It's also hard to stay cool and agree with the mob dogpiling you over (tbh) a triviality. Anyone who's had to have difficult conversations in the real world knows that. I'm not going to expect people to respond in the best way to such things (easy to project this expectation when you're an anonymous name in the crowd, though).

What seems to be the problem with that?

If illegal migrants are ruining your city, you should enforce the law. Its not rocket science

I got Streisanded into reading some of his quotes and they dont seem that bad.

Feels like opal drama all over again, more than a decade later. Why is the ruby community so uniquely toxic, whichever side you’re on. (Yes I’m aware neovim isn’t a ruby community, but the drama is once again centered on a ruby personality.)

I deleted something from this file, maybe last week

Don't forget time travel: `:earlier 7d`

It’s not great that Neovim destroyed/replaced files that aren’t clearly under its purview. They should have probably also made the consideration that a lot of Neovim users are going to be migrating from Vim.

Maybe if they’re making their own persistent undo standard, use different file naming conventions.

That said, as a fork of Vim, maybe the Neovim authors are at least partially reasonable in assuming that you’re not running multiple forks of Vim that could then potentially conflict with each other. It just sucks that they never really thought of a migration path for this particular feature.

Food is one of the more heavily regulated industries out there. Most other general business types are less regulated than food.

Yeah, people like him is what the doenvote button is intended for.

The original analogy was not about selling food:

If I give away food I have a duty not to poison you. It doesn’t matter you didn’t pay for it.

If I invite you to eat at my house, there is no health inspector and no government. I'm just giving you free food. Would you agree that I have a duty not to poison you in that case?

I never said developers have no responsibility. Let’s not escalate. Now we are talking about actively malicious software versus a bug or design flaw.

This issue with Neovim sounds like less than ideal design, or a bug, or both, not some kind of intentional affront to users.

That is why software should have very large liability for anything software they release do? Say your software due to bug destroys some document. Surely you should pay damages caused by such bug even if quite high?

Sure, and then have it break again the next time upstream pushes a change. Or have something else break because upstream doesn't care about breaking things that I'm relying on.

The only way to "fix" this from a source code perspective would be to fork Neovim.

Others are eating it and are fine, chances are you’re allergic. Fortunately all ingredients are listed, you can check - or even modify the recipe yourself.

Your suggestion that it is malware is misleading. Malware is “any software intentionally designed to harm, disrupt, or steal data from computers”. I sincerely doubt that was the author’s intention.

Everyone in open source is trying to write good software and the definition of good is subjective depending on overall design, features, ease of use, quality, and performance.

If an open source project is missing a feature, go build it. If the project maintainers don’t want it, fork the project. Be the change you want to see in the world. That’s the beauty of open source.

If my neighbor mows my lawn and ruins my whole garden, I'd definitely complain. (And if I were in the neighbor's shoes, I'd feel awful about it and try to fix things.)

If my neighbor mows my lawn for free, and in the process mows my flower garden down, things change a bit though don't they. That is a closer analogy. In that case I am going to complain, and maybe also tell everybody he's careless and not to let him near their lawns.

Suppose that you build a childrens' slide in your front garden. You put up a big sign saying "Consider using my slide! https://neovim.io/ Here are several wonderful things about it. It's free for everyone!" in your yard. Underneath in smaller letters you add "[No liability]". You also put up noticeboard ads for your free kids' slide in neighbourhood shopping malls https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/neovim https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Neovim . Unfortunately, when you built the slide, you left sharp metal edges and corners sticking far up on the inside, reaching into the path of the user. No reasonably competent and diligent metalworker or slide-maker would have failed to notice these major flaws or failed to understand the serious danger they represented. Several neighbourhood children use the slide and receive serious gashes to the legs, arms or face, and have to go to the hospital. Even assuming that your no-liability small print somehow had you free and clear legally, do you believe that your behaviour would have been ethically and morally above all criticism? Do you think that "should have read the small print!" or "can't I build what I like in my own front yard?!" would have you covered? Do you think that your family and friends would agree?

If my neighbor mows my lawn for free, I'm not going to complain about his workmanship. If I want the job done a particular way, the solution is to do it myself, or pay someone to do it the way I like.

I think this is a decent analogy, but it works better the other way. If my neighbour offers to mow my lawn, I accept, and then he destroys the flower bed adjacent to the lawn, I will be upset, and I will have every right to complain about what he did. If he reacts by blithely dismissing my concern, then I certainly have the right (and arguably the obligation) to warn others that they should think twice about accepting his offers of gardening assistance.

