We've closed this thread to comments by new accounts because of trolls.<p>If you have a new account and want to comment here, you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com.
She's talking about some guy and his "campaign to legalize rape".<p>I thought she was exaggerating or maybe misunderstanding something. Sure, this guy is probably an asshole, but legalizing rape, come on!<p>I followed the link and... it is kind of almost entertaining. He means it. Literally. You can't stop reading that trainwreck of an argument, because it gets worse and worse.<p>And then you've lost all hope in mankind. I thought I knew what misogyny was about, but that is absolutely breathtaking.
Before googling Randi's name with some relevant keywords I had no idea about the amount of people past puberty that are behaving like this. I was about to say that I'm glad I've never met their kind, but then I remembered that I actually have: in highschool.<p>No idea what happened to them, I assumed they grew up and the few that didn't, found their place at the very bottom of society that is not good for anything.<p>To them usually it's not really about genre, race or any particular property, their disturbed mentality causes them to look for ways to attack and inconvenience anyone they don't like for any reason. I actually think they're even looking for an excuse to find a target, because they are amused by the whole thing and it makes them feel good and important.<p>I can see how many of them would make it as gamers, I'm just surprised that a person like this would also make it as a FreeBSD committer.<p>I wonder why they silently forced him to turn his commit bit off, but they don't want to update their CoC or condemn this behaviour in public.<p>The stealth editing of the Trademark Policy to include this particular case (even though they missed the exception for old uses, which made that change pointless) also deserves some explanation, it's wrong.
Wow, really disgusting to hear how FreeBSD core reacted to this. I've read through a lot of the source materials; she hasn't been perfect in every move; but that's she's been able to be so level headed and professional about it in the face of an onslaught of sexism, intimidation and smear campaigns is... nothing short of a miracle.<p>I don't care about any argument of if she's ever committed, or if her code is any good; that's bike shedding and irrelevant to the fact that no HUMAN BEING should be treated this way, let alone in a leading open source project.<p>> The next communication from core asked me to stop talking about this publicly. They told me to tell everyone it was being solved through private mediation, and that the problem committer was on vacation for a week, so they didn’t want to do anything about it until he got back.<p>WHAT<p>> I had talked to someone from the FreeBSD Foundation earlier on the phone about what was happening. During this same conversation, they actually said “maybe you should be nicer.”<p>THE<p>> A week later, I received an email from this person threatening to involve the FreeBSD Foundation lawyers if I didn’t change my username immediately. They tried to pass it off as a trademark infringement<p>ACTUAL<p>> The FreeBSD Foundation had stealth added ‘usernames’ just prior to her sending that email, adding the word but not updating the date at the top.<p>FUCK<p>The shit she's had to go through makes me lose hope for humanity. While the way she's handled it has restored it. We need more people in tech like this, and I'm glad she's putting up such a fight.<p>It would be easy for anyone to just be a loudspeaker for change; but she's actually getting her hands dirty, talking to people, and engaging about it, and learning and sharing along the way. I seriously doubt most of us would have the gumption and fortitude to handle this the way she has.
I still, deep inside, hold a dwindling hope that all humans can one day learn to treat humans as humans. Basically, literally, to treat others as they themselves would like to be treated. As humans.<p>It saddens me to hear of times when that doesn't happen, particularly in such devastating ways that affect someone's life so fundamentally.
If you look at the actual facts of the matter you will see a vastly differing view of who was "harassed" and who was the "harasser" than this Blog post tries to paint, here's where most of this started: <a href="https://twitter.com/xmjEE/status/613083223086768128" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/xmjEE/status/613083223086768128</a> <a href="https://archive.is/9KGyX" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/9KGyX</a><p>And here's a "discussion" on the matter between Randi, Colin and Johannes on /r/FreeBSD: <a href="https://archive.is/wH4Rg" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/wH4Rg</a>
You can, and lots of people will, wave their hands and ignore/belittle FreeBSDGirl's account. Certainly the trolls will.<p>But, it is just another example that the larger tech community has a problem. GamerGate et al, they are not fantasies. Women who want to create, same as any developer, getting SWAT teams sent to their homes, this stuff is real, and indicates a real problem.<p>Ask yourself, are you helping fix this behavior? Because if not, then you are part of the problem.
