The lead dev freaked out at someone making a PR to use gender-neutral phrasing in the documentation (you know, like is standard for any legitimate technical documentation) and rejected the PR. Further, he has amended the contribution policies into rants about not being a place for “personal politics” and threatening bans to contributors engaging in such “bad faith”.
Bonus: For some reason Google is indexing stormfront and they have an “article” that appears to be painting the project as a “victim of the woke left” (I didn’t click because I’m not giving those shitstains traffic). So, literal nazis love the guy and he has made no statement that I can find beyond hostility in the PR comments, which means no one with any principles should be touching it with a barge pole, as a user or contributor.
Quietly, without acknowledging fault and after behaving similarly in another PR that was not motivated by anything more than the contributor wanting to be grammatically and technically correct.
this was a language issue. kling is not good at english. all the language has been fixed.
It may be that he is not good at English but, the hostility makes it appear much more than a language issue. Plus, the fact that swedish (which is his mother tongue, from what I can tell) has equivalent pronouns to English, including the gender-neutral “hen” (equivalent to they), makes this seem a pretty flimsy excuse for the behavior. I have trouble buying it.
ETA: If anyone does find something (maybe not widely indexed?) that does show that Kling has grown as a person and taken responsibility, I want to see it so that I can support the guy’s efforts.
EDIT: Apparently, “hen” is a more modern thing. Leaving the above because, I appear to be wrong and want to own it :)
the change was probably done quietly because of the extreme reaction the first time.
swedes tend to be to-the-point, and especially in english-language circles we tend to come off as rude even though that’s not our intention. it’s a cultural thing. kling is also a recovering addict who started his os project as therapy. i can sympathise with his tone but that’s because i automatically translate it subconsciously when reading.
also, hen is not equivalent to they. hen is originally a replacement for the longer expression “han/hon” in legal texts, used specifically as “a theoretical person of unknown gender” it’s a very recent invention and has not yet made it into general use. we don’t really have a generic singular gender-neutral pronoun. it’s still applicable here, but the issue was sidestepped entirely by switching to second-person pronouns.
the change was probably done quietly because of the extreme reaction the first time.
I’d suggest that a lack of statement is where in this case (the guy even has nazis praising him).
swedes tend to be to-the-point, and especially in english-language circles we tend to come off as rude even though that’s not our intention. it’s a cultural thing. kling is also a recovering addict who started his os project as therapy. i can completely sympathise with his tone but that’s because i automatically translate it subconsciously when reading.
That does make some sense, thank you. I was aware of him being a recovering addict which is one of the reasons that I want to be able to cheer for him as a human being. This could be a good example of where it would be good to learn from Torvalds, who, despite being renowned for his dickishness, took responsibility and acknowledged having said problematic things (it saying things in problematic ways) that made bigots feel more comfortable in his presence than those who were victims of bigotry.
also, hen is not equivalent to they. hen is originally a replacement for the longer expression “han/hon” in legal texts, used specifically as “a theoretical person of unknown gender” it’s a very recent invention and has not yet made it into general use. we don’t really have a generic singular gender-neutral pronoun. it’s still applicable here, but the issue was sidestepped entirely by switching to second-person pronouns.
Thank you very much for clarifying and correcting me.
Keep in mind that this happens in many (specially “romance”) languages, because such gender is grammatical, not literal (unlike in English, where he and she are very much so). For example, in Portuguese (my native language), I can refer to a person as a “pessoa” (“feminine” word gender) — and I can use this to make a grammatically correct, gender-neutral sentence: Ela (essa pessoa) parece bastante simpática. (That person seems quite nice.)
It does not assume gender, as previously mentioned. Since English does not follow the same rules (he/him and she/her refer to actual gender), you can optionally avoid using they/them by using that person’s name (or pseudononym): “thatonecoder has some cool projects, although they (the projects) seem to have some flaws. That user seems to be nice, so I might point out some of those issues, in a respectful manner!” (yes, oddly specific example, but I am not very creative, and this gave some ways to refer to a specific person without either using they/them, he/him, or she/her.
yeah i fully agree that heading a big project should require some sort of sensitivity training. but just like with linux, serenityos and ladybird have sort of become popular around andreas.
it took linus 25 years to finally give in, and his way of speaking before his therapy is just normal vernacular in finland. neither he nor andreas ever wanted to be public figures, and being the centre of a community naturally means you don’t see the shit that people on the fringes say. if people hadn’t started pushing back and made the leaders aware of the nazi shit there’s a big chance they would have never seen it. you need experience with that stuff to see the signs from that position. linus eventually got that experience and changed his ways, but andreas hasn’t gotten that chance yet.
also relevant; while linux is massively important, serenity and ladybird are super niche. so linux news get out there, but changes to ladybird governance don’t, and people just keep talking about how bad the creator is even though he’s not, and he’s changed.
