Ada Initiative No Longer Partnering with GitHub
adainitiative.org
adainitiative.org
Why? It doesn't follow from the description of the events. Have they spoken with someone at Github? Are they being pressured by their members or other people? Do they have evidence that GH is worse in those respects than other organizations they partner with? Is ending the partnership the best possible course of action both for their cause and for their members?
Again, Ada is simply saying they cannot continue association with Github. The statement you quoted explicitly states that there were several variables to consider, including their own image as a protector of women's rights (their charter is not to end ALL prejudice, it's specifically aimed at prejudice against women).
It cannot automatically be assumed that those considerations generalize to other contexts -- they must be considered in each context.
That seems entirely guilty (if you want to make it into an issue of guilt)to me. github did have "mistakes and errors of judgment" serious enough that Tom resigned.
This seems verifiably false since Github did in fact sponsor conferences, efforts and perks.
So one bad story, that the details aren't entirely clear on, that resulted in the ousting of a founder, means Github, despite going out of their way to put money on the table to support the cause, isn't worthy?
"With friends like these..." seems apt.
> It was shortly followed by a blog post from the resigning co-founder which included a clear threat of legal action against anyone who said he or his wife had engaged in gender-based harassment or discrimination.
That's a direct accusation, and a false one. The threat was against false accusations.
> The sum of these events make it impossible for Ada Initiative to partner with GitHub at this time. ... We will not accept future sponsorships from or partnerships with GitHub unless the situation changes significantly. ... We are working hard to create a world in which women can participate in open source software, Wikipedia, and other areas of open technology and culture without harassment, intimidation, or discrimination. Sometimes this means refusing to partner with or accept sponsorship from specific people or organizations. It is also contrary to our principles to be silent when our existing sponsors and collaborators' actions consistently do not support our mission.
It doesn't get much more direct than this.
If legal action is taken, of course it will be on the grounds that the accusations are false. Whether the accusation is actually true or false, may not have any bearing on whether or not legal action is taken.
Whether they are sufficient evidence depends on the standard of proof and what other evidence is available.
Sure, and that's a legitimate conclusion to reach. Its different than a "no evidence" situation, and different reasonable people can reasonably view the contradictory claims as having different weights and not simply offsetting.
EDIT: And we actually have more than that, since we have statements from several individuals related to the events, plus the Github official statement in their press release on the investigation they commissioned, and those statements do not amount to simple direct contradictions of each other; but the point remains, there is a difference between a "no evidence" situation and a situation where there is a pile of evidence but where a particular observer doesn't find it sufficient to justify a particular conclusion or action.
Witness testimony is generally considered an important form of evidence. Obviously, whether there is corroborating (or, OTOH, conflicting) evidence effects the conclusions that one draws, but that's true of any instance of evidence, not just statements.
> If I stand up in the office and claim that I saw personA murder someone, does that suddenly constitute non-zero evidence that personA is a murderer?
Yes, although standing on its own it would be extremely weak evidence.
> If I write a program to randomly generate claims and post them to my Twitter account, is each tweet a non-zero amount of evidence?
No, because that's not an person making a claim of facts about which they assert direct knowledge. Its kind of irrelevant to the present circumstance, given that no one has challenged the authenticity of the source of Horvath's (or of the other participant's) claims here.
If someone wants to deny an accusation that is true, they will claim that said accusation is false. Claiming that legal action will only be taken if the accusation is false doesn't matter. Take this hypothetical:
If the accusations against TPW are true, but he doesn't want
the world-at-large to believe him. He will present to the
world that the accusations are false. Claims that legal
action will only be taken in the case that accusations are
false don't mean that the accusations must be false for legal
action to be taken.
TPW could take legal action if he wants to present to the world
that the accusations are false and smear the accuser. This would
be a situation where the accusations are true, but legal action
is still taken.The company's claim that they will pursue legal action against false accusations should not discourage people from making true accusations, because the statement provides absolutely no information about what the company intends to do with true accusations. An analogy would be the statement "we will pursue legal action against anyone who trespasses on company property." That shouldn't discourage employees from going into their offices.
If there is a sense that Github doesn't have a proper anti-harassment policy in place, distancing certainly doesn't hurt the initiative's goals
Now, maybe there is more to the story, but the post didn't seem to reveal it.
Just to be clear: I'm only stating my interpretation of Ada's comments. I know nothing of what actually transpired at GitHub, thus I have not formed an opinion about it. Nor do I claim to know whether anyone threatened or intended to threaten legal action.
