When was the last time you were threatened (“we’ll will bang on your door and take down your accounts”) by a company like Kik and you defended the principles and values you believed until the end?
I’m quite familiar with both western and eastern traditions, don’t know any better source than Ghazali’s “the alchemy of happiness” about how people make decisions.
It’s kind of ironic to see people being triggered by just the mention of it though — just reflects what your heart tends to reject impulsively. I wish you curiosity.
P.S Here’s the full quote, it entertainingly describes the ignorance here:
“first, they didn't look at the dates of the emails. They don't understand the timeline.
second, they can't relate to standing your ground in a high pressure situation involving threats.
and third, they haven't read Al-Ghazali yet, don't quite understand how (free) people make decisions”
They are citing something which changed their life significantly, and leaving pointers to the same thing if you're interested (or need further explanation).
If getting wisdom from others is not your thing, I can respect that, but low-key insulting them for leaving you pointers for a more enlightened place is rude.
You can instead say "I don't understand why Al-Ghazali relates to this", and that would be completely OK.
The author made an implicit assumption, and you're making the same one, that they're filled with wisdom received straight from al-Ghazali. Firstly, only wankers act like they're wise and their audience isn't. Secondly, they said "haven't read al-Ghazali yet", implying that it's only a matter of time before everyone reads him.
Lastly, it's fine to quote someone but you need to explain how it's relevant to the conversation. The author could have summarised al-Ghazali's idea about free will or whatever and it would have been fine. But he didn't even bother, as if the ideas so basic and well known that it's not even worth doing.
I'm pretty comfortable with the way I've poked fun at the author's pompousness. If you need further explanation it's because you haven't read Chanakya yet.
I'll read Chanakya, but I don't see how he's supposed to appease to your taste and style of writing.
I don't think that you're pompous because you cited somebody I don't know that existed. I'm not a god. People show me things I don't know, I take note of them.
Maybe I won't agree with the direction you show me, but at least I have a new direction to discover.
I don’t see a problem in someone deleting 1, 100 or 1000 repositories and moving on. Neither Open Source nor Free Software makes no promises of indefinite availability of the source code.
Incidentally, HTTP has a status code for this. It’s 410 - Gone.
I mean, they have seen that NPM did ate their hats to bow to a company and they decided to not have it, and they removed their packages. Why the anger?
Yes, they have asked NPM to remove all of their packages. It's on them. NPM didn't do it, but gave a tool to do it themselves.
I deserted GitHub the day Copilot came online. I archived my repositories just because I didn't want broken links on comments and notes I have written god knows where.
I stopped uploading photos to Instagram the day they started doing AI training with my images. I didn't delete them because my partner likes them.
I can delete these repositories, photos, whatever I have online. I have no obligation to anyone. It's same for them. It's their code they developed by themselves. They can delete them, and just don't care what happens next.
Why this freedom bothers you that much?
P.S.: We don't do ad-hominem attacks here. Please refer to guidelines for more information. Thanks for your cooperation.
Please don't, regardless of how annoying someone else is or you feel they are. We ban accounts that abuse the site like this, and as I told you that last time this came up, I don't want to ban you.
Edit: this has unfortunately been a problem for a long time:
Oh, I don't defend them. I'm just another person who's disagreeing with you. The only thing is their and my values align on some aspects, and we both disagree with you on the same issues more or less. I'm not here to defend anyone.
When I was writing these replies, there were no flagged comments, and if there were, I can see them, if I want. That's an option you can change. I'm sure you know this better than me. You're here since 2014, and I'm here since 2017. Our comment histories are open. You can check whether I'm a sockpuppet or not.
The MIT license doesn't tell anything about availability of the source. In fact, MIT licensed software doesn't have to be Open Source at all. I can get the source, modify, compile and distribute the binaries without the source code attached, and no one can compel me about opening the source code. That's a requirement set forth by GPL family, and even these say that source should be available for a reasonable amount of time, not indefinitely, and certainly not online. IOW, I can sell GPL software, without putting its source code online. The only obligation is to provide the source to the people who have gotten the software (i.e.: How RedHat operates).
My only example was not my Instagram photos. I have also talked about my GitHub repositories (which I am not deleting because of my personal reasons), and again, I'm not here to defend them. To reiterate, I'm a completely different human being who happens to disagree with you.
HN's no delete policy was there since I joined, and I agreed to this when I started participating here. If they do something which is against my values, I'll leave this place, too (like I left Reddit back in the day). I'm not afraid to put my values first. In fact, this is why I have replied to you this much. I'm putting forward my perspective and values, which is not defending someone. I'm a lone person, walking my own way.
Your prejudice and anger is blocking your view. Currently three comments of you are also flagged.
It's enough that you're reflecting your beliefs and prejudices to other people in the form of low-key insults. Also your tea is going cold. It's not polite to not aceept a friendship drink offered in good faith.
