Tag: SJW

The silencing of the tech lambs

An anonymous developer explains why he has to remain anonymous:

Religious wars in software used to be about a fat bearded man named He-macs wrestling a pencil-neck named Vimmy over what text editor to use, but now FOSS devs are concerned about making sure marginalized human beings feel “welcome,” as if someone was trying to physically block newcomers. That opens the door to social justice and other buzzwords that prigs use to feel better about themselves, and utopian visions documented in “Codes of Conduct,” or CoC.

The sentiment behind a CoC is that there is no excuse for being an ass, which sounds great until you realize that only a select few people get to decide who’s an ass. So when open source leaders want to stop you from doing free work they can pretend that its your fault for violating their code instead of admitting they never really wanted to include just anybody. They’ve managed to make exclusivity look inclusive, and it makes me crazy that so few people see that….

They exempt themselves from their own standards and announce their
willingness to proxy dox anyone if persuaded to do so on subjective
grounds. There is no privacy for you: If you look privileged and someone
makes up a story about you, you might get a concerned email from HR
about something making the rounds on Twitter and causing a PR nightmare
for your employer. Whether or not you actually did anything wrong won’t
matter.

Hacker Eric S. Raymond noticed the manipulation at work and indicated that women at tech conferences were targeting male open source leaders with false allegations. Accusations have power, and the 2013 PyCon incident with Adria Richards proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

We need to acknowledge the problem. If you are not considered worthy
of protection by ideological CoCs, then there are people out there that
want you to at the very least lose your job. If they see you
demonstrating even the most innocuous affection or humor, they will
likely assume malice and retaliate, especially if you are the wrong
color or sex. These are the same people who humiliated a scientist for
landing on a comet because of a shirt he wore.

If you think it’s bad now, just wait. The next step is going to be taking open source projects and closing them so that they cannot be forked. After all, what is the point of going to all this trouble to take over OSS if the productive people can simply render all their efforts irrelevant by a fork?

They don’t want a seat at the table, they want control. And what good is control if you can’t control everything?

As for those who say it’s not possible because the rules of open source don’t permit it, remember, they don’t only exempt themselves from their own standards, they exempt themselves from anything that limits their ability to pursue their objectives.

I was hoping to do the Open Brainstorm tonight, but we’ll do it tomorrow at 7 PM EST instead. I’ll send out the invites to the VFM tonight, and post the link publicly tomorrow afternoon.

Facebook is not your friend

Facebook has transformed itself into Big Brother. If you’re on it, it’s time to get off the platform:

Facebook began a Europe-wide campaign on Monday to thwart extremist posts on social media, after German politicians in particular raised concerns about a rise in xenophobic comments linked to an influx of refugees.

The U.S.-based group launched its “Initiative for Civil Courage Online” in Berlin, pledging over 1 million euros (1 million pounds) to support non-governmental organisations in their efforts to counter racist and xenophobic posts.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said hate speech “has no place in our society”, including in the Internet.

Facebook’s ground rules forbid bullying, harassment and threatening language, but critics say it does not enforce them properly. On Friday, the firm said it had hired a unit of the publisher Bertelsmann to monitor and delete racist posts on its platform in Germany.

One of the first things Facebook has apparently done, as part of this campaign “to counter racist and xenophobic posts”, is to expel over 1,000 members of the Facebook group “#GamerGate & #NotYourShield”. The 2,300-member Facebook group #GG  was also shut down yesterday.

Some have said that it was a group mod who was responsible; I’m not on Facebook and I wasn’t a member of those groups, so I don’t know. All I know is from an email sent by a member of both groups who was expelled from the first one.

Regardless, it is important to understand that Facebook is not your friend. Facebook is your enemy and it is the enemy of Western civilization. So stop supporting it. Stop using it.

UPDATE: Facebook has also repeatedly removed the video of a 15-year-old German girl who expressed her fears of those who have invaded her country on the grounds of xenophobia:

Hello, you can read the newspapers but this video is about the real situation in Germany. I would like to tell everyone about this on Youtube and Facebook. I am almost 16. I would like everyone to know what is going on, what I am authentically feeling at this moment.