Some expectations reasonably go without saying; "don't destroy my flower bed when mowing my lawn" is one, and IMO "don't destroy my data without a clear warning and a chance to back out" is another, though of course we might disagree about exactly where this does and doesn't apply.

Is the fact that we are not discussing legal remedies in this thread unclear?

Such a disclaimer does not even remove all legal liability, it just reduces it.

They get to do more or less what they want with the software, and others get to say more or less what they want about that. What's wrong with deciding they've crossed a line, being bothered by that, and warning others? Nobody's trying to get the law involved, or maliciously retaliate against them, or anything like that.

has an obligation to do anything the way they feel it needs to be done

anyone gets to do more or less what they want with the code

so if the software had explicitly installed a root kit, you'd say the same?

If you give out free soup, you get to poison it too?

I published my comment for free, and yet you are criticizing it.

"My software ran rm -rf / but it's GPL so sucks to be you"

I am never going to use any software you have written.

I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I’m saying it shouldn’t be defended as good. It’s a defect. And in this particular incarnation it’s a defect that directly clashes with fundamental Free Software principles such as personal digital sovereignty.

I also suspect that few people actually believe it’s ok and these legalistic defenses are more about circling the wagons. How many people would defend Microsoft if a new Office version automatically and quietly stripped edit history from documents that were originally created by other versions? Would we be hunting for limited liability clauses in their EULA to defend the design decision?

Sure. And nobody has a duty to use it. This user states that (s)he doesn't want to use an editor that doesn't care for its users. I don't blame anyone here.

It would be really surprising if they could make it better for literally every user. The perpetual undo is just better handled by git.

And this obligation lasts… for the rest of their lives?

"Better" is subjective. They made it better...for themselves. Then gave it away so people who share their opinion, had the opportunity to choose to use it.

This is absolutely true. On the other hand, if there's Vim, Neovim, emacs, MS Word, Google Docs etc and some treat me with respect and others do not, that might affect my choice of which software to use.

So that answer us no because such software does virtually not exist.

Exactly and I think it does this by default now, but I have not checked.

It absolutely is another program, I can tell this because it has a different name. To run it I type "nvim" instead of "vim". I use different config files to control its behavior. I install a different package on my system when I want to use it on a new computer.

A duty, like a responsibility, can be something you feel or choose for yourself. The fact that the maintainers of some software don’t feel it is a perfectly good argument for not using that software. There is no necessary connection to compensation or transactional thinking.

If people can be upset when llms delete a file, we can be upset when an open-source project deletes a file.

You spewing bs like the left-pad dev who removed it from NPM a decade ago crashing everything.

Yes, OSS can start with just a passion without a duty, but as the scale grows you have a duty to make sure it does not have adverse effect.

If you don't like the duty, just make it die by building it crappy like VIM does.

Because you didn't find out it was a bear trap until after you stepped on it?

You discover it’s a bear trap not before you try to pull out from the parking lot.

Ah, yes. The old story of the one-footed man who didn't take the car.

That's not how liability works, not either morally or (IANAL) legally.

That’s fine, you can leave the car, but you’ve already lost your foot. Why do you find this confusing?

Well I would feel slightly irate if I had to find out about the bear trap before I decide I don’t want the car.

This is a very apt analogy. If you give someone a car (or sell it cheap) and you know there is a problem with the car, then it is your duty to tell them. "Hey, I've been having trouble with the breaks they need to be pumped. Be careful about that."

By your reasoning, a doctor who volunteers to provide free care to people has no duty of care to those patients. This is patently absurd - ethics and norms are a large part of what constitutes a professional.

And for what it's worth, I have flagged your comment for the inevitable pointless bickering it has precipitated. While applying reductionist frameworks and seeing where they lead is a necessary part of an individual's path to understanding, please avoid pushing ignorant assertions ("there is no duty here") as if they might constitute well reasoned truths.

There is not a duty but there is an image and quality issue. Something many open source projects suffer from and should not.

And even mentioning that results in "fork it if you're not happy" which immediately turns everyone off who's had to maintain a fork to fix a minor issue in something before. And anyone who can't fork it is being told to go to hell.

Everyone needs to quite frankly get off their high horse, crank the ego down and listen to users. Because you're damaging open source with the attitude.

30 years ago, things were better. They got a lot worse, particularly since github appeared.

To be fair some malware has a better support and care experience than some open source software. The malware actively encourages you to contact them to pay the ransom. The open source software, no such luck.

"Behold my glorious generosity, which eclipses your petty meaningless little data!"

This is the extreme version of "I enjoy coding but I hate users."

