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

[awoo]

Technology ranter and self-proclaimed high IQ expert Michael O. Church may be lolcow worthy. I knew something was up when he claims to work in AI/ML and has ANTIFA in his twitter bio. https://twitter.com/MichaelOChurch Whines about how tech company employers and capitalism are evil.

He held a failed reddit AMA even though he's not a notable individual in any way
http://archive.is/6PCHI
According to a reddit comment, "He is banned from Wikipedia, Quora, and Hackernews. That's quite a feat. I don't know anyone else who's achieved that."
Someone even made a subreddit with choice quotes from him https://www.reddit.com/r/michaelochurchquotes/ Also a tumblr! https://michaelochurchquotes.tumblr.com/

I'm almost 30 and my IQ is over 150. I should be an EIR or doing cutting-edge machine learning work, and I'm not, because I was robbed by those fuckers.

Yes, they'll get their comeuppances. I'm sure they'll fall into the wrong fight. But I suffer every day from what those pieces of shit stole from me. I'm years behind where a person at my level of talent should be. Some of it is my fault, some of it is not, but the rest of the world sees it as 100% a reflection on me.

He definitely is banned from Wikipedia. 45 sockpuppets wow! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Suspected_Wikipedia_sockpuppets_of_Mike_Church
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mike_Church~enwiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Mike_Church~enwiki/Archive

Seems like someone has been archiving his stuff before me. Doesn't surprise me, he seems to have a lot of presence on reddit / quora / hackernews.
https://web.archive.org/web/2018010...h.wordpress.com/2017/12/05/why-i-didnt-do-it/

I experienced an aggressive public attack, starting in the fall of 2015. I was “de-platformed.” To wit, I was banned from Hacker News and Quora on false, defamatory pretenses. Why was I banned? It had nothing to do with my conduct on either site. First, I suggested that, instead of enduring the creep of micromanagement and surveillance, software engineers might consider collective bargaining. Second, I wrote a blog post that Paul Graham thought was about him– it wasn’t. Third, Y Combinator abused its power as an investor in Quora to force a ban on my account. It would have shut the company down, costing 120 innocents their jobs, had it not complied.

Quora "Hacker News: Why does Paul Graham have a vendetta against Michael O. Church?"
http://archive.is/AgVIZ possibly posting anonymously to support himself.

He has a long history of angry ranting and delusions of grandeur on the internet so I think it could make a good thread.
> This isn’t bragging. I can write 2500+ words of coherent prose per hour.

 

[Least Concern]

To bring it back around to OSS, here's his GitHub profile (note that one of the repos is for SetBang, an esolang which he discusses on his blog). All the code is in trendy languages like Haskell and Clojure.

Definitely a case of USI here. Where is he working now? Anywhere? I can't imagine a guy like this hasn't burned a few bridges.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

Technology ranter and self-proclaimed high IQ expert Michael O. Church may be lolcow worthy. I knew something was up when he claims to work in AI/ML and has ANTIFA in his twitter bio. https://twitter.com/MichaelOChurch Whines about how tech company employers and capitalism are evil.

He held a failed reddit AMA even though he's not a notable individual in any way
http://archive.is/6PCHI
According to a reddit comment, "He is banned from Wikipedia, Quora, and Hackernews. That's quite a feat. I don't know anyone else who's achieved that."
Someone even made a subreddit with choice quotes from him https://www.reddit.com/r/michaelochurchquotes/ Also a tumblr! https://michaelochurchquotes.tumblr.com/


He definitely is banned from Wikipedia. 45 sockpuppets wow! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Suspected_Wikipedia_sockpuppets_of_Mike_Church
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mike_Church~enwiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Mike_Church~enwiki/Archive

Seems like someone has been archiving his stuff before me. Doesn't surprise me, he seems to have a lot of presence on reddit / quora / hackernews.
https://web.archive.org/web/2018010...h.wordpress.com/2017/12/05/why-i-didnt-do-it/


Quora "Hacker News: Why does Paul Graham have a vendetta against Michael O. Church?"
http://archive.is/AgVIZ possibly posting anonymously to support himself.