And I am so scared everywhere. For example, if my family and I go out together, or if I see a movie with my friends. Usually I stay at home, but sometimes I stay out until 6 pm in winter, and it is so scary. It is just very hard to live day-to-day life as a woman.

I just want to say that I am not a racist. But one day, a terrible thing happened at the supermarket. I ran all the way home. I was so frightened for my life. There’s no other way to describe it.

My aunt and her friend have said you have to grow up. Why should we, children, have to grow up in such fear? It’s not just me, my friends too. You can see on Facebook, a 17 year old attacked, a 15 year old attacked, two 12-year olds attacked, so many. It is really so sad that this is happening … because of YOU PEOPLE. 🙁

Mailvox: a convention, converged

The lesson, as always, is this: don’t ever take McRapey’s advice:

Arisia is a mid-sized sf and fantasy convention in Boston which has been taken over by SJW’s despite some of us attempting to resist them. This year’s GOH was John Scalzi who triggered several changes to the code of conduct.

However, the con chair wasn’t satisfied was that. She insisted that every attendee sign a printed copy of the COC, even though it required 5 point type to fit on a single page. The con cobbled together new registration software and procedures to fulfill this requirement, but there were many problems with it. The registration line reached nearly 3 hours though its peak last year had been about 20 minutes.

Furthermore, faced with this fiasco, the con chair still was unwilling to back off the requirement to expedite registration.

Prediction: attendance at the conventions that have adopted Codes of Conduct that affect the experience in any way will gradually fall off. I know that in the Django project, the amount of emails and posts have already fallen off considerably, because everyone is, quite rightly, afraid that saying anything will make them a target of SJW attack.

This is why you don’t permit their entryists in the first place, and why you certainly don’t give into their demands. Convergence always eventually kills the converged organization unless it can latch onto a host that will financially sustain it.

No Code of Conduct

Paul M Jones provides another good way to address SJW entryst attacks:

What is NCoC

No Code Of Conduct is a groundbreaking new idea. Designed to help you find communities and projects that will not get stuck endlessly debating how members should behave in their communities, only to be found to never be fully resolved to anyone’s liking. What if… we all agreed?

    We are all adults. Capable of having adult discussions.

    We accept everyone’s contributions, we don’t care if you’re liberal or conservative, black or white, straight or gay, or anything in between! In fact, we won’t bring it up, or ask. We simply do not care.

    Nothing else matters!

Q: Great! How do I add this to my project?

Simply copy CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md into the root directory of your project. You may modify it to your needs.

Q: How do I promote No Code of Conduct?

Feel free to talk about, discuss, and promote No Code of Conduct anywhere you wish, and use the hashtag #NCoC on Twitter.

Q: What if, this makes me feel discriminated against?

If you feel this way simply because we do not have a code of conduct, it is hard for anyone to relate to you. This is not intended to discriminate against anyone. Simply because we don’t babysit people on our site to make sure they treat you with respect, does not mean we hope you feel unwelcome, or that you are treated without respect. That is just not something we have time for.

I still favor the One-Finger Code of Conduct myself, but there is certainly a place for the No Code of Conduct as well as the Code of Merit.

SJWs in tech

“Women in Tech” is not only code for “SJWs in Tech”, but it is a massive waste of resources and it is extremely harmful to the women who are coerced and encouraged to waste their lives doing something for which they have neither the interest nor the commitment:

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
No individual with a useful skill set capable of delivering needs to be babied or coerced into working.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
You do women a terrible disservice by trying to convince those who are not seriously interested in the field to enter it.

Jennifer Medina ‏@JenniferJMedina
You do everyone a terrible disservice by discouraging every human being from being introduced to more of what life has to offer.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
You’re wrong. I save those people years of their lives and thousands of dollars by showing them what it ACTUALLY involves.

Jennifer Medina ‏@JenniferJMedina
I don’t give a flying fuck about your anecdotal evidence. Your personal views and life are not on the table of discussion here.

