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Comment by burnished | Hacker News Reader

What is with the comments calling this a non-appology? Do they need a hair shirt to make sure the sinners really suffer?

Hyperbole aside its kind of jarring reading a frank apology and ownership of actions (what they did, how it impacted others, why it was bad) that then gets dismissed entirely. I wonder what those people would consider to be sufficient?

It does not seem like there is any point to a public apology. You are going to get the same response whether you frankly admit fault or apologize because some one else didn't understand your good intentions.

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If you read the entire post, it quickly becomes apparent why people are reacting poorly.

The opening paragraph is an apology. Other parts of the post undo any goodwill that might have been garnered from the apology itself.

One example:

> There is a pattern that needs to be resolved. Projects might not fully understand what joining the .NET Foundation means. We share a checklist with project maintainers on project changes they accept as part of becoming part of the .NET Foundation. That’s obviously not sufficient. We will post a new document that describes what you can expect when your project joins the .NET Foundation...

To me, this says "sooo, even though I screwed up, I'm technically allowed to do what I did and you probably should have already expected that based on the agreement you signed, but we'll make our materials even clearer so you don't make that mistake again".

It turns the problem back around on the community. I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with the rest of the post after the apology...if it was posted separately. When included in the same post, it's hard not to take it as "sorry, but I still wasn't technically wrong".

I do think the whole culture around public apologies and the hair-splitting and analysis that comes after is concerning and often unhelpful. But I think the backlash here is understandable.

The .NET Foundation is just Microsoft money trying to pretend that Microsoft isn't for-profit or pro-proprietary-software. Microsoft only tolerates open source insofar as it doesn't impede any opportunities Microsoft has for increasing Microsoft revenue. When dealing with Microsoft puppets such as the .NET Foundation, one must always remember that all of this pro-open-source project stuff is pretense and subterfuge to maximize Microsoft profits, not to enrich the open source world.

The person (affiliated with the .NET Foundation) giving this apology is on the Microsoft concentration-camp-money payroll. They are being paid to do things that will ultimately result in the sale of more proprietary Microsoft software and services.

Don't get it twisted. These FOSS project maintainers were fools to get in bed with the enemy.

(While I applaud your energy, I wanted to gently point out that the labels might not be too productive. You might be right, or you might not, but given Microsoft’s recent (very positive IMO) open source contributions, well… it just seemed a little unfair that your labels discounted it entirely. That said, perhaps “you’re not wrong” applies. I don’t know.)

Microsoft doesn't contribute to open source software because open source software is good for the world. Microsoft contributes to open source software because Microsoft wants to sell more proprietary software and services to the open source world, as more and more developers live in that world.

They realized that without significant service lock-in, people would begin to abandon things like Windows (and continue to ignore things like Azure).

This is why WSL exists (so even open source people will keep buying Windows licenses), this is why VS Code exists (and, despite being open source, the most popular plugins for it are proprietary) (to provide a privileged position for GitHub integration), this is why they bought GitHub, this is why they bought NPM, this is why they paid Docker to make dockerd run on Windows, and this is why they're trying very hard to get as many people locked in to proprietary services like GitHub Actions and GitHub Issues.

This is also why they run little shell nonprofits like the .NET Foundation.

You might be right about that. But that doesn’t change the fact that good software now exists, which wouldn’t otherwise exist, and that the software is now open source, which otherwise wouldn’t be open source. In my opinion, that counts for something.

I’ve long hoped that gamedev would make a similar transition. And although Unreal Engine et al are open source, it’s still not the default. So in other words, if gamedev as a whole behaved as Microsoft behaves now, I would be gleefully happy. But you would also be correct in saying that they are doing it “just to sell more proprietary software and services to the open source world.”

I don’t know. The reason I’m trying to take a neutral stance is because I empathize with your point of view, but also can’t shake the feeling that the hard line open source idealism of 1980’s has not achieved all the goals that it set out to achieve (to phrase it diplomatically). And so in 2021, the movement is in danger of being totally ineffective, because all of the teenagers from 1980 are old now, and the teenagers from 2021 aren’t buying into the dogma.

>> can’t shake the feeling that the hard line open source idealism of 1980’s has not achieved all the goals that it set out to achieve...

