Drew DeVaultAug 27, 2019
It should be fairly obvious by now that every project which has been forked over some perceived social injustice has quickly failed, being born and dying in irrelevance. Maybe if the spent some of the energy they spend harassing free software maintainers on perfecting the craft themselves, their forks would go somewhere
Show threadpuffball: trianglemancerAug 27, 2019

@sir I think that this conflates the success of a fork to the technical skill of the people forking it which isn't usually true. Half the reason why forks die is because other people don't contribute, partially because FLOSS has a tendency to be hostile towards minorities, (which is usually the reason the fork exists to begin with lol)

If we can raise awareness and empathy for marginalized groups within FLOSS, forks will be made less often, and be more successful when they do pop up.

Show threadProblematic Conference AttendeeAug 27, 2019
@wgahnagl @sir The FLOSS community isn't hostile towards minorities, but it's very much focused on merit. If you yell loudly and often, but don't really bring any code to the table, people are more dismissive of your calls for action. Don't forget that most FLOSS software is also made for gratis by other people. Demanding they change the things they worked for in their spare time because you feel like it's something you deserve isn't "empathy for marginalized groups". That's just harassment.

As for the Glimpse fork of GIMP it's important to note that, in reality, the word "gimp" isn't offensive to the vast majority of the world. To demand a change that's relatively costly to most users, and to do so using harassment tactics[1], seems like a very strange thing to me if you're arguing for compassion and empathy.

[1]: I'm not saying you use harassment tactics, but the group demanding the rename on GitLab was.
Show threadpuffball: trianglemancerAug 27, 2019
@tyil but right, look at the first part of your argument. You mention minorities, and bring merit as almost an argument against them, by putting them at odds with each other. I know you didn't mean anything by it, but it's these very very small actions that build up to contribute to a hostile environment.
When you hear arguments about minorities in FLOSS constantly at odds with "merit", eventually you believe that the community doesn't aknowledge your skill, which is hostile. +
Show threadProblematic Conference AttendeeAug 27, 2019
@wgahnagl I mean, if you're going out of your way to look for "hostility", you'll find plenty of it. If instead you try to go to a project to contribute, and actually bring something of merit, nobody will care about what you look like, who you want to have sex with or any of those things.

Minorities are only at odds when they don't want to bring any merit, but just want to complain and demand changes.
Show threadpuffball: trianglemancerAug 27, 2019
@tyil but the argument I'm making is that it's not always about the code itself, it's about the people you interact with while working on it. If those people express views that other you, or name their software something that others you, you feel that your contributions are valued less.
Show threadProblematic Conference Attendee
@wgahnagl But it is about the code itself. That's why there's a fork, that is supposed to "solve" the problem. The GitHub repository still contains over 5000 references to the word "gimp", though, so it doesn't seem like it's actually that big of a deal, even to them.

I haven't yet found any software that I was unable to use due to the authors "othering" me or having a name that offends me. This is largely because I don't really go out of my way to feel like a victim all the time. If there was a piece of software that I could "fix" in my eyes by changing a name, then that's what I would do. I wouldn't go to their bugtracker, start a massive shitshow and call people names until they do it for me.
Aug 27, 2019 at 3:22pmWeb