Wrongfan ‏@Badthincks
I am a STEM woman (mathematics) and he is right.  In fact I spent years trying to push girls into STEM.

Wrongfan ‏@Badthincks
It’s a waste of time to try and push ANYONE into something they have no genuine inclination for.

Considering how there are already far too many PhDs for the number of positions available, and that there are already 1,000 people applying for 12 game development positions, it should be obvious that encouraging uninterested women to go into a field where they are almost guaranteed to go unemployed is reprehensible.

Stats provided by Creative Skillset show that in 2014, 60 universities and colleges offered 215 undergraduate and 40 master video game courses. The most recent stats available, courtesy of the Higher Education Statistics Agency for the 2012/2013 academic year, show that 3,125 students were taking games as a subject of study.

Compare this with the 620 studios in the UK, according to TIGA, and you can see the difficulties studios face when lending experience in such a highly competitive field. Lenton says a local studio in  Leamington Spa, which houses around up to 300 staff, recently had over 1,000 applications for a dozen places.

What are the chances that a girl who required hand-holding and cheerleading just to get her to pay any attention to the industry in the first place is going to be talented and driven enough to beat out the 98.8 percent of highly competitive young men and women who want nothing more than to make games?

That’s not career advice. That’s a fantasy novel.

SF-SJWs double down

Allum Bokhari of Breitbart addresses the latest attempts by SJWs in science fiction to silence all dissent:

There is no doubt that some sci-fi authors hold views that are alien to much of mainstream, liberal opinion. However, the SJWs who are trying to drive them out continue to fail to grasp that no political opinion is justification for exclusion from awards participation, bookstores, or the sci-fi community at large. The point of sci-fi is good sci-fi, and the point of awards is to recognise good sci-fi, not politically conformist opinions.

SJWs continue to demonstrate their inability – or unwillingness – to separate good art from questionable artists. In a manner eerily similar to the anti-historical campaigns to scrub images of unfashionable – yet historically significant – individuals like Woodrow Wilson and Cecil Rhodes from university campuses and public spaces. At the behest of SJWs,  the face of H.P Lovecraft, one of the genre’s pioneers, was recently removed from the iconic trophies of the World Fantasy Awards.

There’s something ISIS-like to it: the purging of historical icons and works of art because they represent something that falls outside a rigid, intolerant ideology.

Political intolerance in sci-fi appears to be growing, not diminishing. The Sad Puppies of 2016 will have their work cut out for them.

The mere fact that they are having to do openly what they managed to do behind closed doors for 30 years is a victory. And from Castalia House to Brave, we’re seeing one example after another of those who love freedom fighting back.

We’re going to win, in the end, because they are nothing but parasites and cargo cultists. They can’t create, they can’t build, all they can do is latch onto something someone else has created and converge it. Now, as the recent actions by the Linux Foundation have demonstrated, people are realizing that if they do not keep out the entryists, if they do not expel the SJWs, their organizations will not survive.

No SJWs allowed

One senses the hand of Linus Torvalds behind this unexpected action by the Linux Foundation:

Linux Foundation quietly drops community representation

The Linux Foundation is an industry organisation dedicated to “promoting, protecting and standardising Linux and open source software”[1]. The majority of its board is chosen by the member companies – 10 by platinum members (platinum membership costs $500,000 a year), 3 by gold members (gold membership costs $100,000 a year) and 1 by silver members (silver membership costs between $5,000 and $20,000 a year, depending on company size). Up until recently individual members ($99 a year) could also elect two board members, allowing for community perspectives to be represented at the board level.

As of last Friday, this is no longer true. The by-laws were amended to drop the clause that permitted individual members to elect any directors. Section 3.3(a) now says that no affiliate members may be involved in the election of directors, and section 5.3(d) still permits at-large directors but does not require them[2]. The old version of the bylaws are here – the only non-whitespace differences are in sections 3.3(a) and 5.3(d).

