When software offends, the pantyshot package controversy | Hacker News Reader

When software offends, the pantyshot package controversy

zdnet.com

51 pointsgrncdr76 comments

I look at the choice of "Misaka" after "pantyshot" and think this is unambiguously an example for talking about the recent topic of not tolerating assholes in open source software.

Man spends hours developing free software for the world and gives it a tongue in cheek name. World judges man and software by name, wants the software out of repository and the man gone from the planet.

I think John Cleese would like to send you all to the front line of a gruesome war – in panties, of course – to learn to deal with an actual problem.

That's a big brush you're painting with, but the core is true: this is about judging how they chose to name their project.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who changed his project name after seeing how crazy people can get over a name.

It's free publicity, after all :p

There are times where I envy the straight forward rationale of these beasts of burden we instruct in our daily routines. The name of the package is irrelevant to them, its just an identifier that represents a thing that does stuff.

As software engineers you'd hope we were some of the most logical peoples of this planet but then we find ourselves tripping over our own societal taboos and inferences we are perceiving that didn't even exist in the first place.

I mean I can understand the odd chuckle over the BackendInspector class but to take something to this level just over the name? I'd be interested to hear the full coverage that this got cause the original author appears to be completely distraught over the reaction:

http://fossil.instinctive.eu/libupskirt/wiki?name=about-the-...

Makes me wonder what does more harm. A potentially offensive name or people's reaction to said name. I'm leaning towards the latter based on that link.

I don't know how upset she really is here (the page you linked to seems pretty measured) but she's had an "us vs. them" narrative going with her library for awhile, ever since Github forked it. I can't find it now, but she had a commit-for-commit commentary for Github's "Redcarpet" fork which at times seemed unhinged.

I paid attention to this only because we helped with Github's audit of the code, and am motivated to comment here primarily as an opportunity to say:

Make sure your Markdown library is secure.

Everyone seems at some point to end up with a C-language Markdown implementation, and nobody I know of has managed to implement Markdown in C without memory corruption bugs... you know, the kind that let attackers upload their own code onto your servers.

Now this is what I'm much more interested in. Security of the code is a off-the-charts more important than what the package happens to be called. ;)

Thanks for the insight. The article suggests the author is upset due to controversy due to the name but I assume her anguish is more due to the forking of the library and what she feels is the removal of her credit?

No; Github gave her credit immediately on starting the project. She was irritated that they chose to fork her code at all, and disapproved of many of the changes. But her code, as Github found it, was absolutely not safe to run on a popular public web app.

This is so much more of a better story than the OP. Thanks for filling in the gaps, much appreciated.

Having submitted the OP, I completely agree. You never know where an informative tptacek post will show up... :)

I was surprised at how the article characterized the terms "pantyshot" and "upskirt" -- how extremely negative. My familiarity with the terms is not from porn but from celebrities who, whoops, get caught flashing their panties inadvertently in public. So to my mind this was relatively innocent activity and I would have never thought of it in the extremely negative way the article portrays it.

Also, people often have no idea how badly something like this will be viewed by others. I have seen several instances of that sort of thing here on HN and (IIRC) in every case where I have commented on it, simply informing them of how negatively their term was viewed caused them to change it (either the name of the product/site or some wording on it). They just didn't know.

Edit: Can anyone explain to me why this would be downvoted? Thanks in advance for any enlightenment.

>>So to my mind this was relatively innocent activity and I would have never thought...

Whether or not you are genuinely naïve about the terms connotations, I suspect there is a perception that you are trolling. This is in part because the original author of the package expressed the same kind of (artificial) shock when people expressed their concern over the name and responded in a very passive aggressive manner.

Ah, thanks.

No, I'm genuinely naive in that regard. I got married young and raised two special needs kids who needed all my time. So for many years, if it wasn't appropriate viewing for a small child, I was not exposed to it. And that's exactly my point: I'm fairly well read and had no idea this was something that would be interpreted this negatively. So perhaps the authors didn't either. And when you start a conversation with something that amounts to a personal attack/assumption of guilt, it is very normal to get defensive reactions which you might not have gotten had you simply inquired "Do you know how bad this sounds?" In cases on HN where someone used very offensive terms, I did exactly that -- asked what their understanding of the term was or quoted a dictionary -- and in every case they honestly had no idea and promptly changed it without any argument.