This is my last reply on this comment thread, because this is a new day, and I have to handle other matters, too. Without any hard feelings, I wish you the best of luck, and have a nice day.
You broke the site guidelines repeatedly and badly in this thread. Please don't do that, regardless of how wrong or annoying someone is or you feel they are. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Also, it unfortunately isn't the first time you've done this (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42565389), although it seems to be the first time you jumped into a full-blown flamewar. Please don't do it again. We have to ban users that abuse the site like this, and I don't want to ban you.
Let's consider an example about a tangible phenomena: Gaussian Integration, Quantum Entanglement, Crystalline Structure Formation in Alloyed Metals with Heat Treatment, Combustion Dynamics in a Gasoline Engine, etc.
Let's put the same sentence:
"I'd love to explain to you, but if you haven't read $SOURCE_MATERIAL, you wouldn't understand it anyway".
i haven't read it, now i'm interested in it, and frankly you sound like much more of a "wanker" at the end of things for centering your own (lack of) experience in this discussion.
Given that this post is meant to explain your perspective at the time, I think it would make sense to explain it at least a little. At the very least, I am curious. What does Al-Ghazali have to say about making decisions that influenced you? I have not read Al-Ghazali yet.
Yes, when theres's no impulse strong enough to outweigh reasoning. You don't need Ghazali for this, Kant also explains it. Before suggesting that I rephrase things, I think you should explore the domain first.
That’s beside the point. It’s perfectly valid to draw inspiration from Kant or Al-Ghazali for your decision-making framework, but neither explains how people actually make decisions in general-their work is fundamentally normative. By the way, I'd be surprised if a true Kantian would have arrived at the same decision as you.
I don't know that I fully buy this either, at least not the anger part.
I can look back on all this with wry amusement nowadays but I remember it being pretty frustrating at the time.
It sort of felt like, well, either you knew what the impact of unpublishing all your packages would be and you did it anyway, which makes you kind of antisocial, or you didn't know what the impact would be but did it anyway, which makes you kind of a hothead. And in this latest piece Azer has admitted that he didn't understand what the impact would be so... y'know... I do wonder if anger was at least a small factor.
Regardless, it's pretty clear that npm bear a lot of the responsibility for what happened. It's also something that happened a very long time ago and, as I've already implied, is just a funny story nowadays, not something I can manage any ire towards Azer over.
The 3rd option is the one Azer describes in the post:
He wants to remove his stuff, but isn't sure what the right way to do it is, so he asks npm. npm provides him with a set of scripts to run to remove his stuff, and he, presuming that it's "ok" if npm told him to go ahead and run them, runs them. The impact isn't especially important to him, But since npm just gave him a set of scripts with an implicit "oh okay you want to remove your stuff, here I wrote you a script you can run to get it done," makes it more of an npm choice to handle it in this manner. npm asked him to handle it this way, so he did.
At a certain point, no, you can't unpublish because the world only has one arrow of time. Imagine if Torvalds decides to unpublish his code in the Linux kernel. It's easy to understand how that would work: His code would remain out there for all time because doing anything else would be a massive disruption and cause people actual problems. People don't just give others a way to hurt them like that if they know what they're doing, even if they got a lot of value from them in the past.
Lesson: Vendor your dependencies, I guess. Although a lot of the ire around left-pad was programmers using a library for something so trivial, but that's a different conversation.
> Although a lot of the ire around left-pad was programmers using a library for something so trivial, but that's a different conversation.
Very true.
Although, from 2012 onwards, up to around the time of the leftpad incident, the trend - and the pressure - was to minimise the amount of work your code was doing and to publish tiny packages that only did one thing or solved one problem, deferring to other tiny packages for anything non-core. I remember colleagues more embedded in the JS world than I was passionately arguing for this in 2012/13.
And it did make some sense: bandwidth matters, particularly on mobile devices (which became a key source of traffic during that period) so why pull in some gigantic do everything library when you only need a handful of functions[0]? Sure, minifying and pruning help but, due to JS's nature, pruning can only get you so far.
But, yes, I think leftpad was something of a teaching moment on the downsides of this approach.
[0] Of course, if you then stick 6 different tracking scripts in all your pages, it's super-easy to undo all the good you've done by minimising your bundle size, but that's a different conversation.
> If NPM would have prevented the depublishing, he would have made a scene and in the worst case, they would have looked bad.
I mean he says he asked them to remove all his packages, expecting them to do so gradually, following whatever mitigation strategy they felt appropriate (e.g. some kind of warning and fadeout process), and instead they gave him a script to do it immediately so he did that.
> That’s precisely why unpublishing an entire package/crate/gem is not a supported operation on any mainstream repository.
Every competent repository has a process for unpublishing. Sooner or later someone will upload something that someone else claims the copyright to, and then either you take it down when you get a DMCA notice or you lose your safe harbour.
