Diseased Open Source Software Community - it's about ethics in Code of Conducts

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I don't understand how you GIMP users do it. I might open it up once every 6 months to "quickly" do something related to work, and I'm left with seething impotent rage because I fight with every single aspect of getting the app to do what I want lmao.
It seems like the UI is designed around power users who use keyboard shortcuts for everything. It feels like the tiny 8x8 buttons and unintuitively-placed tabs in the toolbox are only there as a concession for plebs who don't do Photoshop fulltime.

One of the things that bothers me most is the lack of a simple shape drawing tool. Just drawing a basic rectangle is a clumsy process involving the select tool or holding shift and drawing each side manually. I get that GIMP isn't made for drawing but a simple feature like that wouldn't be that hard to implement and it would offer a large quality of life improvement for general-purpose tasks.
 
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Fediverse dudes have proposed a new symbol for it: ⁂
Why'd they change it? Did normies take issue with the rainbow pentagram that's been in use for years?
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I don't understand how you GIMP users do it. I might open it up once every 6 months to "quickly" do something related to work, and I'm left with seething impotent rage because I fight with every single aspect of getting the app to do what I want lmao.
I'm a GIMP user for around 10 years now. 8 years ago I took some computer graphics courses in a local library which taught me how to use GIMP. A few years ago I set up pirated Photoshop CS6 to play with it, and had the exact same feeling, what the fuck is going on. It's just a trait of all highly specialized software, it is very difficult to make a powerful UI that is not convoluted, and easy for beginners and power users alike.
 
I don't understand how you GIMP users do it. I might open it up once every 6 months to "quickly" do something related to work, and I'm left with seething impotent rage because I fight with every single aspect of getting the app to do what I want lmao.
You might want to look into using Krita. Krita was originally a painting program but at this point it has so many general purpose tools that it's a far better editor than GIMP has ever been.
 
Python has been taken over by a "Steering Council" - formerly the guy who created it (Guido van Rossum) was a Benevolent Dictator For Life, a humorous title meaning that he calls the shots.

Recently they banned Tim Peters for 3 months, the guy who made CPython, was a major contributor, and the recipient of many awards: https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestration-of-tim
He was banned for CoC violations. No details were given, but among the charges were " Defending “reverse racism” and “reverse sexism”".


Guido van Rossum seems to be salty about this:

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This comment was actually also flagged and hidden by moderators, for some reason it's back (no one knows if for good).
 
He was banned for CoC violations. No details were given, but among the charges were " Defending “reverse racism” and “reverse sexism”".
There are some details in the post you linked, and I want to highlight this:
- Defending “reverse racism” and “reverse sexism”, concepts not backed by empirical evidence, which could be seen as deliberate intimidation or creating an exclusionary environment.
You have to appreciate what a mindfuck this is. As clear an isolated demand for rigor as I've ever seen. They can make bold claims about whatever they want to attribute to consequences of racism, with the "evidence" at best being some humanities grifter writing a book with whole-cloth inventions. But if someone were to suggest you can be racist against white people or sexist against men, it's suddenly "concepts not backed by empirical evidence".

I don't even care about Python (it is decent as a sandbox), but it's a bit sad that it seems to be run by narcissists now.
 
There are some details in the post you linked, and I want to highlight this:

You have to appreciate what a mindfuck this is. As clear an isolated demand for rigor as I've ever seen. They can make bold claims about whatever they want to attribute to consequences of racism, with the "evidence" at best being some humanities grifter writing a book with whole-cloth inventions. But if someone were to suggest you can be racist against white people or sexist against men, it's suddenly "concepts not backed by empirical evidence".

I don't even care about Python (it is decent as a sandbox), but it's a bit sad that it seems to be run by narcissists now.
Where he fucked up was using the term "reverse racism". It's just racism.

When you start off with that terminology, you're handing them an easy win. You're distinguishing anti-white racism from anti-anything-else racism as separate concepts, enabling them to safely dismiss one and not the other. But that's stupid. They're the same thing.

Of course, they'll still sperg out at you with "power plus privilege" nonsense and whatever else they've got up their sleeves nowadays, but still, at least make them earn it. Make them say it out loud: there's some subset of racism they don't care about.
 
