The Impermanence, Karma, and Bad Behavior of Why The Lucky Stiff
zedshaw.com
zedshaw.com
It reminds me of an essay by Henry Miller called "Creative Death" which may help explain _why to those of us who can't understand the state of mind and the motivation of an artist like _why. Here are some excerpts, which run to the end of this post:
For the artist in man is the undying symbol of the union between his warring selves. Live has to be given meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning. Something has to be created, as a healing and goading intervention, between life and death…
The process is a long and devious one. It is all a conquest of fear…
His war with reality is a reflection of the war within himself…
The ideas which germinate in the artist are unique and must be lived out. He is the sign of Fate itself, the very symbol of destiny. For when, by living out his dream logic, he fulfills himself through the destruction of his own ego, he is incarnating for humanity the drama of individual life which, to be tasted and experienced, must embrace dissolution…
It is what Nietzche described as the fusion in one being of two divergent streams–the Apollonian dreamer type and the ecstatic Dionysian…
On the other hand, _why is just an online persona created and portrayed by an actual person. When he says "I truly hope that Jonathan is ok," he's referring to the actual person, not to the online persona... The persona is fictional. A farce. A farce in the name of art, but a farce nonetheless.
It would be like Zed trying to talk about the guy behind 'Fake Steve Jobs' by constantly referring to him as 'Fake Steve Jobs' rather than by his real name, Daniel Lyons. If I said, "I hope that Fake Steve Jobs is in a good frame of mind," most people will not take that to mean, "I hope that Daniel Lyons is in a good state of mind." In the same way, saying, "Fake Steve Jobs is acting like a dick," is not the same as saying, "Daniel Lyons is acting like a dick."
I seriously think that people are taking this "Zed and _why are two polar opposites" idea way too far. Zed is basically saying that _why can do whatever he wants, but to create a bunch of projects that people rely on (even if these projects are your art) and then abruptly, without notice pull the rug out from under these people is an asshole move.
Let's bring all this into a small example. Say there's this artist whose art strikes such a chord with me that I invest every penny I own into putting on a spectacular art show to showcase this artist's art to the world. Let's say that the artist and I spend months and months planning the show and collaborating on it. Then comes the big day of the show, and I go to the location to find out that the artist has up and disappeared, taking all of his art with him. Leaving me with nothing.
If the artist and I have no formal argreement that he has to show his art there he has every right to walk out like this. But it is a very asshole move to leave me hanging after I've invested all of my time in money into it, no? Or do I just scratch my head, say "I just don't understand his art" and call it a day?
This is the same case here. There are things like his twitter account/tweets/blogs/blog entries/etc which pulling from the web isn't that big of a deal. On the other hand, all of his software projects/code are things that people have come to rely on and invest time into contributing to. He basically giving all of those people the finger when he just cuts out everything like this. Without taking the time to organize for these projects to be taken over by someone else (or at least leaving the hosting up for them), he's saying that all of those people, all the effort and time they've spent mean shit all to him.
Being 'artsy' and 'artistic' doesn't excuse you from being an asshole. I mean, Caravaggio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravaggio) was a 'ruffian' and a murderer. While his art still stands on its own, he was a dick of a person. Just because a dick of a person produces great art doesn't mean that we hand-wave away all their misdeeds with nebulous phrases like, "You just don't understand his art."
What if Caravaggio decided to pull a _why? Let's say that he broke into all of the places that his paintings resided (cathedrals,churches,mansions,etc) and destroyed every last piece of art that he had created. Should we excuse this behavior as "Well, it's his art and this action is just an extention of his art. You just don't understand his art?"
This has become a bit long-winded, so I'll just cut it here with this. Zed isn't tearing down _why's art. But some parts of _why's art have crossed over from just being 'just art' to being 'art plus' if you will. In this case, it's 'art + software project.' The fact that part of it is art doesn't mean one can ignore that the other part is a software project.
I also think Zed saying he hopes Jonathan is ok is a bit of a platitude. I'm sure Zed DOES hope _why is fine, but it rings hollow in the context of the whole essay. Plus, who doesn't hope _why is ok. His biggest detractors aren't monsters wishing him ill.
