Comment by akkartik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by akkartik | Hacker News Reader

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I too have followed the vim mailing list for many years, and tried and failed to submit a patch to it. I mostly use neovim now, and have successfully submitted a patch to it. Based on these experiences I found your blog post unnecessarily incendiary. The thread of your patch submission (https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vim_dev/-4pqDJfHCsM/LkYNCpZj...) was actually quite civil. It didn't do what you want, but let's be precise with language here.

To state some blatantly obvious facts, people do open source on their own time, they have limited such time and many commitments, and they explicitly allow forks like neovim for the aspects they can't find time for. Vim and neovim have chosen very different design constraints, and there's no reason why they can't continue to exchange code where it makes sense. Putting one of the two down seems unproductive.

The leaders of large projects like Neovim are seldom critical of the competition, and when they express criticism it is measured and proportionate. We should all learn from them.

(Your OP here is still quite useful. Thanks for putting it together.)

"...they explicitly allow forks like neovim for the aspects they can't find time for."

With the risk of sounding like captain obvious here, but in open source you do not have the luxury to allow or disallow forks, they just happen.

You can use shady licenses to prevent people from re-using your code, or you could not be open source. It is a kinda-explicit green flag.

Someday 'vi' might symlink to 'nvim' instead of 'vim'. 'VI Improved Improved'!

Mr. Greer's post was necessarily incendiary; He's building his brand. Wasting space on the front page of HN is a feather in his cap.

I'm really sad neovim didn't call themselves vi improved improved, or vii. It doesn't just carry the naming tradition of vim, but is also one more than vi.

If it had we might be running it right now.

I'm sorry if you thought the post was self-serving. I can only say with sincerity that it wasn't. I have no motive beyond my interest in software.

If you don't believe my claim of selflessness, believe my claim of competence: If I was trying to build a personal brand, I could do much better than delving into Vim's codebase for a one-off snippet. It's not difficult to create insubstantial content that is widely-shared. I can think of a dozen topics whose mere mention can drive immense traffic and waste absurd amounts of time. HN's front page attests to this.

It's a shame that many people scrutinize others for selfishness. Purely selfish behavior is an extreme rarity, yet it takes much longer to refute such accusations than to make them. I wish it were otherwise.

Before deriding others, please remember: Almost no one is evil. Almost everything is broken.[1]

1. A quote from http://blog.jaibot.com/

You delved[1] into the vim source and found this. You offered no solution except to use neovim, which happens to be 'supported' by the /amazing/ company you're the CEO of. You're very well practiced in false modesty and apologies but fuck you; I'm not sure you know what sincerity means.

I'm sorry if I don't think you're being sincere. Let's have a drink sometime! Let's network!

1. Anything as old as vim, continuously developed, will have any number of these frankenfunctions. They're not hard to find.

Judging from this comment and others, you seem uninterested in civility or truth. I doubt anything can change your mind on this issue.

Still, others read these comments, so I feel compelled to offer corrections: 18 months ago, I pledged $50 to Neovim's Bountysource. My company has not contributed a cent to Neovim. We maintain plugins for many text editors, including Vim and Neovim. That's it.

You keep slinging mud, but there is no ulterior motive at work here. I urge you to treat people more charitably in the future.

Civility works best with mutual respect. That respect might be hollow or fleeting but it's established and traded on. When two people meet for the first time there's a credit exchanged. That's the humanity-freebie.

Don't ask for sympathy ("They don't want civility or truth!!!"), ask yourself why you were treated "uncivilized".

Truth? I suspect that's a glitch in translation.

If you're ever in the Silicon Valley we should "meet up". I'll be nicer to you but you're buying.

>>I don’t consider myself very devoted to my work, but

>Don't try and pretend your problems are our problems. Struggling to survive, scrap by scrap. Fuck off. If you're ever in the Silicon Valley we should "meet up". I'll be nicer to you.

You trawled through my writings to find one sentence in one blog post[1] to voice outrage at. I'm not sure how to react to that. I guess... congratulations on your hard work.

I live in the bay area, but I prefer not to hang out with people who treat others so callously. I hope you understand.

Edit: It appears roghummal has significantly revised his comment since I finished my reply.

1. http://geoff.greer.fm/2015/01/07/burnout-is-in-the-mind/

>Edit: It appears roghummal has significantly revised his comment since I finished my reply.

It doesn't 'appear' that way, that's the way it is. My edit was, just guesstimating here, 25 minutes before your post? Edit was 2-5 minutes after my original post?

You've never said anything you quickly realized was indefensible?

Wrong, even?

So I don't confuse you with an edit and for my own gratification, I'd like you to know that I didn't 'trawl' through your posts to find something that supported mine.

Your titles are bait. Their substance is minimal. When you've had something to say it has been said before, better. If you care about the code as much as you claim you should let it go. (I'm questioning this last statement.)

You're a natural born CEO. Find your Woz.

Edit: And then someone to run your company. (I just saw "Judging from this comment and others, you seem uninterested in civility or truth. I doubt anything can change your mind on this issue.")

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