Peace.

[I] had no idea this was something that would be interpreted this negatively. So perhaps the authors didn't either.

The original author, when challenged, renamed the package to 'Misaka', an Anime character portrayed as an 11-year old who is often depicted graphically from an upskirt angle (its all pretty unsavory, frankly).

Point is... original author clearly knew what he was doing with these package names.

Point is... original author clearly knew what he was doing with these package names.

That seems very likely, but from what I have read so far, all the evidence is circumstantial and guilt is being inferred. So it is still possible it's a stupid mistake. Seriously. (Perhaps there is damning, definitive evidence out there. But what I have read so far contains no smoking gun.)

Possible, yes. But so absurdly unlikely that I find it strange to seriously suggest the package maintainer did not know what he was doing.

Possible, yes. But so absurdly unlikely that I find it strange to seriously suggest the package maintainer did not know what he was doing.

There has already been evidence posted here that the woman involved in the project, like me, had some idea it was kind of risque but no idea just how negatively it would be viewed. So far, no one has posted any definitive evidence to the contrary -- it is all circumstantial. And I have repeatedly seen instances of this on HN and in every case, simply politely informing them of how negative it was got them to change it. I think it is far from "absurdly unlikely" that they vastly underestimated how negatively this would be viewed.

We're talking about two different things. You're referring to the female author of Panyshot, who was a non-native English speaker who did not know the full meaning of "pantyshot". I'm talking about the author of Upskirt who is a native English speaker and changed the name of his package to that of a young anime character famous for upskirt shots.

We're talking about two different things.

I think we are talking about two different things only I would frame it as "I'm talking about assumption of guilt (and how rampant and problematic that is) vs actual proof" and you seem to be talking about probability. Given how this conversation has gone so far, there is probably no point in trying to further clarify my intent or meaning on that point.

Peace.

I meant we were talking about two different people - I was not talking about the non-native English speaker who clearly did not know the full meaning of the word.

I submit that evidence (I hesitate to use the word "proof" since it can have implications of certainty) is all about probability. You have to weigh the probabilities, always. With the native English speaker, I find that his words on the matter make it overwhelmingly likely that he knew exactly what he was doing. I'm not assuming guilt, I'm concluding guilt.

Maybe I'm desensitized to this in anime, but I wouldn't think of Misaka as being famous for upskirt shots.

I wouldn't know from first-hand knowledge. I was trusting the article's author on that information.

My understanding is that the original author, feeling betrayed, has abandoned her open source project, allowing the once collaborator and suggester of the name "upskirt" to make his suggestion of the replacement name "misaka".

My familiarity with the terms is not from porn but from celebrities who, whoops, get caught flashing their panties inadvertently in public. So to my mind this was relatively innocent activity

Famous female celebrity gets out of car, inadvertently flashes underwear due to short skirt, photographer snaps said inadvertent underwear flash and publishes results for titillation and ridicule.

Innocent on the part of the celebrity, sure. But not innocent on the part of the photographer which I think squarely places this within Violet Blue's assertion of upskit/pantyshot being 'an attack on a female'.

She also characterized it as 'illegal,' which may be the case for hidden cameras, but I doubt it is the case for celebrities in a public space.

In the US, it's illegal in "circumstances in which a reasonable person would believe that a private area of the individual would not be visible to the public, regardless of whether that person is in a public or private place."

I find that a bit debatable though. It seems like these laws are specifically targeting hidden cameras in public spaces. If I'm a celebrity wearing a skirt (or kilt) with no undergarments on, who has an army of photographers capturing everything I do, how can I reasonably think that my private area would remain 'not visible' when performing certain maneuvers.

I don't for a second believe it is "innocent" on the part of the celebrity, in the majority of cases. If you're not in the news, you're no longer a celebrity.

Well, honestly, I consider that relatively innocent on the part of the photographer as well, at least compared to some of the harassing things the paparazzi do. If you are a celebrity and in public, you know they are taking pictures. It's not unexpected, surprising, "gee I had no idea the paparazzi would be at the award ceremony". I consider it to be a lot more obnoxious when celebrities are harassed at home, their trash is gone through and so on. Taking a picture of a celebrity at a public event where they know they will be photographed and lucking out and capitalizing on it really doesn't strike me as evil behavior. Though I realize that Arabs found it very offensive when American publications showed some middle-eastern public figure in his t-shirt -- which I imagine is kind of like a "pantyshot" to their minds: it's his underclothes, it's too intimate and it's disrespectful. It wasn't intended that way by the Americans who published it. It never crossed anyone's mind here that a man in a t-shirt was risque.

