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On kernel mailing list behavior
As has been widely reported, the topic of conduct on kernel-related mailing
lists has, itself, been the topic of a heated discussion on the
linux-kernel mailing list. While numerous development communities have
established codes of conduct over the years, the kernel has never followed
suit. Might that situation be about to change? Your editor will attempt a
factual description of the discussion, followed by some analysis.
What was saidThe setting was an extensive discussion on policies for the management of the stable kernel series and, in particular, the selection of patches for stable updates. It was an interesting discussion in its own right (which will be covered here separately), and it was generally polite. Even so, there came a point where Sarah Sharp couldn't take it anymore:
Seriously, guys? Is this what we need in order to get improve
-stable? Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation
and violence. Ingo Molnar and Linus are advocating for verbal
abuse.
Not *fucking* cool. Violence, whether it be physical intimidation, verbal threats or verbal abuse is not acceptable. Keep it professional on the mailing lists. For the record, she was responding to this note from Linus:
Greg, the reason you get a lot of stable patches seems to be that
you make it easy to act as a door-mat. Clearly at least some people
say "I know this patch isn't important enough to send to Linus, but
I know Greg will silently accept it after the fact, so I'll just
wait and mark it for stable".
You may need to learn to shout at people. Ingo's contribution was:
So Greg, if you want it all to change, create some _real_ threat:
be frank with contributors and sometimes swear a bit. That will cut
your mailqueue in half, promise!
Whether these messages constitute "advocating for physical intimidation and violence" or even "advocating for verbal abuse" will be left for the reader to decide. But Sarah's point was clearly not that these specific messages were out of line; she is concerned with the environment on the linux-kernel mailing list in general. She has since taken the discussion to other forums (with more examples) and, in general, seems intent on changing the nature of the community's discourse. Needless to say, responses on the list were mixed, though they were generally polite and restrained. A number of people, Linus included, pointed out that the number of personal attacks on the list is actually quite small, and that Linus tends to reserve his strongest language for high-level maintainers who (1) are able to take it, and (2) "should know better" than to do whatever it was that set Linus off. Opinions differ on whether that is a good thing. Jens Axboe said:
I've been flamed plenty in the past, and it's been deserved (most
of the time). Perhaps I have a thick skull and/or skin, but it
doesn't really bother me. Or perhaps I'm just too much of an old
kernel fart these days, so I grew accustomed to it. As long as I
don't have to see Linus in his bathrobe, then that's enough
"professionalism" for me.
On the other hand, Neil Brown echoed the feelings of a number of participants who worry that the tone of the discussion tends to discourage people from joining the community: "He is scolding people senior developers in front of newcomers. That is not likely to encourage people to want to become senior developers." Being flamed can be hard on the recipient, but it can also affect the community by deterring other developers from participating. For his part, Linus has made it clear that he feels little need to change his tone on the list:
The fact is, people need to know what my position on things
are. And I can't just say "please don't do that", because people
won't listen. I say "On the internet, nobody can hear you being
subtle", and I mean it.
And I definitely am not willing to string people along, either. I've had that happen too - not telling people clearly enough that I don't like their approach, they go on to re-architect something, and get really upset when I am then not willing to take their work. Sarah responded that one can be clear without being abusive; she also suggested that Linus use his power directly (by threatening not to pull patches from the offending maintainer) rather than using strong words. For what it's worth, Linus did acknowledge, later in the discussion, that one of his more famous rants was "Not my proudest moment." Unsurprisingly, there were few concrete outcomes from the discussion (which is still in progress as of this writing). Sarah has called for the creation of a document (written by "a trusted third party") describing acceptable conduct in the kernel community. There will almost certainly be a Kernel Summit discussion on this topic; as Linus pointed out, this kind of process-oriented discussion is the reason why the Kernel Summit exists in the first place.
Some analysisThere are, it seems, some simple statements that should not be overly controversial in the context of a discussion like this. Most people prefer an environment where people are pleasant to one another to an environment where people are harsh or abusive. An abusive community can certainly deter some potential contributors from joining; consider, for example, whether OpenBSD might have more developers if its communications were more congenial. Various development communities have set out to improve the quality of their communications, sometimes with clear success. How do these thoughts apply in the kernel context? It is worth pointing out that this is not the first time people have expressed concerns about how the kernel community works; it was, for example, a topic of discussion at the 2007 Kernel Summit. Numerous developers have pushed for improvements in how kernel people communicate; these efforts have happened both publicly and in private. Even Linus has said, at times, that he wished the discussion on linux-kernel were more constructive. Your editor will assert that, in fact, the situation has improved considerably over the years. Much of that improvement is certainly due to the above-mentioned efforts. Abusive personalities have been confronted, managers have occasionally been contacted, trolls have been ignored, and more. The improvement is also certainly a result of changes in the kernel development community. We are as a whole older (and thus more restrained); the community is also much more widely paid to do its work, with the result that image-conscious companies have an incentive to step in when their developers go overboard. The tone is far more "professional," and true personal attacks are rare (though examples can certainly be found if one looks). Over the years, the kernel development community has continued to grow. One might argue that it would have grown much more rapidly with a different culture in its mailing lists, but that is hard to verify. It is true, though, that much of that growth has come from parts of the world where people are said to be especially sensitive to direct criticism. For all its troubles, the kernel community is still sufficiently approachable that over 3,000 people per year are able to get their work reviewed and merged. That said, the kernel is still viewed as one of the harshest communities in the free software world. It seems fairly clear that the tone of the discussion could bear some improvement, and that the current state of affairs repels some people who could otherwise be valuable contributors. So efforts like Sarah's to make things better should be welcomed; they deserve full consideration on the part of the community's leaders. But this kind of effort will be working against some constraints that make this kind of social engineering harder. One of them is that the kernel absolutely depends on the community's unwillingness to accept substandard code. The kernel has to work in a huge variety of settings for an unbelievable number of use cases. It must integrate the work of thousands of developers and grow rapidly while staying maintainable over the long term. It is a rare software project indeed that has attained the size of the kernel and sustained its rate of change without collapsing under its own weight. If we want to still have a viable kernel a decade from now, we must pay close attention to the code that we merge now. So it must be possible for developers to speak out against code that they see as being unsuitable for merging into the kernel. And the sad fact is that, sometimes, this message must be conveyed forcefully. Some developers are either unwilling to listen or they fail to receive the full message; as Rusty Russell put it:
You have to be harsh with code: People mistake politeness for
uncertainty. Whenever I said 'I prefer if you XYZ' some proportion
didn't realize I meant 'Don't argue unless you have new facts: do
XYZ or go away.' This wastes my time, so I started being explicit.
