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Does it really matter who he is? I don't think it does. It's the message that's important, not who is expressing it.


First, I will point out that when a bunch of people are talking about some guy by his name in a way that feels like everyone kind of knows who it is, it is natural to be curious. However, in this case, there is a very important reason why this is the first thing you should ask: the meat of the message is a threat that "Rob" will somehow build something and replace npm: if Rob were someone well-known in the community, is someone who maintains a package manager for another large community, or even if he had a history of rampaging through communities and disrupting them with successful solutions, this would be a meaningful threat; if Rob is just an angry user, then the threat is hyperbole which should be ignored. Like, I appreciate that "arguments should have weight regardless of who said them", but applying that knee-jerk as if that is true in all situations is harmful to discourse... in this case, what we are looking at is mostly a rant and a threat, not an "argument": it matters greatly who the speaker is.




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