If I was going somewhere and I didn't want people to see my elbow, I'd wear a long sleeved shirt.

Edit: This is specifically for celebrities/public people. I do agree that taking pictures of random girls in this manner is an invasion of privacy however the same common sense rule applies.

Hmm, so instead of being about non-consensual pictures of panties of random girls, it's about non-consensual pictures of random celebrities, and is thus ok? I haven't downvoted but the term is far from innocent.

So, if I run around naked in a public space, I can call any pictures of the event 'non-consensual' and 'illegal?'

Wikipedia often links to specific laws for stuff like this, you should read them if you're actually curious.

In the US, it's required that you have a reasonable expectation that your private areas cannot be seen. Which no reasonable person could have when naked in public.

If you wear a skirt in a public space, you expect people to have a level of decency and respect. In case you hadn't noticed, creeps are in the minority.

If you are famous and attending a public event, you are well aware they will take photos. If you don't want your panties published, you should take appropriate measures to avoid flashing them. It is possible to do that. If they invade your home and take photos of you in your back yard or something, sure, sue the hell out of them. But a famous person at a public event is very often seeking publicity and looking to be photographed, not trying to avoid it. So I fail to see your point.

This is still victim blaming. Just because you're a celebrity it doesn't give people some sort of license to invade your privacy. You could argue that anyone who wears a skirt is asking for it, because their panties are visible at a certain angle (but nevertheless public space). But we don't want everyone covering up just to prevent creeps getting pictures.

I upvoted you because I think your description of the normal response to this kind of unintentionally provocative language is indeed normal.

I speculate that you were downvoted, because the incident in question is fairly clearly an aberration from the normal course of events; an aberration in which someone who wanted to be playful now feels betrayed.

Thanks for your feedback, but I honestly don't know what you are talking about. Care to clarify what is supposed to be so clear? :-/

I believe the following clearly describes an aberration - an exception - to the normal course of events. In the normal course, those who use language more provocative than intended quietly revert it. In the incident under discussion (quoting from the original referenced article):

"She, not being a native English-speaker, had accepted on trust a foreign-language name for her library. According to Holden, the revelation - and the attention to her unknowing complicity - brought about with the name was so uncomfortable for her that she quit working in open source altogether."

Then, later

"Smit [a collaborator with the original author] re-named Pantyshot/Upskirt after a Japanese name. Not just any name, but popularly belonging to an Anime (adult comics) character whose superpower is electricity, and is controversial due to notorious upskirt shots of the character - most especially as she is depicted as being 11 years old."

As for my adjective "playful", I applied it to the situation because of this quote attributed to the original author:

"I did know the sexual and voyeurism connotations of the word “upskirt” and I was very hesitant to actually use it. For the record, my limited grasp of slang English means that I genuinely had no idea where it lied on the offensiveness scale, and whether it could be covered up as something more harmless (and have it be more of an innuendo than of a basic offensive word)."

Thanks.

For the record celebrities rarely "flash" their panties. Its a case of being followed around by paparazzi and the inevitable occurring. I'd actually suggest that the full implications of celebrity magazines (and how they obtain their photographs) is anything but relatively innocent.

It's weird that my only encounter with the term is through mainstream manga, not hentai, manga. Shonen Jump, stuff like that (and for the record I wish stuff like Cages of Eden and Highschool of the Dead toned that down and focused more on the plot). I wonder if its a bit of culture-shock as I would expect it is seen as "relatively innocent" in Japan.

Sexism and Racism: two cards people play all the time for ever-annoying reasons. They're the kind of arguments you "can't be against" because, how can you be against stopping racism/sexism? They're also the kind of arguments that keep sexism/racism happening. We should focus on the important parts:

Are you offended by it? - Deal with it or don't use it or politely make your opinion known to the author. Be an adult and don't "Quit Open Source" or "Ban the package" or "Rant about how Open Source developers are discriminating white males" because that just makes you look silly and chlidish.

Did you name it that way? - if you want widespread usage of your package, know that a polarizing name and one that will be hidden under the throves of porn in a search engine can impact the adoption of your piece of software. Also, it will make you look Silly and childish.

