Re:In Memoriam: Tim Peters 1952–2026
by zahlman on Saturday November 14, 2026 @04:56AM
(#50495643)
I'm accustomed to seeing that the unwritten ground rules in places that would criticize me for taking Tim's side, include an absolute prohibition on the use of the phrase "you people" in any context, for any reason, because it is apparently a racist dogwhistle or something. So it's rather galling to see it used by a critic.
We are talking about a political system which seeks to introduce or apply rules that are obviously unfair on their face, justified by inconsistent theories that constantly make hypocrites of their proponents. It is bizarre and unreasonable to call opposition to this a "political agenda".
As one of the people directly involved in the situation, let me tell you: defending my friend's legacy is part of the mourning. His treatment was clearly unjust on its face and now the people who were responsible and/or supported it or advocated it are trying to blend in and pretend nothing happened, while showing no remorse whatsoever. While I'm sure the benedictions they offer now are sincere, I find it mind-boggling that it seemingly gives them no pause to consider what happened. Especially considering the timing (dying around the second anniversary of the original tension, and this being discovered around the time of his reinstatement).
Tim made an entire separate blog site to plead his case, largely motivated by my own posts[0][1]. His "mea culpa"[2] ceded only a tiny bit of ground, and even that was frankly unreasonable. (In the post[3] where he accepted blame, he was explicitly calling out an oppressive power structure, just apparently not the right one.) Not to mention that he was very clearly being "tone policed" by people acting on behalf of the very movement that popularized the term to try to shield themselves.
The insulting thing is to pretend that any reasonable person could ever have seen any merit in the claims against him after any honest inspection of the evidence (to the extent that evidence was presented: the nature of the claims made it clear what public events were being alluded to, while nothing private was ever asserted to exist).
We are talking about a political system which seeks to introduce or apply rules that are obviously unfair on their face, justified by inconsistent theories that constantly make hypocrites of their proponents. It is bizarre and unreasonable to call opposition to this a "political agenda".
As one of the people directly involved in the situation, let me tell you: defending my friend's legacy is part of the mourning. His treatment was clearly unjust on its face and now the people who were responsible and/or supported it or advocated it are trying to blend in and pretend nothing happened, while showing no remorse whatsoever. While I'm sure the benedictions they offer now are sincere, I find it mind-boggling that it seemingly gives them no pause to consider what happened. Especially considering the timing (dying around the second anniversary of the original tension, and this being discovered around the time of his reinstatement).
Tim made an entire separate blog site to plead his case, largely motivated by my own posts[0][1]. His "mea culpa"[2] ceded only a tiny bit of ground, and even that was frankly unreasonable. (In the post[3] where he accepted blame, he was explicitly calling out an oppressive power structure, just apparently not the right one.) Not to mention that he was very clearly being "tone policed" by people acting on behalf of the very movement that popularized the term to try to shield themselves.
The insulting thing is to pretend that any reasonable person could ever have seen any merit in the claims against him after any honest inspection of the evidence (to the extent that evidence was presented: the nature of the claims made it clear what public events were being alluded to, while nothing private was ever asserted to exist).
[0]: https://zahlman.github.io/posts/an-open-letter-to-the-psf-co...
[1]: https://zahlman.github.io/posts/open-letter-psf-coc-wg-adden...
[2]: https://tim-one.github.io/psf/meaculpa
[3]: https://discuss.python.org/t/for-your-consideration-proposed...