I’m only part of the cover-up if I choose to be. So from now on—I’m not.

June 25, 2021 4:20 PM

Matthew Butterick, lawyer, programmer, creator of the Pollen open-source book publishing system; author of the authoritative Typography for Lawyers and Practical Typography, has written a long, thoughtful post about the systemic abuse he has experienced from Matthias Felleisen of Racket/FOSS, and why he is choosing to now speak up and withdraw from the community. Matthew Butterick previously.
posted by Silvery Fish (42 comments total)

Holy cow Felleisen's website makes my skin crawl. I think it hits almost every single square of the white male martyr bingo card. And the rest are checked off on his blog.
posted by supercres at 4:38 PM on June 25, 2021 [35 favorites]

It's behavior like this - and how it seems like every open source project of note has a story like this - which is why I am done listening to the argument that open source is somehow more "ethical". When abusers are allowed to run roughshod over their victims while others excuse their behavior, those communities lose any claim to being ethically superior. And yet we see this over and over, as if there's a worry that if the community kicks the abusers out, it will compromise the project. (Hell, we had ur-libertarian Eric Raymond literally make that argument a couple of months back.)

Abusers are poison. And the open source community needs to make that clear, by pulling support from projects that won't deal with their abusers.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:38 PM on June 25, 2021 [40 favorites]

> It's behavior like this - and how it seems like every open source project of note has a story like this - which is why I am done listening to the argument that open source is somehow more "ethical".

You really don't like open source do you?
posted by technodelic at 4:42 PM on June 25, 2021 [6 favorites]

You really don't like open source do you?

I think NoxAeternum really doesn’t like abusers. That was my takeaway, at any rate.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:55 PM on June 25, 2021 [84 favorites]

You really don't like open source do you?

I don't like the sanctimonious way it was presented to me as an undergrad, that it was somehow more "ethical" than other modes of development, while it didn't take long at looking at the communities involved that abuse was routinely dismissed.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:56 PM on June 25, 2021 [48 favorites]

Holy cow Felleisen's website makes my skin crawl. I think it hits almostevery single square of the white male martyr bingo card. And the rest are checked off on his blog.

His public rants about NSF broader impacts requirements on his website are enough to convince me he's a complete asshole who nobody should take seriously. I don't have a dog in this fight. But, I'm pretty sure I've already picked the winner. Sounds like it's fork time.
posted by eotvos at 5:02 PM on June 25, 2021 [2 favorites]

I think there's something to be said about the difference in culture vs. product.

Producing free software is an unalloyed ethical act. It seems more ethical to give useful, infinitely replicable tools away rather than selling them for profit by utilizing artificial scarcity.

Culturally speaking, I've worked on projects that were all open source and funded by non-profits with very difficult people, and the same with very good, decent people. I've also had that range of experience in the room with for-profit projects. I'm sure there's a team somewhere at Raytheon that is incredibly respectful, inclusive and celebrates diversity as they design hunter killer drones that can use DNA haplogroups as targeting vectors.
posted by turntraitor at 5:04 PM on June 25, 2021 [25 favorites]

All I know about Felleison is that he has this note on the linked personal website above:

Universities routinely complain that Computer Science employs too few female faculty members. Now, have you ever searched for conservatives on campus? Well yes, not even Google can find them.

So, I’ve kind of prejudged him. I imagine he wants people to prejudge him for that statement, so I think we should both be happy.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:07 PM on June 25, 2021 [34 favorites]

Holy cow Felleisen's website makes my skin crawl. I think it hits almost every single square of the white male martyr bingo card.

It's kind of perfect that the pretty straightforward "clean" design is marred by a sidebarred screed against diversity efforts, a boxed Orwell quote that is clearly intended to be pro-confederate-monument, and a fucking Dilbert cartoon. This guy is the platonic ideal of an asshole.
posted by mr_roboto at 5:09 PM on June 25, 2021 [58 favorites]

I think there's something to be said about the difference in culture vs. product.

Your culture is what builds your products.
posted by mhoye at 5:12 PM on June 25, 2021 [16 favorites]

"clean" design is marred by [...] a fucking Dilbert cartoon

A fucking Dilbert cartoon that it looks like he phone-photographed of out of the newspaper.
posted by supercres at 5:13 PM on June 25, 2021 [7 favorites]

It’s not as if “being ethical” is a property one can measure on a single axis. It would be silly to assert that FOSS projects are “more ethical” in every possible dimension, but as such it also feels like a bit of a strawman to act as if this is widely asserted.

