Zed likes pretending that he knows _why's name is Jonathan, when in fact every person here who knows _why says it isn't, and when _why didn't like people speculating about his name to begin with. So Zed's a dick, too, and, typical of Zedshawism, he doesn't get his facts right, choosing instead to trust a specious Wordpress blog whose author is both unknown and a dick himself.

_why never said he was Buddhist. _why said nothing. The rest is speculation. So judging his philosophy is a little bit stupid as well.

I agree with your second statement, which is that _why didn't treat his projects well. But Zed isn't talking about other people. Zed's talking about himself, as always. He's no Jason Scott, who devotes his life to archiving other people's work. Instead, without anything to go on, he calls _why a nihilist (only for him it's a capital-N Nihilist), a "Nihilist who was just jerking people around and playing a long con on everyone," which is pretty offensive in my book. He also calls _why a dick (er, he calls "Jonathan" a dick), and he talks about how he's better than _why because he left up his code after insulting the entire community.

I don't know if we'll ever hear _why's story, but I'm going to give him the benefit of a little doubt. I won't lie, though: I think the guy had every right to remove himself from the Internet. I'd understand his motivation in removing everything, suddenly, without warning. Hell, the only reason I still have this HN account is that there's no option to delete on this site. And leaving gradually isn't leaving. Even when he completely vanished people made it a drama: If he'd announced this a week ago, we'd have had a week's extra drama.

So maybe Zed cared about his projects more than _why, but he doesn't care about people. He cares about pretending he knows shit about philosophy and psychology, and, stripped-down theme or no, about Zed's So Fucking Awesome, enough that his ego gets to influence every story he decides to force himself on. That's not caring about people, especially not caring in the way _why did.

I agreed with Resig's eulogy, actually: It seems like _why would view his role in those terms. So what happens is, all of us see only _why disappearing and taking everything with him. In that context, he's being a nihilist. But from _why's perspective, he changed the community he was in for the better, and has chosen to go on. So he has left things behind - the salvaged programs, the Guide - and has himself moved on to something. We don't know what that something is. It's nihilist if you assume that his point was to disappear and destroy, but if he's moving on by using the things he's learned as _why, then it's a transformation and a celebration in just the way Resig described.

Resig is well-meaning, but he's abusing the analogy by relating _why's work to a sand mandala. A sand mandala is not just symbolic--it's ceremonial, it's expected, and nobody gets hurt when it's destroyed. _why's disappearance was not ceremonial, was not expected, and did hurt people. It reflects the notion of impermanence, but that that is neither the totality of Buddhism nor an idea exclusive to Buddhism. Absent the notion of karma (or some other check), impermanence implies Nihilism, and it's a gross distortion of Buddhism to suggest that any suffering you cause for others in the name of impermanence is ok as long as you grow individually.

Zed is doing what so many are unwilling to, which is to point out that even though we all love _why and can all agree that he had the right to do what was good for him, it's still a dick move to hurt people in the process, and he could have handled it better. _why could have accomplished the same thing without hurting anybody. That might have rightly been called a Buddhist act, and fit for praise. But what is actually happening is that people forgive _why for the trouble that his exit has caused because they like him.

Rush to judgement? Yes, I'm unwilling to do that, especially publicly and without any reasonable justification for my own self-involvement with the issue.

Also, we're talking about something Zed posted to his own personal blog. Is Zed not allowed to post what he thinks to his own personal blog? What "reasonable justification" is required to publish your own opinion on the internet?

I agree with this. Zed's persona has really not changed all that much since dropping the ZSFA theme. Fewer swear words, but the same basic philosophy and outlook on life shines through both before and after.

If I win the lottery, in whatever form, I'm not hanging out on the internet anymore either!!!