Read https://twitter.com/jacobian for the latest stuff against PG. (Hes creator of django)
Also, https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015 (Created by a core contributor to django)
In Django only has 1 woman contributorjoyent
libuv
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luriel wrote a nice answer, like a good, old hater would write. (You can't just go around and insult programming languages. They have feelings too, dude.) is there any real…
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Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 5:58:02 AM UTC.
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HN mentions by year86 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2011-07-20 15:45:57 UTC to 2025-12-07 08:01:36 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
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| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 1 | 6 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 44 | 4 | 40 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 22 | 1 | 21 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
libuv has moved to github.com/libuv/libuv
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
44 sourcesHe did explain himself a day later:
https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...
In Ben Noordhuis's Departure"he could have easily said that rather than closing the
pull request with a discouraging comment"
There are 129 open issues[0] and 25 open pull requests[1] for libuv right now on Github. That one didn't deserve his extremely valuable time that is better spent on considering contributions that matter, like the the 25 open pull requests.
You don't have a right to Ben's time and attention. He gives to the project out of his own volition out of a sense of duty to the community. The community here are people who have help build node.js and libuv to what it is today. Someone showing up in Nov/Dec 2013 issuing their first pull request and making it a trivial one isn't deserving of Ben's time. Ben doesn't owe anyone an explanation here. Had the PR request submitter made several prior code commits that had been accepted, maybe it would be fa
Read the rest
ir to expect an explanation, but not for a trivial first PR.
[0] https://github.com/joyent/libuv/issues
[1] https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pulls
To answer your question: Yes. https://github.com/joyent/libuv/commit/804d40ee14dc0f82c482d... (please scroll).
However, that's not a necessary criteria. Substitute "he" for some other term, say "white person", and I doubt you'll see the need for a specific member of the excluded segment to speak up.
The real argument is around the second part of your comment. Which can be recast as whether male as the default gender, when used in texts, is a matter of concern for the development/opportunities of women. I think so. Along with salary differences, etc. We do not have to reach to Simone de Beauvoir to make that point... here is a link to a current analysis/view: http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/gender-sensitive-langu....
Quote:
> Moreover, these issues are important for people concerned about issues of social inequality. There is a relat
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ionship between our language use and our social reality. If we “erase” women from language, that makes it easier to maintain gender inequality. As Professor Sherryl Kleinman (2000:6) has argued,
>
> [M]ale-based generics are another indicator—and, more importantly, a reinforcer—of a system in which “man” in the abstract and men in the flesh are privileged over women.
>
> Words matter, and our language choices have consequences. If we believe that women and men deserve social equality, then we should think seriously about how to reflect that belief in our language use.
"Removed use of gendered pronoun" a Pull Request
2 points · Open discussionJesus. Take a look at this "patch":
https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015/files
Ousted the guy because he referred to "user" as a "he" in the comments? Are you fucking kidding me?
I'm all for gender equality, but the amount of drama that came out of this is just insane and disturbing for the hacker community. I can not see it as anything more than pure politics and gender issue as a convenient pretext.
Joyent has lost all credibility for me. And Ben has taken the place of the tech drama queen of the year.
In Ben Noordhuis's Departure"Any commit should be according to commit rules. And changes which do not actually affect how the code runs are actually unimportant from a core committer's point of view."
While it's actually hard to believe, I think the (very trivial) commit that was rejected broke the build for two reasons:
1) The project in question has a CLA requirement. https://github.com/joyent/libuv/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#...
2) The project in question has a commit message policy that is CI-enforced. https://github.com/joyent/libuv/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#...
Can anyone else confirm? I haven't seen this fact discussed publicly (although knowledgable people seem to allude to it).
In Ben Noordhuis's DepartureHe gave a perfectly reasonable explanation why he did what he did: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...
In Ben Noordhuis's DeparturePeople who want to ruthlessly enforce their personal version of political correctness (Bryan Cantrill in particular, and Ben's employer Issac Roth, who seems to have competed with Bryan in a no-I-am-the-bigger-asshole contest) forced an important core committer out because he tried to enforce accepted commit policy. This is a particularly aggressive brand of feminism, one that I have mostly seen in the USA. It seems to be mostly dictated by people pushing through their changes based on their ideology at any cost, by branding anyone who opposes them as discriminatory oppressors.
The number of people I have heard saying stuff like "It was a politically sensitive PR, of course it should have been merged" is surprising. In fact, I would strongly recommend rejecting all such politically sensitive PRs on the basis that they are deliberately con
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troversial, and asking the submitter politely to put their changes in a PR with more significant contributions that they submit to the project.
