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by jayd16 770 days ago
It's important to remember that a community is not a single minded entity. It's members can hold many contradicting beliefs, while each individual is ideologically consistent.

This shouldn't be unexpected and it's not an excuse to be dismissive to an imagined hypocrite. Not saying there aren't hypocrites in this world, just that we shouldn't treat members of a community as some kind of superset of everything in that community.

3 comments

It's the upvote where that opinion falls short. Sure, it may just be one hypocrite, but it sure is funny when a community raises scarcely concealed hypocrisy to the top comments or sub-comments. And then forgets about it 2 weeks later.
Its not unexpected and neither is Oracle's approach unexpected still its worth talking about.

Besides I made observation about people in community and not community itself as I did not say HN thinks software should not be paid for.

> Besides I made observation about people in community[...]

Can you link any specific HN user who holds any 3 of those specific beliefs, or was this hypocritical strawman purpose-built to bolster your argument?

It's important to remember that a company is not a single minded entity. It's members can hold many contradicting beliefs, while each individual is ideologically consistent.
They often do have a hierarchical command structure and that should entail some top down consistency and some accountability rolling upwards but you're not wrong.

Believing every employee at Walmart thinks the same is silly and while someone is to blame for policy its important to not blame retail clerks for store policy, for example.