These changes all happened shortly after Karen Sandler announced that she planned to stand for the Linux Foundation board during a presentation last September. A short time later, the “Individual membership” program was quietly renamed to the “Individual supporter” program and the promised benefit of being allowed to stand for and participate in board elections was dropped (compare the old page to the new one). Karen is the executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, an organisation involved in the vitally important work of GPL enforcement. The Linux Foundation has historically been less than enthusiastic about GPL enforcement, and the SFC is funding a lawsuit against one of the Foundation’s members for violating the terms of the GPL. The timing may be coincidental, but it certainly looks like the Linux Foundation was willing to throw out any semblance of community representation just to ensure that there was no risk of someone in favour of GPL enforcement ending up on their board.

The Foundation’s action doesn’t have anything to do with Karen Sandler being the executive director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, but rather, her having been the executive director of the Gnome Foundation, which she bankrupted in three years by devoting nearly 50 percent of the foundation’s budget to a new Women’s Outreach Program.

This demonstrates the seriousness of the threat that the most influential  people in tech know that the SJWs pose to it. It is well worth destroying the community aspect of a project to keep them out, if necessary, because if they are allowed in, they will spend all their time and effort in attempting to take it over; even if they are prevented from doing so, far too many resources will be wasted in stopping them, resources that could have been spent on achieving the goals of the project.

Keep them out. As Linus knows, even it requires changing the rules, you have to keep them out.

A second SJW attack on PHP

Another SJW, this time one Derick Rethan, takes another crack at imposing a Code of Conduct on PHP:

Hi, I’ve decided to re-propose the CoC RFC. There are many reasons for it, but there are a few points I want to make. I strongly believe that a Code of Conduct is required. The amount of toxic behaviour on this list is in my opinion unacceptable. It drives people away, it certainly did. It is also one of the reasons I am not nearly as active as I used to be.

It also makes me reluctant to welcome and mentor new people wanting to contribute. I have said “no” to two people in the last few days, mostly because I am not sure whether I want them exposed to some of the things being said on the list.

But I think this list, and hence this project, and language, can be improved. A Code of Conduct alone is not enough. The focus for this list, and wider community, should be on collaborating to make PHP even better and faster than it already is. Collaboration works better in a happy environment, where people work together instead of against each other.

The new 0.5 version of the RFC that is up at  https://wiki.php.net/rfc/adopt-code-of-conduct focusses more on working  together and mediation than on acting with an iron fist on when things
go awry, although these parts of the RFC are still included. In my opinion, an CoC that is not enforced is nothing but some text on a piece  of paper—or in our case, a few bits on a disk. I have added a section,  Constructive Contributor Guidelines, in addition to the CoC. This section definitely needs improving.

I would everybody invite you to help out improving this RFC, but please take into account  https://wiki.php.net/rfc/adopt-code-of-conduct#constructive_collaboration_guidelines

I want this to work, and work together, to get this approved.

cheers,

If the project leader at PHP has any sense at all, he will expel this SJW from the project immediately. Notice how he spews squid ink the moment his idiocy is confronted:

There is no mechanism or ability for one to confront ones accuser

That is a tricky one. In my opinion, in the case of abuse as pointed out in the draft CoC, I think this is fair, and necessary that we all for reports of abuse in private, and with secrecy. Without it, an accusor is likely immediately going to be lambasted by the perpetrator.

Here we have the core of (yet another) problem: presumption of guilt. The “accused” is casually referred to as the “perpetrator.”  This is *exactly* why the accused needs to be able to confront the accuser.

The common reply here is to say “oops, sorry, I meant to say ‘the accused'”.  I don’t think that’s true; it’s a wink-and-a-nod, a recognition that one has revealed their true thoughts: all accusations are to be believed. Except, of course, the ones that are not to be believed, and those will (strangely enough) line up with the political beliefs of the enforcers. Because it is a political document, the Contributor Covenant is *intended* to work that way.

That is only one of the many reasons the Contributor Covenant, and all documents like it, should be removed in toto from any Code of Conduct discussion.

There is nothing “tricky” about it. SJWs want to be able to act arbitrarily, and in secret, without any oversight or possibility of public protest. Again, PHP should ban this SJW from the project immediately; he is actively seeking to destroy it and he is using deception to do so.