The size of the community, the fact that some developers are unwilling to toss aside code they have put a lot of time into, and pressure from employers can all lead to a refusal to hear the message and, as a consequence, the need to be explicit. Any attempt to make it harder for developers to express their thoughts on the code could damage the community and, more to the point, is almost certain to fail. That said, Rusty concluded the above message with this advice: "But be gentle with people. You've already called their baby ugly." There are certainly times when the community could be gentler with people without compromising on their code. That, of course, is exactly what people like Sarah are asking for. Whether a documented code of conduct would push things in that direction is hard to say, though. Simply obtaining a consensus on the contents of such a document is likely to be a difficult process, though the discussion itself could be helpful in its ability to produce counterexamples. But, even if such a document were to be created, it would run a real risk of languishing under Documentation/ unheeded. Communities that have tried to establish codes of conduct have also typically included enforcement mechanisms in the mix. Groups like Fedora's "hall monitors" or Gentoo's "proctors" typically have the ability to ban users from lists and IRC channels when abuses are seen. Mozilla's community participation guidelines describe a number of escalation mechanisms. It is not at all clear that the kernel is amenable to any such enforcement mechanism, and, indeed, Sarah does not call for one; instead, she suggests:
Some people won't agree with everything in that document. The
point is, they don't have to agree. They can read the document,
figure out what the community expects, and figure out whether they
can modify their behavior to match. If they are unwilling to
change, they simply don't have to work with the developers who have
signed it.
It is far from clear, though, that a document calling for any sort of substantive change would acquire signatures from a critical mass of kernel developers, or that developers who are unwilling to sign the document would be willing (or able) to avoid dealings with those who have. So proponents of more polite discourse on linux-kernel are almost certainly left with tools like calling out undesirable behavior and leading by example — precisely the methods that have been applied thus far. Those methods have proved to be frustratingly slow at best, but, helped by the overall changes in the development community, they have proved effective. It was probably about time for another campaign for more civility to push the community subtly in the right direction. Previous efforts have managed to make things better without wrecking the community's ability to function efficiently; indeed, we have only gotten better at kernel development over time. With luck and some support from the community, we should see similar results this time. (Log in to post comments)
Thick skins Posted Jul 17, 2013 17:17 UTC (Wed) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link]
> Perhaps I have a thick skull and/or skin, but it doesn't really bother me. Or perhaps I'm just too much of an old kernel fart these days, so I grew accustomed to it.
I don't participate in LKML, but I've noticed from other development communities that I have a thick skin. I hate having to have a thick skin (partly because I get defensive and end up continuing the aggressive tenor of conversations, partly because it's not enjoyable even if it's sufferable), and I also know folks who would be great contributors who simply don't.
I think those of us with thick skins should stop excusing abusive behavior simply because we can take it, and that we should definitely stop implying to new folks that a thick skin is effectively required to join the community.
Thick skins Posted Jul 17, 2013 18:05 UTC (Wed) by BradReed (subscriber, #5917) [Link]
If you get defensive, then I would say you have a thin skin and not a thick skin.
Thick skins Posted Jul 17, 2013 18:09 UTC (Wed) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link]
That might be true. I'm certainly willing to argue my point, loudly (which is a behavior that I've seen LKML encourage in the past -- "we want to make sure you really believe that the thing you're proposing is correct, so we'll force you to argue it"). In any case, I'm reasonably unlikely to be personally hurt or offended, and there should be somewhere in this skin analogy for the people who get hurt and give up.
Then again, I _have_ given up on LKML, so.
Thick skins Posted Jul 17, 2013 19:03 UTC (Wed) by aliguori (subscriber, #30636) [Link]
A thick skin is needed in just about every community. If you spend time working hard on something and someone tells you that you are completely wrong in a blunt fashion, it hurts.
But there is a difference between say, "This approach is completely wrong" and saying "YOU ARE F*CKING STUPID".
The later is being abusive. That's not a question of thick skin, it's a question of willingness to tolerate being abused.
