The Open Source Identity Crisis

In pointing out that "merit" can be freely defined, this piece shows that meritocracies are, in fact, arbitrary. If there's a key line, it seems to be this one:

"This is about who these people believe open source is for, and by extension, their own self-identity. Indeed, when people are challenged to explain themselves, you get nonsense and cognitive dissonance. People are being openly hypocritical, with no apparent awareness. The closer they get to confronting the truth, the more likely they are to break down in anger and confusion."

What's worth noting is that this pattern - of a previously secure group finding itself set upon by "outsiders" wanting in - is repeated in many spheres. Typically, the combination of limited self-awareness, egregious hypocrisy, and a flood of blinding, reflexive anger does not work out well for the group of people who display it.

At the same time, dis-empowering gatekeepers who behave like this tends to be a major boon for the fields they previously dominated without challenge.

The HN software originally killed this article because the submitting account had been flagged for posting HN-inappropriate articles in the past (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7847688 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6535840).

This had nothing to do either with the present post or with the site, which is not banned: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=modelviewculture#!/story/sort_by_d....

Oh shit, now you've got the angry twitter feminists on you. It's _on_.

Expect them to rally their fellow feminists and drop a lot of f-bombs on you (it makes them seem more passionate/angry/edgy).