He wrote the software, he gets to have whatever attitude and tone he feels like. If you don't like it, don't use his software.

I took what I see as a moderate position lightly criticizing his tone, but because you're going way farther than that and asserting that he can be as much of a jerk as he wants, let's address that argument.

I think it's nonsense. Rich is probably among the most brilliant software engineers on the planet but that has no bearing whatsoever on whether he needs to be polite and show human empathy and decency like everyone else does. You can be toxic and hostile and people will put up with it if you're useful enough (c.f. Linus) but we shouldn't be lining up, comment after comment after comment, to cheer that kind of behavior on.

Again, I don't think this is a big deal. I think that his rant is just a small indiscretion and we're all human, but I'm dismayed to see such an outpouring of support for exactly the position that you're putting forward. What I'm saying isn't "nauseating PC culture" as one GitHub commenter put it; it's just not being an asshole.

I found the original rational, useful and straight-forward. It's not an "indiscretion".

So, yeah, your comments are approaching "nauseating PC culture" because you can't read something like the original without being offended some how.

Well, he and other 147 people, according to the GH contributors page. Though, granted, none with anywhere near the same level of contributions to the core.

That doesn’t excuse being rude.

I didn’t read disdain at all, so I’m interested in which parts tickled your disdain detector.

Mainly:

> As a user of something open source you are not thereby entitled to anything at all. You are not entitled to contribute. You are not entitled to features. You are not entitled to the attention of others. You are not entitled to having value attached to your complaints. You are not entitled to this explanation.

Also see my response on the gist itself:

https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba95...

Feel free to use my HN comment as an upvote/downvote proxy since gist doesn't support upthumbs/downthumbs on comments.

Thanks for being one of the few voices of humanity in this exchange. This whole situation just feels.. icky.. to me. I wish I knew what long term effects Rich's statement will have on the community, but I can't help but think that it will probably verge towards the opposite of embracing diverse viewpoints. That makes me quite sad.

Rich is very quick to escalate from “I feel X about action Y” to “you are Z”, where Z is negative.

Example, people are frustrated about how Rich runs his project. They are expressing how they feel about Rich’s actions, which is fair. Rich is under no obligation to change, but Rich’s response is to call people entitled. This is an attack against the person, not against the action, and it’s a chilling escalation.

Also, the fans cheer him on, which is gross.

Thanks for your perspective, I can see how you really can read two tones into his statement.

Side note: it appears gist links aren't stable? I think halgari had the same issue when trying to link to his response.