I feel like it has to be a joke, but I wonder if such a clear "joke" would make other things in the contract possible to be invalidated in court given that if one assumes that part is a joke how can one tell what other parts are also supposed to be or not to be a farce in the contract.
I would probably sign if all of the following are true:
- The money is significantly better than my other options
- I believe the company not to be serious about the suicide clause
- I believe the suicide clause to be non-binding in any jurisdiction that applies to myself or the foundation
- I didn't believe the company / foundation would take my refusal to kill myself at a later time as a license to have me killed
The last one is a bit out there, but in the world of crypto, you can never be too sure.
Also, regardless of whether I would sign, I think it's in pretty poor taste and a pretty bright, amber flag (but not quite a red flag) if an employer thinks this is a funny or acceptable thing to put into a contract.
It's also in very poor taste and reeks of coercion to send out a manifesto or mandate like this on a Friday and expect people to sign or agree by Monday or lose their jobs. They likely wouldn't be able to have it reviewed by a lawyer over the weekend if they chose to do so.
What "contract"? They're referencing a meme on page 11 of the document, which looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/bSYTJb1
Are people seriously believing the Ethereum Foundation is looking for its members to commit suicide in case they don't publish full source-code? :P Either I'm massively misreading what the outrage is about, or I think this is the point I stop understanding how the world works. Are people taking that image seriously???
Wow, it's weird to think that people can be so proud of their terrible ideas. To go so far as to post it on their own website. Project 2025 was published this same way.
I thought the "seppuku" line was hyperbole, but there it is in black and white. You can jump directly to it with a Ctrl+F.
Everyone thinks their ideas are brilliant and that the ideas that run contrary to theirs are terrible. Your comment is tantamount to saying "I disagree with these ideas".
I agree with your sentiment, but something this big should have been run through a committee of not-yes-men before publishing. I feel like honest feedback would have stopped this.
That is not true. Other people can have good ideas, bad ideas, kind of bad ideas, very bad ideas, terrible ideas and off the chart stupid ideas.
So, no the comment is not tantamount to saying "I disagree with these ideas". It is possible to disagree with an idea that is not horribly bad. It is possible to disagree with an idea that is quite smart, just with a trade off I dont prefer.
If you go deep into the crypto world you'll find that this messaging resonates well with "degens" (as they sometimes call themselves).
They love this stuff, it signals how "pilled" you are. It may or may not have to do with a large proportion of them being high on drugs (weed, psychedelics, cocaine), in addition to obviously being terminally online and bubbled. They are also extremely anti-authority, because a lot of what they do breaks the law in bigger and lesser ways, especially tax/financial law.
And they often will drive millions and millions of dollars of crypto toward these ventures, often anonymously.
You have to read these kinds of things in the context of the target audience, which is very real.
Weirdness used to be a charming aspect of the tech industry. Now it's death cults, fascism, accelerationism, "monarchists," "effective altruism" and whatever other brand of curdled dark perversion haunts Silicon Valley.
I can't express something better than this observation I read the other day:
>again, something of a banal observation, but i think contributing to the general feeling of powerlessness and rage in america today is the extent to which our elites engage in such flagrant, grotesque, even performative contempt for the rest of america
>i don't exactly think andrew carnegie loved the little guy exactly--he was, at best, the good cop to frick's bad cop--but he at least put on the appearance of charity, decorum, civic-mindedness
>meanwhile today's elites mostly seem interested in apocalypse bunkers and sex cults and getting real jacked on testosterone and ranting about the woke mind virus
>regarding the rest of us as, at best, hogs bound for the slaughter, and not even particularly hiding it
> "Authors, maintainers, editors and distributors of “this software” would pledge to ensure the software remained free and publicly accessible, and would also vow to “take his or her own life with a sword upon failure to uphold any of the pledges in this license,” the illustration read. It was labeled “Source Seppuku License,” an apparent reference to a traditional Japanese ritual suicide.
When the document went out on that Friday in March, employees were told to commit to the principles in the mandate by Monday or quit their jobs, according to the lawsuit brought by Kayleen Fulton, a Boulder woman who was fired from the Ethereum Foundation after she led employee resistance to the suicide pledge."
.. wow. When your employer starts posting like Yukio Mishima of course you sue them. I have a new entry in "most unprofessional thing I've ever seen". And no, using the "should not be taken seriously" defense is also hugely unprofessional.
Seppuku is a two person job. Does accepting the contract mean you volunteer to be the second (the person finishing the job by decapitation) for someone else’s ritual suicide?