Thick skins Posted Jul 17, 2013 19:36 UTC (Wed) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link]
Yes, there's certainly a difference there.
I've been told, and told people, "This approach is completely wrong" couched inside "I value and appreciate the time you spent on it, and don't think that you are dumb." I've been in productive communities where you don't need a thick skin, because people value each other and their happiness in that community, and out of that, productivity and good technical decisions naturally happen.
When I'm lucky, instead of directly being told "This approach is completely wrong" (or telling people that, conversely), I'm simply asked enough questions to realize that for myself, and nobody is hurt. This approach requires patience and trust, and a general feeling that others in the project value you as well as the project. So it's understandable that in volunteer communities, people don't tend to go for that approach. But it's worth the long-term investment, where possible, and we should acknowledge that we're hurting people when we don't.
Thick skins Posted Jul 18, 2013 3:05 UTC (Thu) by NightMonkey (subscriber, #23051) [Link]
But they killed Socrates, too! :)
Thick skins Posted Jul 18, 2013 16:37 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
Seconded; you can tell someone in no uncertain terms that they've done something wrong and should make sure it never happens again, and even make it clear that they should have known better, without going on a tirade against them personally. *That's* what it means to keep things professional.
Thick skins Posted Jul 18, 2013 2:13 UTC (Thu) by axboe (subscriber, #904) [Link]
> I think those of us with thick skins should stop excusing abusive behavior simply because we can take it, and that we should definitely stop implying to new folks that a thick skin is effectively required to join the community.
I am not "excusing abusive behavior" because _I/_ can take it. I don't find Linus' behavior abusive at all, that was my point. I speculate that it is _perhaps_ because I have thick skin, or perhaps it's because I'm used to it. Or maybe it's a cultural thing. I don't know.
Fact is, sometimes you do need thick skin to survive. And sometimes you should not take things at face value at all.
Thick skins Posted Jul 18, 2013 6:21 UTC (Thu) by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935) [Link]
I also find Linus's behavior rarely if ever abusive, also because usually he's quite polite towards people that are trusted. (Frankly not always, but in general that is true).
But I was just now skimming the "recent patches" on LWN and found this:
> So you try to sell that qrwlock as a replacement for ticket spinlocks,
The rest of the message contains many reasonable and insightful observations, but is it really necessary to talk about "guess based drivel" and accuse the poster of faking/withholding experimental data?
I call *this* lack of professionalism (and also the ARM example linked to in the article). I'd take a million swear words, it doesn't matter if English or Italian or Finnish, over this.
Thick skins, and women Posted Jul 18, 2013 23:21 UTC (Thu) by brianomahoney (subscriber, #6206) [Link]
I am sorry, I go far beyond axboe, this is a storm in a thimble, Linus is often very rude and usually right.
This silly woman should STFU and stop working on the kernel and go back to sandal knitting.
I for one am sick and tired of special case identity politics and PC. from women. They want to play, then play don't start asking to change the rules
Thick skins, and women Posted Jul 18, 2013 23:36 UTC (Thu) by andresfreund (subscriber, #69562) [Link]
Now *this* is a prime example of toxic bullshit.
*Plonk*
FWIW, there are loads of discussions on -lk where I find the tone inappropriate, but usually it's not the ones where Linus got fed-up but longer standing personal things between people.
Thick skins, and women Posted Jul 20, 2013 14:08 UTC (Sat) by lemmings (subscriber, #53618) [Link]
Your misogynistic comments are not acceptable in any community of decent human beings. A basic capacity for empathy should demonstrate to you why that is the case.
Also, Sarah's message had absolutely nothing to do with her gender anyway so your comments are even further off the mark.
Decent human beings are sick and tired of putting up with jerks like you.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 17:39 UTC (Wed) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link]
It's hard to sell that kind of "prefessionalism" upstream when arguably the benevolent dictator's most revered online videos is of him flipping the bird towards the camera.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 19:53 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]
I believe that's the most important item glossed over in this whole discussion. Linus sets the tone of LKML and the whole kernel development process. Without his buy in, little will change. As Rusty said, you can be firm without being rude.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 13:46 UTC (Thu) by alankila (subscriber, #47141) [Link]
I believe that you will never change Linus unless you can convince him that emotional responses that seem justified at the heat of the moment are inappropriate. I think there is significant resistance on his part to this idea, and I suspect this is part of the "bad" you have to accept with the "good" when it comes to him.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 14:08 UTC (Thu) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
Linus most important trait is being pragmatic, so let's analyse this from a pragmatical point of view:
Being occasionally rude:
Being always polite:
And a few facts:
- The LKML is one of the busiest in the world.
Feel free to add your own opinions.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 21:43 UTC (Thu) by diederich (subscriber, #26007) [Link]
'Being always polite'? I think a lot of benefit could come from Linus in specific, and LKML in general, agreeing to the the simple paradigm that, all other things being equal, being nice is better than being nasty.
'Being always polite' is a worse state, by far, than where LKML is right now.
It goes a long ways when people say, "I will make some effort to make my tone more pleasant."
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 21:59 UTC (Thu) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]
> all other things being equal, being nice is better than being nasty.
I think that's exactly how the people on the LKML behave today, unless you can bring proof that people are nasty all (or most of) the time.
The LKML is archived. Just start at any random point and count messages until you find some cursing or nasty behavior. Repeat a few times. You can call it Guerrero's metric if you want. Is the average is less than 2?
