[erlang-questions] Coon - new tool for building Erlang packages, dependency management and deploying Erlang services

Fred Hebert mononcqc@REDACTED
Tue Feb 13 16:40:23 CET 2018


On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 7:58 AM, Max Lapshin <max.lapshin@REDACTED> wrote:

> I think that this is very clear:
>
> 1) it is almost impossible to use a word that will not offence anyone
> (especially in USA)
>
>
It is very possible. This mailing list is full of folks boasting of writing
systems that run on hundreds or thousands of nodes and handle more load
than anything else out there with amazing uptime figures And somehow,
nobody can be assed to just look up words in a search engine or use the
link Mahesh posted that is meant just for that?

You can open up a dictionary and be sure that picking any random word is by
far likely not to be racist. I'll just pick another animal instead of a
raccoon: pick a red panda, for whom the raccoon is its closest genetic
neighbor. I googled "red panda offensive" and it turns out to be links
about how the animal defends itself so it's probably gonna be good for an
English-speaking audience.

I do the same exercise for "coon offensive" and what do you know the top
half of the page contains multiple links alluding to racism.

If folks from this mailing can't use google like that and it's considered
"almost impossible" to figure out if a word like "coon" is racist, then we
are truly a lost cause.


2) if you want to export something to some country/nation, you have to take
> in consideration local situation.
> For example russian Avtovaz had to change naming  from "Zhiguli" to "Lada"
> because nobody would purchase car named "Zhiguli" in France. Lada is
> pronounced better.
>

Agreed. The target audience is important. Buick made a car named
"LaCrosse". They recently made a new version called "LaCrosse Avenir".
"LaCrosse" alone is kind of fine, but in Quebec French, the sentence
"LaCrosse Avenir" is pronounced the same as "La Crosse à venir", which in
Joual means "the fraud to come". Not a great name for your car.

But you know what? People laughed about it and it was not racist, it was
not insulting. It was just bad marketing. The company looks kind of stupid
but everyone knows mistakes are made some time. All the injury is on their
end for the bad advertisement. We have to stop making false equivalencies
where people in this thread keep equating "it's hard to not accidentally
have an unfortunate name in a foreign culture" with "it's hard not to pick
a racist term in the main language I'm writing the library for."

They're not the same thing, we should not treat them the same. Parallels
are easy to make, but they're not adequate.


>
> 3) If you do not want to change naming, you can lose some market.
> Developers are the same market: they pay with attention, their time, etc.
>
>
>
> So if Valery really wants his software to be used by Fred and his
> colleagues, he has to take it in consideration.
> If Valery is going to create such a wonderful software that Fred's
> colleagues will have to use even calling him a racist, so they will just
> use it or fork and rename.
> If Valery is not going to change naming, then it seems that Fred's
> colleagues will refuse from software just because of naming. It is very
> professional, but this is life.
>
>
> So I see only one question: are fred's colleagues a big market for
> Valery's software?  Perhaps they represent american market, which is still
> richest in the world and
> one of best in terms of developer feedback.
>
>
So one thing I want to add here is that it's not just about me. It's not
just about the people I know. It's not just about the people on this
mailing list.

It's about all the people outside this community who see this debate and go
"this is god damn ridiculous just change the fucking name, it's obviously
racist to a bunch of folks" and make the decision to never join this
community after seeing that. So yeah, Valery can keep the name and can keep
going with it, but I want to say that in terms of adoption of Erlang, this
one single thread will have done damage to the future of this language and
its community, and probably well-deserved damage.

What frustrates me here is that I will have personally spent years of my
own time trying to make Erlang friendlier and more approachable. Years. For
free, without advertisement, without accepting donations. Because I think
it's the right thing. Because I care to have a functional community that is
fun and welcoming. I am personally frustrated and disappointed because it
appears that one single day of shitty mailing list behavior has managed to
provoke a massive backlash *outside of here* that undoes a lot of the work
I've tried to do for a long time. Maybe some of you never wanted those
folks to join here and you're fine with it. Maybe you just don't mind
overall. That's your prerogative.

This is my frustration and it's on me for having spent a lot of time in
here the way I did, but I wanted to voice it. I'm really disappointed at
all of this.


>
> Frankly speaking, it seems that it is a good idea to listen to Fred and
> listen to him. Just because it is so today in USA.
>
>
>
I'm happy if the marketing aspects is what ends up working for some people
in here, but overall I think it's just the decent thing to do. To quote
Vonnegut because I think he put it more succinctly than I ever will (I'm
bad at keeping things short): "God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
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