:(...<p>As someone who didn't really follow the whole controversy the past years, this was an eye-opener for me. Did it really get that bad?<p>Stop tolerating the intolerant! Also, I don't understand the point of GamerGate. As an outsider, all I see is two groups making themselves look really bad and everyone else loosing. You don't convince others by threatening and harassing them, something the extremes at both sides seem to do. Why?<p>By the way, note how she did not mention the harasser's username in her post.
There is a thread on KiA where references to the original materials (transcripts of Randi's dispute with the freebsd developer) are available. The raw materials paint a rather less flattering portrait of who was attacking / harassing / abusing whom. This may be one of those cases where discretion (withholding names / evidence) does a disservice to the truth.
I know most of the people involved in this and it's just a shit sandwich. Randi wanted a person crucified, that's not how companies and foundations function, and thankfully so. I hope she finds success in new endeavors and am sad she had to leave under gross circumstance.
Here's what confuses me. What actually happened to her? Without any context, all this can really be is her word against someone else's. She says she forwarded on relevant harassment incidents, but without context, the actual truth of what happened to her is unknown.<p>>Don’t tell people to stay quiet about abuse. This removes them from their support network of friends and family.<p>Didn't they just tell her to stop talking about it in public, though? And really what mechanism does anyone have to force her to do this?<p>>If you’re a dude, don’t reach out to women leaving other open source projects saying “join us here!”<p>On the surface, that sounds like she wants men to...not be welcoming? This is, perhaps, poorly worded.<p>>You have no idea if women in the community have problems or not. Women will talk to other women about the quality of the community. But it’s also just really bad taste. Instead, find someone in your community that is also part of that minority group to reach out. They’ll know more about potential issues than you will.<p>Not sure how this follows from the previous sentence. How is it in bad taste to reach out to someone in a welcoming way? Does this mean that I, as a straight white male, should only communicate with other straight white males?<p>She probably doesn't mean it this way, but boy, am I confused.<p>>Publicly stand behind the women in your community, or eventually they will leave and write a post just like this.<p>I find it amusing that someone who has written a tool that allows you to filter out a specific block of individuals (as trollish as they may be) can write this post at all. The cynical side of me thinks the attitude shown here is, "Hear me, but here's a way you can systematically ignore people that I fundamentally disagree with".<p>I often feel like tolerance and progressivism has wrapped all the way around to discrimination. Am I wrong to feel that is part of what's happening here?<p>EDIT: I'd like to make it clear that I'm genuinely not trying to troll. If I'm being wrongheaded, then please show me how my thinking is wrong.
I believe Ms. Harper to be both abuser and abused. And it should be noted that she now has a financial interest in keeping these kind of things active.
does this same thing eliminate the upvote option?
<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/ub98ewlux598o8p/Screenshot%202015-12-31%2015.09.48.png?dl=0" rel="nofollow">https://www.dropbox.com/s/ub98ewlux598o8p/Screenshot%202015-...</a><p>sorry if this is off-topic :\
This is why no one will ever take them seriously, by spamming this thread out to their followings in this way they are attempting to create outside focus on the HN community not within it.<p>I invite you to see how Hacker News responds to an inherent problem with misogyny in open source. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819778" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10819778</a> …
<a href="https://twitter.com/LilyLemmer/status/682688557018828802" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/LilyLemmer/status/682688557018828802</a><p>Admittedly really curious to see how the HN community responds to this.
<a href="https://twitter.com/randileeharper/status/682683554447265792" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/randileeharper/status/682683554447265792</a>
Notice that this blog post provides zero in the way of evidence. Before assuming everything written here is true, it would be worthwhile to fact check.