We are all educated and grown people, we should be able to make these decisions easily in our lives.

If I make a CoffeeScript to Assembly translator called "Beaner" I should at least know that Some people won't appreciate it and call me racist and probably some mexican will quit open source software forever. And I'm taking that risk by naming my package that way.

We shouldn't be afraid of being offended. I'm offended all the time and it doesn't stop me from living my life properly.

You're asking people not to have a knee-jerk reaction to offensive language, but you're having a knee-jerk reaction to people being offended. Some people might choke on their morning coffee when reviewing a pull request for "pantyshot", but the majority of us just want a bit of civility (not unlike the rules of HN).

Nobody chokes on their morning coffee when reviewing a pull request for "pantyshot". Such people ought to be sent to the front line in all-out war to learn to deal with some real issues in life.

Besides, men wear panties too. I've seen them do it.

I don't see the connection to being sent to war: It seems like you are trying to say "because this (war) is more unpleasant, you have nothing to complain about", which makes no sense.

I think he was trying to say that experiencing high magnitude discomfort puts low magnitude discomfort in perspective.

Also, knowing several Iraq veterans before and after, it seems to get you very comfortable with offensive language :p

>You're asking people not to have a knee-jerk reaction to offensive language, but you're having a knee-jerk reaction to people being offended.

Uh, yeah, and that invalidates his point in exactly what way? It's still true that people are overreacting. If somebody is offended by the name of a freaking software package, I'd wager that this person has other problems to work out.

It's also true that "sexism" (and various other *isms) is a completely abused term that simply serves as an "argument" that nobody can counter, since if anybody does, he must be a sexist.

Besides, I think that "civility" includes not whining to everyone over being personally offended by something.

It's not at all an analogous situation. You're talking about offending people with the name of a package you wrote. This is talking about offending the person who originally wrote the package by suggesting a name, the connotations of which she didn't fully understand. Her name is now associated with it. This isn't a problem of someone childishly over reacting.

Agree! It's a problem of /many/ people childishly overreacting :p

This is interesting on multiple levels. There was the Python Software Foundation's decision to be reactive rather than proactive. Then why give it such a name? Esp. since the author was a woman. Who didnt speak English, and used a name suggested by a friend(?). There we arrive at what I consider to be reprehensible behavior: to expose someone to ridicule in the guise of giving help.

I'm not sure I would say she doesn't speak English. Check out her blog post about this: http://fossil.instinctive.eu/libupskirt/wiki?name=about-the-...

Especially:

I did know the sexual and voyeurism connotations of the word “upskirt” and I was very hesitant to actually use it. For the record, my limited grasp of slang English means that I genuinely had no idea where it lied on the offensiveness scale, and whether it could be covered up as something more harmless (and have it be more of an innuendo than of a basic offensive word).

I'm not sure what to make of that, but I do think that naming software with any sort of sexual innuendo regardless of how offensive it is is a very poor choice. More than anything else, I feel embarrassed to be in tech when this sort of thing happens.

I stand corrected. Wow. Best to avoid slang in a language you dont understand very well.

Not just slang (I mean not just intentional use of slang). I used to talk to a man online who was very interested in politics. Because I am American and he was not (and I think English was like his fourth language), he routinely referred to President Bush as "your Bush". I'm female, so this made me very uncomfortable and I finally asked him "Do you know what that means in English slang?" He wasn't attempting to use slang, but boy did it sound bad to me.

There are all kinds of landmines when you try to speak another language. I have lots of humorous/embarrassing stories from growing up in a bilingual family.

Similar situation of insulting source code: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=477454

One reason you shouldn't name your software something like this is because it will be hard too google for. All the web results for this will be for the porn version of the name. You shouldn't name your software something that's hard for people to find

Kind of the inverse of rule 43. If you search for porn long enough on the internet, you will end up with software.

Well, reading the actual explanation page by the author of libupskirt, it's obvious she's not upset by being tricked into using that name, but she's upset because of the reactions of other people to that name.

She's quite clear she "did know the sexual and voyeurism connotations of the word “upskirt”", but she was caught completely surprised by the shitstorm created by people that felt offended by it.

So if you're looking for blame, blame the white knights on their high horses of political correctness, for giving somebody so much shit over what could have been just a childish joke [like there are many others, as pointed out ITT], that she just wanted to quit and have nothing to do with the entire shitbasket anymore.