[1] http://tom.preston-werner.com/2014/04/21/farewell-github-hel...
Edit: In case it wasn't clear from the above post, I'm not taking sides with or against Ada, Github, or anyone else. I'm stating what I took to be Ada's reasoning, but not endorsing nor criticizing that reasoning.
What does AI expect Github to even do about that? It seems completely irrational.
For example, would you say the same thing about EFF and ACLU speakers canceling their RSA conference talks, due to a "biased interpretation of unclear events" of RSA collaborating with the NSA?
Horvath alleges that illegal behavior took place. Github has said that their investigation has found no such thing, leaving things at an impasse until Horvath produces the evidence that she claims to have.
The NSA likewise says that no illegal behavior took place. Independent investigations by other arms of the government, including the Senate, have found otherwise. Furthermore, some of the behavior that the EFF and ACLU object to -- such as the collection of metadata -- the NSA do not deny that they are doing it. They only claim that such activity is legal and beneficial.
Until Github takes a stand or makes an assertion with which we can agree or disagree with, the situations are not the same. Right now, Github is basically being asked "Have you stopped sexually harassing your female employees yet?" and its refusal to answer that question is apparently grounds to judge Github.
In my example, I talked about organizations distancing themselves from RSA (the company), not the NSA (the US govt agency).
And as far as I know, no formal, independent investigation has found RSA guilty of allegations that they knowingly weakened their encryption after the NSA paid them to do so. So it doesn't meet the criteria you just mentioned.
But to your more specific scenario...we are still talking about a much different level of evidence. OK, let's agree that RSA has not been found "guilty" by any authority.
But the allegations do not come from just...well, whoever we might call the original accuser (Snowden? Greenwald?). Independent reports have alleged substantial claims and findings. For example, this is via Reuters, who is also sourcing reports to a group of academics:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/31/us-usa-security-ns...
> (Reuters) - Security industry pioneer RSA adopted not just one but two encryption tools developed by the U.S. National Security Agency, greatly increasing the spy agency's ability to eavesdrop on some Internet communications, according to a team of academic researchers.
Reuters reported in December that the NSA had paid RSA $10 million to make a now-discredited cryptography system the default in software used by a wide range of Internet and computer security programs. The system, called Dual Elliptic Curve, was a random number generator, but it had a deliberate flaw - or "back door" - that allowed the NSA to crack the encryption.
A group of professors from Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Illinois and elsewhere now say they have discovered that a second NSA tool exacerbated the RSA software's vulnerability
Even more importantly, RSA did not issue a denial (though I concede that they may have later on, I just haven't googled it yet)...they refused to comment even on the possibility that the NSA made a payment to them regarding the controversial issue.
> We could have been more skeptical of NSA's intentions," RSA Chief Technologist Sam Curry told Reuters. "We trusted them because they are charged with security for the U.S. government and U.S. critical infrastructure."
Curry declined to say if the government had paid RSA to incorporate Extended Random in its BSafe security kit, which also housed Dual Elliptic Curve.
This is quite different than Github. Github not only commented (and took the obvious stance that harassment is wrong) on the allegations a day or so after they were public, but they have launched an independent investigation, and they have asserted that the investigation did not uncover anything for them to cop to. Now you may say that their investigation was a farce...but this, again, is where things stand until more accusers/evidence come out. And it is at this state of uncertainty that Ada Initiative has decided to take a strong position.
Here is RSA's denial (emphasis added):
"RSA, as a security company, never divulges details of customer engagements, but we also categorically state that we have never entered into any contract or engaged in any project with the intention of weakening RSA’s products, or introducing potential ‘backdoors’ into our products for anyone’s use."
https://blogs.rsa.com/news-media/rsa-response/
Yes, this leaves leeway for "oh, we just didn't know that they were backdooring us". But do you have proof that RSA was actually aware of the consequences of implementing the NSA's "suggestions" (and did it anyway for the $$$), and not just really naïve about it?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/after-nsa-backdoors-se...
The EFF, on its part, is not basing its stance just on the existence of intentional wrongdoing, but on what it regards as carelessness by RSA to not fix a protocol that was publicly questioned in 2007. That this protocol was questioned is not under debate. And that the protocol was flawed is also not under debate.
