Of communities and bikesheds

So, this morning a new Erlang package building tool was announced. I happened to be reading the erlag-questions mailing list (a fairly rare occurrence, as we’ll get into) and I saw the announcement. As soon as I saw the name of the project, I decided to ignore the thread. However, that thread soon re-connected with me via 2 IRC channels, a Slack channel and Twitter. The project’s name? Coon.

Now, having grown up in Ireland, I was unfamiliar with the word, or the racist connotations. Only since moving back to the US have I been introduced to the surprisingly large lexicon of American racism that was not mentioned in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ or ‘Huckleberry Finn’. Thus, given that the author didn’t seem to be a native English speaker, and certainly not someone expected to be familiar with derogatory American slang, I expected someone to politely point this out and for the author to realize they’d made a terrible mistake and rename it.

Well, at least the first part happened.

About now is the time to mention why I don’t regularly follow the erlang-questions mailing list anymore. Many years ago, when I was new to Erlang, I was an avid reader of the mailing list. However, over time something changed. I’m not sure if I simply became proficient enough with the language or if the tone of the mailing list changed as the community grew, but I began to lose patience with the threads on naming and API design that would always grow out of all proportion to their importance while deep, technical discussions would often be overshadowed. For the most part this was just annoying, but harmless and I gradually drifted away from paying close attention to it.

Today however, things are a little different. There’s yet another naming discussion, and people are adding their opinions to a dog-pile of a thread faster than you can read the responses, but this time it’s about the accidental use of a racist slur as a project name.

Now, let’s remember, this is a programming language community. These communities are supposed to help practitioners of the language, advocate for its use and generally be a marketing and outreach platform to encourage people to use it. There are a lot of programming languages these days and developer mindshare is valuable, especially for an oddball language like Erlang. And while it is true that communities are not always (or maybe even often) inclusive or welcoming, surely programming communities should be.

Instead the thread (and I confess to having not read the bulk of it) devolved into arguments around intent vs effect and appeals that other problematic project names had flown under the radar in the past. I’m sorry, but this is not how it works. When you create something and release it into the world, you lose control of the interpretation that thing takes on. I’ve seen cases of authors, reviewing their work in a school curriculum where their work is analyzed vehemently disagree with the interpretation of their creation. It’s easy to forget that building things, naming things, etc are as much, if not more, about the effect produced in the consumer of that work as it is about the author’s intent. You don’t get to say “That’s not what I meant” when someone points out a problem with what you’ve done; you need to examine the effect and determine if you feel you should correct it. This is your responsibility as a member of a community and if you’re hurting inclusively or diversity then you are not being a good member of that community.

When I visited ‘coonhub’, the associated website for the tool that lists available packages, I saw one of my own projects prominently featured. Given that I am not a member of a group to which the derisory term applies, I didn’t expect to feel anything, but instead I felt ashamed that I, however indirectly and involuntarily was lending support to this. I can’t imagine what it feels like for someone to whom the slur has been applied, but the faint echo I encountered was unpleasant enough to give me pause.

Long story short, I hope the Erlang community can pull its head out of its ass long enough to realize that bikeshedding about something like this is bordering on the obscene and should shut that shit down. The original author should recognize their mistake, sacrifice their beloved ‘coonfig.json’ pun, rename the project and everyone should move on. A 50 email thread on the matter is ridiculous and is not appropriate.