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Comment by cddotdotslash | Hacker News Reader

https://github.com/OpenCut-app/OpenCut/issues/192

I don't know if this style of... discussion is something the Cluely team made popular recently, or if it took off sooner, but I really hope it doesn't catch on further.

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Assholes online were not “made popular recently”.

Gotta love seeing a code of conduct:

> We as members, contributors, and leaders pledge to make participation in our community a harassment-free experience for everyone

And down in Enforcement (emphasis mine):

> Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be reported to the community leaders responsible for enforcement at [INSERT CONTACT METHOD]. All complaints will be reviewed and investigated promptly and fairly.

What’s the point of this dance when you can’t bother to fill out the contact.

Because the code of conduct is ONLY ever intended to be used as a sword, not as a shield.

Probably because it is AI slop and no one ever read that...

Honestly, how many projects with "Code of Conducts" actually use or follow them? Maybe if you're a big CNCF project or something like that, but the average GitHub project just adds one because GitHub told them to. If they were actually more about enforcing community standards and not about social signaling they'd probably just be called "contributing rules" or something boring and nondescript like how Internet rules always have been.

In other words, the point of this dance is to check a box. I mean literally, GitHub will check a box in Insights -> Community Standards when you add one.

I had to add a COC in order to qualify for open source hosting tier on netlify.

Did anyone read that linked thread in full? There's no "style of discussion" there, there's a lot of people engaging in a very normal, constructive discussion, which is being interupted by a single disruptive commenter (Zaid).

Nothing there seems to reflect poorly on the project as far as I can tell?

"A single disruptive commenter (Zaid)" And he is one of the top contributors. That doesn't quite fit the narrative that it was just some weirdo interfering.

“Top contributor” is being rather generous there. He just committed several really tiny changes to the CI

https://github.com/OpenCut-app/OpenCut/graphs/contributors

https://github.com/OpenCut-app/OpenCut/commits?author=Zaid-m...

According to github insights, he contributed 66 lines of code. I mean, it could be really valuable 66 lines, especially if he fixed bugs. Somehow I doubt it.

However, I'd get rid of this 'contributor' asap if I was a maintainer.

What’s Cluely? While I can google and find out I just wanted to reflect how irrelevant that name actually is for a large portion of the internet.

Flamewars, internet jerks and online bullying has been around since irc. If not longer.

imo looking at the thread, I see a bunch of people throwing a few strongly worded comments at each other in a typical heated discussion online.

We used to call this flamewars.

Just another grifter

Telling someone to fuck off for coming at a for fun OSS project with a trademark claim is completely reasonable.

If it was a more legit trademark claim that would be one thing, a lot of OSS people think you can just name your project after something popular so you can coast off the reputation of the more popular product.

But since this is a BS claim, I think the following approach is totally appropriate:

- Have one person post the antagonistic garbage the OP deserves

- Have another person play the “rear guard” and follow up with the actual legal reasons they won’t comply.

Why? OSS projects aren't somehow exempt from trademark law, and at the very least can have its repo taken down. The trademark in this case might not be airtight, but that's a separate issue.

I have little respect for people petty enough to involve legalese against people doing something for free, just for the love of the game.

I would let them do a takedown, just so they expend billable lawyer hours, only for me to do a search+replace and reupload under a different name out of spite.

Then frankly your being a child. The point isn't to shut down the project... It's asking them to change name due to trademark, and asking civilly without lawyers is nicer than most do up front.

If the trademark claim is nonsense - which idk this looks pretty flimsy - i can understand the reaction

Nah you still come off as childish when you reply like that no matter the validity of the claim. If the claim is nonsense then ignore or call it out as nonsense and move on ... but when you act like that you sour your image and if it is a legit claim you've now just made things worse.

Not saying it’s the adult thing to do but again, it’s understandable. Their takedown attempt seems to be disrespectful and wrong. I typically advocate for taking the high road but I certainly understand some situations where people don’t, even if I would have.

edit: thinking about it, we could look at your tone here as well to illustrate the point. Sure you weren't as uhh "passionate," but let's look at it more closely:

>Nah you still come off as childish when you reply like that

1) "Nah" is a very dismissive way of saying "I disagree." Then you follow it up 2) by calling someone "childish." There are certainly more respectful ways to make your point! Then again, I don't think it's that big of a deal. Someone else might though.