Actually it has done quite well. Not as widespread as some would like, but I think Free Software is doing spectacularly well. I would say nobody needs Microsoft for anything these day because there are great alternative, but they are creating some decent enterprise tools that may not have free equivalents.

Windows and Office though? I haven't needed those in 15 years, and that's because Free Software has achieved most of its goals.

There is no replacement for Excel. Those who think there is are either ignorant of Excel's capability, or are fooling themselves.

(Just wanted to say, it was a delightful surprise to hear you make a defense of Microsoft in this particular area. Thanks for being impartial.)

> I’ve long hoped that gamedev would make a similar transition.

Reminder: Microsoft is one of the biggest game platforms, too, and have not even flirted with the idea of open source there.

open source is open source, it is good that they are embracing open source community and contributing A LOT of resources to that. We have a lot of good softwares, framework, open code to learn and communities build by them and they're not allowed to make money from it?

You're basically saying that people who wants to make money are bad. That is just a weird judgement, laravel is building a whole ecosystem to make money, spring is building training and support around , nestjs is building enterprise support. If there is no way to make money around doing something that we love, then open source will be dead. If we are grateful as a community towards what they did, we should support them. not judge them that they want to make money :/

Reading the parent post, I found the monetary aspect less as some kind of anti-capitalist moralism, but more an observation regarding incentives:

There's nothing wrong with making money. However, when your historical business model relies on leveraging monopolistic positions to make said money, any contribution you make is tainted by your ultimate goals of embracing, extending and extinguishing competition to those monopolistic, proprietary offerings. I simply don't trust Microsoft: anything they present isn't a Trojan horse of one flavor or another; proprietary addons in vsc, all the Github nonsense, poisoned "foundation" governance structures - all of it has the effect of luring developers into doing work that benefits the Microsoft ecosystem over open ecosystems. It is naive in the extreme to assert that just because a benefit exists in any form, all harms associated with that benefit must be ignored.

Nothing wrong with making money from software. Lots is wrong with Microsoft attempting to bamboozle developers out of the rights to their work in a transparent attempt to extend corporate lock-in. When Microsoft GPLs their codebase, I'll take their contributions to open source at face value. They can take donations like everyone else.

I did not get that at all. To me it sounds like she is coming clean with what she sees as the issues surrounding the project, including poor communication. I read that as, 'another problem we've seen is that people are unclear what it means to become a member of our organisation so we are working towards improving that.'

I initially read her apology and thought it was likely a response to an overblown situation that occurs because it's on the Internet and it's much easier to assume the worst of people's intentions.

I can imagine merging a PR I made that I imagined to be obvious and fine. I probably would have just said, 'oh yeah, sorry. I'll try not to do it again. My bad.'

But then again, that's probably why I'm not the leader of the .Net foundation :-)

> I read that as, 'another problem we've seen is that people are unclear what it means to become a member of our organisation so we are working towards improving that.'

The implication though is that becoming a member of the organization allows for actions like the one she took. I do think owning up to "maybe these agreements aren't clear enough" is good, but that then seems inextricably linked to "I was allowed to do this".

The reader then needs to figure out "is she apologizing because of what she did, or is she apologizing for not being clear that she was allowed to do what she did?"

If you're one of the maintainers, the latter falls flat, regardless of intent/genuineness.

I hope your more charitable take is closer to reality.

I don't know why there would be confusion about what she's apologizing for. She explicitly stated what the mistake was.

> I shouldn't have merged this PR without explicit sign-off from the other maintainers, because it's disrespectful and rude not to follow the project’s process.

But when that is followed by an explanation outlining why they’re allowed to do what they did, and going forward they’ll try to make that more clear, how is one supposed to interpret the original apology and its intent?

The apology and the legal overview do not coexist well.

Aren’t people conflating two different things? Merging a PR when repeatedly asked not to until it got approved, and Microsoft moving repos?

Merging the PR is a personal failure for which she explicitly apologized for.

Microsoft moving repos is something that the organization has always said was possible. There’s not much to apologize there for. That has always been explicitly stated the rules.

Wasn’t just opening a pr and merging it, it was opening a pr, having a maintainer ask her to clarify/follow process, close pr, her reopen it, TWICE and then finally just merge it dismissing the maintainer

https://github.com/reactiveui/splat/pull/778

Thanks! Coming in to this cold: Starting with reading the apology and the first few comments on that page, then back here down to yours. This paints a totally different picture to the impressions I got from the preceding steps; I can fully understand the upset.