I have to say that you confuse being an artist with being 'artsy', which is a mistake. I'm artsy, but I'm no artist. Not a single artist I know would describe themselves as simply artsy. Much of my opinion on what it is to be an artist, however, comes from the Henry Miller essay I referenced earlier. I suggest reading it. It's in a volume called "Matters of the Heart".
I believe an artist has the right to destroy his own work unless he's sold it or given it away. I'm not of the opinion that publishing work on-line is the same as giving it away, and I'm certainly not of the opinion that _why taking his stuff down is the same as breaking into a place to steal and destroy things. There's a very big difference between what _why did and your Caravaggio example. _why did nothing illegal, for instance.
In a way, _why reminds me of the French New Wave film-makers. They believed in the "film-maker as auteur" and wanted complete control over their work. From reading these forums, it sounds like most of _why's code was recovered, which is fortunate, and I'm not aware of anything missing that others collaborated on. I don't think he collaborated much with others if at all, but I don't really know. I do acknowledge that, even with works created solely by _why, there's a certain collaboration osmosis that occurs just by having it on the internet with so many users/readers/extenders/whathaveyous, but in my eyes that falls short of giving it away.
To me, _why considered his programs and their source code art equal to (more important than?) his drawings, music, poems, and stories. It was all his art. I'm extremely sad at the loss of so much of his amazing work.
Publishing work on-line IS giving it away. If you don't want that, just don't publish it online. If not, it's like singing a song at a party and getting all upset on your friends for memorizing it. Sorry, but the cat is out of the bag, and you can't tell me that _why (being involved in an open-source community and all) wasn't aware of that.
_why's taking his stuff down is also comparable to stealing/destroying things ... his work still lives on because other people bothered to make copies, but he also took down the mailing lists / homepages of those projects, disrupting the communities behind those projects, leaving nice people that invested time and resources for those projects in the dark (I don't know how much time/resources were external, but that's irrelevant).
Being an artist doesn't excuse you being dick (although it also doesn't negate your achievements). But when you're being a dick, since you're living in a society that would brake if all of us where dicks, then you should pay the price for that.
Maybe pulling things down is "comparable" to stealing, but it's not the same. And the extent to which external resources were part of his work is not irrelevant. There's tons of gray area here that's being glossed over.
Zed (and other posters) seem to have a view of the issue that lacks nuance. "He abandon us, he must be a dick." I'm not sure know why "dick" is the only name Zed et al have for _why. Besides the fact that the word is grating and low, it is bad form and, frankly, a little immature to use insults like that, especially when you don't know the whole story. The HN community both eulogized and demonized _why too quickly. Maybe it makes sense that hackers only think in binary terms and pass such stark judgment.
Look, I'm disappointed that _why is gone. There have been good points made on this forum about people who depended on the mailing lists, etc. And we can speculate ad-nauseam the causes for his disappearance. Personally, I thought his work was touching. As I discussed earlier, I also view him as an artist, with motivations that I think are very different from those of a typical hacker or engineer. But because we don't know the whole story, any judgment is based on speculation. And so I must give _why the benefit of the doubt here (and, clearly, defend him a little).
It's wrong to judge _why as Zed and others have, 'nuff said.
I also believe in coding as an art form (although I'm surely not an artist), and _why was a person to which I could relate to. We need such positive models with the same aspirations as ours because we may start thinking that we are crazy ... ever got a blank stare while you where explaining to someone else that programming in itself is beautiful?
It would mean a lot to me if sooner or later he would reappear and provide an explanation ... I could also relate to him being burnt-out.
This is not to state that _why is a 'dick.' He might be in some sort of weird mental turmoil. But his actions, while maybe not meant to be 'asshole moves' can still be described as 'asshole moves.' Reality and intentions don't always line up.
Think of it this way. Some of his art -- namely HackityHack -- was designed to be not only art, but a learning tool. Some people maybe relying on that learning tool. While that learning tool is technically still in _why's possession -- giving him the right to pull the plug on it -- are you really going to say that ripping a learning tool away from people that are using it is a good thing?