He has a long history of angry ranting and delusions of grandeur on the internet so I think it could make a good thread.
> This isn’t bragging. I can write 2500+ words of coherent prose per hour.

If this guy isn't a cow, it sure ain't for lack of trying.

 

[frozenrunner]

It was weird that an existing, benign feature of open source development was suddenly turned into political weapon.

Maybe it's not that weird. It reminds me of how HR departments have become the preferred vector for the "Social Justice" infiltration in businesses.

 

[awoo]

To bring it back around to OSS, here's his GitHub profile (note that one of the repos is for SetBang, an esolang which he discusses on his blog). All the code is in trendy languages like Haskell and Clojure.

Definitely a case of USI here. Where is he working now? Anywhere? I can't imagine a guy like this hasn't burned a few bridges.

Idk if pretty popular functional languages can be considered "trendy", but his github doesn't show any evidence of him being the machine learning genius that he supposedly is. To be fair, plenty of people don't put the code they write for their company on github publically.

Linkedin (he doesn't list the specific times he's worked for companies)
http://archive.is/SJtDR (2016)


He appears to have worked for Google in NYC for 6 months. https://web.archive.org/web/20181021011555/https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5517208
Church claims that if you go to HR you get fired, while someone else says that's bullshit.

I've noticed on Quora almost always anonymous posters speak glowing praise for him while users with their real name have a more balanced view. Given Church's long history of sockpuppeting, I would bet he tries to fake praise and support for himself.

Also you have typical twitter nonsense
https://web.archive.org/save/https://twitter.com/MichaelOChurch/status/1053771009478877184

Always remember that the only reason we don't have universal healthcare is because a few rich white guys (Southern politicians) feared that their wives would leave them if black men achieved social or economic equality.

https://web.archive.org/web/2018102...com/MichaelOChurch/status/1041833541561143296

US cultural relevance is largely due to our diversity. Not to say that straight white guys don't add value, but if it was just us, we'd be a shitty Euro knock-off. Our culture's why the world'll still care about us when corporate capitalism collapses like the Soviet system did.

https://web.archive.org/save/https:/twitter.com/MichaelOChurch/status/1032567968432115712

If your IQ exceeds 135 or so, your very existence is politically incorrect and you must self-handicap if you want a shot at success in the corporate world.

Strange obsession with IQ.

 

[Least Concern]

Hmm. From his current LinkedIn profile:

If you do Scrum, don't waste your time. I'm all about technical excellence, and nonsense like "user stories" just gets in the way of that.

Wow, now that sounds like a guy I want to hire!

Spoiler: What's a user story?

A user story is basically a way to define a product's necessary features by breaking them down into tasks that a user using the product would need to accomplish, such as "as a forum poster, I need to be able to edit my posts, so that I can improve a post which might have an error in it," or "as a moderator, I need to be able to delete users' posts, so that I can remove low-quality or illegal content and improve visitors' experience." That this guy is calling this technique "nonsense" implies he doesn't care much about user experience (UX) concerns. Incidentally, user stories are not an inherent part of the scrum technique, which is basically about breaking down software development into small, well-defined timeboxed chunks; he might be conflating the two.

As for this…

Always remember that the only reason we don't have universal healthcare is because a few rich white guys (Southern politicians) feared that their wives would leave them if black men achieved social or economic equality.

I'm seriously curious about the train of thought behind that. Maybe there's a logical explanation, but I doubt it.

If your IQ exceeds 135 or so, your very existence is politically incorrect and you must self-handicap if you want a shot at success in the corporate world.

Insert the South Park fart-smelling clip here.

 

[Vivec]

Hmm. From his current LinkedIn profile:



Wow, now that sounds like a guy I want to hire!

Spoiler: What's a user story?

A user story is basically a way to define a product's necessary features by breaking them down into tasks that a user using the product would need to accomplish, such as "as a forum poster, I need to be able to edit my posts, so that I can improve a post which might have an error in it," or "as a moderator, I need to be able to delete users' posts, so that I can remove low-quality or illegal content and improve visitors' experience." That this guy is calling this technique "nonsense" implies he doesn't care much about user experience (UX) concerns. Incidentally, user stories are not an inherent part of the scrum technique, which is basically about breaking down software development into small, well-defined timeboxed chunks; he might be conflating the two.