If you really want to identify a particular issue with open source projects I think it’s fair to say that, as with a lot of nonprofit and volunteer efforts, it can be pretty easy for whatever asshole shows up to take charge of something to become the asshole you can’t get rid of.
posted by atoxyl at 5:16 PM on June 25, 2021 [15 favorites]

There are problems in FOSS projects, one of the top ones is the outcast's (supposedly self-evident) belief that it's morally wrong to cast people out, no matter the reason. The so called tolerance trap.

But, like, capitalism doesn't make the situation BETTER!
posted by Horkus at 5:26 PM on June 25, 2021 [11 favorites]

As I mentioned on another site, my only firsthand encounter with him was during a presentation at a tech conference, where (as an audience member) he was so gratiuitously confrontational and abrasive during questions that the video for the talk does not include the Q&A segment. I find it easy to believe that he's been a bully on a long leash for many years. (That talk was in 2015.)

It was deeply disappointing, because I love the Little Schemer series of books, and I've had great conversations with some of his co-authors (Daniel Friedman, William Byrd).
posted by silentbicycle at 6:40 PM on June 25, 2021 [4 favorites]

I met and had dinner with Felleisen a few years ago and this all reads as being pretty on-brand, based on my own limited experience. In one short evening I heard plenty of bad opinions, the likes of which you can (apparently) find on his website. Nothing in Matthew's account sounds unlike what I heard dispensed at (what was billed as) a collegial dinner. I don't know how Matthew put up with more than my own glancing encounter with that kind of bullshit.

Matthew on the other hand is genuinely nice; eager to help and patient in every interaction I've seen or had with him. The Racket community is poorer for his absence.
posted by noop at 6:50 PM on June 25, 2021 [7 favorites]

You really don't like open source do you?

Seriously? This sounds like something out of the Gamergate playbook. Like a reply to an Anita Sarkesian article on sexism in video games.

"Well, this computer industry element X has a major problem with sexism/racism/abuse/exploitation that should be addressed."

"YOU HATE X, DON'T YOU!"

The fact that the actual issue wasn't addressed, but instead an ad hominem attack on the messenger was launched is evidence that not only is there a problem, but that at least part of the community is invested in maintaining that problem.
posted by happyroach at 7:04 PM on June 25, 2021 [31 favorites]

Mod note: Hey guys, try to focus on the actual topic of the thread, instead of generalized ranting about open source.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 7:23 PM on June 25, 2021 [11 favorites]

Casting toxic shitheels as a problem specific to any mode of software development or even any particular kind of organizational structure is missing the forest for the trees, to put it charitably.

The issue is with toxic people and their enablers who claim that toxic people are somehow indispensable to the goals of the group. It always turns out they aren't except maybe in an organization of one or two, but people somehow persist in justifying overlooking bad behavior to themselves, probably because of a combination of denial and it seeming easier to ignore the behavior than to stand up for the victims.
posted by wierdo at 8:17 PM on June 25, 2021 [16 favorites]

This kind of toxic behavior isn’t restricted to open source communities, it’s everywhere. It is really hard to get rid of these jerks once they establish themselves. People hate conflict and will often side with the jerk because they depend on the person so much.
posted by interogative mood at 8:22 PM on June 25, 2021 [13 favorites]

Because Butterick talks about how Racket is still something he'll use, despite the abuse, I started reading Beautiful Racket and ran into this in the introduction:

Racket has great ethics. It’s an open-source project (Apache/MIT), so it’s free to down­load, use, and deploy. It’s directed by a team of computer-science researchers who have been improving it for nearly 20 years, so like them, it’s mature and stable.

Ouch.
posted by aneel at 8:34 PM on June 25, 2021 [4 favorites]

I must have directed angry words at you, who clearly had nothing to do with how the day had gone. And this hurt you and it definitely jaded all of our interactions from then on.

I hope someone thoughtful points out to Felleisen that the lesson of First Impressions is a very important one, and it doesn't matter how many Good Things you've done since that one moment, they all are judged as unworthy next to that First Impression.

i have a history of gum problems, something I'm not entirely happy about. But one of my co-workers, 10 years ago, the first words out of his mouth to me were "Do you have scurvey?" I cannot interact with him AT ALL without that lurking someplace in the background. It wasn't even Hello, or "My name is X, what is yours?" it was those exact words, first thing.

Those moments don't ever erase themselves.
posted by hippybear at 8:47 PM on June 25, 2021 [12 favorites]

An interesting note (via HN) on Racket: Why I Think It’s a Great Language, and Why I’m Not Using It Anymore from Jan. 2021. It's a good video all the way through, but difficult interactions with the Racket project leaders are noted at about 6:30.