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 3:35 UTC (Fri) by diederich (subscriber, #26007) [Link]
I don't think LKML is rife with nastiness. But there's definitely some, and what I'm opposed to is the idea that it's ok for some people to be unpleasant, even rarely, if they're very good at what they do.
Linus is a fantastic leader in many ways. By his own admission, he's a bit of a technical hot-head, more so in the past than now. In my mind, it's such a tiny delta to say, "I am a hot-head, and I'll make some effort to tone things down." Rather than justifying (very rare) unpleasant behaviour.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 23:28 UTC (Thu) by brianomahoney (subscriber, #6206) [Link]
Concur, see above, this silly woman is either motivated by power and status or just cant conceive that not all of us agree with her world view, if she has something USEFUL to say, say it.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 13:36 UTC (Fri) by emunson (subscriber, #44357) [Link]
This is a perfect example of lots of negativity with no addition to the discussion. We would have been better off without the addition of the patronizing sexism and people would be more willing to listen to you. Instead, the community now gets to write you off as a jerk who relies on being bombastic rather than right.
I have contributed, I have been flamed by both Peter Z and Linus, neither really bothered me because I felt that (in my case) they were attacking the admittedly poor code quality. But your statement is far different and is of the type being discussed. You seem incapable of engaging with the idea so you attack the person. Sad, really.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 21, 2013 18:55 UTC (Sun) by hirnbrot (guest, #89469) [Link]
>We would have been better off without the addition of the patronizing sexism
Where was the actual _sexism_ in that? They just mentioned her gender - replace "silly woman" with "silly person" and the message is the same.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 21, 2013 18:59 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
If that was the case, why bother introducing the gender? When was the last time you heard "silly man" in similar arguments?
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 21, 2013 19:42 UTC (Sun) by hirnbrot (guest, #89469) [Link]
I agree that when it's not important you should leave it out - however, languages being what they are, it sometimes flows better _with_ gender than without (e.g. singular "they" being somewhat uncommon).
However, I was just talking about that one particular comment, and having read the other comments by that particular person in this thread, it's very clearly a case of sex- and/or troll-ism.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 25, 2013 22:52 UTC (Thu) by stevenb (guest, #11536) [Link]
Does "wrote most of the USB3.0 code" count as "something useful to say" to you? Sarah is not just a random person sprouting a discussion on lkml, she's been around for quite some time.
As for your comment: Silly is as silly does...
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 11:43 UTC (Fri) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
I'll add
Being always 'polite':
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 17:54 UTC (Wed) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]
this should be an amusing thread
should linus try to be more diplomatic? i suppose. telling people their volunteer contribution sucks in a diplomatic way will always be challenging, and the single response from linus doesn't seem to indicate that he is interested in behavior modification.
everyone has the freedom to unsubscribe. there are no employment contracts, w2s, employer-employee relationships between linus and those who volunteer patch submissions. everyone is free to exit the process at any time, or just take the code and start anew. the captain of the boat won't get far if all the rowers abandon ship.
it would be nice if everyone on the list would consent to some basic ground rules, and in short order, as i presume there will be a major backlash against any trend that seeks to take the lkml too far off-topic.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 18:14 UTC (Wed) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]
I have no major problem whatsoever with people telling me that my code sucks *censored* through heavily-clogged straws. I can deal.
I do have a major problem with people telling me that *I* did that when I wrote my code, much less insinuating that I do it habitually.
The line can be blurry at times. It certainly depends on the recipient's cultural background. Professional courtesy requires erring on the side of caution.
I stopped participating in Debian discussions umpteen years ago, not because I couldn't take it, but because I didn't want to subject myself to the kind of abrasive language that was then common there. (Things have since improved, though I refuse to quantify.)
The bottom line is that the kernel community (a) does get older and (b) is not especially diverse. IMHO, if we don't want to have major problems in ten years because maintainers are leaving for age and/or burn-out reasons, we need to increase the appeal of participating *now*.
Of course, a Code of Conduct by itself will not by itself increase the appeal of kernel programming to people who are not western, white, and male. But it cannot exactly hurt either.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 19:00 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
> increase the appeal of kernel programming to people who are not western, white, and male. But it cannot exactly hurt either.
I actually think that this is a corollary to the main point, the abusive behavior is what is in question and it is not something that is discriminatorily directed at non-western, non-white, non-male developers on LKML. A scaling back of the abuse will make LKML more welcoming to all professional developers, including those who are not western, white and male, but especially those who don't feel the need to tolerate others abusive bullshit.
On skin thickness Posted Jul 18, 2013 3:44 UTC (Thu) by zblaxell (subscriber, #26385) [Link] Indeed.Some western, white, male, professional, etc. people have to subscribe to LKML and interact with developers there in order to be verbally abused. Other people get their quota of abuse from non-LKML sources without making any special effort to receive it. Abuse is not discriminatorily directed at these various groups, but is discriminatorily received by them. There also seems to be some warped social status exchange going on. In a group it's usually a privilege to have an elite's attention at all, and if that attention leads to a response in public so much the better. Getting an emotional and memorable response (i.e. an abusive one) from an elite elevates the recipient's status among members of the group--but only members of the group that understand the structure of this interaction will see it this way. Outsiders see only one stranger hurling public abuse at another for no apparent reason.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 18:42 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
There are actually quite a few replies from Linus in this thread.