Furthermore, the Code of Merit appears to be an effective way to go, because the SJWs are definitely against it:

I had a look at this, and I think it is not suitable. It is almost the exact opposite of promoting collaborative behaviour, and instead only focusses on the “if you done nothing before, you have no voice”. There is also no chance the PHP project will have have a benevolent dictator (or group of people). And it only focusses on the technical aspects of a community, but even covering a set of guidelines to improve collaboration.

Remember, to the SJW, “not suitable” means “it won’t help us take control and play thought police.” But clearly it can be approved. “Almost the exact opposite” is not good enough. If they’re not shrieking and crying and protesting, it’s clearly not enough.

Show them you mean business and will not put up with the disruption. Kick them out as soon as they show themselves.

Initial SJW attack defeated

An SJW gives up on his initial attempt to seize control of the PHP project:

I’ve decided to withdraw the CoC RFC. There are many reasons for it, but there are a few points I want to make.

As to the content of the RFC, when I initially proposed it, I selected the Contributor Covenant due to it being a well adopted standard. Several people raised objections to it, and I was completely open to changing it. But the more objections I see, the more I feel the nature of the objections actually justifies the Covenant as the choice rather than justifies switching it. The more I hear people complain about the “scope of applicability” being outside the project, the more it’s apparent that many (not all, but many) simply don’t want to need to think about their actions in other contexts. Some will claim that ambiguity will lead to abuse, but the underlying idea is “treat people with respect”. And as long as you do that, all will be fine.

And while several would rather see a CoC that focuses on “positive behavior”, to me that’s not what a CoC is for. The CoC is to take a stand and say “this is what we will not tolerate”. Positive behavior should be encourage in another “Contributing” document. Where you detail how people should contribute. The CoC is a mechanism for people to feel safe. And safety is achieved by taking a stand.

As far as voting on just the CoC without a private reporting mechanism (which implies some degree of “teeth”), I’ve made it clear that I don’t believe that’s tenable. I believe that asking people to go public with every incident defeats the entire point of having a CoC.

I am also not happy with the RFC in its current state (I’ve been clear about that since day one). But I also have no further energy to evolve it further. Hence, there is nothing left for me to do but withdraw it.

Notice the First Law of SJW at work: the initial suggestion is that the Code of Conduct is simply about being nice, and that there is nothing controversial about it. But then, the moment that anyone objects, the fact that there is controversy only proves the need for this uncontroversial policy to be implemented. And then notice how, although the Code is said to be about nothing but feelings, it needs “teeth” and private enforcement in order to be “tenable”.

And don’t forget the Second Law of SJW: SJWs always double down. No sooner did Ferrara withdraw his attempt to impose the Code of Conduct on the project than someone else proposed it again.

One of those who successfully resisted the initial entryist attack, PHP project member Paul Jones, explains in detail why the Code of Conduct is nothing more than an SJW weapon used to exert political control over an OSS project:

Recently, Anthony Ferrara opened an RFC for PHP internals to adopt and enforce a code of conduct. Even leaving aside for the moment whether this is an appropriate use of the RFC system, the RFC generated a lot of discussion on the mailing list, in which I participated at great length, and for which I was hailed as abusive by at least one person in favor of the RFC (a great example of a kafkatrap).

To restate what I said on the mailing list, my position on the RFC is not merely “opposed”, but “reject entirely as unsalvageable” (though I did make some attempts at salvage in case it goes through). I continue to stand by everything I said there, and in other channels, regarding the proposed Code of Conduct.

Normally, if you had not heard about this particular discussion, I would say you were lucky, and probably the happier for it. In this case, I have to say that you should be paying close attention. The Code of Conduct as presented enables its enforcers to stand in judgment of every aspect of your public, private, professional, and political expression. I understand that’s a bold assertion; I will attempt to support it below.

