Just had someone leave feedback on my F/OSS project saying “maybe that's fine if a product is focused on your Chinese community.”

I'm Korean. Every single piece of documentation is in English. There's nothing in Chinese anywhere in the project.

This kind of microaggression is exhausting. As a non-white maintainer, you deal with these assumptions constantly—people who feel entitled to your labor while casually othering you based on your name.

It chips away at your motivation. It makes you wonder why you bother.

https://github.com/dahlia/optique/issues/59#issuecomment-3678606022

@hongminhee

Eeew that was quite rude and racist of that commenter. They don't deserve to be a community built around sharing and cooperation.

@hongminhee you are extraordinarily patient with him! I'm not sure I'd have bothered

@hongminhee Your response was classy and delivered with the patience of a saint. The fact that you have to process and respond at all is infuriating. I have nothing to offer except solidarity.

@hongminhee what a cool project! sorry you had to read that :/

In general, I find it pretty distasteful to expect to be "win over" by a project, as if they're doing you a favour by considering using the code you worked on and freely provided. (This is very different from saying 'this could be more convenient to me and probably others' btw). The racism only makes it worse.

@hongminhee I'm sorry you had to (very gracefully) deal with that idiot. I took a look at their resume and, yeah, a couple of red flags right there.

@hongminhee

What a jerk.

@hongminhee maybe it's fine if he gets banned from open source repos ;)

@hongminhee honestly, as a software person who dealt with a toxic community - just assume bad will, block the person and continue on. It really does cost you motivation to be kind to everyone. Motivation is on a short supply anyway.

@hongminhee Sorry to hear that, thank you for your service to the open social web.

@hongminhee That’s shitty and I’m sorry people are being unkind to you. You’re awesome and doing fantastic work.

@hongminhee I’m so sorry you have to deal with this horrid behavior 😭 sending you a big virtual hug. You’re amazing and I’m so grateful for all you do 🫂

@hongminhee Pretty awful, sorry you have to deal with that!

Kudos on how well you handled it!

@hongminhee And like as if Chinese devs have some fundamental differences than "a programmer out of this community" 🤣

@hongminhee This is so unacceptable and unneeded, I'm so sorry you had to deal with that.