(It's weird.. I just came from that link, and was feeling exactly the same way, and then read your comment. Yes. I try not to chime in with "me too," but that PR really puts into perspective that the merge was problematic in addition to them transferring entire GitHub repositories without warning, which is generating an equal amount of outrage. I see now why it's equal.)

> 'oh yeah, sorry. I'll try not to do it again. My bad.'

This definitely should be sufficient. But hey, we are not living in that time anymore.

Public condemnation is the new normal. And a response with public self-condemnation is expected from the mob. "I'm sorry" and "I apologize" is no longer sufficient. You need to go deeper and expose the evil in your soul, and condemn your self and your conspirators, and devote you will be a new person. You might get a chance.

The promise is "apologize and this will all go away". That's a lie. Never does. Depending on where you work, you may or may not be totally screwed, but apologizing when you have done nothing wrong changes bupkis.

Why give the bullies what they want? Stand your ground:

- You can cordially invite the mob to go fuck itself.

Or, for a less confrontational approach:

- You can ignore the mob and proceed as normal for a few months until they find somebody else to hate.

It's going to be a ride either way, but these bullying tactics work only because people cave. It's a trial by fire. The people that don't tend to end up more successful afterwards, and with the added benefit of knowing who their true friends really are.

A couple of important points:

- You need to commit. If you later on back down, you are done like a cheap steak. The bullies know they own you at that point. Yes, this means you might be fired, or kicked out of your university. Might get your house torched. You're going to lose "friends". Improvise, adapt, and overcome.

- These bullies want to provoke you to violence on their terms. Don't. Especially if you're the fighting type: don't take that bait. Pretty sure Sun Tzu didn't write, "Fight precisely when the enemy wants to battle."

People do something shitty all the time, like literally all the time. But public condemnation is the new normal. But nothing you do will prevent that from happening. Mob is just being mob. The mob mentality is spreading like a disease.

You know what? You're right. Deleted that bullet point.

The problem is that an apology should not contain a ‘but…’

A self-condemnation should not contain a ‘but…’.

Unless the situation is nuanced. Which is pretty much all the time.

“Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance.”

> The opening paragraph is an apology. Other parts of the post undo any goodwill that might have been garnered from the apology itself.

This is also recognizable as “I’m sorry, but” or “I’m sorry it made you feel that way”. Both of which have meaningful applications in very specific circumstances but neither of which belong in a public apology.

To people who actually want to better learn to apologize: find a way to apologize sincerely, without inserting yourself into the space receiving the apology, then take your “but” and apply what you learned from the experience to it. Your “but” matters to you, it might be important, it doesn’t matter to the person or people you harmed.

I think this is actually a result of this post being a very savvy PR move. The title and beginning of the post make it seem like she's personally apologizing for merging a piece of code. That's all good and well -- I think her apology for that part is mostly fine. And at a casual read for a person who's just peeking in, and hasn't read the other post on that board for context, that's all it appears to be.

But (as other folks have mentioned) most of the maintainers are commenting on the rest of the post, which sort of hides behind that apology. The rest of the post addresses the real outrage that's been growing in that community -- not due to a bad merge, which is rude but somewhat understandable as a mistake, but due to the .NET Foundation essentially overstepping what the project maintainers understand as the DNF's role and authority.

That part is a complete non-apology, where the executive director of the DNF is basically saying "we're so sorry that you didn't properly understand that we could do this, we'll fix that by publishing a clearer document", and "we're so sorry that you didn't know we could just move you to our enterprise account, we'll communicate better next time". Both of these are spun as communication issues, whereas in reality they're authority issues -- the maintainers don't think the DNF should be able to just decide to do that, on its own, regardless of how well it's communicated.

I was ready to agree with you. And then I read https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/38

And then I realized: her apology here isn’t addressing the root concerns. But it’s addressing everything she has authority to address. Therefore, it’s the best apology possible, but people may be upset because e.g. her merging a PR without discussion is perhaps less anxiety-inducing than the idea that your GitHub repo can be moved without warning to a separate enterprise account (if I’m reading this correctly).

