Or maybe the server(s) (is|are) at home and he forgot to pay the electric
bill!
His servers were still responding to ssh, just not anything on port 80,
from
what I understand.
On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 9:54 AM, Gregory
Brown[email protected] wrote:
Do you really think there is a remote possibility that he was hacked
at this point? I thought so too at first, but I doubt it now.
Or maybe the server(s) (is|are) at home and he forgot to pay the
electric bill!
Of course there’s the matter of closing twitter and other accounts.
Like I said it’s impossible to understand _why.
–
Rick DeNatale
Blog: http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/RickDeNatale
WWR: http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/9021-rick-denatale
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickdenatale
On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Jason R.[email protected]
wrote:
It’s definitely too late now, or we would have heard if he got hacked. He
closed up shop and destroyed almost a decade’s worth of Ruby information,
discussions, library documentation, ticket history, etc. I agree with Zed on
this one, that was a dick move. People use and rely on the tools he’s built,
have contributed back to them, and have helped with the documentation. He
didn’t just destroy his work, he destroyed the work of hundreds, maybe
thousands, of people who wanted to contribute to Open Source.
He has no obligation to do that. Behore him that didn’t exist, well
now it doesn’t again. He has the right to disappear, and people may
even appreciate life impermanence.
Source code is all around, if people want to keep those projects
healthy they have the sources and the means to do so. Starting point
is very high compared to years ago.
If that was his way of doing that, just respect him.
(Of course this is all based on speculation.)
On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 10:23 AM, Xavier N.[email protected] wrote:
He has no obligation to do that. Behore him that didn’t exist, well
now it doesn’t again. He has the right to disappear, and people may
even appreciate life impermanence.
Speaking as one practicing Buddhist (and by no means for all Buddhists):
Things are impermanent by themselves… a volitional destructive act
is not a helpful lesson in impermanence, but something that adds
unnecessarily to suffering.
At the very least, it’d help to not conflate “disappearance” with
“obliteration”. While (like anything else) we can learn from any
phenomena, we don’t need to make life any harder than it already is.
-greg
On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 10:13 AM, Rick DeNatale[email protected]
wrote:
Do you really think there is a remote possibility that he was hacked
at this point? I thought so too at first, but I doubt it now.Or maybe the server(s) (is|are) at home and he forgot to pay the electric bill!
Of course there’s the matter of closing twitter and other accounts.
Like I said it’s impossible to understand _why.
You don’t need to understand him to have a pretty good sense that this
wasn’t some cosmic accident.
On Aug 21, 2009, at 10:07, Jason R. wrote:
It’s definitely too late now, or we would have heard if he got
hacked. He
closed up shop and destroyed almost a decade’s worth of Ruby
information,
Destroy it? Didn’t he just make it unavailable? And it wasn’t as if
what he took away was the community’s documentation of Ruby, just his
own projects to which other people had contributed.
It could have been handled better, but it’s hardly more than “I’m
taking my ball and going home”.
Considering all the good he did for Ruby over the years, all for free,
I don’t think anybody should be overly critical of an abrupt departure.
Ben
However much I hate to agree with Jason, I have to say that _why should
have
posted the opportunity for others to carry on the torch of his work.
Not doing so was kind of a jerk move. Personally, I would welcome _why
coming back and reposting all of his work, but I doubt that’s going to
happen.
/Shawn
On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Jason R.[email protected]
wrote:
Well, one theory, and most likely?, is that he did it intentionally,
another is that he was hacked somehow. AFAIK, the jury is still out
on that.Do you really think there is a remote possibility that he was hacked
at this point? I thought so too at first, but I doubt it now.-greg
It’s definitely too late now, or we would have heard if he got hacked.
I strongly feel so too.
well it’s going to be hard to take him seriously if he ever shows up again,
in Ruby or some other community.
Actually I never liked his style (that does not mean I did not respect
him!).
But I feel you are a little too harsh with him. I guess most of his
work will be saved thanx to forks or by contributing back from local
repositories.
He might have had some very good reasons, e.g. employment, to do what
he did. I hope it was the right decision for him, that is all I have
to say to him.Huge props go out to github, at least we didn’t lose any of the source code,
history, etc, and to Rubyforge for not allowing people to delete their
accounts.
