly can't understand why it would be downvoted otherwise.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24122834

I agree that the post you linked to was downvoted unfairly.

Many of his subsequent posts have been fairly downvoted.

I think some of his downvotes are from people who have interacted with him elsewhere. His reply to one of my comments is why I’m using this alternate account.

His recent post about pkg.go.dev misrepresented the facts.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24023998

He frequently takes an absolutist stance, often assumes negative intent, and is at best abrasive.

Here are some examples:

https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/mail-for-good/issues/357

https://github.com/kisslinux/repo/issues/100

> I would like to add, I use much of ddevaults software on a daily basis, and have found it to be some of the absolute best I've ever used. As such, I tend to give what he says at least a moment of thought.

It’s your call but I would be hesitant to use anything by him. How would he respond if I report a bug or open a feature request?

> Many of his subsequent posts have been fairly downvoted.

> He frequently takes an absolutist stance, often assumes negative intent, and is at best abrasive.

I don't disagree about this. Having gone back and reread many of his comments, they do come across as aggressive, even if I agree with much of the contents.

> It’s your call but I would be hesitant to use anything by him. How would he respond if I report a bug or open a feature request?

I don't know to be honest. That being said, his absolutism/idealism make me a little more comfortable with using his software, as I can be reasonably sure it's being held to a high standard.

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