The Incoherence of "Non-Judgmentalism"
Here is famed software developer Eric Raymond telling Mozilla not to let the door hit it on the way out to oblivion. Why?
The company "betrayed one of the core covenants of open source." Which was? "One of the central values of the hacker culture from which Mozilla sprang is that you are to be judged by the quality of your work alone."
Which is, of course, exactly what Raymond is not doing in reference to Mozilla! He is judging them because they forced Brendan Eich to resign. But that is very much not their quality of their work (which is mostly Firefox): it was a political decision they made.
Now, I happen to agree with Raymond that Mozilla should have showed a little more spine! But despite my agreement, I am forced to note that is argument is self-undermining: you cannot use a universal ban on "judgmentalism" to judge those who violate it! It simply makes no sense.
The company "betrayed one of the core covenants of open source." Which was? "One of the central values of the hacker culture from which Mozilla sprang is that you are to be judged by the quality of your work alone."
Which is, of course, exactly what Raymond is not doing in reference to Mozilla! He is judging them because they forced Brendan Eich to resign. But that is very much not their quality of their work (which is mostly Firefox): it was a political decision they made.
Now, I happen to agree with Raymond that Mozilla should have showed a little more spine! But despite my agreement, I am forced to note that is argument is self-undermining: you cannot use a universal ban on "judgmentalism" to judge those who violate it! It simply makes no sense.
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