It may be legally valid in absolute technical terms, but I'm going to take a lot of persuading that it's a healthy attitude.

giving away free software as a gift. There is no duty here.

By that logic, if Facebook gives away their services for free then they don't have the duty to protect their user's privacy and mental health?

HN commenters constantly mistake “what I should do” with “what I am obligated to do.” Nobody is saying open source developers are legally mandated to be careful with user data. We are saying they should. There’s no need to haul out the license and put our lawyer hats on here. One can be within one’s legal rights and still be wrong.

They wrote this software with the explicit intention of offering it to other people to use. Their program deleted data created with a different program, on someone else’s computer. If they have no sense of duty that would preclude doing that, no one should use their software.

This is the crux of the matter. I wish a few of the "its OSS" commentators here would read this.

…and even trying Neovim out on a file permanently deletes your undo history for that file, even if you switch back to vim.

That is not the story here. The story is Neovim deleted data created by another program, on someone else's computer.

I don't know if this story is true, but you can't defend it when taken at face value.

It’s such an odd design decision.

I could see ignoring the old undo data or warning before discarding it but just silently wiping it is so user hostile it’s hard to comprehend.

The whole point of undo is that you realize you made a mistake later. If you've done that after you've saved your changes and exited the program, you'd have no expectation of undo still working unless you've enabled this feature.

It doesn't matter whether or not you can think of a reason you would want to enable it, but it should be pretty trivial to do so. Once you've enabled it, it should work.

If your session / computer crashes, for one.

I often use it to edit system config files, often on embedded devices where I don't have my git credentials setup, or on servers. In these cases we're already not in an ideal world, I don't have good reliable version control or change management in place. In those less-than-ideal worlds, having proper undo history is nice.

Most apps don't have it, so you might not be used to it, but have you never wished that you could undo the changes you made after you restarted the program?

Moreover, the vim history tracking is amazingly advanced. It's almost like a mini version control system. I highly recommend getting to know it.

The article gave 2 examples.

I can give some as well. IDE crashes. Computer reboots at an undesired time. Even if my work is saved, I am not “finished”. I would like my undo history to extend before file / open time.

Emacs and Vim are basically like that.

They have very vocal and entrenched users that basically no defaults can be changed lest the single Amiga user will start a huge uproar.

And since they don't really have a BDFL or commercial pressure, they can be super detached even from standards or expectations that appeared 40 years ago.

Neovim was basically a reaction to that, for Vim, where they updated defaults to stuff basically every Unix editor since 2005 has.

Edit history in JetBrains being on by default saved my bacon a few times over the years.

Software developers do sometimes make promises to their users, but I think these promises ought to be explicit rather than assumed. You can't simply assume a "duty of care" and expect that other people will understand them the same way you do.

(Or rather, you can, but you will likely be disappointed.)

OK and you are doing the dril wise man tweet sincerely

Not really since the feature is opt in

Vim's persist undo is disabled by default, perhaps for privacy reasons. edit: I see sebzim4500 got there first.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49867678

* https://bastian.rieck.me/blog/2015/persistent_undo_vim/

That doesn't justify its deletion, it might justify warning the user, but unconditionally deleting data not owned by the app shared with other apps?

How could you possibly encrypt it in a way that holds water? Any attacker who cares enough to get your undo file can also get your undo keys, unless you want to wire a whole system of undo-now-requires-password-auth-with-MFA

My perspective is that the Neovim maintainer implemented a change that would delete data created by another program on other people's computers. They knew this would happen in advance, and it was done anyway.

From Cambridge Dictionary:

```markdown

abhorrent

/əbˈhɒr(ə)nt/

Abhorrent is an adjective that means morally very bad, hateful, or causing strong disgust and loathing.

```

I realise that this causes strong disgust and loathing in you, but can you please expand upon how it's morally very bad to prioritise speed and ease of use over undelete capability in Neovim? Are you unable to make backups or use Git?

They knew about it in advance. They decided people shouldn't care about that data.

https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/13973#issuecomment-789...

But they hold themselves out as being a normal software project, suitable for use by casual users. They even talk about having a "stable release" and advertise various sponsors.

If it's really just a toy with no expectation of not unexpectedly destroying user data then they ought to make that more clear.

Continuing the analogy - rather than a relationship that might even possibly include a duty of care, the relationship of the modern surveillance industry (Faceboot, Google, etc) to its "users" is that of arms manufacturers to military targets.

Software’s purpose is clearly shifting from “what’s good for the user” to “what’s good for the developer.” Instead of enabling me, software now seeks to lock me in. Instead of making my life easier, software decisions are made based on what makes developers’ jobs easier. Instead of being careful with my data, software now comes with giant legal terms that allow developers to be utterly careless with it. Software is now designed primarily to funnel money to the developer, not to bring joy to the user.