As for this…



I'm seriously curious about the train of thought behind that. Maybe there's a logical explanation, but I doubt it.



Insert the South Park fart-smelling clip here.

TW: :powerlevel::powerlevel::powerlevel::powerlevel::powerlevel::autism::autism::autism::autism::autism:

Your user story breakdown paints an unfairly rosy picture, and this coming from someone unfortunate enough to be considered an agile and scrum evangelist at a fortune 50. The reality is, scrum and agile as a development methodology are shit compared to something like Cal Newport's very simple idea of deep work.

Stories as a 'nirvana state' concept are pretty good actually, but in practice also add a lot of bloat, and then occupy one human in a liaison role (biz analyst, req analyst, or what have you) for every 3-9 man dev team just to do the documentation around that work, and the fluff that is required for a story to serve as a living document that can be used by biz, dev, and QA. In reality, one person working deeply on requirements as gathered is going to blow everything else the fuck out of the water. The me that develops open source code can run circles around the me that has to attend daily scrums, defect calls, IT checkpoints, and the like, all while documenting what I'm doing, whipping up PR approvals for merges, etc. That said, in corporate dev jobs, that's largely just how the game is played, and the new game is still far better than the old game (waterfall). We should never make the mistake of confusing better for good, because that's how you end up with endless ridiculous cheerleading when there are still major elephants in the room impeding progress.

 

[Least Concern]

I totally sympathize with the desire to just be able to code without distractions and managers and so much process like we can on our own OSS projects. Believe me, I do. But when we work for a company, we're working on their product, not ours, so the purpose of all that process is to make sure what we're building matches what they need, not just to waste time - as much as it may feel that way.

I once had a freelance client who signed a contract with me, then almost immediately went silent. Periodically I would email them updates on what I was working on or ask questions when I needed something clarified, but I only ever got brief, non-committal responses, if I got one at all. Finally, after a couple months of work, they finally agreed to have an in-person progress report meeting with me, where they basically said "this isn't what I wanted it at all and I'm not going to pay you for this." It was a good amount of money, but not enough to warrant getting a lawyer involved, so I just had to eat it. That's a time when I wish I had had a bit more annoying process imposed on me from the product owner…

 

[You Promised]

Some proposed patches for the Linux Kernel CoC, Linus approved:
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20181020134908.GA32218@kroah.com/t/#u

Essentially:

• Remove the threat of punishment to maintainers for failing to enforce the CoC.
• Add a supplemental CoC Interpretation document (includes a section explaining it's scope).
• Introduce a mediator (lawyer) for CoC issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mishi_Choudhary

 

[Vivec]

I totally sympathize with the desire to just be able to code without distractions and managers and so much process like we can on our own OSS projects. Believe me, I do. But when we work for a company, we're working on their product, not ours, so the purpose of all that process is to make sure what we're building matches what they need, not just to waste time - as much as it may feel that way.

I once had a freelance client who signed a contract with me, then almost immediately went silent. Periodically I would email them updates on what I was working on or ask questions when I needed something clarified, but I only ever got brief, non-committal responses, if I got one at all. Finally, after a couple months of work, they finally agreed to have an in-person progress report meeting with me, where they basically said "this isn't what I wanted it at all and I'm not going to pay you for this." It was a good amount of money, but not enough to warrant getting a lawyer involved, so I just had to eat it. That's a time when I wish I had had a bit more annoying process imposed on me from the product owner…

Sure, but there's a world of difference between that, and in house dev where agile, scrum, and planning demands 15 hours a week minimum of a developer's time. I've also eaten freelance losses in the 4 digit range, but what I'm talking about is the cult of agile that now exists and drowns people all throughout the big tech companies, and elsewhere tot. Was talking to a google friend a couple of weeks back and they have the exact same issues. Just a massive amount of wasted time in meetings that devs ought not be in. User stories are a part of that bloat, and there are other ways to work that are more effective if you aren't being driven by a process.