>Their takedown attempt seems to be disrespectful and wrong

How was the initial claim "disrespectful"? It might not be using maximally cuddly language, but "[...] your platform seriously infringes on our legitimate rights and interests, please rename to other one." seems pretty respectful to me. Was it only "disrespectful" because it was wrong?

Fair question - my use of "disrespectful" is a bit forced. It appears their claim is frivolous so I just considered the whole act "disrespectful." There are certainly better words though.

comparing me saying "nah" and describing something as "childish" to the types of things that Zaid-maker was saying in that comment thread is kind of a stretch isn't it?

The person I was referring to as childish:

>No one gives a shit, get out of here!

>BLAH BLAH BLAH

(and then when someone points out he is in fact NOT the maintainer and is a contributor)

>I am the maintainer of this project who says I am not. I only made changes to CI by my choice. Ask maze before making false exceptions to me otherwise you will be hearing from my lawyers next time for harassment.

The law is the only reason why a corporation can't take your open source project and rerelease it without any attribution. Laws for thee and not for me is juvenile.

In various jurisdictions, a trademark that doesn't get defended makes it much more likely that you'll lose your trademark all together when trying to stop actual infringement. If the infringers can point at others and say "look, they let others infringe on their trademark for years and only now they're going after us" that can have an impact on the viability of your case.

That said, China regularly blocks or attacks Github users, so I don't think any open source project needs to be too wary unless they're trying to do business in China.

>In various jurisdictions, a trademark that doesn't get defended makes it much more likely that you'll lose your trademark all together when trying to stop actual infringement. If the infringers can point at others and say "look, they let others infringe on their trademark for years and only now they're going after us" that can have an impact on the viability of your case.

Oh, I didn't know that. At least now it makes some sense. Thanks.

It’s a Chinese trademark, China does not enforce US IP law. Why should we pay any heed to a Chinese trademark in the US?

That thread is trash.

If anyone is looking for tips on what to NOT do, it's a gold mine.

You are mentioning as to what Zaid did, right?

Yes

> I really hope it doesn't catch on further

It already has.

It is the late teens/young twenties online communication style. Generally pretty aggressive, but easy to ignore because they are usually not really saying anything of substance. They are "ragebaiting" you.

I'm sorry, but I'm not going to blame toxic culture in OSS development when it was pioneered by the greats like Torvalds https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/after-years-of-ab...

When I see people commenting "shut your bitch ass up" (now deleted), "triggered", "keep dreaming my guy", it is distinctly generational (young gen z) to me. It is a style of communication.

Torvalds may have "invented" OSS toxicity, but, as far as I can tell, he was not popping in saying SYBAU like he was commenting on a tiktok brainrot compilation.

Not legitimizing his rants - he is a genuine asshole - but his raging is actually entertaining and more often than not, you'd learn a thing or two.

That's been an element of internet culture at least since the early '90s. I'm surprised that it's surprising anyone.

Flamewars were a thing long, long ago. They somewhat stopped being a thing when BBSes and Usenet died.

Well, the nomenclature may have changed, but raging arguments on the internet are still here.

It's a small time contributor making those comments, not the maintainer.

Who knows, maybe he is just the childish persona of the maintainer. It is rare to use more than one in a specific project but a lot of people maintain more than one persona online.

Cluely seems sort of AI tool? How does that relate to that thread?

I guess their team posts stuff in a style like that sometimes. E.g.

https://x.com/cluely/status/1932966330904506501

Not a cluely

Huge red flag. I doubt actual good product is coming out from a person with that much attitude on anywhere, let alone their project's issues...

Hard to tell who’s who, but the Zaid person who claims to be a maintainer is apparently not a maintainer. He contributed some small changes and started claiming to be a maintainer.

Whoever else is the one with authority isn't doing anything about it either. So.

Let me introduce you to OpenCart, an open source eCommerce platform in use on hundreds of thousands of websites handling customer payments, recently struck a multi-million dollar deal with PayPal, and whose founder and practically sole developer responds to bug reports and CVEs with careful, well-thought-out replies like "JUST FUCK OFF!":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7526498 https://archive.is/9bHTi (archived version of github issue linked in above thread) https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/24/opencart_vulnerabilit... https://github.com/opencart/opencart/issues/12947#issuecomme...

yeah, people have attitude problems recently

Wow.

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