Relevant links:
[1] Original pull request: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015
[2] Bryan's "I am going to fire Ben, even though he isn't my employee. Fired. Did I say fired yet?" blog post: http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun
[3] Issac Roth's "We'll fire Ben if he doesn't learn grammar. Haha, j/k." blog post: http://strongloop.com/strongblog/collaboration-not-derision-...
For those who don't know what's going on: Joyent made a blogpost calling Ben, (one of _THE_ most prolific contributors to nodjs), an asshole (http://www.joyent.com/blog/the-power-of-a-pronoun) and said they'd fire him if he'd been working for them, because he refused to take a commit making language in some part of the code gender-neutral.
Here's Ben's last response to the whole ordeal: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...
A lot of people speculated that this is part of a dance Joyent is doing to assert itself as a big cloud player. I don't know how much truth there is to that, but as a general spectator I feel like wanting to remark that Bryan Cantrill only fanned the fire here in all of this. And so perhaps there should be some weight given to the fact that a worker of a company that's a competitor to Joyent
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just quit, arguably due to Joyent's rough play -- if Joyent had approached the matter differently, carefully, sensitively, there likely would have been a different conclusion to this. But now it's done, and pretty much every participating party in this whole thing came out looking like a loser, Joycent, Strongloop, the whole nodejs scene. Here's hoping Ben now finds a workplace that appreciates him for his talents and respects him as a person.
actually, that's not what happened at all. Read the response of the guy who rejected it here:
https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29538...
Hi all, let me try to clear up a few things.
Why I rejected the pull request. Us maintainers tend to
reject tiny doc changes because they're often more trouble
than they're worth. You have to collect and check the CLA,
it makes git blame less effective, etc.
That's why the usual approach to such pull requests is
'no, unless' - in this case the 'unless' should probably
have applied. To me as a non-native speaker, the
difference between 'him' and 'them' seems academic but
hey, if it gets us scores of female contributors, who am I
to object?
Why I reverted the commit. In hindsight, I should have
given Isaac the benefit of the doubt because I don't doubt
that he acted
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with the best of intentions. On the other
hand, if another committer jumped the line like that, I
would have done the same thing. We have procedures in
place and no one is exempt from them.
To the people that felt it necessary to call me a
misogynist: I volunteer in a mentorship program that gets
young people - especially young women - involved in
technology. How many of you go out and actively try to
increase the number of women in the field?
I'm probably going to step back from libuv and node.js
core development. I do it more out a sense of duty than
anything else. If this is what I have to deal with, then
I'd just as rather do something else. Hope that clears
things up. Thanks.
He was asked, sort of: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29539...
But the thread was immediately derailed in the next comment by some asshole saying he was glad the change didn’t go through, setting off the whole fiasco. It could have been a nice teaching moment, giving Ben a chance to explain his dismissal (which turned out to be logically reasonable if not tactful), followed by an explanation to a non-native speaker the importance of non-gendered pronouns. Instead, as it all too-often does, the situation became a complete shitstorm because some people can’t understand that “hostile” doesn’t require, or even imply, conscious intent. Mens Rights activists need to “lighten up”.
Naturally, said asshole is continuing to fan the flames: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29576...
In The Open Source BikeshedWow - just read a more recent comment from Ben here: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...
The sad part of it all this: "I'm probably going to step back from libuv and node.js core development. I do it more out a sense of duty than anything else. If this is what I have to deal with, then I'd just as rather do something else. "
Joyent - well done - you have shown potential customers to now be wary of becoming too entangled in your products or ecospace, lest they get bitten by the effects of your blog space comments and the ramifications of these.
Joyent - well done - you have shown open source developers you would fire them (how?) before you would establish the facts. Developers - be wary here before you selflessly give your time and effort to these projects.
The lynch mob on the internet - shame on you all. There
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was no issue here for you to shout and scream about, let alone bring out your virtual portable gallows. What ever happened to benefit of the doubt? For shame. The sad part is that there are real gender issues out there, but instead of spending the time and effort on those, where they do actually exist, you spent it on here, on this, which was more a poor communication at best, a minor issue of lack of respect amongst fellow developers at a stretch, but not, and never a sexism or gender issue.
Wow, the response from Joyent seems ridiculous. Saying you would fire someone (who doesn't even work for you) when you haven't even asked them why they did what they did is stupid. You're overreacting, doing it without full information, and doing it publicly. It seems even worse when you read the response from Ben: https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...
NB: I don't know much/anything about Joyent/Ben so my perspective is just from what I've read on GitHub and this post.
In The Open Source BikeshedThis is Ben's latest position from 5hrs ago:
https://github.com/joyent/libuv/pull/1015#issuecomment-29568...
Until that moment, I don't think he was even asked what his position was and why he acted the way he did.
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