I don't think we should be honoring him, though, because he was, despite being my friend, not a very good person:
https://twitter.com/deborianerin/status/1495636848722513920
https://twitter.com/deborianerin/status/1495645190832463872
https://twitter.com/twena/status/1495537875651371012
https://twitter.com/deborianerin/status/1495673397296218113
These tweets were posted today, but those of us that knew him well have known of these issues for years.
I have as a point of pride many "problematic" friends; my friendship with someone is not approval of every (or even any) action they undertake in life.
I do not approve of this dedication, as Sven was a good example of the kind of people who make the f/oss community worse, not better. We as a community can do much better than explicitly endorsing those who would cause our scene to be unsafe and unwelcoming to young women.
Or is that, like, too subtle and nuanced a concept nowadays.
Or rather, is it actually too nuanced to think the ends don’t justify the means?
If we had to stop and think about death, we would have to consider our own mortality. If we had to stop and think about the poor life choices of a dead person, we would have to stop and think about our own poor life choices. We might have to consider whether we owe some kind of penance; whether our own misdeeds outweigh our good; whether someone might dig up our own past when we pass. And that's terrifying.
So obits must only say good things about the dead. We mustn't consider the true nature of a life filled with bad and good and in-between. We must instead shroud ourselves in the comforting blanket of pure nostalgia. This way we don't have to face pain, or truth, or conflict, and we can just feel a benign sad pleasure, to more easily slip back into comforting ignorance.
As an aside: Twitter is a hellscape of negativity. It could be that he also saved drowning toddlers from a river or some shit, but that isn't going to make it through the typical barrage of snide tweets. So just as much as we should consider the negative, we should consider that there's also positive. The fact that all humans are fundamentally flawed does not invalidate their good deeds, nor validate the bad. And if we try really hard, we might conclude that there is no such thing as a "good" or "bad" person, but just "a person", the culmination of which cannot be put neatly into a box. Maybe then we could stop reacting so strongly to discovering that humans are indeed flawed, and that there is no shame in considering all of one's deeds, for that's where the truth of life lies.
Some will think this is the same as "making it OK to be a harasser if you are l33t/important/rich/etc" but it's really not.
VIM is a community project that he dedicated significant time and effort to at his own expense. It's just like a rich donor to some hospital and getting a wing named after them, it doesn't erase their sins but it acknowledges the good that person has done in that act.
A person is more than their faults and trying to take everything good away from their memory after their death because of those faults doesn't sit right with me.
I'm very much with you that just because someone has died doesn't mean we should whitewash their flaws and pretend they don't exist, but you've really caused me to face the full force of that opinion today :-)
Telling the truth is always appropriate.
TFA claims that "He was a good person." I do not believe that to be accurate.
It's a compromise, attention for the suffering of the victims, no consequences for the perpetrator.
Having known him, I can certainly imagine him hurting for companionship and being awkward about it. Surprise, Sven was an imperfect human, just like everybody else.
Personally though I've NEVER observed him behaving in this way and being on the watch for such things, I would surely have talked to him about it.
Despite the problems he had to deal with (or choose to ignore ;->) (not talking about the stuff above), he dedicated his life to improve things around him the best way he could see fit.
If you had a problem with Sven and were happy enough to not speak up when he was alive, why raise this issue only now that he is dead? We are honouring Sven's contributions so others are inspired to be similarly helpful. It truth this is somewhat independent of Sven as a whole. But by dragging the person he was through the mud, you are not helping anybody or achieving anything for society.
He only harassed me inappropriately, via text and a few times physically, many years ago in #CCCB Glad that won't happen again.
Reply:
Sven Guckes was one of the great evangelists of the German open source scene. During his lifetime, there were good reasons why people wanted to dislike, shun or sometimes kick him out, but he really didn't deserve such a reaction to the obituary tweet. Take care, Sven.
Her reply:
but I deserved to be harassed as a woman, by a +20 years older guy in whom I NEVER showed interest...? To just sit on my legs at the movie Sunday, to force cuddling, although I had ignored [his] advances for months - BÄH how disgusting.
You are a wonderful friend.
> Our friend Sven Guckes died in Berlin on February 20, 2022.
> He was diagnosed with a brain tumor in December 2021.
This is something I have seen more frequently with older people: they just suck it up either because they don't want to be a burden on others or because they have seen a lot of hardship in their lives and on that scale some pain signals don't register high enough to make a fuss about.
If there is a lesson: keep an eye on older people and be sensitive to the stuff they tend to shrug off.
I imagine it depends on which cells are impacted. Glial cells not giving much option.
But he was also known as "sexual predator" who harassed young, underaged girls, see https://twitter.com/twena/status/1495537875651371012
I don't know if it is appropriate to make a dedication to someone like this.
It’s okay to express your opinion about the person being discussed and add more information to it in general.
If VIM is being dedicated to an alleged sexual harasser, I as an interested person is happy to know about this.
I see that a lot of the appreciation posts are also purely anecdotal. So are we contesting whose word has more value here or what anecdotal experience is valid/invalid or appropriate to share?
Some pathologically agressive individuals who had had a long history of antisocial and criminal behaviour were later found to be genetically determined by a kind of neurotransmitter mutation(s).
Having Vim 9 dedicated to his memory is wonderful. Thank you, Sven
A life interrupted