Dostoevsky meets OpenSource

Michael Bodnarchuk @davert
6 min readFeb 20, 2023

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Recently Denis Puskarev aka zloirock published a blogpost inside Readme of his open-source product core-js. In the post, he wrote the story of his life and the burden of being an open-source maintainer.

Pushkarev’s post was related to his open-source library, core-js, but the writing style and the depth of thought he exhibited in his post reminded me of Dostoevsky’s writings. If we look wider, we can see this is not a story of a person but a common mindset built into Russian society.

As an #opensource developer I feel his pain, but as a person, I can’t understand the logic of that person.

All his life problems are direct consequences of his actions but instead of taking responsibility for them, he blames the world and greedy corporations.

His first mistake: he decided to return to Russia. Living there was his own choice. But Russia strikes back. What a surprise!

In his post (which replaced Readme of core-js) he begs for money while writing about how poor he is he wants a “new iPhone for his wife”, so he talks about being entitled to luxury

Also, he mentioned he has 2.5$K on donations and 10K$ on previous contracts

Remember the Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment? That’s the same character. While thinking of his own greatness he suffers from a lack of money. Denis could drop core-js altogether or maintain it part-time but then he will lose his mission and his vibe as a world Savior

I would not have written that thread if he had not mentioned the war in his post.

(btw, why? As no one asked him about that, really!)

He said that #opensource is out of politics while making a political statement in the next line. It’s double thinking which was also shown in The Idiot novel

Sure, a person like him would think that he is the most victim in the world, so he has no empathy for war victims The difference here: war victims didn’t choose their destiny but Denis did.

War victims were killed, lost their homes, or lose their beloved ones but Denis didn’t

Today over 300 000 such characters are at the war in Ukraine

👿They are ‘out of politics’ but have their political opinion of two evils
👿They blame the West for their miserable lives
👿They don’t take responsibility for their actions

Maybe they are not evil by themselves. Maybe not the worst people. Who knows? They had their families but once they decided to go to kill others

The mix of messianism, victimization, and infantilism turned them into a barbarian horde terrorizing my country.

A significant part of Dostoevsky’s stories is murder and a court. In a novel written by 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗲-𝗷𝘀 maintainer Denis Pushkarev this section is also presented.

We have a court ruling on Denis’ case with some details I would like to share. So what it was about?

In 2020 Denis had an ‘accident’, as he named it.

Denis was driving a motorbike at 60 km/h In the night when he hit two young women. One of them died. He summarized it as “shit happens”.

Denis blames the victim (they were drunk, had dark clothes, it’s russia, etc), while the court didn’t take his arguments as reasonable:

But did he have a chance to prevent this tragedy? According to the court — yes. The road was straight, and the observability was good, as well as the weather conditions.

Yes, it’s russia if you can be killed at a pedestrian crossing and you get blamed for that!

Denis states that he could not see them as they were lying on the ground. If they were standing he would see them.

A strange argument, as there could be a road hole anywhere. His lights should be able to detect something on the ground. Russian roads are not that good not to take that into account.

Denis tried to blame the victims, as the only victim in this story is himself!

That crazy drunk girl unexpectedly died causing a disturbance in core-js maintaining process!

While Denis accepts his guilt he doesn’t feel regret

Moreover, Denis blames the mother of the victim for a bad upbringing.

That sounds insane to me. Really. I don’t know what to add…

Denis regrets the fact that he is not a privileged person and can’t escape the prosecution.

That’s how that society works. “Oh, I wish I could bribe the policemen and the court”. Those are his thoughts that he thinks are acceptable.

Did you notice how he marked the victims? In quotes. Why?

Correct, he is one TRUE victim of that story.

What a plot, what a character, Mr. Dostoevsky, wake up, you are missing so much here!

So instead of Crime & Punishment that could be a story of Crime & Bribe but because greedy corporations didn’t pay him for open source, that story didn’t happen.

But thanks to the tech community who donated to him, now he has enough money for such cases.

That was a fantastic novel.

But I must say to all people who admire Russian literature: you would prefer not to live inside their novels.

This is not fiction, though. And I’m sorry about the victims.

The final hypocrisy is Denis posting a photo of his son trying to manipulate the reader’s emotions. And asks for money. Somehow, he didn’t post a photo of a girl he killed. But she was someone’s daughter too.

Yet, you donated to him and not to his victims

How can Russians kill so many people in Ukraine? Why don’t they count others’ lives?

That’s why!

🤔 Don’t they have empathy?

🤮 No, it is you who must feel empathy to them

🤔 Why don’t they sympathize the victims?

🤮 Because they are the only victims here

My main point of this post was to show how those things considered to be normal in Russia are not such in modern societies. The Ukrainian community was angry with his statement about ‘two kinds of evil’. Let’s imagine he could put some racist slur into his post. Will he also be considered a good person to send money to?

Denis manipulates the community presenting himself as a self-proclaimed messiah, Internet stands on his shoulders! But in reality, he abuses the bus factor and puts the community at security risks with his behavior.

And the worst thing is that Russian society has the same paradigm. Self-centered people constantly focused on their suffering, accusing others of their miserable lives. So it’s not about Denis at all. It’s about Russian society. It’s rotten.

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Michael Bodnarchuk @davert
Michael Bodnarchuk @davert

Written by Michael Bodnarchuk @davert

Web developer from Kyiv, Ukraine. Lead developer of Codeception testing framework. Tech consultant and trainer at http://sdclabs.com

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