> speaking the truth about the climate emergency and treating it as an actual emergency.
Unfortunately this advocacy frequently took unproductive directions, being abusive to elected officials and staff at the local and state levels,[1] and opposing changes that would help move things in the right direction climate-wise, such as building more in-fill housing in Berkeley, because some other action (say, convincing people to massively reduce their energy usage) was an even better strategy in his eyes. Tom was not convinced for example that Berkeley needed any more housing.
The source of this post is a good clue; Berkeley Daily Planet mostly publishes posts from NIMBY's who don't care about the climate and don't want anything that could possibly increase the number of people who live in Berkeley (Zelda Bronstein and Toni Mester are good examples).
Having interacted with Tom on Twitter, and reading through the comments here, I'm surprised to learn that he was a valued member of an open source community and published software that people used at one point.
[1] source - personal conversations with those officials and employees about Tom's behavior
I don't doubt or dispute any of your points, but it would have been far nicer to wait and air them at a different time and in a different venue -- step back for now and give people a chance to grieve and pay their respects to someone who just died unexpectedly.
Tom Lord was, like other GNU pioneers, well known for being very opinionated and not being especially easy to work with. GNU arch was forked how many times?
But he had a lot of skill to back it up with, too. I remember when QuickCheck first appeared, someone used it to test the correctness of various regexp libraries, and Tom Lord's was one of the very few which passed.
> I'm surprised to learn that he was a valued member of an open source community
He wasn't without controversy, even at a time when the free software culture was even less interested than today in being nice when you could be right[tm] instead.
Lots of culture will be lost one way or the other due to climate change. Addressing climate change the soonest possible is how to keep as much of what we know as normalcy into the future.
Berkeley has basically the same population as it did in 1950. It is home to the best public university in the state, which outdates any residents by a century. Students and low income workers sleep in cars, in tents near Highway 80 or commute from Antioch for lack of housing.
If there is any city that should be scaling aggressively instead of “gracefully” it’s Berkeley.
> Unfortunately this advocacy frequently took unproductive directions, being abusive to elected officials and staff at the local and state levels
Coddling the egos of these "authorities" should be low priority considering the dire nature of the situation. If they drive us off a cliff because the constituents weren't "nice", it's still their fault.
He was rude to legislators on constituent calls in a way that made them not want to support the bills that he was supposed to be advocating for. Fortunately, since those bills would not have helped reduce climate change, this was probably a good thing on net.
He was also removed from occasionally appearing on Berkeley Zoning and Advisory Board because he couldn't get along with the elected official for his district.
Separate issue but an interesting one, basically revolves around good manners.
a) Don't recall someone's blemishes while their family is grieving because that would be and is (if they see/hear it) unpleasant for them at a difficult time. Especially if the passing was unusually more tragic than "died while still mentally sharp and enjoying things of extreme old age in bed surrounded by loving children and grandchildren." May we all be so lucky.
b) Don't paper over their blemishes, remember them fully and as humans. This is especially relevant for public figures where people try to use (a) to advance some political outcome. Eg X is dead so can't be criticised but was wildly in favour of increasing the military budget which we must now redouble efforts to do with no disparagement. This is obviously only a little hyperbolic.
I note that (b) can also be used. Eg X was a massive jerk so don't let X's death get added publicity for views about resource allocation that are to be opposed. Whether X really was a jerk or not.
I have sympathy for both (a) and (b). Will Tom's family see things here? Is Tom Lord a public figure? OP seems to think so. Are they indulging in a little (b)? I have no idea. I have minimal interest in Berkeley politics.
What I will note is that I've just spent half an hour reading Tom's old posts from 2012 her on HN and he reads very well. He seems knowledgeable, kind, humane, subtle, intelligent and has very interesting things to say. Agree or not he's worth reading. An ideal HN poster from those I read. From what I have seen I would certainly listen to his views on Berkeley politics if I cared about it in any way.
FYI Tom Lord was indeed an official of the city of Berkeley, having been appointed to certain boards and commissions, from which he eventually had to be removed for violating the Brown Act and making various outbursts.
The reason it makes sense to discuss this aspect of his life is the article isn’t in some neutral news outlet, it is in the mouthpiece of the population-controlling degrowth philosophy that Lord advocated. He sincerely believed that building housing in Berkeley encourages population growth and that not building it could control the population. In this way he was a kind of useful idiot for the real estate investors who control the city.
>>He seems knowledgeable, kind, humane, subtle, intelligent and has very interesting things to say.
>In this way he was a kind of useful idiot for the real estate investors who control the city.
This comment doesn't seem like it lives up to the quality of Tom's HN comments. I would object equally if you were described as a "useful idiot" to those who seek to benefit from property development or own land capable of being developed . Noting that I don't care if either or both of you are "wrong", as I don't care at all about Berkeley politics and planning.
If I did I would listen to Tom and his reasoning as I read his HN comments. That is with interest, more so that he has a very different point of view to mine. With that view well thought out and well expressed seemingly motivated by more than pure self-interest.
The same might well be true of yourself but that isn't obvious to me yet.
By law these meetings have minutes recorded and made available to the public. If you really want to confirm the situation for yourself the messy details are likely missing from this record while the situation in general is reasonably well presented.
Unfortunately this advocacy frequently took unproductive directions, being abusive to elected officials and staff at the local and state levels,[1] and opposing changes that would help move things in the right direction climate-wise, such as building more in-fill housing in Berkeley, because some other action (say, convincing people to massively reduce their energy usage) was an even better strategy in his eyes. Tom was not convinced for example that Berkeley needed any more housing.
The source of this post is a good clue; Berkeley Daily Planet mostly publishes posts from NIMBY's who don't care about the climate and don't want anything that could possibly increase the number of people who live in Berkeley (Zelda Bronstein and Toni Mester are good examples).
Having interacted with Tom on Twitter, and reading through the comments here, I'm surprised to learn that he was a valued member of an open source community and published software that people used at one point.
[1] source - personal conversations with those officials and employees about Tom's behavior