Just read it. Even after knowing exactly what it meant, her horror is at the reaction of the angry PC mob, that is making this word out to be much worse than the harmless innuendo she intended it to be.

This woman is clearly intimidated, so much she's making blanket apologies left and right and just wants this to be over. But ask yourselves, who's she intimidated by?

Serious question: can we fork the library, s/pantyshot/somethingelse/g, submit it to PyPI, and then just nobody use the original?

No, because it would be hypocrite to rate the importance of the name higher than the value of the code, and then nevertheless try to steal the code from the guy who spent all the time developing it.

The guy wrote the code and gave it a tongue in cheek name. Deal with it. What the hell is wrong with this world? Moral outrage in the sub-urbian latte crowd? Pillows not fluffed enough?

Since when is forking open source code 'stealing' it?

Oh boy, what can of worms am I opening here...

Since when is forking open source code 'stealing' it?

According to the FSF? Usually when you do something with it that RMS doesn't like. GPLv3 anyone? (Sorry I couldn't resist.)

Seems relatively simple. This Frank Smit guy loves anime in a borderline-creepy way and is, like the original developer, not a native english speaker.

[1]: http://61924.nl/04-11-2011/ubuntu-10-dot-10.html

[2]: http://61924.nl/about.html

Just curious, but how is this borderline creepy?

It isn't. It's just people talking about things which they know next to nothing about. Move on, nothing to see here.

Tbh, I slightly frowned when I installed the unicode-nazi python package last week. It's just not what you want to call your package..

Uh, since it's quite obviously a pun on "grammar-nazi" I fail to see your point. Even the description of the package makes it obvious:

Annoying helper module that finds unicode/bytestring comparisions and other problems.

I wonder how the hell did they focus on Misaka and upskirts... cause anyone who read/watched the material would know, that the running gag is that her clothing makes any try at pantyshot futile... and thus doesn't really care about moving in a way that would normally expose her.

I guess my astonishment comes from the fact that to me, the name reminds me not of a minor gag, but rather of the mentally-broken, war-torn 13~14yo who could take over any computer system, and use coins (and other conducting materials) as hypervelocity projectiles (thus her nickname, "Railgun").

So... once again, media jumping to worst possible interpretation?

It's not only "media" that thought he was a tool for it. The relation was made by a member of the Python community.

Python Package Index is a product of many years of effort by many people. It is not only used in hobby projects but also within enterprises. If Frank's actions harm PPI's upstanding, then he should volutarily leave PPI and distribute his packages through alternative mechanisms. All you need is for some nutcase to make fun of a prophet and lodge it with PPI for all of us to be tarred with the same brush.

Personally, I'm not surprised the name came from IRC...

> It’s not that the names were simply sexual in nature: it was that they targeted a women over the very thing that makes them a minority in the Python community in the first place: you could call it a sexual exploit.

I don't understand this part -- what is she saying causes women to be a minority in the Python community?

There's another domain where predominantly white males give arbitrary names: Physics. While there are many examples of funny or quirky names there, none of them is offensive. For the extra reason that the innuendo loses its humor after the first time you use it, and these names are meant to stick indefinately.

P.S. Also Biology, but these people are not even comfortable with sonic the hedgehog.

Biologist here.

The Drosophila community is rife with humorous (and sometimes offensive) gene names like "Cheap Date" (ethanol sensitivity), "Ken and Barbie" (genitalia fail to develop), and "Fruity" (male fruit flies show no attraction to females) -- that one was so controversial it got renamed "fruitless".

http://flybase.org/reports/FBgn0004652.html

The research communities for organisms such as E. coli tend to think this practice is immature. Genes should follow a specific nomenclature: fis (factor for inversion stimulation), mot (motility), etc.

This issue with software has been around a while, too. A ton of people dislike the name "Gimp", for instance.

Wow, i didn't know fruity was a slang word for gay. But see, the community changed it eventhough it's a milder case than the one presented here (as "pantyshot" presumably refers to a non-consensual/harassment act (not that i am not sympathetic to gay drosophilas))

Well, I'd better go rename my Burger package before it offends vegetarians.

It's not the same thing. As the article discusses, it's not just that the name is sexual but that it refers to an act that victimizes its subject because they are unaware it is happening.

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