The poetic pull quote: "If that's what it looks like to be successful in this community, I think I'd prefer to be successful somewhere else."
posted by SunSnork at 8:57 PM on June 25, 2021 [7 favorites]

> You really don't like open source do you?
> Seriously? This sounds like something out of the Gamergate playbook. Like a reply to an Anita Sarkesian article on sexism in video games.

I sure didn't help the conversation at all -- I really should have explained myself more. I've seen several postings about abusive behavior by people in open-source projects, and NoxAeternum always seems to come out swinging against all open-source projects. They definitely have a point about the abusers like Richard Stallman and this guy Matthias Felleisen, etc, etc.

I'm not trying to explain it away. Open-source projects are made up of humans. The ethical/ideological and countercultural nature of it means that people who are attracted enough to it to spend their time on projects are comfortable marching to a different drummer from most people, and sometimes this includes a higher than normal percentage of people who have twisted and toxic ideas about how to treat others. I've met a similar set of non-mainstream people in leftist political organizing circles and various types of geek tribes.

The problem I had with NoxAeternum is that they seem to have trouble separating the abusers from the rest of the open-source people who are really nice people, doing great work, and giving away software for free. In recent years there have been significant conversations in the open-source world specifically around preventing toxic behavior.

I should have taken the time to explain myself better. I'm sorry.
posted by technodelic at 10:31 PM on June 25, 2021 [18 favorites]

Holy cow Felleisen's website makes my skin crawl.

I read this and thought "how bad could it be?" It's pretty bad. Bad enough that I found myself momentarily thinking that surely it was some kind of joke.

But it's not and now I feel bad in two ways -- unsettled a little bit by the website and unsettled considerably more by the realization that I'm still quite effectively socialized to downplay and/or excuse pretty obvious warning signs of of obnoxiousness and abusive behavior, even to myself.
posted by Nerd of the North at 11:21 PM on June 25, 2021 [4 favorites]

This is what we need, today and everyday: "The tyranny of structurelessness" by Jo Freeman.

Freeman wrote this text in 1971, when she was fed up with the women's liberation movement in the USA, but what she says is valid and useful in so many other contexts, not just volunteer movements. When I read it for the first time, I thought "she's describing the internet".

You may think that you don't need formal rules, structure and organization because it's old-fashioned, it's oppressive, because "we're all good friends here" - but, as Freeman shows, a lack of structure means that your movement can easily be corrupted by bullies and psychopaths.
posted by Termite at 12:00 AM on June 26, 2021 [47 favorites]

Now, have you ever searched for conservatives on campus? Well yes, not even Google can find them.

First of, this man apparently is unaware of the existence of economics departments, where economic thinking and policies quite at home in conservative circles (before the party went insane Trumpist, anyway) are more often the rule than the exception. Second of all, I can assure him that there are colleges/universities where not only are there conservatives but administration whose political goals include cultivating them. I had the mixed fortune of attending one, which gave me an early education in the shortcomings of conservative thinking and in making uphill arguments.

He probably has something of a point that conservatives are vanishing in many parts of academia, but apparently it hasn't occurred to him that the reason why fewer and fewer academics are conservative is that the conservative movement itself keeps going to war with the academy and its conclusions, no matter how well founded.

There should be a corollary to Frum's bon mot "If conservatives can't win democratically, they won't abandon conservatism, they will abandon democracy", more or less "If conservatives aren't validated by the academy, they won't abandon conservatism, they will abandon academic discipline."

And it's never a surprise when conservatives are abusers. Place in the hierarchy, strict father discipline, that's the direction this stuff leads. And a key check on this sort of thing tends to be missing when you rise to a status which distances you from accountability. Which is why Butterick did the right thing in making this public. It took talking to other people in the room for Felleisen to *start* to get some perspective and eventually issue the apology which comes close to being the right thing.

I do think Felleisen's apology is worth some respect. Some people would never have done that much. It's late, it may not have involved as much introspection as it should have, but it nevertheless has value.

I've got a book Felleisen is a co-author on. Similarly I'll give him limited marks for it; it's OK, but it's no SICP.
posted by wildblueyonder at 12:15 AM on June 26, 2021 [5 favorites]

I think it's important to connect failures to their source as accurately as possible. It's not specifically the open sourceness of a project that leads to this kind of abuse; and open source development does have a pretty clear ethical advantage along some important axes: it both makes resources universally available to people and provides them the ability to make those resources even more useful for their own needs, regardless of their socioeconomic or geographic status. And in a world where so much of our existence is mediated by software and hardware that are designed to extract maximum value for people other than their users, often in ways that we're not even aware of and often at the cost of our privacy and, in some extreme cases, our human rights, the existence of an alternative approach where we can both see and change the systems we're interacting with is a really huge benefit.