Analogies -- even mine -- up to this point have not been the strong suit of this discussion, but I'll boldly use another one any ways. Let's say that _why owns a building. Why goes crazy and makes all sorts of artistic changes/improvements to the building. Now this building also has a meeting hall inside of it. _why uses this meeting hall to form several groups of people all of whom meet there to discuss various pieces of _why's art (and maybe how he should further improve the building or something... who knows). One day the people try to meet there only to find a wrecking crew tearing the building down. The construction workers say that _why sold the building to someone else who is tearing it down for condos.
Now in this analogy, _why has every right to do what he wants with the building. But _why has also formed an implicit promise with the people meeting there that this is their meeting place. He has assumed a responsibility -- albeit on a unspoken social level -- to at least announce to these people that the building will be no more.
Even if he's our friend, we still recognise when he acts as a dick and point that out.
[Edit] I'm being downvoted into oblivion. Answer me this -- Shouldn't Zed Shaw be contacting _why directly and privately first, rather than posting this publicly shaming and incredibly presumptuous article? What possible benefit is there here?
Given that Zed offhandedly switches between _why and 'Jonathan', he must know _why, right?
[Edit] The downvotes truly boggle my mind. Since when did it become socially acceptable to public dress down a software community member without any facts, evidence, or corroborating information? Zed Shaw is trolling. He has nothing in the game (he 'cut all ties' to Ruby, remember?), no relation to _why, and no reason to be publishing invective from his bully pulpit other than a desire to inject himself into the conversation.
He doesn't know what happened to _why, or what _why has planned, or whether the code is gone for good.
Even if you were wrong, you're making well-reasoned points, and it's irritating that people are downvoting you and upvoting snark.
In response to the article and comments, there are a lot of people here who immediately dismiss the article because its written by Zed, and still others who deem _why's actions acceptable because he's an 'artist'. Assuming _why is ok and he just decided to log off, Zed is right in this case. _why has transcended being an artist by creating art that does not only have aesthetic beauty, but also has substantial value to the people who have used it and who have invested time into it. The fact that he has created solid documentation in addition to releasing his projects in a public distributed system geared towards sharing and reuse is proof that he was at least interested in having other people use his projects. Which means he has a social obligation to not actively screw over his user base so he can be dramatic. Just wait, I can see Eric Raymond writing a new chapter about the responsibilities associated with releasing code to the open source community. Maybe this is a sign we need an equivalent of archive.org for code so that nothing like this can happen again.
It doesn't seem to have caught Shoes (too new?), but seems after a glance to at least have most of the important stuff for Hackety Hack. When you consider that (helped but not entirely due to to DCVS) the source code is all over, it doesn't seem to me that much was actually lost -- just a little misplaced.
And it took, [precisely that](http://whymirror.github.com/)
Zed, you and other are arguing as if he actively deleted your own copies of all that work and that he had an obligation to support it for ever.
a) _why was hacked. a crime has been commited
b) he did this for personal or "artistic" reasons, and other people got screwed
Instead you dismissed it as "snarky". Why do you disagree that Zed Shaw is attempting to hijack the situation to garner attention?
The whole idea that comment moderation should be based on whether you agree or disagree with the message is a toxic one that has killed civil conversation on dozens of sites, replacing it with thoughtless and instinctual groupthink that frankly makes everyone dumber. (I won't even pretend to be above it at all times myself, but I try, and would hope to not be alone in that.) Ultimately, you can't stop everybody from voting that way, but you can discourage it, and that's what my post was about.
Edit: Woah, controversial comment.
Let me rephrase that: Zed cares more than _why about his projects' afterlife.
Zed likes pretending that he knows _why's name is Jonathan, when in fact every person here who knows _why says it isn't, and when _why didn't like people speculating about his name to begin with. So Zed's a dick, too, and, typical of Zedshawism, he doesn't get his facts right, choosing instead to trust a specious Wordpress blog whose author is both unknown and a dick himself.
