[HN Gopher] Vim 9 will be dedicated to Sven Guckes
___________________________________________________________________
Vim 9 will be dedicated to Sven Guckes
Author : rffn
Score : 344 points
Date : 2022-02-21 14:59 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (groups.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (groups.google.com)
| ahallock wrote:
| I've used Vim nearly every day for the last 20 years. Thank you
| for FOSS. RIP.
| kbd wrote:
| > Our friend Sven Guckes died in Berlin on February 20, 2022.
| > He was diagnosed with a brain tumor in December 2021.
|
| Sheesh so fast... scary. RIP.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, it can be that fast. Two cases nearby in the last two
| years. Very scary stuff, and you don't have to be over 50
| either.
| caycep wrote:
| It sounds like glioblastoma multiforme maybe. Life expectancy
| used to be 6 months average post diagnosis...
| echelon wrote:
| Any way to get an early diagnosis and potentially be eligible
| for surgery? Any warning signs to look for?
|
| I imagine it depends on which cells are impacted. Glial cells
| not giving much option.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The two people that died recently near me: one a bad
| headache, the other a sight problem in only one eye. In
| both cases they went to a neurologist, the cancers were
| both the most aggressive kind and in both cases the time
| between initial diagnosis and the funeral was less than
| three months. Very harsh stuff.
| echelon wrote:
| That's so scary and sad.
|
| I'm sorry for your losses.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Thank you. Still not over one of these. To the point that
| I recently reached for the phone to give that person a
| call and only after getting the 'number not available'
| signal it clicked again. Cognitively I've long ago
| accepted it but in times of half-attention it goes off
| the rails so easily.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Can you describe the sight problem in only one eye? I've
| had one for a while now and it's getting worse. For
| example, did your friend have a redder-than-usual eye?
|
| I've already seen an optometrist and he thinks its just
| worsening blepharitis which I've had in both eyes for
| over 5 years.
| pantulis wrote:
| You don't need an optometrist, you need an ophtalmologist
| here. If you are unsure, check more than one specialist
| but that's it. There are a lot of eye conditions that do
| not necessarily need to be anything to stress about.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's correct.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Optometrist is a tech. Ophthalmologist is an MD. I'm
| surprised the optometrist didn't refer out.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's what should have happened, if only to rule out
| that something bad is happening. Time is everything with
| stuff like this.
| jacquesm wrote:
| mail? jacques@modularcompany.com
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Unfortunately, this is the nature of the most deadly
| cancers. What makes them deadly is that by the time
| they're catchable, they're already uncontrollable.
| Pancreatic is in the same category because your pancreas
| can take a lot of punishment before it starts to fail;
| most pancreatic cancers are first identified by the
| symptoms caused by the pancreatic cells metastasizing to
| something that _can 't_ take that punishment and presents
| a malfunction you can feel more quickly.
|
| We've investigated the feasibility of regular cancer
| screening for this, and the problems compound; turns out
| when we do regular imaging of the human body, we find out
| various odd morphologies are developing and dissolving
| all the time, and only a handful of them will ever become
| something the body's own immune system doesn't get on top
| of before it becomes an endemic problem. So "Why don't we
| just do regular pancreatic cancer screenings?" turns out
| to be harder than we want it to be, even if we could
| discount the cost factor.
| pantulis wrote:
| My cousin was a ER doctor. Last year, after one shift, he
| had some abdominal pain. One colleague offered to perform
| an echography and bam, there it was: renal cells cancer,
| with a size comparable to the kidney itself. Further
| tests revealed that it was already metastasized, and five
| months later he left us. He was 53 years old, he knew
| everything that was going to happen to him, and happen it
| did. It was not a matter of insurance or receiving more
| or less care, his fate was written since that damning
| echography.
|
| This reads like a horror story but that's the crudeness
| of life and death for us. Only thing to do is medical
| checkups from time to time and try to live a plenty life
| because you may not be there after the next corner.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That sucks. And yes, your last line is spot on: use it
| while you have it.
| cgh wrote:
| My mother was diagnosed with bone cancer and died a week later.