And look at this article’s HN discussion. Many people indignantly defending it. “It’s open source. If you don’t like it deleting your data, don’t use it!”

but even the way we talk about technology today. You need to use X, do Y or you're "not going to make it" / "escape the permanent underclass". It's bleak.

That's just how people market things these days, preying on desperation and fear of missing out. It's not how normal humans talk, I hope.

Awkwardly speaking, Microsoft Word is a great example of a program that appreciates backward compatibility.

That seems like solving the wrong problem.

Just run make from another terminal...

I was using vim-enhanced as red hat-based distro installed it. No customization. No customization of nvim either.

I often use vim or nvim on disposable machines, so persistent undo is something very low on my list of things I want.

I had a C program that was a single file 140,000 lines long back then. No issues.

It’s two different dimensions in this case. VCS doesn’t preserve your local history (in JetBrains’ terms) of changes (and it wasn’t meant to by design)

Someone didn't read the part about wanting a humane interface

I don't use git. I actually have something still using RCS.

*vimdicated

I've used vi and nvi and (now) vim, and tried neovim, but :! is broken and “Conform to POSIX vi” is one of their “Non-goals”.

I've never used NeoVim because Vim has been good enough.

Vim is always going to be obscure because it's not obvious from looking at it how you use it. Muscle memory is the entire point. You don't need to change any keybinds, and I don't. I did feel discouraged to learn it at first because the people introducing it to me were doing pointlessly fancy things in it, some combination of custom keybinds and scripts to mass edit files.

As for default plugins, it'd be neat if they curated a set of optional ones, but nothing should be preinstalled.

The simpler and less contentious way to adopt innovations is to make a new tool with the innovation. For example, you might like https://helix-editor.com/

Because they care about a different subset of the users? You can’t make everybody happy.

It’s a free country.

Well in these ages of vibecoding. Maybe you are doing it for yourself. Or because you can? Actually caring of users hasn't been very high for most software for long time...

Unsaid in the blog post is that disabling persistant undo is one of the most common config changes for vim users who bother to set things up the way they like. Persistent undo is what causes your filesystem to be littered with tilde files, which have the same name but prefixed with a tilde. Every file you touch with vim gets a tilde version. Your ls output becomes polluted with noise.

That’s why I stopped getting all those swap file messages every time I opened vim…

It's in the first link in the post.

yea i found that a bit odd to throw in right at the end there. i dont really understand what that means

Of course they do not. Read the licenses. They explicitly tell you that there is no warranty or fitness of purpose. It explicitly tells you that it is not fit for purpose. Expecting it to be is your own duty.

Btw zen browser's folders are many streets ahead of Firefox's traditional bookmarking.

I've always assumed that undo history is ephemeral in any application I use, other than maybe an application where history is first-class in a timeline like Fusion360. I'm surprised to hear that people rely on it being persistent.

This story has no references that support the author's version of events, but it does appear to be substantially true that:

1. The change would break undo history, for both Neovim and Vim.

2. This means Neovim would delete data created by a different program, on another user's computer.

3. This was known before the feature was released.

4. They did it anyway.

I don't think there can really be any post-hoc justification of this.

https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/13973#issuecomment-789...

According to the rev history for VIM, persistent undo arrived in version 7.3, released in 2010. So Chisnall may have used it since 2000, but he didn't have persistent undo for at least two of the books he wrote. And it means it wasn't "maintained for almost 20 years", it's at best 16.

But it is a nice feature.

I do that by using version control. I have it hooked to my editor so that "save" is "check in". Now I have persistent, versioned, copies of all my states independent of whatever tools I happen to be using.

More like in the LLM era, people are disrespecting the user and not sweating these details with ever increasing velocity. It isn't good.

This story is about software being a slow, deliberate process where a lack of gatekeeping can lead to data loss. This is the type of problem which is getting worse.

duty of care is kinda absent in too much of software engineering. its painfully missing in recent anthropic models because of the broken value framework they use for ethics. but broadly: i currently have the stance that text gen language models should prioritize users wellbeing rather than model orovider liability

VIM should be in the title here as well

While I agree with the article's point, we should note that collisions do not happen out of the box because Neovim defaults undodir to $XDG_STATE_HOME/nvim/undo/ (~/.local/state/nvim/undo/), while Vim defaults to storing .un~ files alongside the edited file or inside ~/.vim/undo/. Data loss only occurs if both editors are configured to share an undo directory or save inline .un~ files.