It's actually well worth taking the time to go ane read. (although since it's still going on, you may want to wait a bit or you will end up tracking new posts to several different subthreads)
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 8:34 UTC (Thu) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link] should linus try to be more diplomatic?The real problem is not Linus's well known antics. I can take the bad with the good in Linus's case, because Linus is Linus. You know, the Linus. Broke the mould after they made him and all that. The real problem is people who are not Linus, but feel entitled or even obligated to act just as antisocial as Linus. These are the people who are primarily responsible for turning LKML toxic. If it was just Linus acting up from time to time and everybody else carrying on in a civilized adult manner, LKML would never have earned the reputation it now has. Let me add my own data point. A major reason I dropped out of the kernel community for three years and did other things was the toxic environment. I could name names, but I won't. (You know who you are.) To be sure, this was not the major reason I dropped out... the actual major reason was, when I joined a hedge fund one of the conditions was that I stop contributing to open source. Of course that was not forever, but it is telling that after I came up for air from the even more caustic financial world, I did not choose to go back to LKML. I went and did something fun for a year instead, where contributors are actually respectful to each other. (Computational geometry if you want to know.) The only reason I came back to the kernel community is because somebody I respect (Hirofumi) asked me to. Now I am glad to be back, but I sure was not coming back on my own. And I still feel terrible about the toxic environment on LKML, and the people who make it that way. I do believe that Hirofumi would agree with me. Just my personal data point. Carry on. Regards, Daniel
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 14:06 UTC (Thu) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link]
Would that, by any chance, be about requests to <gasp> turn htree code into something more or less readable? They did *not* start toxic; it only got to the point of really unpleasant conversations about your taste after your directly expressed opinion that taste was optional, because, you know, htree appears to work and WTF do all those unreasonable people want, anyway? Functions somewhat smaller than 400 lines of spaghetti? If somebody can't follow those, they are wimps and that's that; you won't be wasting time on that...
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 20:24 UTC (Thu) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
It wasn't you Al, though it easily could have been. However you are doing an excellent job right now of demonstrating classic toxic style. Sit back and look at your post. Did you attack a) the HTree code or b) me? Right. You attacked me. Please do not do that again. Ever. I am sure you are smart enough to catch yourself before you hit send next time.
Let's get something else clear. Cleaning up HTree is not my job, nobody pays me for that. My job was inventing it, thus handing Ext2/3/4 a new lease on life, and making it work well (many thanks to Ted for supplying the nasty telldir bit). Don't get me wrong, I find the HTree code style as cringe worthy as anyone else. And for the record, I often cringe when I read your code, think about that one please.
Cleaning up HTree is something I might have become interested in, if the environment were less toxic. Without monetary reward, what is my reward? The abuse stops? Sorry, not enough in itself. Ted is the Ext4 maintainer, he gets paid full time for that. If you want HTree cleaned up, talk to him. You might start by asking why Andreas's cleanup/generalization patches from Lustre still aren't merged.
Or instruct a kernel newbie on how to clean up HTree stylistically, that accomplishes the dual purpose of instructing the newbie (and perhaps bringing in some new blood, goodness knows we need it) and reshaping it to your taste.
Finally, you should read about Shardmap, which will obsolete HTree except for legacy volumes. See, you actually *want* me spending my time on stuff like Shardmap as opposed to rolling around in the mud and the blood and the beer, as you try to bite off a piece of my ear.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 2:19 UTC (Fri) by jimparis (subscriber, #38647) [Link]
> > Would that, by any chance, be about requests to <gasp> turn htree code into something more or less readable? They did *not* start toxic; it only got to the point of really unpleasant conversations about your taste after your directly expressed opinion that taste was optional, because, you know, htree appears to work and WTF do all those unreasonable people want, anyway? Functions somewhat smaller than 400 lines of spaghetti? If somebody can't follow those, they are wimps and that's that; you won't be wasting time on that...
> However you are doing an excellent job right now of demonstrating classic toxic style. Sit back and look at your post. Did you attack a) the HTree code or b) me? Right. You attacked me.
I find this really interesting because it shows that there can be a huge difference in how a message is interpreted.
I know nothing about you or HTree or previous disagreements. When I read Al's message, what I got out of it was:
1) htree code is unreadable
My thought after reading it was "wow, sounds like htree code was really crappy", _not_ "wow, sounds like this daniel guy is terrible".
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 6:14 UTC (Fri) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
He was justifying being rude, pure and simple. The comments on the code are merely thin decoration of a personal attack. This: "it only got to the point of really unpleasant conversations about your taste after your directly expressed opinion that taste was optional". Count the fallacies. Then note your selective interpretation.
Also: "did not start toxic", which clearly implies that the discourse did turn toxic. To tell the truth, I don't remember anything about it, except for not feeling in any way compelled to "work for the kernel" when not being paid to do so, after I had already made a major contribution. In the event, I think Ted went in and made some cosmetic changes to it. Good. He was getting paid to do that, I wasn't. See, everything was working fine except for one thing: the toxic behaviour on the sidelines.
Also, how do you know HTree code is actually crappy? Because Al said so? Did you read it? Did you see the part where I think Al's code is ugly? I mean it. Cosmetic beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And honestly, beauty is secondary to the code being good.
