> I have made no shortage of mistakes, and there are plenty of hurt feelings which can be laid at my feet. I am regretful for my mistakes, and I have worked actively to improve. I think that it has been working. Perhaps that’s arrogant of me to presume, but I’m not sure what else to do. Must I resign myself to my fate for stupid comments I made years ago? I’m sorry, and I’ve been working to do better. Can I have another chance?<p>When you are working on yourself and reach new milestones, then it will take time until even your closest will recognize and really trust the observed changes. And I assume public / anonymous people will take even longer.<p>This can feel unfair, because these things are very hard like improving, changing your habits, getting a bit wiser, or learning a new skill. But it is how it is. People have an image of you and it changes in a delayed manner. It's even doubly unfair if that image is distorted in the first place.<p>Also people like jumping on negativity bandwagons. It seems to be one of the really stupid parts of human nature. I do it too, most people do it even if we try to avoid it most of the time. It sucks.
I guess I should have known better but I was surprised to learn that Drew would be on the receiving end of that stuff.<p>The vibe I got from sourcehut is that it's built by peers for peers, they are remarkably open about everything. The service is straightforward and doesn't force you to a particular workflow. It's a solid hosted version control with a no-nonsense web UI - open source to boot. What's not to like?<p>It blows my mind that someone would actively hate on such a project. Oh well, internet.<p>(I signed up for srht and pay a small amount for my personal non-work stuff.)
I’ve been a very delighted user of Sway for at least 5 years and am grateful for the work Drew has put into it.<p>I once made a trivial PR to sway that was maybe 6 chars in total but Drew made sure I felt welcomed and even mentioned me in the list of contributors.<p>I find it a bit puzzling why someone who contributes so much to the community gets so much hate. Even if the opinions might not always be popular, the volume and quality of his work should speak much louder than words.
<i>Perhaps it this has something to do with the backlash, not just against me and my work, but against others who use and participate in that work.</i><p>this a thousand times. i didn't care when people insulted or criticized me, but when they went against my team, then that hurt deeply and i really took that personal.<p>shrugging off attacks directed at me is kind of doable, but when others are attacked because of me, then i want to be able to protect them. sometimes it works to redirect the attention to me, but when it doesn't it makes me feel helpless.
Just yesterday I was telling a friend about Sway, and then about Drew and all of his other projects I use and love. To me he is no less than legend developer with ethics that don't just show in his words, but in his code. We need more people like Drew.
Thank you Drew for doing your best! Please, never give up, no matter who wants you and your hard work to go away.<p>I have used Sway and fell in love with it, it was such a discovery of simplicity and beautiful design. I read about your new language many months ago, even then realizing the potential behind it. They want to silence you because you are a beacon of new hope and ideas. They fear your potential. Don't let anyone to belittle your talent and skill.
I happily pay for sourcehut, not only but also because sourcehut aligns so much with the software world I am hoping to see more of.<p>Imagine just 10% of the revenue involving software globally would go into supporting all excellent open source projects that millions of people depend on on a daily basis. What a beautiful world that could be.
> [...] This kind of harassment is something I hear about often from many maintainers of projects on SourceHut. It breaks my heart and I feel helpless to do anything about it.<p>I most certainly can't provide an answer here but doesn't the medium (IRC, mailing lists, forums, etc) facilitate this toxic environment too? People whose sole intent is to manufacture a narrative in order to harass someone, or their project(s), are a lot more comfortable doing so online. They are guaranteed a wide audience, lots of views and publicity which in turn maximizes the damage. Rarely do I encounter this behavior in workplace meetings, conferences or venues that require physical attendance.
The following are only my lax feelings. There was a time here on HN a few years back were Drew was often on the front page. He seemed to be a growing Open Source star. He had opinions, but also projects to show. I don't know if he changed or I changed, but for me he got some attitude problem. It certainly is not easy to be impartial when you are in the spotlight, but his opinions took a bit too self-righteous turn for me. It could be just miscommunication on his part (or misreading on my part), but I felt many times that I mostly agreed with him, but was not a fan of how he put it. I like what he does even if I don't really use any of his software.<p>Now that he was involved in a new language he seems to get more bad press with it, I think mostly because he is someone that is Internet semi-famous.<p>I think he has his niche and people should just leave him be. As it is the question of popularity it is sad that work he was involved with also suffers, making this spiral that gets back to him. Probably what would help the most would be to go a little under the radar. It is unfair, but the Internet drain pipe must forget that he's a subject to pin things to. In his place I would limit writing to things not easily consumed by masses or associated with him - like mailing lists. It sucks, because who wouldn't like to be free to express himself and to advertise his work, but there is no spam filter for the public Internet.
Drew's been doing really cool stuff. I'm a paying user of Sourcehut myself and I'm considering moving from the "Amateur" to "Pro" tier just to support the project.<p>I also don't get how someone would get out of their way just to be toxic against a free, open and community-oriented project. If you don't like it, don't use it.
i've been following Drew DeVault and his project ever since SourceHut announcement<p>SourceHut turned out to be a company which values i very much share<p>i wasn't aware about the harassment-campaign, but i wish a soon recovery!<p>consider going off-line for a while and start talking to a therapist
One thing I don't see mentioned is that sourcehut users are taking the hit for hosting their code there. Some of it is because of natural tech activism and the coders need to create their desired order, but certainly there just typical bullying as well. Of course we're all just human, but I hope that retelling Drew's faults is not to justify any retaliation delivered to sourcehut users.<p>I consider drew a prolific coder who seems to be focused on all aspects relating to getting good code out of our brains. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if he would come out with a new keyboard next.
It is incredible how much hate people point to another person.<p>Why not point this hate to corporations that are destroying our society with their unethical business practices?
I always look forward to reading Drew's blog posts and I suspect that there's more people that, like me, value Drew's work, but we mostly just shut up about it.<p>The haters are always going to have a louder voice because hate is an emotion that provokes people to be loud and outspoken. Appreciation is usually silent.
I am greatly appreciative of Drew's work. I too have found that people will be intensely negative about anything I do online. It can be really hard to tune out the trolls because there is often truth to what they're saying. I just try to remind myself that trolls accomplish nothing and the end of the day I've at least done something.
I feel like I'm coming in to the middle of an emotional conversation about a topic which has a lot of backstory I don't know about. Someone here care to bring me up to speed?
The fact is that workflows that are forced on you by hosting a project on SourceHut don't work for the majority of open source contributors anymore.<p>It's no reason for hate or any kind of personal attacks of course, but saying "then don't contribute" is not an option for most project leads that want to build successful open source software today. You have to choose your audience and the size of it.