 

[Jaimas]

Some proposed patches for the Linux Kernel CoC, Linus approved:
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20181020134908.GA32218@kroah.com/t/#u

Essentially:

• Remove the threat of punishment to maintainers for failing to enforce the CoC.
• Add a supplemental CoC Interpretation document (includes a section explaining it's scope).
• Introduce a mediator (lawyer) for CoC issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mishi_Choudhary

That sounds like a massive undercutting of Coraline Ada's bullshit.

...Good.

 

[Kosher Dill]

A user story is basically a way to define a product's necessary features by breaking them down into tasks that a user using the product would need to accomplish

If you're actually seeing trendy methodologies like Agile or user stories used as intended, that's great but realize that you're a tiny wisp of a minority.
The last time I saw "user story" language being deployed, it was on a bunch of bugs reported by an outsource team in India, all of which were of the form: "As a user of Program X, I want Program X to not crash when I open it, so that I can use the program".

 

[Least Concern]

Heh… well, yeah, once Indian subcontractors get involved, anything is possible! Needless to say, using user stories to report bugs is hammering a square peg into a round hole.

You know, I feel bad for all the truly skilled developers in India and Pakistan, of which I'm sure there are many. I bet they have a hard time sticking out and fetching a decent rate amongst the drones willing to accept very little pay to churn out barely-functional code to stakeholders who won't realize they're getting exactly what they're paying for until it's too late.

 

[Vivec]

Heh… well, yeah, once Indian subcontractors get involved, anything is possible! Needless to say, using user stories to report bugs is hammering a square peg into a round hole.

You know, I feel bad for all the truly skilled developers in India and Pakistan, of which I'm sure there are many. I bet they have a hard time sticking out and fetching a decent rate amongst the drones willing to accept very little pay to churn out barely-functional code to stakeholders who won't realize they're getting exactly what they're paying for until it's too late.

Reality is, most talented ones move, often while getting Masters or P.hD's abroad. As far as pure output, no native born American I know of can match the raw production of a top tier Indian or Chinese dev in the US. Part of it is just a numbers game, too. We are talking about the very best of two countries that are comprised of 2.8 billion people, and that's not even mentioning that some of these people will spend 70 hours a week in the office on the regular, or grind out 1000 open source commits year on the side.

 

[AmpleApricots]

Man, I know why I ended up not working for long in that industry. It's more fun to have all that stuff as a hobby to be quite honest.

The changes also add to my guess I expressed earlier in the thread that they just took some CoC without really looking much into it or the people behind it.

 

[Route 79]

Some proposed patches for the Linux Kernel CoC, Linus approved:
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20181020134908.GA32218@kroah.com/t/#u

Essentially:

• Remove the threat of punishment to maintainers for failing to enforce the CoC.
• Add a supplemental CoC Interpretation document (includes a section explaining it's scope).
• Introduce a mediator (lawyer) for CoC issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mishi_Choudhary

Instead of throwing out a coc thats obviously bad they waste a lot of time making it a diet coc, but only because some developers actually had the balls to fight back against this bullshit. Those provisions will come back, likely after an "incident".

 

[byuu]

SQLite got nagged into adopting a CoC.
Unfortunately the troons didn't consider that it can be a double-edged sword:

Having been encouraged by clients to adopt a written code of conduct, the SQLite developers elected to govern their interactions with each other, with their clients, and with the larger SQLite user community in accordance with the "instruments of good works" from chapter 4 of The Rule of St. Benedict. This code of conduct has proven its mettle in thousands of diverse communities for over 1,500 years, and has served as a baseline for many civil law codes since the time of Charlemagne.