U see;)
Cheers
Robert
On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 10:23 AM, Xavier N. [email protected] wrote:
didn’t just destroy his work, he destroyed the work of hundreds, maybe
If that was his way of doing that, just respect him.(Of course this is all based on speculation.)
I never said he was obligated to keep it around, but that doesn’t make
the
move right or respectful in any way. Leaving the community is fine.
Calling
it quits with Ruby, or programming in general, that’s fine.
Destroying the many thousands of hours of work by OTHER PEOPLE simply
because it’s HIS stuff, out of the blue and with no warning whatsoever,
will
never, ever be looked at as “respectable”.
In this one move, he broke one of the leading unspoken rules of Open
Source:
respect the community. If you don’t want to continue maintaining, or you
don’t want to be around at all anymore, then say so, and people who want
to
keep said projects running will do so.
If Matz decided that he was done with Ruby and wanted to move on, if he
pulled a _why and up and deleted ruby-lang.org, the entire SVN
repository,
and shut down ruby-doc.org, there would be a HUGE outcry. If Jamis B.
decided to completely shut down and delete capistrano instead of posting
a
good-bye message like he did and letting others take up the reins,
people
would be pretty ticked off. Why is what _why did here any different,
that he
should be respected in this decision?
I think people have confused two issues here: _why’s disappearance and
the
destruction of all his work. _why calling it quits is FINE. He has every
right to leave, and yes he has every right to do what he did in the
removal
of all this work, but that doesn’t make it right.
Jason
Jason R. wrote:
If Matz decided that he was done with Ruby and wanted to move on, if he
pulled a _why and up and deleted ruby-lang.org, the entire SVN repository,
and shut down ruby-doc.org, there would be a HUGE outcry.
I’ll say. I’d wonder how he got access to my servers to shut down
ruby-doc.org.
There’s a reason to have things distributed. Fault tolerance.
Nonetheless this is a very educational experience, and, in the grand
scheme of things, hardly world-shaking.
Be grateful both for what you were given and what you can learn.
–
James B.
www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys
www.ruby-doc.org - Ruby Help & Documentation
www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
www.neurogami.com - Smart application development
Okay, here’s my theory.
_why, Jimmy Hoffa, and Judge Crater are all the same person.
They’ve never been seen together, and they are all unseen together now!
–
Rick DeNatale
Blog: http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/RickDeNatale
WWR: http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/9021-rick-denatale
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickdenatale
On Aug 20, 4:10 pm, Karl von Laudermann [email protected]
wrote:
_why the lucky stiff appears to have disappeared from the internets!Daring Fireball: John Resig on Why the Lucky Stiff
I can only imagine _why stumbled upon some forbidden ‘potion’ in his
secret lab one night and …
\ | /
o*o o ’ O o o
oO Poof o’O
OoO’o’o o
/ | \
that was that.
Go well _why, go well.
I think that for now we should close that chapter. _why is gone and no
matter what, he seems to have done so on his own and made up his mind
completely.
that doesn’t make the move right or respectful in any way.
Noone needs to be respectful. I do not understand the stipulation to
be respectful. It also does not make any move “right” or “wrong” only
because others judge it in a specific way. There is no “wrong” or
“right”. If that were, why would we have wars for example?
Behaviour of people is different, and motivations vary. And the internet
really is not 1:1 real world …
Fact remains that _why is gone for now, and to complain about “he
destroyed the work of others” is like complaining around as you do:
Destroying the many thousands of hours of work by OTHER PEOPLE simply
because it’s HIS stuff, out of the blue and with no warning whatsoever,
will never, ever be looked at as “respectable”.
Why complain? Also this is your stipulation. It is not as if he is
forced to fullfil any criteras others bestow on him. For example, in
your paragraph I would ask - how could it be that a single man destroys
thousands of hours of work by other people? Were these people so stupid
to not keep their own work?
It seems to strange what you write here …
Personally, I had a mixed mind about _why.
The plus side - which I believe clearly overwhelms the downside - was
that he was that he was extremely creative, and appeared friendly (at
least when I wrote him).
