I'm not aware of Microsoft Word or any editor I've ever used or heard of forbidding me from using the word "retards" or any other. Heck, Gnu Emacs allows me to write proprietary software, a user freedom RMS is no doubt not entirely happy with.
I require that general freedom of expression in my tools and do no tolerate vendors who engage in these sorts of damaging stunts. I suspect I'm not alone, and I note GitHub has a further problem of not being all that sticky, e.g. I moved all my repos off it earlier today after we got confirmation of this.
I don't get the outrage. In fact, I think it's a brilliant parody of post-structuralist jargon, self-contradictions and pretentious verbal mannerisms. If you take this repo as a serious attack against feminism I have to point out that as far as I can see the whole thing has no substance and offers no comments on real-life issues. Zero.
It satirizes a certain vacuous style of writing. Saying that it threatens feminism is like saying that satirizing jargon-heavy research papers threatens science. Is the jargon really all that matters?
I went to Slashdot through the link above which led me back to HN. The reactions just seem bizarre. Even if offensive to some, the readme.md is fully within the traditions of American comedy. You don't get all angry about Jeff Foxworthy's You Might be a Redneck, right? You don't proclaim that he misrepresents the rural poor and trivializes their hardships? Or do you?
If they didn't then a lot of repos would be removed or censored. If they don't though, then - similar to the 'retard' censorship - they're inconsistent and using double standards (which BTW is also a trait of the SJW subculture the c+= repo parodies)
If this is where the things are going the time may soon come for someone to launch a GitHub clone that deliberately only bans illegal content and provides technological means of protection against Twitter mobs.
Meanwhile, it would be nice to have a reusable code of conduct written with the same attitude. E.g., it would only forbid personal attacks, credible threats of violence against other contributors and violations of the law (like committing warez to the repository). It would deny any responsibility for what the contributors say elsewhere on the Internet and state an unwillingness to discuss their speech on the project grounds. It could include anti-blackmail clauses like that agitating people on social media to "support" your issue by shaming the maintainers will get you banned and the issue closed immediately and irrevocably. The latter would have to be carefully written, though, to not be exploitable.
tl;dr: Observed fact, GitHub disappeared a repo (this I personally know for a fact) and all its forks, the only reason we can surmise is that it described itself as "X for retards". I believe it's this one https://github.com/WebMBro/WebMConverter now described as "WebM for bakas." (Japanglish for idiots or fools).
I'd be more willing to extend some slack to GitHub if they hadn't precipitously turned off their service for these repos, that's worse than this example of their "tolerance", but who knows what it'll be next?
Who knows how this will play out in the long term; their trashing of their meritocracy rug suggests this is not a one off (ADDED: and erics32 reminded me of C+=). Why should I or anyone else concerned about long term stability invest in their particular value adds when they show such capriciousness?
The great point, in relation to this topic of their latest investment, is that companies that depend almost entirely on their "communities" can screw those up and destroy their value.
Yes it is highly offensive to many English speaking individuals in the US. It has historically been used as a highly derogatory term for disabled individuals.
It'll be another word, perhaps in a more ambigious context, next time. Which brings up another point: I just don't want to have to worry about what will become this politically incorrect in the future when I'm writing code and documentation.
> I just don't want to have to worry about what will become this politically incorrect in the future when I'm writing code and documentation.
Then don't say/write bigotted things. Honestly, it's like asking people not to write spelling or grammar mistakes in documentation. It's not that hard.
Do you not know that words can have more than one meaning? From the context you can tell the meaning. When airbus use "retard" they're using it to mean "to slow down".
It's not "these 6 letters in this combination is banned", it's "stop insulting people based on mental illnesses".
That requires people to understand context and nuance.
We live in a world where a guy wants to ban Mel Brooks' The Producers because he doesn't realize it's a satire of Hitler, not an homage. Lots of people don't or won't appreciate context.
The context of the original repo was very clearly that of an insulting word.
re: The Producers, with any topic you'll get one or two extremists of any varity. You should judge it not by "did someone want to stop this", but instead by "did someone(s) in power to stop it, want to stop it". One crank protesting outside a cinema is very different from the CEO of a movie studio deciding not to make the film.
The whole argument hangs on that point. I don't know where your optimism comes from. Seeing a lot of human behaviour on the net in this area, I have pretty much zero confidence that the right decision would always be made.
"Mental retardation" has been a medical term since relatively recently. The "retardation" means nothing more than "being held back". But people did pick it up as a derogatory term, and so it was replaced with "intellectual disability". A classic euphemism treadmill.
In the context of medication, "retard" is still in use: it describes medication that is released steadily and continuously into the bloodstream.
This reaction to the word will over time also come to the replacement word that people will need to come up with to refer to the condition.
"idiot" and "imbecile" used to be the terms used by medical professionals to refer to mentally retarded people in the 50s and 60s. Then those terms became insults, so they started using the term "mentally retarded". Now that retard has become an insult, another word will have to be found, (handicapped? slow?) and then it will become an insult, and they'll have to find another word...
The next phase has already begun - "You were one of the special children, weren't you" is a pretty common start to an ass-chewing in the military. They'll have to move on pretty soon.
"The great point, in relation to this topic of their latest investment, is that companies that depend almost entirely on their "communities" can screw those up and destroy their value."
I think it's pretty much inevitable once the money rolls in that companies like Github and others will start censoring content and generally doing things that upset the community to appease their investors. I can't think of a single company that doesn't do this, and in many cases it has led to a downturn of the company if not outright demise.
Not this particular Github repo maybe, but once they start taking down stuff, they will eventually hit something that will make people quite upset. Though from what other social networks generally experience, that won't be enough to drive a lot of users away, usually just the core ones which is enough to start the momentum away from the platform.
Github has chosen the left/PC side, certainly, as evidenced by the rug death. But I suspect this will help them rather than hurt, as the majority of developers are probably left/PC, as is leadership of major tech companies. They are aligning with the power structure.
Do you think Bitbucket would stand up to a PC Twitter campaign? I think not; only the explicitly ideological want to fight such battles.
This was on the front page recently. 741 comments and only 480 upvotes, so it wouldn't suprise me if it set off the flamewar filter and got pushed off.
I require that general freedom of expression in my tools and do no tolerate vendors who engage in these sorts of damaging stunts. I suspect I'm not alone, and I note GitHub has a further problem of not being all that sticky, e.g. I moved all my repos off it earlier today after we got confirmation of this.