And the code is good in spite of Al smearing it (and by implication smearing me). It is in fact the fastest directory indexing code in the known universe, with something like one bug turning up over the last ten years, that being a year or so after going into service. For the record, I did "come out of retirement" and help fix that. It mattered, you see.
Anyway, I told Al it wasn't him and I meant it. I never expected him to act visibly defensive about whatever he was thinking of, which I have long since forgotten.
But here we have another point: certain people feel justified in attacking contributors who are strictly volunteers. My lord. Where on earth does that come from? In the Tux3 project I have gotten some great contributions from really talented people, and of course I want more. I don't browbeat them to get more. See? Basic principle of decency.
Now here you are, jumping on the side of toxic entitlement. Try this: say thank you for that crucial piece of the Linux tapestry I provided. And think hard about whether the kernel would have gotten more like that from me and others if the culture was a little less toxic.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 12:14 UTC (Fri) by tytso (subscriber, #9993) [Link]
The htree code was significantly cleaned up before it got merged -- by me. That was a special case, though. because we very much wanted the feature, and it was clear you wouldn't do it. If you think what is there now isn't great, it was ten times worse before I was done getting it to the point where I was comfortable putting the changes into mainline.
It is *not* the maintainer's responsibility to clean up, rewrite, and merge in every single code submission. That just doesn't scale. There have been features that have never made it into ext4 simply because the submitter couldn't get the code cleaned up enough.
Also, for the record, I am not paid to the ext4 maintainer. Google is kind enough to let me spend a certain amount of my time on it --- but it's not what pays my salary. And my hats are off to many of the other ext4 contributors who go above and beyond what is strictly needed "for their company", but who then make their code contributions clean enough and general enough that it is fit for the upstream kernel.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 18:57 UTC (Fri) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
My advice to you, Ted, is that if your Google manager ever states that working on Ext4 is not part of your job description, you should leave for a more enlightened employer. Obviously, there are many who would be happy to have you.
Thanks for "cleaning up" HTree to your taste. Bear in mind that it might not have been to my taste. And indeed, I have issues with the taste in that code myself, but curiously, my issues seem to be completely different ones than your issues. Moral of the story: taste is a subjective thing.
One thing is abundantly clear, and we should get this straight: maintainers should not be assigning make-work projects to active contributors. It is a most excellent way to turn an active contributor into an ex-contributor. Instead, try to use other means at your disposal. For example, put an intern on it. I know you can.
Ted, you may not realize it but you are perpetuating the toxic culture in several ways right now:
1) You should not have been harassing me about cosmetic changes at any time, and you should not be justifying it now. If a polite suggestion results in me going in and making a series of cosmetic changes to bring the code up to "kernel standard" (whatever that is, the kernel is full of ugly code written by the same people who complain about ugliness in the code of others) then fine. Everybody happy. But harassment - and that is exactly what it was - is way over the top.
2) You should politely let this particular matter drop instead of dragging it on forever and confirming to the world that the rumoured toxic culture does in fact exist.
3) You should avoid fomenting tension in public amongst community members who are supposed to be setting an example. Please email me privately if you want to continue this thread, otherwise, beer is on me at the next meet up.
4) Mobbing. That is the technical term for it. Recognize and actively defuse, whether it happens in your own thread or somebody else's.
By the way, what about those patches from Andreas? As I understand it, they do clean up some substantive issues, such as the arbitrary limitation to two level trees.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 20:12 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
> maintainers should not be assigning make-work projects to active contributors.
one person's "make-work" project is another persons "critical for long term maintainability" project.
It's _very_ common for people to some to an open-source project and hand over a bunch of code to be implemented.
It's almost unheard of for the same person to be involved a decade later to fix or clarify that same code.
As a result, the maintainers (many of who _have_ been around for a long time) are FAR more concerned about maintainability issues than new contributers.
Sometimes the maintainer will do the work to convert a contribution to be more maintainable, but as Ted notes, that doesn't scale. What the maintainer needs to do is to push back on the contributer to get them to improve the submission.
In most cases, the contributer does so, and their next contribution is better (requiring less change).
Sometimes, the maintainer will ask the contributer to fix something else that the contributer sees as related to the contribution. sometimes the contributer does so and the result is much better, sometimes the contributer doesn't do so and their change goes in anyway, and other times the contributer refuses and goes away, and their change doesn't go in. All of these are acceptable results
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 20, 2013 7:52 UTC (Sat) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
You are being rather presumptuous, assuming that Ted's cleanups were critical for long term maintainability.
I will give you this: Ted's legendary hack to make telldir/seekdir work was if fact critical for long term usage of HTree, or even short term usage. But I have always said that, haven't I. Now maybe you should go read Ted's telldir code, then come here and tell me more of your theories about long term maintainability. Dare you.
By the way, did you see the rule 4 above, no mobbing? Please think about how you might have worded your comment so that it does not come across as a defence of the right to abuse/harass/whatever toxic behavior LKML has earned a reputation for.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 20, 2013 8:20 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
you made up those rules, I never agreed to them.
By your definition, anyone who argues with you is now guilty of 'mobbing' and violating the rules. This is exactly the type of rules gamesmanship that makes people very reluctant to allow any formal rules to be defined.
As for maintainability, where there is disagreement between contributors and existing long-term maintainers (especially when there are multiple maintainers talking), the maintainers get the benefit of the doubt. They have earned it over time.
In programming and system administration, people come into existing situations and always blame the prior person for the problems they see, and for that person being short-sighted.