_why never said he was Buddhist. _why said nothing. The rest is speculation. So judging his philosophy is a little bit stupid as well.
I agree with your second statement, which is that _why didn't treat his projects well. But Zed isn't talking about other people. Zed's talking about himself, as always. He's no Jason Scott, who devotes his life to archiving other people's work. Instead, without anything to go on, he calls _why a nihilist (only for him it's a capital-N Nihilist), a "Nihilist who was just jerking people around and playing a long con on everyone," which is pretty offensive in my book. He also calls _why a dick (er, he calls "Jonathan" a dick), and he talks about how he's better than _why because he left up his code after insulting the entire community.
I don't know if we'll ever hear _why's story, but I'm going to give him the benefit of a little doubt. I won't lie, though: I think the guy had every right to remove himself from the Internet. I'd understand his motivation in removing everything, suddenly, without warning. Hell, the only reason I still have this HN account is that there's no option to delete on this site. And leaving gradually isn't leaving. Even when he completely vanished people made it a drama: If he'd announced this a week ago, we'd have had a week's extra drama.
So maybe Zed cared about his projects more than _why, but he doesn't care about people. He cares about pretending he knows shit about philosophy and psychology, and, stripped-down theme or no, about Zed's So Fucking Awesome, enough that his ego gets to influence every story he decides to force himself on. That's not caring about people, especially not caring in the way _why did.
I agreed with Resig's eulogy, actually: It seems like _why would view his role in those terms. So what happens is, all of us see only _why disappearing and taking everything with him. In that context, he's being a nihilist. But from _why's perspective, he changed the community he was in for the better, and has chosen to go on. So he has left things behind - the salvaged programs, the Guide - and has himself moved on to something. We don't know what that something is. It's nihilist if you assume that his point was to disappear and destroy, but if he's moving on by using the things he's learned as _why, then it's a transformation and a celebration in just the way Resig described.
Resig is well-meaning, but he's abusing the analogy by relating _why's work to a sand mandala. A sand mandala is not just symbolic--it's ceremonial, it's expected, and nobody gets hurt when it's destroyed. _why's disappearance was not ceremonial, was not expected, and did hurt people. It reflects the notion of impermanence, but that that is neither the totality of Buddhism nor an idea exclusive to Buddhism. Absent the notion of karma (or some other check), impermanence implies Nihilism, and it's a gross distortion of Buddhism to suggest that any suffering you cause for others in the name of impermanence is ok as long as you grow individually.
Zed is doing what so many are unwilling to, which is to point out that even though we all love _why and can all agree that he had the right to do what was good for him, it's still a dick move to hurt people in the process, and he could have handled it better. _why could have accomplished the same thing without hurting anybody. That might have rightly been called a Buddhist act, and fit for praise. But what is actually happening is that people forgive _why for the trouble that his exit has caused because they like him.
Rush to judgement? Yes, I'm unwilling to do that, especially publicly and without any reasonable justification for my own self-involvement with the issue.
Also, we're talking about something Zed posted to his own personal blog. Is Zed not allowed to post what he thinks to his own personal blog? What "reasonable justification" is required to publish your own opinion on the internet?
I agree with this. Zed's persona has really not changed all that much since dropping the ZSFA theme. Fewer swear words, but the same basic philosophy and outlook on life shines through both before and after.
If I win the lottery, in whatever form, I'm not hanging out on the internet anymore either!!!
Extremely judgmental especially since open source offers no warranties or guarantees and implicit in this is the very real possibility of the code simply disappearing. It isn't like there is some contract (social or otherwise) that requires people to leave their code up online.
I think of OSS as a movement. Publicly nuking your (popular) repositories is a step back for that movement.
Any developer has every right to do it. However, for those of us who are trying to get large enterprises to embrace and contribute to OSS, our task is a little harder this week than it was last week.
As for getting enterprises to embrace OSS: Wouldn't you say that the ability for people to do what _why did is a disadvantage? Commercial apps don't do things like that. I'm not knocking OSS, but that's certainly something to take into consideration.