The lead dev freaked out at someone making a PR to use gender-neutral phrasing in the documentation (you know, like is standard for any legitimate technical documentation) and rejected the PR. Further, he has amended the contribution policies into rants about not being a place for “personal politics” and threatening bans to contributors engaging in such “bad faith”.
Bonus: For some reason Google is indexing stormfront and they have an “article” that appears to be painting the project as a “victim of the woke left” (I didn’t click because I’m not giving those shitstains traffic). So, literal nazis love the guy and he has made no statement that I can find beyond hostility in the PR comments, which means no one with any principles should be touching it with a barge pole, as a user or contributor.
and then merged the pr. masculine pronouns for this sort of thing was taught as the standard in swedish schools until pretty recently.
this was a language issue. kling is not good at english. all the language has been fixed.
Quietly, without acknowledging fault and after behaving similarly in another PR that was not motivated by anything more than the contributor wanting to be grammatically and technically correct.
It may be that he is not good at English but, the hostility makes it appear much more than a language issue. Plus, the fact that swedish (which is his mother tongue, from what I can tell) has equivalent pronouns to English, including the gender-neutral “hen” (equivalent to they), makes this seem a pretty flimsy excuse for the behavior. I have trouble buying it.
ETA: If anyone does find something (maybe not widely indexed?) that does show that Kling has grown as a person and taken responsibility, I want to see it so that I can support the guy’s efforts.
EDIT: Apparently, “hen” is a more modern thing. Leaving the above because, I appear to be wrong and want to own it :)
the change was probably done quietly because of the extreme reaction the first time.
swedes tend to be to-the-point, and especially in english-language circles we tend to come off as rude even though that’s not our intention. it’s a cultural thing. kling is also a recovering addict who started his os project as therapy. i can sympathise with his tone but that’s because i automatically translate it subconsciously when reading.
also, hen is not equivalent to they. hen is originally a replacement for the longer expression “han/hon” in legal texts, used specifically as “a theoretical person of unknown gender” it’s a very recent invention and has not yet made it into general use. we don’t really have a generic singular gender-neutral pronoun. it’s still applicable here, but the issue was sidestepped entirely by switching to second-person pronouns.
I’d suggest that a lack of statement is where in this case (the guy even has nazis praising him).
That does make some sense, thank you. I was aware of him being a recovering addict which is one of the reasons that I want to be able to cheer for him as a human being. This could be a good example of where it would be good to learn from Torvalds, who, despite being renowned for his dickishness, took responsibility and acknowledged having said problematic things (it saying things in problematic ways) that made bigots feel more comfortable in his presence than those who were victims of bigotry.
Thank you very much for clarifying and correcting me.
Keep in mind that this happens in many (specially “romance”) languages, because such gender is grammatical, not literal (unlike in English, where he and she are very much so). For example, in Portuguese (my native language), I can refer to a person as a “pessoa” (“feminine” word gender) — and I can use this to make a grammatically correct, gender-neutral sentence: Ela (essa pessoa) parece bastante simpática. (That person seems quite nice.)
It does not assume gender, as previously mentioned. Since English does not follow the same rules (he/him and she/her refer to actual gender), you can optionally avoid using they/them by using that person’s name (or pseudononym): “thatonecoder has some cool projects, although they (the projects) seem to have some flaws. That user seems to be nice, so I might point out some of those issues, in a respectful manner!” (yes, oddly specific example, but I am not very creative, and this gave some ways to refer to a specific person without either using they/them, he/him, or she/her.
Although this video isn’t made by me, it is particularly insightful, so I thought I’d share it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf-R7UywbXU
Sorry about this essay, but I really wanted to point this out! If you do have any questions, feel free to ask them!
You’re replying to someone with AuADHD. I generally have to edit down things before I post and still end up with a fucking novel :D
Thank you for the long and thoughtful reply.
Thanks for your reply, too! I wish every person was as nice as you — sadly, the world is still fucked up, and will remain so, for a long while…
yeah i fully agree that heading a big project should require some sort of sensitivity training. but just like with linux, serenityos and ladybird have sort of become popular around andreas.
it took linus 25 years to finally give in, and his way of speaking before his therapy is just normal vernacular in finland. neither he nor andreas ever wanted to be public figures, and being the centre of a community naturally means you don’t see the shit that people on the fringes say. if people hadn’t started pushing back and made the leaders aware of the nazi shit there’s a big chance they would have never seen it. you need experience with that stuff to see the signs from that position. linus eventually got that experience and changed his ways, but andreas hasn’t gotten that chance yet.
also relevant; while linux is massively important, serenity and ladybird are super niche. so linux news get out there, but changes to ladybird governance don’t, and people just keep talking about how bad the creator is even though he’s not, and he’s changed.