> An email to the foundation seeking comment on this story was not immediately returned Thursday, but a foundation leader at the time told employees the suicide pledge was not meant to be taken literally, according to the lawsuit. After employee pushback, managers updated the commitment form to clarify that the form had “nothing to do with literal seppuku,” according to the lawsuit.
Oh see it was just a joke - a joke, get it? ha ha, see by watching how many employees were complaining, we retracted it - just a "joke", right? after we put it out there saying nothing whatsoever and demanding a yes/no loyalty pledge.
it was boundary testing. this company should go out of business.
My falling out of love with crypto was due to the realization that these 'foundations' were effectively governing bodies participating in the minimum level of decentralized theater to grant them plausible deniability in a court of law. Bitcoin is still extremely interesting, as it has no such body, only a bunch of anarchy minded anti-social but very smart group of volunteers fighting each other. At least they practice their anarcho libertarian experiment in the mailing list, to its huge detriment.
> “If you reward making a stink with outcomes, then everyone will know that essentially making that kind of show both internally and externally is the way to cause outcomes inside of the EF,” he said, according to the lawsuit, which cited a recorded conversation between the pair.
Well she was too effective at organizing a resistance. Can't have that.
- The money is significantly better than my other options
- I believe the company not to be serious about the suicide clause
- I believe the suicide clause to be non-binding in any jurisdiction that applies to myself or the foundation
- I didn't believe the company / foundation would take my refusal to kill myself at a later time as a license to have me killed
The last one is a bit out there, but in the world of crypto, you can never be too sure.
Also, regardless of whether I would sign, I think it's in pretty poor taste and a pretty bright, amber flag (but not quite a red flag) if an employer thinks this is a funny or acceptable thing to put into a contract.
It's also in very poor taste and reeks of coercion to send out a manifesto or mandate like this on a Friday and expect people to sign or agree by Monday or lose their jobs. They likely wouldn't be able to have it reviewed by a lawyer over the weekend if they chose to do so.
Are people seriously believing the Ethereum Foundation is looking for its members to commit suicide in case they don't publish full source-code? :P Either I'm massively misreading what the outrage is about, or I think this is the point I stop understanding how the world works. Are people taking that image seriously???
Lol, did the perpetrators commit seppuku after the illegitimate DAO fork?
I thought the "seppuku" line was hyperbole, but there it is in black and white. You can jump directly to it with a Ctrl+F.
So, no the comment is not tantamount to saying "I disagree with these ideas". It is possible to disagree with an idea that is not horribly bad. It is possible to disagree with an idea that is quite smart, just with a trade off I dont prefer.
They love this stuff, it signals how "pilled" you are. It may or may not have to do with a large proportion of them being high on drugs (weed, psychedelics, cocaine), in addition to obviously being terminally online and bubbled. They are also extremely anti-authority, because a lot of what they do breaks the law in bigger and lesser ways, especially tax/financial law.
And they often will drive millions and millions of dollars of crypto toward these ventures, often anonymously.
You have to read these kinds of things in the context of the target audience, which is very real.
Source: I made it out.
>again, something of a banal observation, but i think contributing to the general feeling of powerlessness and rage in america today is the extent to which our elites engage in such flagrant, grotesque, even performative contempt for the rest of america
>i don't exactly think andrew carnegie loved the little guy exactly--he was, at best, the good cop to frick's bad cop--but he at least put on the appearance of charity, decorum, civic-mindedness
>meanwhile today's elites mostly seem interested in apocalypse bunkers and sex cults and getting real jacked on testosterone and ranting about the woke mind virus
>regarding the rest of us as, at best, hogs bound for the slaughter, and not even particularly hiding it
https://bsky.app/profile/sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com/pos...
When the document went out on that Friday in March, employees were told to commit to the principles in the mandate by Monday or quit their jobs, according to the lawsuit brought by Kayleen Fulton, a Boulder woman who was fired from the Ethereum Foundation after she led employee resistance to the suicide pledge."
.. wow. When your employer starts posting like Yukio Mishima of course you sue them. I have a new entry in "most unprofessional thing I've ever seen". And no, using the "should not be taken seriously" defense is also hugely unprofessional.
Corporations put out all sorts of fluff. If employees took it seriously then everyone working at facebook should have a VR helmet on their head 24/7.
This would by itself be enough to start packing all your office things into a cardboard box.
Oh see it was just a joke - a joke, get it? ha ha, see by watching how many employees were complaining, we retracted it - just a "joke", right? after we put it out there saying nothing whatsoever and demanding a yes/no loyalty pledge.
it was boundary testing. this company should go out of business.
Well she was too effective at organizing a resistance. Can't have that.