Where he fucked up was using the term "reverse racism". It's just racism.
It's unclear what all he did say because many posts have been suppressed, but this one may be some indication:

Most relevant part:
I’ve been enough of a “US white left-of-center liberal” myself to judge that I don’t need studies to know which beliefs are popular among “my people”. I hear them every day, echoing - and echoed by - our echo-chamber “news & opinion” sources

Can’t say I’ve paid it much attention in recent years. Last time I did, “all races can be prejudiced, but only whites can be racist” was the Correct View™. Like here:

https://www.aclrc.com/myth-of-reverse-racism

While it still largely makes good sense to me, I don’t want to see the PSF insisting than any other view can only be held in “bad faith”. Other views are common too. Among people of my age, very common. I can attest from personal experience that some people near my age never even heard of the view the PSF endorses.

It’s too simplistic for the global world anyway. For an extreme example, there are a total of thousands of castes, races, ethnicities, and religions that might claim group-based discrimination in India, but relatively few “whites” left in sight.

If this is representative, then his "crime" is saying that other definitions of racism, etc., are in use besides the prejudice+power one, and indeed probably more widespread, and thus the PSF shouldn't say that theirs is the only true one and any disagreement is bad faith. He's not even disputing the definition, just saying others might be honestly held.

Burn the heretic!
 
It's unclear what all he did say because many posts have been suppressed, but this one may be some indication:

Most relevant part:


If this is representative, then his "crime" is saying that other definitions of racism, etc., are in use besides the prejudice+power one, and indeed probably more widespread, and thus the PSF shouldn't say that theirs is the only true one and any disagreement is bad faith. He's not even disputing the definition, just saying others might be honestly held.

Burn the heretic!
The banning was already discussed here a while ago, although the reaction by Guido is new. Seems most likely that Peters was banned because he opposed a power grab by the council.
 
Another interesting piece of context is that in June the "Steering Council" has proposed a controversial new amendment to the rules, among others: https://discuss.python.org/t/for-yo...-to-improve-our-membership-experience/55696/1

Change 3: Allow for removal of Fellows by a Board vote in response to Code of Conduct violations, removing the need for a vote of the membership​

Currently PSF Fellows are awarded membership for life, as a reward for exceptional service to the mission of the Foundation. There are deliberately very few ways to remove a Fellow from the membership.
If a Fellow were found to have violated the Foundation’s Code of Conduct in a way that warranted termination of their membership, currently the only way to remove them would be to put their removal to a vote of all Voting Members (per section 4.15 of our Bylaws). We believe that requiring a vote of the membership to remove a Code of Conduct violator from our community would subject members of the community — including people directly impacted by that violator’s behavior — to undue distress.
On the other hand, we believe there is significant legal risk that could arise from Code of Conduct violators known to the PSF using their status as a PSF Fellow to enhance their reputation. In cases where the Foundation needs to act in order to continue being able to serve the Python community effectively, we currently have no choice but to name a known Code of Conduct violator as part of a vote put to the membership.
In practice, this requirement limits our ability to effectively enforce our Code of Conduct. This is a disservice to our community.
This proposed change gives the Board, by a majority vote, the ability to terminate the membership of a Fellow as a consequence of breaching any written policy of the Foundation, specifically including our Code of Conduct. This change would allow the Board to act in cases where there is a clear need for a problematic community member to no longer be affiliated with the Foundation, without further perpetuating the trauma caused by that community member’s actions.
Typically Fellowship indicated people who were absolutely instrumental to Python's success, and was awarded to authors and maintainers of critical tools, and so on.

This provision was clearly designed to let them kick out inconvenient and rebelious Fellows without actual approval of the community. Since most normal people (read: infidels) are going to protest when they see rules saying whites are fair game for all sorts of harrassment and are not allowed to fight back, effectively they're going to be able to keep boiling the pot and oust anyone who doesn't like it.

It's almost painful seeing how much people like Tim Peters are already walking on eggshells and censoring themselves to avoid incurring the wrath of the Council, all in vain of course because they have a clear goal and aren't going to care. They're allowed to say you're the scum of the world and you're forbidden from even taking notice.
 
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