They do. Companies go out of business. They kill products. I went through it in a couple situations when I worked in IT.
In one instance, a vendor was sued by another company and had to immediately pull distribution of an app that we depended on, and the alternative was unusable. That particular example also provides an example of the value of OSS: the app was open source, so we were able to keep using it and tweaking it for years.
The philosophy of DVCS is that people should have copies of the recipe anyways.
That was the page I learned my first bits of Ruby on. That was the page I introduced 8 friends to Ruby for the first time. It was the page I single-handedly got our contract renewed, by proving a piece of functionality was possible and easily done.
I think for many, it was an easy way in to Ruby. Someone must replace this immediately.
One of the things that bother me more is the fact that he also pulled the plug on all the mailing list of his projects, which would have been the right place to discuss what to do with the code.
My wife actually noticed yesterday that it was gone before I got around to reading all the comments on HN about Why's departure. I eventually told her that he was basically dead. Her response? "How am I going to learn Ruby now?"
I of course have installed a local interpreter, but she really liked the lessons.
Just think how would you feel if the Rails or Django guys decided to take everything down. You have the full commit history, if you had cloned the Github repo, so why do you care?
edit: I'm not sure what the issue is- it's clear there is a difference between material niceness and immaterial niceness, and Zed, to my knowledge, has never been materially unnice.
People should be allowed to take things offline if they choose to, it's laughable that Zed is suddenly high and mighty because someone took their ball and went home.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
Please note: By arguing that Zed is being internally consistent, do not jump to the conclusion I am personally making a judgment on _why.
And even if it is, it's kind of a dick thing to do, given that we know that _why never wanted to be known as anything but _why.
I agree though, dick move. Then again, this _is_ Zed we're talking about.
Umm, ok, let's recap, shall we?:
1) His sister. This ( http://www.advogato.org/person/whytheluckystiff/diary/14.htm... ) says she was 14 in 2001. That makes her ~21 today. "Jonathan Gillette from Utah" has "Kristin Gillete" listed as a relative here: http://www.intelius.com/search-summary-out.php?ReportType=1&... . She's 21.
2) His wife. This page ( http://ftp.df.lth.se/pub/scene.org/music/groups/starving_but... ) says Jonathan is married to Kylie, or at least was in 2004. She makes jewelry, and has a site hosted by _why: http://74.125.93.132/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=c...
3) His band. See http://ftp.df.lth.se/pub/scene.org/music/groups/starving_but... again. He plays in a band called (both) "Starving but Happy" and "The Child Who Was A Keyhole". See http://www.myspace.com/thechildwhowasakeyhole . Compare picture of _why (http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottlaird/31366517/ ) to http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewIma... and http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewIma... -- the guitar is pretty easy to identify as the same.
4) The why@rysa.inetz.com thing.
5) This site (http://members.tripod.com/soccer_riot/ ) was made by _why (pre-why, as far as I can tell). If he is just close friends with Jonathan Gillette, it's apparently to the point that it didn't seem relevant to point out that he was producing the audio clips for the site. Open dolphins.ram in pretty much any media player and you'll see "Jonathan Gillette" as its author.
6) Why did jgillette make several very informed posts to ruby-talk, then completely quit developing ruby (apparently...)?
The only difference between the disappearance of these two from the ruby scene is that _why will actually be missed.
Fuck Zed Shaw.
We have no proof that _why is in any trouble at all, and this isn't the first time he's nuked things he created. There's nothing much about the person to be worried about, and the persona isn't real. Zed just likes ranting. (BTW, if you're worried about a person and how they're doing, you don't call them names.)
Also, it might be poor form to call someone names, but just because you disagree with one of someone's actions, doesn't mean you don't like them.
You can say someone did a bad thing without thinking that they're a bad person.
We're talking about why the lucky stiff. We don't know anything about the man that wore the mask. He was very good at keeping his personal life a mystery. So calling him why the lucky stiff makes sense, at least until/if we learn more about what's going on.
If you think this is measured I would hate to see your definition of intemperate.