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Comment by VyseofArcadia | Hacker News Reader

This is a little, uh, I don't know a polite way to say it, but is the author ok?

If you contribute code to a free software project, people are going to use, extend, or modify it. They don't have an obligation to ask permission or even inform you. That is kind of the point.

I agree that the change is maybe not the most well thought out and introducing ambiguity in the meaning of a symbol is probably bad software engineering in the long term. But to call it "an act of aggression" is unhinged.

In meme form:

> contributes code to a free software project

> someone else touches that code

> suprised pikachu face

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You can't just send a pull request to Linus replacing ioctl with some function of you own writing, certainly not when it breaks other functionality. In meme form: one simply does not walk into Mordor.

And the author seems ok to me, just pissed off.

> people are going to use, extend, or modify it. They don't have an obligation to ask permission or even inform you. That is kind of the point.

That's all well and good, but the objection doesn't relate to someone exercising their software freedoms, it relates to the effects on the repository. If this happened in a fork then nobody could say anything, but if it happens upstream then it messes with the maintenance and development responsibilities of previously borne by Mackenzie.

It also messes with config files of lot's of users.

> Contributes code for 20 years.

> Somebody else makes breaking change to 20 years of work

> Project loses experienced maintainer of core feature.

> Surprised pikachu

Yes, with the added detail that the change was accepted to main and the author of c-mode feels like everyone was consulted but him, when the change is "replace c-mode."

I can definitely see how one feels pushed-out in that context.

what a weird comment to make. the author is upset that the project that they have worked on, for free, for decades, and has been a cornerstone of emacs as a programmer's editor, was unilaterally deprecated by an Emacs maintainer without any discussion.

Agreed. This read to me like the person had a pre-existing axe to grind.

They clearly had pre-existing beef, but also, you don't just break a 20-year-old important plugin without even telling the author. Especially if the guy who wrote it is on the short-list of core contributors with you. It makes sense that Alan feels totally disrespected.

I'd say it's the "straw that broke the camel's back," but this is less a straw and more a cinder block.

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