https://www.npmjs.com/policies/conduct
I guess lots of people will think that a policy like Avoid using offensive or harassing package names, nicknames, or other identifiers that might detract from a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for all. stifles their inner something or other though.
It's funny how many people get easily pissed off about other people allegedly being oversensitive. And it's sad how many of them are part of my same bullied-as-young-nerds cohort, considering that it appears their reaction to getting some power for the first time in their lives was to jump into the bully camp themselves.
Or maybe they see others using political correctness to bully people around them.
So I stick by my stance that it seems like tying to try those things together ("you screwed this up because you're morally in the wrong as shown by your focusing on the wrong things") to advance a personal political agenda is the more bullying behavior, here.
"Please don't use unnecessarily harmful/crude/we-don't-like-it language when giving names to pieces of computer software that we host, manage, and coordinate for you" counts as bullying now? I think not. As they say, if you don't like it, don't play.
And besides, NPM seems pretty focused on package names alone (as they should be). If you absolutely must live out your libertarian fantasy by being insulting, nobody's stopping you from making the API to your package something like:
const pkg = require('totally-innocuous')
pkg.IHateYouBecauseOfYourEthicityOrGenderOrReligionAndIAmProudOfIt()But people do have knee-jerk reactions, and people do overreact for fear of it being bullying next time. None of those are likely to be necessary on this case, but people's feeling aren't very contextual. Many people will react to overreaching political correctness for fear alone, and it isn't nice for the GP to accuse them of bullying.
Because probably every country has some words they don't like.
Name aside, the package as described is useless and serves no legitimate function.
If they're going to curate, they should do some quality control.
If they take that down the Nazí one but not the Fabiano one, you can then take your mischief making to the next level by accusing them of being misogynists for banning a package promoting a woman chess champion but leaving up the one for the man.
Probably will get scooped up by pedophiles sooner or later, followed by a couple high profile arrests and everyone will be scared shitless to run a node for that blockchain. CP has always been a good source of scare for Tor exit node operators, thankfully enough Tor nodes don't store the stuff in contrast to a blockchain - so at least the operators didn't have to serve jail time but a couple have had their houses raided by the cops and all IT equipment confiscated for months.
Actually, from a libertarian POV I really like the idea, both behind an uncensorable imageboard and Tor, but the simple fact that pedophiles and Nazis can and will abuse the openness for their vile gains makes me believe that the world will probably never be ready for such a thing as widespread service. For now we as society have to be lucky that many pedophiles, drug dealers and Nazis don't really care about good opsec... but that one is bound to change.
Similar considerations are why I never ran a Tor exit node, despite my inner geek wanting to as soon as I heard about it because the technology is cool.
The deciding factor was that almost every good thing that I could think of or that people suggested that a truly anonymous, untraceable, non-moderated, anybody to anybody communication system could be used for were things that could be reasonably accomplished by other means that are not as open to abuse.
For example, a common scenario offered is someone inside an oppressive regime working to document the regime's abuses and bring it down. They would be tortured and killed (and possibly so would their family) if their identity became known.
But they just need a need a secure channel to a trusted contact outside the reach of the regime who can relay messages for them. It does not have to be an anybody to anybody channel or a non-moderated channel.
The only things I could think of that really need something like Tor are things where what you are doing is so near universally frowned upon that there is almost nobody willing to be publicly associated with facilitating it.
You can even get this kind of problem without involving a different language, because words can have different meaning in different fields.
There is a (probably) urban legend about a mathematics grad student working in algebraic geometry returning from a conference, who finds he is sharing the security line at the airport with another conference attendee and they start chatting about algebraic geometry, talking about "blowing up points on a plane". It does not go over well with the non-mathematicians in line or with the TSA agents.
Efim Zelmanov, a noted algebraist, tells of being stopped by the KGB on the way to a conference and being questioned at length because he had books with him about "free groups" and "radicals".
All the time, and the response from devs ... depends. Remember the recent Pik image format? Or Pidora linux, which to a russian ear sound akin to "FedoPiLix"? Or Vista, which is exactly "chicken" in latvian?
Mostly you kind of keep laughing and wincing for a few years, then you sorta get used to it.
Well we have to live with it, and funny things happen. In Turkish, which is my mother tongue, the English word Scheme sounds very similar to "sikim", which is a very vulgar way to say "my dick". About five years ago having lunch with colleagues (programmers), chattering about programming languages, when I said I liked Scheme, I had some weird looks :) Some more on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7421315
I might... the acronym doesn't ring any bells and a Google search doesn't show anything special (if anything, it already shows a bunch of other things - including companies and organizations - using the same letters). What is the issue?
I must be missing something, but wouldn't .forget be the file extension you're looking for?
... Or it did. I received a harshly worded letter from npm saying they axed it. It hit all the talking points about inclusiveness and making sure no one feels even slightly annoyed.
Meh. No point to this story. Just an interesting situation with an inconsistently curated package manager. I was surprised there was an unofficial undocumented banlist.