One would be wise to remember Zed's melodramatic exit from the Rails community. Once is surprising, twice is a pattern; reading the bitching about the PSF in this piece, I suddenly remembered the nearly identical bitching (including the le Carré style yarns of intrigue and "trusted associates" with chat logs) about certain folks in the Rails community. Read between the lines, and you almost identify a complete unwillingness to accept personal blame for anything: in "Rails is a Ghetto"[0], he claimed Rails and Mongrel ended his career and made him homeless -- which is odd, given the astronomical growth of Rails. In this essay, he claims the PSF is actively trying to suppress him for Reasons. So he responds to that by charging money. Come on. Think about that for two seconds.
I'm amazed that people still don't read Zed Shaw objectively in 2017. Zed is not a friend of any community except his own, including appeals to violence, and he has repeatedly shown that. I think it's extremely important to keep in mind the person being dealt with here and his history, because he absolutely does create toxic drama within communities (including in this thread, right now).
Replying to a comment that says to leave the past to the past by pointing out a time in the past someone did a thing.
Maybe Zed burns himself over Python3. Maybe not. It doesn't really matter because he's gonna keep doing what he does, both good and bad. He's as human as the rest of us.
If there is a pattern here, I think it's definitely useful to describe it. The goal is not to fan the flames of this particular controversy, but to detect and neutralise this kind destructive behaviour when it occurs in the future (whether it's Zed doing it or someone else).
Yeah, I can see the validity in that. This industry is ripe for "loud" personalities with a contentious point of view. Zed is just an extreme example with that. I have a soft spot for him because I started with LPTHW, and I dont really care about the Python community either way.
If that was your introduction to Zed, I can certainly understand your perspective. Just know that these are deep, deep waters with a lot of unnecessary grief across more than a decade, and a lot of different perspectives who will disagree with you based on additional experience.
I'm amazed that people still don't read Zed Shaw objectively in 2017. Zed is not a friend of any community except his own, including appeals to violence, and he has repeatedly shown that. I think it's extremely important to keep in mind the person being dealt with here and his history, because he absolutely does create toxic drama within communities (including in this thread, right now).
[0]: http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/ruby/rails/is-a-ghetto