So again, you can say, "Well how was RSA supposed to know that those Microsoft researchers were onto something? And how do you expect RSA to figure it out after just five years?" But that's a different deal than we have with Github. The only evidence we have of Github's collective wrongdoings are that Horvath felt that she had to quit. We do have (implicit) evidence that the co-founder did something wrong, because he offered his resignation. But he has made it adamantly clear that what he screwed up in had nothing to do with gender-based discrimination. Which is purportedly the issue that Ada Initiative is most incensed about. What we have now, though, is that there were clearly bad management problems at Github. And if Ada Initiative wants to boycott a company for having such internal strife, then that's their right.
But that sounds about as right as someone ripping on Ada Initiative (which some did) for this incident of internal strife and miscommunication: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Initiative#Violet_Blue.27s_...
It is. Do some background research. The Ada Initiative is a radical feminist organization and does more harm than good.
My basic point is that it's rarely profitable to be in the middle of someone else's bitter conflict. Given AI's mission and the existence of intense bad feeling on both sides following an accusation of workplace sexism, it's easier and smarter for the organization to just walk way from the whole situation rather than taking sides in a conflict whose parameters they don'tunderstand.
I have no opinion on the whole Horvath/Github situation because I simply don't have enough information to judge whose version of events is truthful, and I don't even have a GitHub account so I don't care much either way. I'm just pointing out that a small nonprofit might have good reasons for not wanting to be connected to a potentially toxic situation.
OK so let's ignore Github's investigation; what other sides to the story are there besides what the accuser told TechCrunch and what she alludes to in tweets? If Github needs further punishment, this has to be instigated by the accuser, just like it would be in a civil/criminal case. Horvath has said that she believes the treatment of her was outright illegal -- and that she has evidence of this. This is not a situation in which an accuser/whistleblower backs down because they don't want to be exposed...Horvath, to her credit, has put her name to these allegations. But alleging is not enough to mandate a punishment. Since Github has also made its defense and is standing by it....are we supposed to side automatically with the accuser?
Github is now in a "have you stopped beating your wife?" predicament. I don't see how the Ada Initiative can pronounce such a judgment unless they are privy to whatever decisive evidence Horvath is currently holding on to.
If Github was truly hostile towards women, why would they support the Ada Initiative in the first place? Sponsoring two conferences "to support women in open technology and culture" is not something a misogynistic organization would do.
I do not envy Github's PR staff. It seems like they are going to have a hell of a time repairing the damage from this incident.
[1] http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/31953/the-louder-...
Of course they would. No organization is likely to official advertise that they are hostile towards women, and sponsoring this kind of events is an easy PR operation. That says absolutely nothing about the day-to-day situation within the company.
And yes, one always has to sacrifice something on principle, otherwise they wouldn't be principles, just more profitable choices.
They did. "We will not accept future sponsorships from or partnerships with GitHub unless the situation changes significantly."
> The Ada Initiative's goal isn't to help github grow up, it is to help women and girls in tech.
Free private repositories "to over 500 women learning to write open source software" isn't beneficial to women and girls in tech? Having a well-known, well-funded, and (until recently) well-respected company sponsoring conferences isn't beneficial to women and girls in tech? I wasn't saying that they should care about how this affects Github. I'm saying they should care about how this decision affects them and their ability to carry out their stated mission.
They aren't nuking peoples repos. People are welcome to have free public repos on github and there is plenty of alternatives. Github != Git.
if github changes through action, not words, I am sure they could work something out. Space and time will heal this.
It's never that simple. Almost everyone says they want more women in tech. But few take steps to actively promote that -- by increasing hiring of women, by fighting misogynistic elements of company culture, etc. Misogynistic company cultures are far more likely to arise through unconscious propagation of stereotypes and behaviors than from misogynistic leadership.
The Ada Initiative isn't trying to call Github misogynistic. It's just saying they haven't done a very good job of living up to their principles.
So, whether you believe there was gender-related wrongdoing depends entirely on whether you believe Julie Ann Horvath or an independent investigator, or neither.
As such, it seems like the only reasonable conclusion for an outside party considering an action related to github (going to work there, partnering with them, or even just using their product) is "we don't know."
The only way we could know, with any actionable level of certainty, would be if this went to court. Until that happens, though, any punitive action we take (like boycotting github, or ending partnerships with them), is based on a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach founded in a single person's accusation. That reeks of witchunting, and I'm more than a little concerned by it.
* Everything github has said seems to indicate only non-gender-related wrongdoing, specifically the founder's wife pressuring (unintentionally, according to her) employees into helping with her charity.
The sum of these events make it impossible for Ada Initiative (...)