But because of that, it's easy to adopt a hero narrative for the open source movement. And I think that's where the issue lies: not in open source, but in our need to have heroes, to have targets for adulation, to mythologize and write in sweeping terms about how beautiful or clean or ethical some system or person is. Because if you look too closely at a hero you're all too likely to find flaws, and the result is that we often choose not to look closely, or to ignore anything that detracts from the pretty narrative. Even worse, we have a tendency to try to suppress things that make the narrative less pretty, or to say "well, but the good they produce is worth it," instead of saying "let's produce that good without the bad."

I think it's important to both support open source development as a whole - without mythologizing it - and to require that the things we support not be abusive. I don't think there's any inherent contradiction between those things, and I wish that people calling for the latter would be more careful about condemning the former.

(And to be clear I don't just feel this way about open source: it drives me crazy when people say things like "these government projects were mishandled or corrupt, therefore government can't do anything well and everything should be privatized," or "lots of medical studies have been falsified and way too many doctors are abusive and terrible, therefore modern medicine is bad and alternative medicine is good." It's so important to target the actual bad - which I think is more or less equally possible in any system - and work to improve the system, without throwing the baby out instead of the bathwater.)
posted by trig at 12:29 AM on June 26, 2021 [35 favorites]

I am a big fan of the approach used by The Little Schemer, although I think the more esoteric followup books are less important as they insist on an expert audience from the start.

But I had an inkling that Felleisen was Problematic when I watched this video where he tells the story of how he got ownership of The Little Schemer. For those of you who do not want to watch this person speak (and I understand), here's my summary:

He was a teaching assistant for Daniel P Friedman's Little LISPer course, and constantly interrupted every class session to tell the professor he was Doing It Wrong. Finally Friedman took him to an administrator and said "Since you seem to think you can do better, I will let you write your own version of this textbook so long as you promise never to darken my door again."

I think there are a lot of very good technical ideas that are being articulated by terrible people. It's not surprising that the Clean Architecture stuff (which has a very solid and convincing foundation) is associated with a more "GamerGatey" set, as its primary advocate is the famous edgelord "Uncle Bob". For this reason, I always introduce it with this Brandon Rhodes talk. I also keep checking up on his twitter feed to see if he's still the mild-mannered level-headed astronomer he portrays in public (so far so good).
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:27 AM on June 26, 2021 [6 favorites]

The problem I had with NoxAeternum is that they seem to have trouble separating the abusers from the rest of the open-source people who are really nice people, doing great work, and giving away software for free.

Well, here's the thing - because those "really nice people" don't rein in the abusers and many times give them cover (we see this in the story in the OP, where Butterick was told by a member of the Racket core team “Matthias is a pain and always has been.”), the abusers are allowed to continue to abuse, and even to incorporate their abuse into their positions. You bring up Stallman, but ignore that his abusive nature was papered over by the community while he was allowed to be not just a technical leader, but a moral one for decades. And while it's true that the community did push back on his attempt to return (and that was a good thing to see), his position of authority being allowed for decades is also true - and the response to that I've seen has been mostly dismissals ("oh, nobody was listening to him") and arguments that his abuses shouldn't be held against the community as a whole.

That's why I'm done with the arguments of morality and ethicality coming from the open source world, which you'e peppered your arguments with. (Suffice it to say, coming from a family that was involved in labor, the argument that giving one's labor away is somehow inherently virtuous is one I don't buy.) A community that seems to have an endemic problem with allowing abusers to operate doesn't have a strong claim to ethical behavior, at least from where I sit.

Or to put it more bluntly, you're making the "good cop" argument here. I don't think I need to explain why that argument has lost legitimacy, particularly in the last few years.

In recent years there have been significant conversations in the open-source world specifically around preventing toxic behavior.

Good. But as long as we continue to get stories like the one in the OP, where an abuser is allowed free rein while those in the community around them give them cover, that's all those conversations will be - words, and ones that people who are the target of abuse will put little stock into. It's time for less "conversation" and more action on holding abusers accountable.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:19 AM on June 26, 2021 [9 favorites]

Nox, it's disappointing that you're derailing a thread about the free software community calling out an abuser by trying to damn the free software community for not calling out abusers. Yes, more is and was needed, but I really have a hard time understanding how you could think that what you're doing right now is helpful in any way.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 4:05 AM on June 26, 2021 [18 favorites]

Mod note: As EM requested above, how about let's dial in more on the actual post and less general Open Source venting, please.
posted by taz (staff) at 4:08 AM on June 26, 2021 [9 favorites]

People hate conflict and will often side with the jerk because they depend on the person so much.