I assume she can’t address the latter, since it’s unrelated to her. But she quite thoroughly addressed the former — which is great! — but perhaps she should have distanced herself in her apology from the other happenings that people have brought up.

I don’t know. It was just sort of shocking to read “they transferred my GitHub repo without warning” without an immediate “crap, sorry! We’ve reverted that” reply. I assume I’m missing lots of context though.

She says she is the "Executive Director for the .NET Foundation". I'd be extremely surprised if this role didn't allow her input into the decision to move projects to a separate enterprise account without informing the project maintainers.

I was wondering about that too.

If that’s the case — and that’s a big if… I don’t think we should assume it’s true — then her apology probably failed to address the root outrage of the decision to move projects to the enterprise account without warning or consent.

They may be entitled to do this, but anyone with a patent is also entitled to enforce that patent. An enforcement decision needs to be made with great care. In this case, they end up sounding tone deaf (https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/39#dis... has a bunch of justifications about why their decision makes sense, and all I can do is shake my head, even though it is technically correct).

> e.g. her merging a PR without discussion is perhaps less anxiety-inducing than the idea that your GitHub repo can be moved without warning to a separate enterprise account (if I’m reading this correctly).

You're reading it correctly. There are several maintainers in that discussion who only found out today that their projects were moved from their public GitHub accounts to the DNF's GitHub Enterprise accounts. They weren't notified, and some of them only found out because they read the discussion you linked and decided to check the status of their projects.

As far as I'm aware, the projects haven't been transferred back to the accounts they belonged to prior to being moved to the DNF's account.

I was also struck with commenter’s swift label of her apology a “non-apology.” I’ve seen this on Twitter and elsewhere. It’s basically a proxy for “I don’t think you’ve suffered enough to be forgiven.” And that strikes me as honestly a little bit terrifying.

I think that this is an authentic apology. However, non-apologies are common. I think the Wikipedia page does a good job of explaining the difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology

So I'm an outsider here, but I think you're missing the point.

Sure, the post starts out as an actual apology for her actions with regards to the PR, but that doesn't seem to have been the meat of the complaints.

Then her post goes on to start making claims that people were upset because things "sound scary" but that the foundations unilateral decision to move projects under their github account actually somehow "gives them more control over their projects".

Then she goes on to make legal claims that "project ownership changes", when that does not appear to be what the contracts actually say. At this point she is litigating in public against the project maintainers when it seems the foundations purpose in life is to represent them!

There's also an implication here by putting the legal claims after the part about moving projects without the consent that the foundation was "in the right" to do this because they had a contract giving them that right.

Then the email wraps up with multiple paragraphs of polite speech that can frankly be summarized as "and now you get to wait and see what we dictate".

"Non-apology" doesn't seem to be quite the right term, she did apologize at the start for one thing, but the rest was anything but an apology.

I don’t understand why people get so angry about this sort of thing, when I saw on Twitter that someone was upset because they had been migrated to GitHub enterprise my immediate reaction was to think that Microsoft did it to give them a better experience rather for some nefarious secret plan.

There is no law to say that people have to give their projects to the DNF, there is no law that says people have to use those projects and can’t start their own projects - join it if you want, don’t join if you don’t want.

I believe the issue is that the maintainers were explicitly told that they weren't "giving" their projects to the DNF, but rather that the DNF was there to support them, while the maintainers retain complete control. So the DNF is saying "we're sorry you misunderstood", and the maintainers are saying "we didn't misunderstand, you're not allowed do that".

It's an ownership issue rather than a benefits issue -- if you joined a homeowner's association in order to have a say in how things work in your neighborhood, and then got back from vacation and discovered they completely redid your yard while you were away, without telling you about it or asking your permission, you'd be pretty mad even if the yard ended up being nice.

Did you read the whole post? It does start as an apology, but then it explains that she actually had every right to exert control of the project and implies the only reason people are complaining is that they didn't understand the new hierarchy they had inadvertently signed up to.

People map their mental model of others onto text as they read, which is one reason why text-based communication, while low bandwidth, is also often misunderstood due to all of the subtle information compression that is lost during the information exchange.

> I wonder what those people would consider to be sufficient?

The exact same apology, but coming from a male.

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