To me, this reads that it's not about who has done what etc. But rather that one doesn't want to keep working with a company where an affair like this goes down the way it has. As some agreed before here on HN; github, or rather the participants in this affair acted, or seemed to act, like a bunch of immature teenagers. It's understandable that this irks business partners, as its simply not professional - usually what business is about (Or more often, pretends to be. But that's not too relevant here). Especially when your mission includes social/society topics, like the Ada Initiative.
I don't know, maybe it's the Ada Init. acting immature here.
Or maybe the whole "echo chamber" around github et al needs to grow up (seriously, usually such FUD, dirty laundry, who-kisses-whom etc. is written about in very low grade magazines, one would assume such are not read by techies/hackers). It would explain why many articles related to that are consistently upvoted (thankfully, they seem to vanish rather fast as well).
Or maybe there's a real, general problem of our/this society lying below all that; but I doubt that. (Not that there are no problems at all).
But serious discussion about this should go to a social science HN, in my opinion. I would prefer if we all could nudge the scope of HN back to tech stuff (or fields where YC backs startups, since it seems to expand since recently).
Cause I'm getting a little fed up with all this excitement and talk about failed social interaction between some other humans, which in contrast to the billions of other similar mishaps on this planet, just happen(ed) to be affiliated with a company whose products are often used around here.
Have they asked people to vote or not? Why do their opinions not matter?
I don't know what kind of work they do with Github other than hosting repository and sponsorship -- which means it doesn't stop people fro using Github or mentioning github.com/<username>/<reponame> on slides.
So what's the problem with the report?
Are they not happy with the whole "third-party independent investigation"? (Someone said in other HN threads that the investigators didn't reach out to Horvath until the end of the investigation). That shouldn't be a good reason to quit the partnership.
Are they angry at the "[we, github] found mistakes" (which probably means very poor management)? That's still not a good enough reason to quit. Every comapny has some kind of problems too.
Or are they fully convinced that Github is lying and Horvath is telling the truth? Which one? This is probably the worst reason to quit partnership.
So, which one?
That said I'm fiercely opposed to organisation's like the Ada Initiative since they are inherently discriminatory in nature, I'm in favor of Egalitarianism.
If you don't think they are discriminatory imagine -
---- "The Turing Initiative - Supporting men in open technology and culture"
"The Turing Initiative welcomes men of all kinds, and specifically welcomes trans men and genderqueer men. We strive to be an intersectional social justice organization." ---
We shouldn't be demanding equality for one group or another we should be demanding it for everyone.
Ada Initiative - Support all people in open technology, That I would donate to.
Sexualized environments harmful? Color me curious! So I read the referenced page:
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Sexualized_environment
Those are all cogent points! If any hetero identifying male wants to dispute them, I challenge him to spending a weekend in The Castro neighborhood of SF and write a completely truthful essay chronicling his comfort level. He's either going to end up supporting the above points about sexualized environments by documenting reduced emotional comfort levels, or he's going to demonstrate that he's a paragon of not-giving-a-# -- which while admirable, being one should not be a requirement for working someplace in an office. Keep in mind that going to The Castro is a leisure activity and such a situation is a whole lot more voluntary than going to work.
It turns out that many of our ancestors were smart and wise people and not all of them were merely grunting superstitious simpletons. A sublimated sexuality hidden behind a facade of polite society can be a powerful tool for facilitating consensuality. The point being that such social norms can allow one to opt out of activities they don't care to be a part of. Granted, there are also ways in which sublimated sexuality can be used to reduce consensuality though the use of social pressure. Again, the key is consensuality, and whether or not power relationships support or undermine individual freedom, not sexuality in its entirety.
It strikes me as odd that sexuality should be wholly removed from such huge swathes of human experience. Not only is this notion odd, but as history demonstrates, it's starkly unrealistic. The kind of polite society that promotes "live and let live" as a communal good arose for good reasons. As always, things that naturally evolve have flaws, but the project of social reform, most feminism included, rests on the underlying assumption that such things can be fixed.
I used to live right near the Castro and spent lots of time there. I also lived in West Hollywood for years. I always felt completely comfortable in both places, and not because I am a paragon of not giving a shit. Sorry, but being looked at or hit on by a man is not, in itself, a traumatic experience. I know your post is probably motivated by empathy, but the above comment comes off as really weird and homophobic.