Having his talent in the ruby community was a big plus. Many people
liked his work, like the poignant guide, tryruby (the official ruby
webpage really needs to have this, so people can try out ruby without
installing it locally, for testing purpose), shoes and so on. A great
many cool things. Better to have 1 _why than 10 zedshaws in a community
…
His work for yaml also was great. I mean, yaml is great. People defend
XML so often, like this way “you use XML not for how it was meant to
be”, but when I see people doing XML config files, and compare these to
the simplicity of a yaml config file (or other simpler formats), I know
that something is very wrong in the XML camp. People often do not
recognize that doing things in a specific way is bad - or there are
other ways, which are BETTER.
Creativity and Elegancy is a universal trait. Shoes was elegant. The
comics were elegant and creative. Come to think about it, we should get
10 new different _why’s to compensate for the one _why being gone.
The downside for me was that it appeared as if _why moved from project
to project like the wind. When he seemed bored with it, he stopped it
more or less. See hpricot. Also I had the impression that he left shoes,
more or less, to play with potion or other crazy ideas (a new
programming language? Oh man…). The poignant guide was confusing me
actually more than it helped me understand - I am a little dumb. The
pickaxe was much easier for me to understand. I know that _why was picky
about this topic, even moreso because a VERY FEW others very critical,
and he seemed to pick up this more readily.
I guess it is easier to feel irritated about others complaining, than
for those who cheer and praise a work. Bit unfair to neglect those that
cheer for someone.
And if anyone feels too irritated - lighten up.
Criticism needs to exist in creative communities as well, without
stifling creativity.
On Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:35:47 -0500, Gregory B. wrote:
Hi all,
-greg
I only hope he’s ok, as it seems like an act of someone not in the right
frame of mind. Obviously I have no evidence to support that, but if he
has suffered a breakdown I hope someone’s there to look after him.
People
often try to disappear from the rest of the world when they’re
depressed.
Rational thoughts are not high on their priority list!
I don’t know. But I’m certainly not going to call it a ‘dick act’ or
ridicule him for doing what he’s done without knowing the facts!
On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 5:37 PM, Gregory B.
[email protected]wrote:
The circumstances won’t change that, they’d only
change how _why’s reputation is held if he ever decides to resurface.
I hold no ill will towards _why over his disappearance and think it
would be
great if he were to resurface and begin programming again. However, if
he’s
done with that chapter of his life I wish him godspeed on his future
endeavors.
On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 7:01 PM, Mark[email protected]
wrote:
At the very least, it’d help to not conflate “disappearance” with
I don’t know. But I’m certainly not going to call it a ‘dick act’ or
ridicule him for doing what he’s done without knowing the facts!
I don’t want to pass judgment either, honestly. Non-personally the
act is destructive. The circumstances won’t change that, they’d only
change how _why’s reputation is held if he ever decides to resurface.
But recognizing the problem with this act is relevant to our
community. I imagine if this were a regular occurrence, Github would
have been doing true clones rather than what they currently do with
their fork networks. If we really can’t trust one another, then we
need to decentralize documentation and articles if we want to call
them ‘community resources’.
Investigating the situation will help find the right balance. I too
hope that the drama dies down soon though.
Hi,
In message “Re: Why, oh why, _why?”
on Fri, 21 Aug 2009 23:50:09 +0900, Jason R.
[email protected] writes:
|If Matz decided that he was done with Ruby and wanted to move on, if he
|pulled a _why and up and deleted ruby-lang.org, the entire SVN repository,
|and shut down ruby-doc.org, there would be a HUGE outcry.
Fortunately, none of the SVN repository, ruby-lang.org, ruby-doc.org
is maintained by myself. Even if I disappear today, we will lose
little.
matz.
If we really can’t trust one another, then we
need to decentralize documentation and articles if we want to call
them ‘community resources’.
Quite frankly, I think you’re overdoing it. For important projects,
there will always be people who have a reasonably up to date copy
somewhere. git is decentralized and not every clone/fork is hosted on
github. The presence of the code on github is of little importance in
this context.
He only removed his account and the master tree. Since he is the
copyright holder for the original version of his OSS, he has the right
to do so. The “community” should be thankful for the time and effort
he put into his software in the past and respect his decision.
On Aug 21, 2009, at 8:59 PM, Yukihiro M. wrote:
Even if I disappear today, we will lose little.
I disagree. 
James Edward G. II
We should keep it in mind that he is possibly watching this very thread.
Let’s not burn any bridges. (And thanks for everything, _why)