The Contributor Covenant version on which the RFC is based is authored and maintained by intersectional technologist and transgender feminist Coraline Ada Ehmke. Ehmke believes that open source is a political movement:

    From the onset open source has been inherently a political movement, a reaction against the socially damaging, anti-competitive motivations of governments and corporations. It began as a campaign for social liberty and digital freedom, a celebration of the success of communal efforts in the face of rampant capitalism. What is this if not a political movement?

– Why Hackers Must Welcome Social Justice Advocates

Whether or not this description of open source is accurate, it is true that Ehmke thinks of open source as a political arena. As such, one must read the Contributor Covenant as a political document, with political means and political ends. Specifically, it is a tool for Social Justice.

As a tool for Social Justice, it recognizes no boundaries between project, person, and politics. This attitude is written into the Contributor Covenant with the text, “This Code of Conduct applies both within project spaces and in public spaces when an individual is representing the project or its community.” So, when is a project participant not representing the project? The answer appears to be “never.”

Never accept any Code of Conduct proposed for any reason. And every OSS project leaders should impose a rule that anyone proposing a Code of Conduct will be immediately expelled from the project. At a bare minimum, only those who have been contributing to the project for at least three years should be permitted to propose, discuss, or vote on project-related rules.

Notice how the SJW Coraline had been a member of the Ruby project for all of two days before proposing the Code of Conduct there. But in the present circumstances, it is much better to simple expel every member, new or old, who proposes or supports one.

More SJW attacks in tech

An SJW entryist attacks Ruby. Note the appeals to “everyone’s doing it” as well as how quickly SJWs line up to endorse it in an attempt to create momentum for the Code of Conduct that will allow them to take over the project:

Code of Conduct
Added by Coraline Ada Ehmke 2 days ago.

I am the creator of the Contributor Covenant, a code of conduct for Open Source projects. At last count there are over 13,000 projects on Github that have adopted it. This past year saw adoption of Contributor Covenant by a lot of very large, very visible projects, including Rails, Github’s Atom text editor, Angular JS, bundler, curl, diaspora, discourse, Eclipse, rspec, shoes, and rvm. The bundler team made code of conduct integration an option in the gem creation workflow, putting it on par with license selection. Many open source language communities have already adopted the code of conduct, including Elixir, Mono, the .NET foundation, F#, and Apple’s Swift. RubyTogether also adopted a policy to only fund Ruby projects that had a solid code of conduct in place.

Right now in the PHP community there is a healthy debate about adopting the Contributor Covenant. Since it came from and has been so widely adopted by the Ruby community at large, I think it’s time that we consider adopting it for the core Ruby language as well.

Our community prides itself on niceness. What a code of conduct does is define what we mean by nice. It states clearly that we value openness, courtesy, and compassion. That we care about and want contributions from people who may be different from us. That we pledge to respect all contributors regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or other factors. And it makes it clear that we are prepared to follow through on these values with action when and if an incident arises.

I’m asking that we join with the larger Ruby community in supporting the adoption of the Contributor Covenant for the Ruby language. I think that this will be an important step forward and will ensure the continued welcoming and supportive environment around Ruby. You can read the full text of the Contributor Covenant at http://contributor-covenant.org/version/1/3/0/ and learn more at http://contributor-covenant.org/.

Thanks for your consideration and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

I also enjoyed the false claims about a community to which he doesn’t even belong. I’ve seen this cookie-cutter approach being used in various projects. The problem is that most of the respondents don’t understand what is going on and are taking the entryist at face value. This guy, however, does:

Yes, we know who you are. To everyone reading this thread, please take time to read the following by ESR (Eric Raymond). http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6918 (Why Hackers Must Eject the SJWs)

You now have the basic information behind why people are attempting to wedge in CoCs…. If any sort of CoC is adopted, let’s adopt one like the “Code of Merit” where people who do great work are the ones working up the chain with the purpose of being a leader in the community.

However, even this response makes the mistake of nodding to equality and so forth. They prey on that sort of niceness and tolerance. “What’s important in this process however is that people who might
otherwise feel excluded from certain open source communities be involved
in shaping the final code of conduct.” Reject it. Reject ALL of it. Let those hypothetical people feel excluded. Give them no ground whatsoever.