| She had been living with it for some time and just dealt with
| the pain until my sister made her go to a doctor. I'm not sure
| what the lesson is here or even if there is one but yeah, it
| can all happen quickly.
| jacquesm wrote:
| First off, my condolences.
|
| This is something I have seen more frequently with older
| people: they just suck it up either because they don't want
| to be a burden on others or because they have seen a lot of
| hardship in their lives and on that scale some pain signals
| don't register high enough to make a fuss about.
|
| If there is a lesson: keep an eye on older people and be
| sensitive to the stuff they tend to shrug off.
| gotsa wrote:
| It's always humbling to get to know more about the stories behind
| software I use daily.
|
| Having Vim 9 dedicated to his memory is wonderful. Thank you,
| Sven
| xwdv wrote:
| :q!
|
| A life interrupted
| kibwen wrote:
| It's curious to think that, for many of us, the most enduring
| legacy of our names will be as lines in CONTRIBUTORS.txt and
| ghostly email addresses buried deep in git histories.
| freedomben wrote:
| I think about this occasionally too. When I hear about people
| dying surrounded by their loved ones I think about whether
| looking at my git history would give me the same comfort. I
| doubt it. I'm gonna go give my kids a hug.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I use it daily and this is a good reminder to be(come) more aware
| of who all the people are behind the FOSS stuff that I have come
| to rely on for just about everything.
| adelarsq wrote:
| Sad! Thanks for your effort Sven Guckes! Rest in peace!
| sneak wrote:
| Sven was my friend. I knew him well. He was one of the first
| people in the tech scene I met when I first came to Berlin in
| 2007.
|
| I don't think we should be honoring him, though, because he was,
| despite being my friend, not a very good person:
|
| https://twitter.com/deborianerin/status/1495636848722513920
|
| https://twitter.com/deborianerin/status/1495645190832463872
|
| https://twitter.com/twena/status/1495537875651371012
|
| https://twitter.com/deborianerin/status/1495673397296218113
|
| These tweets were posted today, but those of us that knew him
| well have known of these issues for years.
|
| I have as a point of pride many "problematic" friends; my
| friendship with someone is not approval of every (or even any)
| action they undertake in life.
|
| I do not approve of this dedication, as Sven was a good example
| of the kind of people who make the f/oss community worse, not
| better. We as a community can do much better than explicitly
| endorsing those who would cause our scene to be unsafe and
| unwelcoming to young women.
| twh270 wrote:
| I don't know the first thing about him, but maybe we could
| honor his contributions while not giving a blanket approval of
| everything he ever said and did?
|
| Or is that, like, too subtle and nuanced a concept nowadays.
| BeetleB wrote:
| One can also highlight both the good and the bad. Although my
| experiences with him were not as extreme as these examples, I
| did stop using Mutt a decade ago partially because of his
| behavior - he had been a liability to Mutt development for
| years at that point.
| herthabroetchen wrote:
| Yeah, alas that seems to be the case. A few unsubstantiated
| tweets seem to make some folks wanting to "undo everything".
| [deleted]
| atommclain wrote:
| In situations like this, I think of the sentiment: "May the
| good he created stretch on, and the evil be buried with him."
| allarm wrote:
| And maybe there should be something more than a couple of
| tweets from random persons without ANY proofs? That's just so
| wrong.
| BeetleB wrote:
| The commenter knew him personally, and is attesting to his
| behavior.
| herthabroetchen wrote:
| I would say he remains as vague as possible: "he was my
| friend, but so deeply flawed. Look at them tweets and
| rubbish his life"
| allarm wrote:
| Especially if the accusations are true, there should be
| something more than just these tweets and a comment from
| a person who allegedly knew him.
| xionon wrote:
| How do you celebrate one's accomplishments while ignoring
| one's behavior in the process of making those
| accomplishments?
|
| Or rather, is it actually too nuanced to think the ends don't
| justify the means?
| [deleted]
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| Obits are not meant to be honest. They are meant solely to make
| the people that are still alive feel better.