Spoiler: The rules

1. First of all, love the Lord God with your whole heart, your whole soul, and your whole strength.
2. Then, love your neighbor as yourself.
3. Do not murder.
4. Do not commit adultery.
5. Do not steal.
6. Do not covet.
7. Do not bear false witness.
8. Honor all.
9. Do not do to another what you would not have done to yourself.
10. Deny oneself in order to follow Christ.
11. Chastise the body.
12. Do not become attached to pleasures.
13. Love fasting.
14. Relieve the poor.
15. Clothe the naked.
16. Visit the sick.
17. Bury the dead.
18. Be a help in times of trouble.
19. Console the sorrowing.
20. Be a stranger to the world's ways.
21. Prefer nothing more than the love of Christ.
22. Do not give way to anger.
23. Do not nurse a grudge.
24. Do not entertain deceit in your heart.
25. Do not give a false peace.
26. Do not forsake charity.
27. Do not swear, for fear of perjuring yourself.
28. Utter only truth from heart and mouth.
29. Do not return evil for evil.
30. Do no wrong to anyone, and bear patiently wrongs done to yourself.
31. Love your enemies.
32. Do not curse those who curse you, but rather bless them.
33. Bear persecution for justice's sake.
34. Be not proud.
35. Be not addicted to wine.
36. Be not a great eater.
37. Be not drowsy.
38. Be not lazy.
39. Be not a grumbler.
40. Be not a detractor.
41. Put your hope in God.
42. Attribute to God, and not to self, whatever good you see in yourself.
43. Recognize always that evil is your own doing, and to impute it to yourself.
44. Fear the Day of Judgment.
45. Be in dread of hell.
46. Desire eternal life with all the passion of the spirit.
47. Keep death daily before your eyes.
48. Keep constant guard over the actions of your life.
49. Know for certain that God sees you everywhere.
50. When wrongful thoughts come into your heart, dash them against Christ immediately.
51. Disclose wrongful thoughts to your spiritual mentor.
52. Guard your tongue against evil and depraved speech.
53. Do not love much talking.
54. Speak no useless words or words that move to laughter.
55. Do not love much or boisterous laughter.
56. Listen willingly to holy reading.
57. Devote yourself frequently to prayer.
58. Daily in your prayers, with tears and sighs, confess your past sins to God, and amend them for the future.
59. Fulfill not the desires of the flesh; hate your own will.
60. Obey in all things the commands of those whom God has placed in authority over you even though they (which God forbid) should act otherwise, mindful of the Lord's precept, "Do what they say, but not what they do."
61. Do not wish to be called holy before one is holy; but first to be holy, that you may be truly so called.
62. Fulfill God's commandments daily in your deeds.
63. Love chastity.
64. Hate no one.
65. Be not jealous, nor harbor envy.
66. Do not love quarreling.
67. Shun arrogance.
68. Respect your seniors.
69. Love your juniors.
70. Pray for your enemies in the love of Christ.
71. Make peace with your adversary before the sun sets.
72. Never despair of God's mercy.

 

[Marvin]

Reality is, most talented ones move, often while getting Masters or P.hD's abroad. As far as pure output, no native born American I know of can match the raw production of a top tier Indian or Chinese dev in the US. Part of it is just a numbers game, too. We are talking about the very best of two countries that are comprised of 2.8 billion people, and that's not even mentioning that some of these people will spend 70 hours a week in the office on the regular, or grind out 1000 open source commits year on the side.

English is the native language of software, period. If you do work in the former soviet union, you'll find a disturbing number of developers who rely on php, even really intelligent developers. The reason is because php is old as shit and the documentation has been translated into every human language under the sun.

It's frustrating because you end up needing to parse out their ideas through a haze of drunken php.

The chinese have the same problem. The chinese are better with hardware than software by a huge margin.

Heh, even ocaml, a language that was originally created by the french, with french documentation, eventually got dominated and taken over by a US company called Jane Street. Jane Street's core library is basically considered the standard library for the language.

I've yet to meet a single chinese or indian developer that can compete with native english speakers on their own merits. Pakis are also p terrible.

 

[AmpleApricots]

As most of you know already, the 4.19 kernel was released and Linus is back in business.

https://lwn.net/Articles/769110/

Turns out there was no jewish tranny lizardman conspiracy to kill the white man in kernel development after all. Well, that was a big nothingburger. At least it gave me a chance to look at the *BSDs I guess.

What have we learned? Probably not to politicize fucking everything, lest we turn into something similar to SJWs.

 

[AnOminous]

It's frustrating because you end up needing to parse out their ideas through a haze of drunken php.

Is this why so much web shit is so crazy? The php itself is literally drunk on Russian vodka?

The chinese have the same problem. The chinese are better with hardware than software by a huge margin.

Easy to do that when you're working off designs stolen from everywhere else in the world.