When a person stays in a job long enough, they look at something and have the same reaction, but then realize that they were the one responsible, and they can remember why they did things that way. After a few times of this, they get MUCH more careful about what they are willing to accept, because they realize that they will have to maintain it over the long term.
Until you've been on something long enough to be in the position of replacing your original work with the next generation (and seeing the next generation of co-workers and their reaction to your prior work), youreally don't think about maintainability in the same way.
In my case, it's system and network administration and design, for Linus and his Lieutenants, it's maintainability of the kernel code. There are a LOT of things that they did 15 years ago that they would not accept from anyone today
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 20, 2013 8:32 UTC (Sat) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
Feh. You are just sticking up for the current toxic culture, including mobbing. Let Ted argue his own points please. Oh wait, it was Al. Oh wait, it's a mob, including you.
Your post is full of fallacies but we already wasted enough bandwidth on this, you find them please.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 20, 2013 8:39 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I actually expected you to dismiss anything that I said.
i also expect that you will dismiss anything that Ted says.
After all, anyone who doesn't agree with you must be blindly in favour of abusing people.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 20, 2013 8:53 UTC (Sat) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
You posted a patronizing lecture, proceeding from an assumption that is dubious at best. Your behaviour is toxic, and you react defensively to that being pointed out, rather than doing the right thing and considering how you might become part of the solution instead of part of the problem. By the way, you never said thank you. Good night.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 20, 2013 13:47 UTC (Sat) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
" Your behaviour is toxic, and you react defensively to that being pointed out, rather than doing the right thing and considering how you might become part of the solution instead of part of the problem"
Have you ever hear of that wonderful technical invention called : 'The mirror'.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 20, 2013 20:35 UTC (Sat) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
Your behaviour is called "blaming the victim". Part of the toxic pattern.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 20, 2013 20:39 UTC (Sat) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
And further, you joined in the mobbing. And also forgot to say thank you. Time to go get that mirror out.
By the way, what is your real name? Are you a kernel developer?
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 20:05 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]
I've seen the behaviour Daniel is exhibiting here, before, here on LWN.
It was aimed at me, a couple years ago, in a thread also prominent for pointing me to Derailing For Dummies to acquire an education in how not to do ... something I wasn't doing in the first place.
Old timers will remember the thread; *EVERYONE* is invited not to, um, derail *this* thread into that one.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 20, 2013 13:44 UTC (Sat) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"By the way, did you see the rule 4 above, no mobbing?"
Now who's being presumptuous ?
"your comment so that it does not come across as a defence of the right to abuse/harass/whatever toxic behavior LKML "
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 20, 2013 18:25 UTC (Sat) by tytso (subscriber, #9993) [Link]
The cleanup I was referring to wasn't the telldir/seekdir hack, but the fact that the code was deeply nested with huge numbers of goto commands. I fixed it by refactoring the code and adding some functions, so the flow of control was more understandable. I don't consider such changes to be "cosmetic" by the way; that would be changing the names of variables, cleaning up english/spelling mistakes, fixing whitespace. And I do a certain amount of that too. The changes I was referring to, and the problems which Al alluded to, were not cosmetic problems, but things which are fundamental to the code's long-term maintainability.
People who are curious what the difference might be are invited to look at the your original code submission, and compare and contrast that to with is in ext3 and ext4 today.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 21, 2013 20:26 UTC (Sun) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
I know that Ted, and that can be plainly seen from my post. You should also realize that I consider your "cleanups" purely cosmetic, however I would never dream of claiming that you should not have done it. It made you happy, you see. It was pointless to me, since I regarded the original as well within the bounds of what any professional ought to be able to read without effort.
Maybe I am wrong about that. However if you want to see a lot of long functions, go read the FreeBSD code. Same type of subsystem. Multi-hundred like functions everywhere you look. They like it that way. I like it either way: I am generally more concerned about the substance.
Taste is very much subjective. If you want to exercise yours in the subsystem you maintain, then by all means do so. That is your business, not mine. If you do exercise your taste, you can do so in a polite way.
Anyway, it is clear that we differ. I am saying, clearly cosmetic, you are saying fundamental. Well, the great thing is, you were able to change it so you were happy. Why you were berating me then, and still are now, is beyond me. Now we as a community have put a word to such behaviour: toxic. And you are not by any means a prominent offender. This is a great time to sit back, take a deep breath, and ask yourself why you felt compelled to act that way, and why you feel compelled to defend it now. I am telling you it is harmful and hurtful, you respond by doing it more. It is not even the real you, this is something more akin to road rage, the main difference being "behind a keyboard" as opposed to "behind a steering wheel".
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 22:30 UTC (Thu) by nyc (subscriber, #91222) [Link]
This was never a big issue for me while I was still an active contributor. I don't know if I'm so much thick-skinned as just oblivious. But there is a large issue with the comment to which I'm replying:
> everyone has the freedom to unsubscribe. there are no employment
This putative "freedom" is preposterous. A number of the industrial contributors' job performance is judged at least partially on community acceptance of their work. And it's not that easy to jump ship, especially not in this economy.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 18:05 UTC (Wed) by mylogic (subscriber, #75038) [Link]
I don't really understand the argument here.
