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When Open Source turns sour: A brush with mistaken identity

Public shaming is common online, but in Open Source the reliance on reputation and collaboration makes it worse.

As an enthusiastic advocate for Open Source, I find it easy to get caught up in the excitement of collaboration, innovation and the sense of community that comes with being part of this movement. As the community grappled with these issues, it seemed like we were all ready to move on to the next thing—until a personal experience of public shaming brought the dark side of open source uncomfortably close to home. I was reading some random stuff on Hacker News and your name popped up.” He went on to explain that he had fallen down a rabbit hole investigating a suspicious-looking Zsh plugin manager called “zi”(the alleged bad actor in this story).

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