[gfunk911]

http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2009-05-0...

why is awesome. he's one of the big reason I'm a ruby programmer. He's contributed so much to the community, and he doesn't owe anybody anything.

If he deleted all his repos, sites, etc with no notice, then that was a dick move. It doesn't mean he's an asshole, it means he did one asshole thing. That doesn't mark him as an asshole, but it wouldn't change the fact that it was an asshole thing to do.

If you're running for the elevator and I don't bother to hold it, that's an asshole thing to do. Maybe I saved your ass last week when you forgot to check in the fizbit and the client was pissed, whatever. That doesn't change the asshole-ness of my one action. And that's ok, we all do it. why's still awesome, even if possibly for an hour he was an asshole.

[adbachman]

The elevator analogy doesn't really hold for me.

It's more along the lines of one person in the office bringing in bagels every week for a few years, then one Monday morning they aren't there.

The asshole isn't the one who stopped bringing in the bagels, it's the folks standing around the coffee machine empty handed, griping about not getting their weekly cinnamon crunch.

"I wish Mike would've told us he wasn't going to bring in bagels today. What a dick move." Nope, doesn't work.

But that's just the way I see what is happening here. I can understand the divide if you have a different perspective of what's going down.

I agree that failing to hold the elevator is inconsiderate, but I disagree that simply putting information on the web constitutes entry to a similar social contract.

[scott_s]

Bringing in bagels every day is active. Leaving existing software up is passive.

[akd]

Keeping software hosted is active. Let's say he waited until his domain name expired... then he could say "I'm not spending the $10" and let it go offline, and people would excoriate him then. He just chose to rip the Band-Aid off at once instead of in bits and pieces.

[lil_cain]

I think, if he's posted up and said 'hey, I'm fed up with this internet thing. I'm taking everything down, can someone else host them', there'd have been a queue. Certainly, I'd have been very glad to host the Poignant Guide

[bunnny]

There are copies of it floating around. Here's one on Scribed: http://www.scribd.com/doc/2236084/Whys-Poignant-Guide-to-Rub...

I understand that you're referring to the web-based version which has a different feel to it, but the content does still exist. Nothing lasts forever--enjoy it while you can.

[sho]

They were hosted free on github and/or rubyforge. He had to go in and actively delete them. If he had done nothing, they would still be there right now and there wouldn't be all this kerfuffle.

[bunnny]

AFAIK there are forks/mirrors of his work on GitHub; so why are you having such a hard time dealing with his repos being deleted by him? It sounds like you're just whining.