|
| If we had to stop and think about death, we would have to
| consider our own mortality. If we had to stop and think about
| the poor life choices of a dead person, we would have to stop
| and think about our own poor life choices. We might have to
| consider whether we owe some kind of penance; whether our own
| misdeeds outweigh our good; whether someone might dig up our
| own past when we pass. And that's terrifying.
|
| So obits must only say good things about the dead. We mustn't
| consider the true nature of a life filled with bad and good and
| in-between. We must instead shroud ourselves in the comforting
| blanket of pure nostalgia. This way we don't have to face pain,
| or truth, or conflict, and we can just feel a benign sad
| pleasure, to more easily slip back into comforting ignorance.
|
| As an aside: Twitter is a hellscape of negativity. It could be
| that he also saved drowning toddlers from a river or some shit,
| but that isn't going to make it through the typical barrage of
| snide tweets. So just as much as we should consider the
| negative, we should consider that there's also positive. The
| fact that all humans are fundamentally flawed does not
| invalidate their good deeds, nor validate the bad. And if we
| try _really hard_ , we might conclude that there is no such
| thing as a "good" or "bad" person, but just "a person", the
| culmination of which cannot be put neatly into a box. Maybe
| then we could stop reacting so strongly to discovering that
| humans are indeed flawed, and that there is no shame in
| considering all of one's deeds, for that's where the truth of
| life lies.
| freedomben wrote:
| You have as a point of pride many problematic friends (which I
| think is great), but you shit on their memory online the day
| after they die?
|
| I'm very much with you that just because someone has died
| doesn't mean we should whitewash their flaws and pretend they
| don't exist, but you've really caused me to face the full force
| of that opinion today :-)
| croes wrote:
| >but you shit on their memory online the day after they die
|
| It's a compromise, attention for the suffering of the
| victims, no consequences for the perpetrator.
| sneak wrote:
| If I am shitting on anything, it is the decision by people
| currently alive to explicitly endorse his presence in the
| f/oss community, which is a very poor decision in my view,
| given Sven's conduct within it.
|
| Telling the truth is always appropriate.
|
| TFA claims that "He was a good person." I do not believe that
| to be accurate.
| serf wrote:
| >Telling the truth is always appropriate.
|
| the truth is that Sven was a prolific foss contributor with
| a complicated history with regards to other people.
|
| you can acknowledge both contributions & faults, erasing
| his history of foss contributions wouldn't be the truth --
| much like labeling him as nothing more than a predator
| wouldn't be the truth, either.
|
| I'm not sure what you're advocating in this memoriam
| thread, to be honest -- total erasure of person and non-
| response from the projects they were involved with?
|
| Isn't that a similar kind of non-whole truth that you're
| railing against all together?
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think we have diverging definitions of what the word
| 'friend' means.
|
| It's possible to be someone's friend, acknowledge their
| wrongs and not draw attention to those wrongs in their
| obituary. It's one of those things that have historically
| been agreed upon as the proper way, in dutch we've
| formalized it in a proverb "Over de doden niets dan
| goeds.". "Nothing but good about the dead.". Simply because
| it is bad form to shit all over someone who isn't there to
| defend themselves (especially when you call them a friend)
| and because you never know who is going to read your
| writings, they might already be having a very hard day. I
| realize that this is too much to ask for some, but his
| friends should know better.
| [deleted]
| rectang wrote:
| This article isn't an obit, though. Guckes is being
| elevated by a unique dedication for a prominent FOSS
| project, and such honors express the values of FOSS
| culture.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It serves as one because it communicates the fact of his
| death to a large number of people who probably were not
| aware of that, and I suspect this is the main reason it
| got posted here in the first place.
| [deleted]
| Mergio wrote:
| I didn't know him. I appreciate this information though
| because honestly I stop caring for people who do something
| like this.
|
| I guess plenty of people f him because they only knew the
| good side people mention.
| freedomben wrote:
| What do you mean, "I stop caring for people who do
| something like this?" Like literally you don't care that he
| died because someone on Twitter accused him of something
| gross? Or you don't care about his contributions to free
| software that improve the lives of millions of people? I'm
| not trying to challenge or straw-man you, I really want to
| understand what you mean.
