120
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2024
120 points (100.0% liked)
Free and Open Source Software
18017 readers
11 users here now
If it's free and open source and it's also software, it can be discussed here. Subcommunity of Technology.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
They didn’t just ask the dev to change it, they submitted a pr that would’ve fixed it. All the maintainer had to do is click merge
The maintainer was the one that brought politics into it!
I understand that, but the whole point behind it was them making an assumption about something and proposing a change because they didn't like their term that the dev used. Yet there was LITERALLY nothing wrong with the term.
The guy definitely made an ass of himself with his responses.
Like I said, both of them are idiots over this. It was pointless to make an issue out of it to begin with, and then then the dev making it even worse didn't help.
I’m not convinced
No, no clearly don’t.
You seem very, very sure of there being "LITERALLY" no problem with the gendered pronoun being used for an unknown user.
Instead of hand-waving it away as the author being male and just prefering his own pronouns in his writing, we could maybe consider where it is being written and why it might feel particularly non-inclusive? ie: a field that has historically been very intentionally uninviting to women?
Also, it's not like this was someone petitioning for a boycott over one assumed pronoun, they just quietly fixed the grammar and submitted the change. Absolutely nothing idiotic about it.
There literally wasn't a problem.
Until the person that asked for the correction literally assumed that said dev was assuming. Since thats what they said in their comment.
So I can understand being a little pissy at someone pointing to you and accusing you of assuming something. It's stupid.
I may have been a little irritated too if someone accused me of assuming something. I wouldn't have reacted the same, but I would have been clear that I in no way assume anything related to gender identity.
If the person wouldn't have put that assumption into their comment, the change may have been more likely to happen.
Instead they assumed something and got push back which turned into the scene we see now.
Ass u me... I mean it's pretty clear.
Ah OK, I think we're getting to the heart of why you are saying that this wasn't an issue.
When you say that the author wasn't assuming anything, what exactly do you mean? If, for example, I write in a guide that if a user of my software does 'a' then he can expect result 'b', do you disagree that I am assuming my users go by he/him pronouns?
I might not have done it with intention, but there is an assumption being made there. Words mean things.
Exactly this.
Just because you wrote your documentation a certain way, doesn't automatically mean that you feel a certain way about any particular group, or that your users are primarily a certain gender. It may just be writing what pronoun you are most familiar with.
In this particular case, we can see that the author didn't exactly make the best case for himself.
However, there was never a problem to begin with until the person that requested the change also accused the the author of assuming that the user/dev of the OS is male.
If that little bit of accusation would have been left out, and they just put a note like "grammatical correction" it may have just been accepted and moved on. Instead they asked for a change while accusing the author of feeling a certain way.
So, not 'exactly this'. I wrote that in my example an assumption had been made, whether I intended it or not.
Same as in the documentation this post is about, therefore the problem existed before it was pointed out.
The grammatical error to be fixed was the assumption in the language used. Both of these things are true. Pointing it out very simply, as part of providing the reason for the change, is completely normal
What makes you think the change suggesters assumed ill intent?
The submitted PRs seem to reason improvement, not accuse the original author. I see them suggesting a change, neutrally. With (minimal) objective reasoning.
/edit: I see the later ones did. But the first one didn't. And the second one arguably didn't.