You are reading something into what I wrote that I am not saying. Being looked at or hit on by people male or female that one isn't interested in isn't necessarily traumatic, but certainly the usual expectation is that it isn't completely devoid of discomfort. If that were true, then there would be no social cost to such activity. This isn't the case for most contexts. (And you know as well as I do that there do exist specific contexts -- certain times and places -- where that's what the expectations are, that one is there to be hit on.)
I used to live right near the Castro and spent lots of time there. I also lived in West Hollywood for years. I always felt completely comfortable in both places, and not because I am a paragon of not giving a shit.
And I will venture to guess that such environments are places you normally went and felt comfortable in -- people respected your boundaries in a way you found satisfactory, because you opted to be in a place where those were to your liking. For many men in North America, the social norms in many places in The Castro in SF or The Monstrose in Houston (where I lived for many years) are not the ones they are normally accustomed to. They will feel some discomfort. If they acknowledge the truth of that, then they will acknowledge the discomfort of some women in the workplace.
EDIT: And it's those individuals in particular who have the most to gain from engaging in this gedankenexperiment. As for you, this would probably be preaching to the choir.
No matter what your experiences are, it will prove my point ← seriously?
I'm playing the odds here. There are a few odd ducks that opt to be in contexts where social norms are not to their liking. The vast majority of people go where they feel comfortable. The main point has to do with consensuality, so for most psychologically normal people, an honest account will support my point.
I can understand, though, if someone finds my mention of The Castro somewhat "othering." The othering wasn't my intention. It was a gedankenexperiment about being outside norms that support one's chosen boundaries. There are also a whole panoply of unspoken social norms and power relationships that change and come into play as well. Only holistic experiences, actual or imagined, are efficient for communicating these.
Taking away their free private repos seems pretty harmful.
Actually, it was a clear threat of legal action against anyone who made false accusations.
I would be interested to know which allegations the Ada Initiative think have not been addressed, and how they would like them to be addressed.
Also, the ADA initiative doesn't really have a choice here either. Either draw a hard line, or look like they aren't able set the same standards that they ask from others.
Finally, if the investigation at Github turned up real mistakes of judgement, why weren't they itemized? We are left guessing what the investigator found. Github has that report, yet they are being evasive about it's contents. Air that stuff out. Stating that the allegations are unfounded at the same time as revealing that undisclosed mistakes in judgement occurred, combined with pushing out a founder: doesn't smell right.
Who knows, actual female developers might be put off by radical feminism using them for their agenda.
Further, this is concerning a person with a power disadvantage in their environment who is going to be subject to the array of classic silencing techniques that criticize not her argument but her person.
Interestingly enough you're using one as well classifying the response as "radical feminism". This discredits their position because they were "too aggressive". It is another argument that adds nothing because it attacks their tone and not ideas.
Also this fits pretty well: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Innocent_until_proven_gui...
Besides, it seems possible that women who work at GitHub don't quit because JAH is gone, if some accounts are true (ie the Jane Doe on Medium article).
But you are right, the JAH incident itself probably doesn't motivate anyone to join IT (neither men nor woman).
Then again, perhaps eliminating drama from IT (by eliminating drama people) will in the long run entice those women to join.
That seems like at least a motivation for the actions, and at the far end of the spectrum, a reason for it.
And the counterproductive, zero-sum game that modern gender advocates get wrapped up in playing - that is a cause of it.
Did we read the same blog post [0]? While I agree that we might have seen a little more from GitHub than we would have from MS/Google their response to the situation was extremely lacking IMHO.
[0] https://github.com/blog/1823-results-of-the-github-investiga...
What other steps would you suggest they have taken that would have constituted a satisfactory response?
Did she? The offending member quit, so it isn't really a loss.
> I'm not arguing Github hasn't handled this situation as well as possible, but really?
The discussion afterwards brought up that many of the witnesses external of GitHub were not contacted, which if true shows that their selection of external auditing used a biased basis to prove no harm was done.
It doesn't matter if I believe.
All I am saying is that the posters could have seen that evidence and used it as their basis.
You can't tell a company that already investigated a problem to investigate it again, it would be fruitless. Cutting ties is basically your only choice.
> favoring the assumption of wrongdoing rather then a discussion or argument against Github's reasoning/investigation.
I repeat my last point. They can't ask Github to investigate something they investigated. It cannot create different results.
The problems pointed out are systematic, it isn't like repeating the process will magically remove those problems and find a different result.
Why would you love to hear my argument against Github here?? I never said I was for or against them. I simply said that your assertion that due process had happened is untrue.
That'll show 'em!