Maybe you replace it with some sort of tombstone. Maybe you warn all the reverse dependencies first. But you have to have a way to remove content.
Please. It looks like he was doing dev as a hobby, asked a big company how to handle removing his packages, and did what they told him to. They might not have had the right policy, but that doesn't make a guy who doesn't want to give his packages away to a company just because they're making threats into an asshole. It makes him typical.
He had already given everyone a license to use his software. That’s what FOSS software is - the users are granted a license to use the software and it can’t be revoked, even if the author is throwing a tantrum.
Sure, but that license doesn't include the requirement to host in perpetuity, and anyway, I wouldn't expect a hobbyist to need to worry about this. If I decide to make my gamer-profile private / offline or something and that breaks your crawler, even though I previously granted unrestricted public access to that data, that's really not my problem.
??? I didn't say anybody using npm wants this. I'm saying npm had the wrong policy around deletion, that npm could have handled the situation differently, and also that Azer not knowing or caring about the effects of removing the package doesn't make him an asshole or even negligent (although it also doesn't mean he ISNT an asshole; that's a separate matter).
The point is that Azer didn't owe anybody anything; not even to know what he was doing. npm did.
That said, I'm glad the wake-up call came in such a relatively benign way.
Personally I understand both Al-Ghazali and "Not driven by logic, anger" parts very well. I have been in that position as well.
Being neutral and seeing a good way forward is not something practiced, taught or celebrated in western, esp. American culture much. One always needs to have a thrust source (mostly an emotion driven by logic, taught during being grown up (e.g.: You should be angry about it)) to make decisions.
In fact, sometimes, you just don't have a thrust source, you just feel like doing it. It feels the right thing to do, and you do it with no emotions attached.
This is a boon, in fact it's called "clarity" brought by being with yourself. Either spending time outdoors, doing some reflection work, or by meditating. I use the same methods when I face with a non-urgent but important decision. Let the way reveal itself. Putting logic and emotions aside and finding the right way is not easy, or the process is not smooth sailing, but I never arrived to a wrong place by following that path.
They weren't too lazy to avoid it. Depending on other peoples' packages was actively encouraged within the JS community during that period, and the perceived benefits of doing so were loudly trumpeted.
We westerns do the know much about the Socrates from the eastern side of the world. I can only imagine people from there know who al-Ghazali was just like we know who Sartre was.
So, im gonna try and read something by al-Ghazali.
When this happened, people started making assumptions. A few of them:
1. I’m irrational
2. I’m angry
3. I’m greedy
They came to one of these conclusions, based on how they see themselves in the same position.
I can be of course one of these three in some other situations, but in the left pad incident, I done all purely with my heart, to stick to my values and principles which was behind my motivation to do open source for such a long time.
Ghazali is the best source I’m aware of about how to put heart in the driver seat of life, and without fighting but using logic, greed, anger etc as tools.
If my reference made curious about him, I couldn’t be more happy. Here’s a great lecture about his book, The Alchemy of Happiness: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zBwWc0DflRQ
Hey - thank you for your interesting post today. It set me off on a personal journey which, in my mind, involved the discovery of many secret trails and camping spots, metaphorically ..
One thing I have learned about al-Ghazali today, thanks to your efforts, is that philosophers aren't always right, faith and logic can work together, and doubting everything can lead to truth.
But, most importantly, live ones faith honestly - and this is especially true for those of us who detest imperialist/corporate interference in spiritual activities, such as publishing packages to the npm ecosystem intended to make ones fellow human beings lives' more rewarding, in spite of the lack of personal rewards to be gained in doing so.. that the value in seeing this is lost on a lot of HN responses in this thread so far, is no big surprise - but it is surely disappointing.
I hope you will consider adding Aquinus and Augustine of Hippo to your references, also. Sometimes it helps to see how the universality of true philosophy crosses cultural divides.
>(definitely the most pompous and self-important part of this post)
What compels you to say this? Would you be more satisfied if he'd suggested the reader acquaint themselves with Thomas Aquinas or Augustine of Hippo? Are you familiar with al-Ghazali, the scholar, or is he new to you?
You have, rather literally, proven the philosophers point - while remaining, it seems, ignorant of it.
Or perhaps, you mean to imply that /u/akoculu was doing a good deed not because he cared, but to show off?
The irony is, al-Ghazali asked his readers to question their pomp and self-importance, and to do good deeds because they truly cared, not because it would result in social acknowledgement by the mass collective, whose motives should always be questioned, effectively.
Perhaps, then, your position is more of a reflection of your own condition? One would hope your disdain is borne on an actual understanding of al-Ghazali's position, vis a vis self-doubt ... or rather, one would hope your current position is based on an ignorance of his works, actually.
One should never feel so compelled to deny the enlightenment of others, especially if by doing so, you resort to personally-motivated obscurantism in response.
"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."
It's because you haven't read al-Ghazali yet.
(definitely the most pompous and self-important part of this post)