|
| I have no idea if he is guilty or not, but even still I
| think humans are much, much more complicated than that. If
| all of us are summed up and judged as "worth caring about"
| based on the worst things we've done (assuming he is guilty
| of the twitter accusation, which I have no reason to doubt
| but also don't accept purely on faith), I think most (all?)
| people will be judged worthless. I'm not trying to make the
| "but Hitler built the Autobahn" argument, I guess I'm more
| trying to understand why "hate the sin but love the sinner"
| has gone so out of fashion.
| d_tr wrote:
| Apparently someone in that _obituary_ discussion is happy that
| the person died of this horrible disease because he was
| inappropriate to them in a few occasions.
|
| > This won't happen again.
|
| Holy motherfucking crap.
| Tomte wrote:
| > happy that the person died
|
| That's simply a lie. Her words support that she is happy
| about him not harassing anyone anymore, but not about his
| death per se. Which she explicitly emphasizes down the thread
| again.
| vimacs2 wrote:
| Curious if the same people getting upset about her words
| were similarly upset when Richard Stallman said after
| hearing of Steve Job's death "I'm not glad he's dead but
| I'm glad he's gone".
| rectang wrote:
| Let's not underestimate the impact that certain kinds of
| being "inappropriate" can have on people -- the sense of
| powerlessness it instills, especially when the offense is
| dismissed and minimized by elements of the wider society.
| It's sad but not surprising to see this sort of response
| (EDIT: _her_ response).
| d_tr wrote:
| Your reply is not very relevant to my comment though. Also
| I might be much more sensitive than you think and you are
| sad and unsurprised for nothing.
|
| EDIT: I' m sorry, I misunderstood you.
| rectang wrote:
| I'm at fault for a lack of clarity. This is a difficult
| and unfortunate discussion, and let's try to appreciate
| all of us as whole people today in the fullness of all
| our experiences and lives lived.
| wyldfire wrote:
| Can you share a translation for the first two - auf Englisch?
| stereo wrote:
| Deborah's first tweet:
|
| He only harassed me inappropriately, via text and a few times
| physically, many years ago in #CCCB Glad that won't happen
| again.
|
| Reply:
|
| Sven Guckes was one of the great evangelists of the German
| open source scene. During his lifetime, there were good
| reasons why people wanted to dislike, shun or sometimes kick
| him out, but he really didn't deserve such a reaction to the
| obituary tweet. Take care, Sven.
|
| Her reply:
|
| but I deserved to be harassed as a woman, by a +20 years
| older guy in whom I NEVER showed interest...? To just sit on
| my legs at the movie Sunday, to force cuddling, although I
| had ignored [his] advances for months - BAH how disgusting.
| [deleted]
| jpgvm wrote:
| Not condoning his behavior if these tweets are true but I think
| acknowledging his contributions to VIM is entirely orthogonal.
|
| Some will think this is the same as "making it OK to be a
| harasser if you are l33t/important/rich/etc" but it's really
| not.
|
| VIM is a community project that he dedicated significant time
| and effort to at his own expense. It's just like a rich donor
| to some hospital and getting a wing named after them, it
| doesn't erase their sins but it acknowledges the good that
| person has done in that act.
|
| A person is more than their faults and trying to take
| everything good away from their memory after their death
| because of those faults doesn't sit right with me.
| warmwaffles wrote:
| > Sven was my friend. I knew him well.
|
| You are a wonderful friend.
| pantulis wrote:
| F*ck cancer.
| gjvc wrote:
| I remember his "put some colour in your life!" pages with
| affection. Thank you, Sven.
| r_singh wrote:
| I'm surprised about Sneak's comment being flagged on here.
|
| It's okay to express your opinion about the person being
| discussed and add more information to it in general.
|
| If VIM is being dedicated to an alleged sexual harasser, I as an
| interested person is happy to know about this.