More often it's because it's the path of least resistance for THEM. This is where the concept of allyship really comes into play.... but it usually takes a group to get rid of the abuser. So it's not just a question of individual vision and strength of character.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 5:10 AM on June 26, 2021 [6 favorites]

10 years ago, the first words out of his mouth to me were "Do you have scurvey?" I cannot interact with him AT ALL without that lurking someplace in the background.

He was a teaching assistant for Daniel P Friedman's Little LISPer course, and constantly interrupted every class session to tell the professor he was Doing It Wrong. Finally Friedman took him to an administrator and said "Since you seem to think you can do better, I will let you write your own version of this textbook so long as you promise never to darken my door again."

These examples remind me of a guy I knew as an undergraduate. He said he was doing an "unofficial" triple-major in my program, and insisted on being a part of the student organization I was active in. Every single time he came to a meeting, he asked personal questions to everyone and then immediately went into sea lion mode if anyone took offense ("I'm just asking an innocent objective question about the way you look / your ethnicity / that speach impediment--it's how I relate to the world--I ask questions").

One time we had a remote guest lecture from a really prestigious person in our field, and this guy asked a question that was a little outside our guest's expertise and this guy actually scolded the lecturer for not understanding his question and not being able to answer it.

None of us in the organization had any training on how to handle this guy or any guidance on what do to with him. He was very intelligent for some definition of intelligent, and all of our faculty advisors just shrugged and said he probably won't get far with that kind of behavior. I don't know if he did because now I'm scared to check.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:38 AM on June 26, 2021 [6 favorites]

These examples remind me of a guy I knew as an undergraduate

I've yet to find a group of more than 15 people that doesn't include at least one bully. I'm trying to overcome my natural instincts to be nice and instead become the guy who calls them out. It's hard to really believe that not everyone means well, despite the overwhelming evidence.

(RonButNotStupid, I'm sorry your faculty advisors failed you. I suspect none of them knew what to do either. Doesn't mean they shouldn't have tried. Even if that amounts to nothing more than trying to be intimidating.)
posted by eotvos at 7:17 AM on June 26, 2021 [3 favorites]

IMO the place where the (eventual) apology fails is it seems to be apologizing for turning the anger and abuse to someone who didn't cause the supposed "problems" that day, but let's be clear -- it isn't okay to behave that way to the folks who were involved in the thing that went wrong either.
posted by misskaz at 7:22 AM on June 26, 2021 [3 favorites]

I don't think standing by while someone victimizes others is a quality of being "nice." Passive, self-serving, self-protective, yes. But it is not nice.
posted by Stoof at 8:09 AM on June 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

Find conservatives on campus? Usually they never shut up.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:26 AM on June 26, 2021 [12 favorites]

all of our faculty advisors just shrugged and said he probably won't get far with that kind of behavior. I don't know if he did because now I'm scared to check.

Well now I'm curious. Memail me the name and I'll look them up?
posted by eviemath at 9:41 AM on June 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

Butterick in 2013.

description of YouTube link: Butterick has discovered Racket a few months earlier and is enthusiastic about being involved.

alternate description: Butterick, before it went bad.
posted by otherchaz at 10:51 AM on June 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

I always introduce it with this Brandon Rhodes talk. I also keep checking up on his twitter feed to see if he's still the mild-mannered level-headed astronomer he portrays in public (so far so good).

Rhodes's How To Shut Down Tolkien (previously) is brimming full with concern about this topic, to the point where it makes Lewis look like kindof a jerk in spite of what by most accounts was a warm and fruitful friendship between him and Tolkien.

Humans gonna human so perhaps at some point Rhodes has/will unleash poorly directed aggressive criticism at someone, but I'd be surprised if the person who produced that talk did it often, and wasn't better at introspection about the problems.
posted by wildblueyonder at 2:28 PM on June 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

I know Brandon Rhodes reasonably well from various PyCons and some light socialization outside of this, and while he is, as you say, "human", he's genuinely good people and that talk is a pretty good representation of his personality.
posted by ChrisR at 2:57 PM on June 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

RonButNotStupid> probably won't get far with that kind of behavior. I don't know if he did because now I'm scared to check.

No details so as not to out or deadname: In my case I knew someone like this and when I finally got the nerve to try to find out what happened to them, after a lot of confusing research I finally realized they'd transitioned.

Now, maybe they're still toxic, but lacking any direct evidence of that, I look back now on how they were acting with a lot more empathy.

That's certainly not meant to excuse all the stories here, just me adding one anecdatum
posted by secretseasons at 7:26 AM on June 28, 2021