| coldpie wrote:
| Unfortunate, but not surprising. HN has a pretty large & vocal
| libertarian, "there should be no consequences for my actions"
| crowd.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| I'd say they got flagged because they made a huge accusation
| without a shred of non-anecdotal evidence.
| r_singh wrote:
| Well, I (& they) personally know people who are victims of
| Sven's stalker like behaviour / issues / symptoms of a bigger
| problem
|
| I see that a lot of the appreciation posts are also purely
| anecdotal. So are we contesting whose word has more value
| here or what anecdotal experience is valid/invalid or
| appropriate to share?
| herthabroetchen wrote:
| throwaway839120 wrote:
| r_singh wrote:
| Someone very dear to me is a victim of Sven's stalkerish
| behavior.
|
| What behavior? Repeatedly texting / touching girls
| decades younger than him even after being politely
| rejected on multiple occasions.
| herthabroetchen wrote:
| Very vague. Very, very vague.
|
| When did all that happen to the person very dear to you?
| Here's me asking because I have a hard time imagining how
| a very frail person on crutches is gonna stalk someone.
| [deleted]
| freedomben wrote:
| You can pretty effectively cyber-stalk somebody even when
| frail, especially if you're an old time FOSS hacker who
| really knows how stuff works.
| lenalena007 wrote:
| iso1631 wrote:
| :wq
| balakk wrote:
| :n
| lytedev wrote:
| :x
| nixcraft wrote:
| ZZ
| actionfromafar wrote:
| killall -9 vim
| furgooswft13 wrote:
| Pulls plug
| willcipriano wrote:
| Ask IT for a new EC2 instance
| gruturo wrote:
| terraform destroy --auto-approve && terraform apply
| --auto-approve
| davidkunz wrote:
| shutdown -r now
| hajhatten wrote:
| sudo !!
| [deleted]
| bravetraveler wrote:
| someone think of the swap files!
| georgewsinger wrote:
| pkill vim
| [deleted]
| ruhrharry wrote:
| He was well known as an open source evangelist and as a helpful
| guy.
|
| But he was also known as "sexual predator" who harassed young,
| underaged girls, see
| https://twitter.com/twena/status/1495537875651371012
|
| I don't know if it is appropriate to make a dedication to someone
| like this.
| Semaphor wrote:
| The source is some random person on Twitter saying he is?
| Really?
| ruhrharry wrote:
| There are more, see comment of sneak. A lot of people knew,
| that he was a "problematic" guy. He was kicked out of a
| hackerspace in Berlin after he harassed a young girl. The
| fact that she is still affected by this incident after 10
| years shows that this wasn't a minor issue.
| herthabroetchen wrote:
| gotsa wrote:
| Do you knew him?
|
| How is it possible that you catalog a person as a "sexual
| predator" without any proof?
| ruhrharry wrote:
| I didn't catalig anyone. Do you know that the quote sign (")
| stands for quotes?
| freedomben wrote:
| "I was just quoting someone else" is the classic cause for
| how misinformation/disinformation spreads on the internet.
|
| I'm not saying you're wrong about him, I have no idea. But
| you're clearly amplifying and spreading the accusation. You
| have some responsibility to find out if it's true before
| doing so. Now that said, I don't want to let everyone else
| on here off the hook by blaming you. They also have a
| responsibility to take _your_ statement with a grain of
| salt too. But we can only control our own behavior _.
|
| _ I'm not taking a position on whether we have free will or
| not. In fact I'm somewhat convinced that we don't ;-)
| gotsa wrote:
| > I don't know if it is appropriate to make a dedication to
| someone like this.
|
| Sure, the quotes, how could I have been so oblivious...
| Then, what do you mean with "someone like this"? Why would
| it be inappropriate to make a dedication?
| zetalemur wrote:
| Other HN discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30410077
| kpjas wrote:
| As a doctor I wouldn't exclude the possibility that his behaviour
| could be influenced by the growing tumor.
|
| Some pathologically agressive individuals who had had a long
| history of antisocial and criminal behaviour were later found to
| be genetically determined by a kind of neurotransmitter
| mutation(s).
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-02-21 23:02 UTC)