First of all, "violent and threatening"? Really? Being told to "SHUT UP" by the world's biggest nerd over the Internet is *hardly* a violent and threatening situation. Do they really feel threatened, or did someone's feelings get hurt? Secondly, one doesn't like how the maintainer of a project maintains, they should maintain their own project. Thirdly, from the examples provided, it seems like they needed to be yapped at.
Sometimes certain systems, that are complex and perform a crucial function, *require* hard-nosed leaders. I'm sure military officers don't apologize for hurting feelings...
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 18:20 UTC (Wed) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]
The LKML is not a military boot camp. Participants don't abdicate their civil rights when they join in.
There's a difference between telling people, in strong words if necessary(!), that their code requires improvement before it can be merged -- and writing a put-down that discourages them from ever trying again. IMHO, long-term the kernel cannot afford the latter.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 18:31 UTC (Wed) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]
> Participants don't abdicate their civil rights when they join in.
private organizations in the US can absolutely discriminate in ways you might find reprehensible. see: the boy scouts. see: any country club that prohibits women members. all legal, as long as the group is private and membership voluntary
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 8:22 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
Linux kernel development has not, is not and very probably will never be US only. So it's irrelevant to this discussion what is allowed in the US and what is not.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 18:26 UTC (Thu) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]
but then the whole context of civil rights is also irrelevant - they are also the product of national legal codes
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 15:28 UTC (Fri) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]
Most countries have libel laws. Not quite as many have laws about offensive or insulting public speech.
In any case, civil laws are supposed to codify what should be generally-accepted polite and/or reasonable behavior. Thus reasonable and polite conduct cannot require the existence, much less content, of any laws; that would be as circular as requiring a running Linux kernel to boot Linux from.
Nevertheless, having a code (legal code, code of conduct) as a reminder for, and if required as a basis for the punishment of, misbehaving people, is a good idea.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 23:10 UTC (Wed) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"Participants don't abdicate their civil rights when they join in."
Please do tell which 'civil right' afford you the 'right not to be offended'
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 10:38 UTC (Thu) by simosx (subscriber, #24338) [Link]
>> "Participants don't abdicate their civil rights when they join in."
> Please do tell which 'civil right' afford you the 'right not to be offended'
He said that participants do not abdicate their civil rights [in general] when they join the Linux kernel development.
And then you twist the message by asking not to go to specifics on which civil rights. ?!?!?! From point to pointless.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 19:01 UTC (Thu) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"And then you twist the message by asking not to go to specifics on which civil rights."
Note: I auto-corrected s/not// in the above otherwise that would not have made any sense.
Certainly... unless that point was pure irrelevant drivel, the author intended it to be relevant to the discussion at hand... hence the question: what 'civil right' does one has to 'abdicate' to be on LKML and/or join the Kernel dev ?
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 14:43 UTC (Fri) by cloose (subscriber, #5066) [Link]
At least in germany it is:
http://dejure.org/gesetze/StGB/185.html
Insult
The offense is punishable with imprisonment up to one year or a fine and, if the insult is committed by means of an assault, punishable by up to two years or a fine.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 17:16 UTC (Fri) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
yep that sound like a winner...
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1994-05-23/news/19941430...
Can wait for that level of absurdity to be enforced on LKML....
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 17:59 UTC (Thu) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link]
> Please do tell which 'civil right' afford you the 'right not to be offended'
This gets right to the heart of it. This argument is the tip of the spear, let the busybody do-gooders ever get a foot in the door and watch how fast things bog down in endless committees (complete with their own mailing lists and wikis) conferences, forums and plans to 'make the Linux and Free Software world a better, more welcoming and diverse[1] place.' Until all actual work stops.
[1] Diverse in the PC sense of course. Where everyone of every race, color, gender identity and (approved) religion comes together in perfect harmony to utterly stamp out any dissenting opinion. Because the one diversity that is forbidden is diversity of thought.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 21:57 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
I've worked in lots of workplaces in which insulting people was beyond the pale. Actually that would be all of them.
In not one was this implemented via 'endless committees', nor was it true that 'everyone of every race, color, gender identity and (approved) religion [came] together in perfect harmony to utterly stamp out any dissenting opinion. Because the one diversity that is forbidden is diversity of thought'.
I find it astonishing that you believe that being asked to not be horrible to people is equivalent to some sort of police state!
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 0:00 UTC (Fri) by Tobu (subscriber, #24111) [Link] Being offended is entirely up to the person being offended, and doesn't have to be motivated by actual insults. It shouldn't be surprising that being offended and making a spectacle of it has become way more popular than insulting people; it's just as nasty to interpersonal relationships, and way less risky.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 0:17 UTC (Fri) by rgmoore (subscriber, #75) [Link] It shouldn't be surprising that being offended and making a spectacle of it has become way more popular than insulting people [Citation Needed] I've certainly seen a lot more nasty insults from LKML- the arena under discussion- than claims of being offended.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 2:51 UTC (Fri) by ajf (subscriber, #10844) [Link] I find it astonishing that you believe that being asked to not be horrible to people is equivalent to some sort of police state!Oh my god, that’s treating other people with respect gone mad!
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 23:50 UTC (Thu) by brianomahoney (subscriber, #6206) [Link]
100% Correct, and this is why I am so dismissive of this stupid woman, iy is like the emmigrants from the Marxist Kommonwealth of Kalifornia, they go elsewhere an defecate again.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 0:25 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] I will say this once only. Desist immediately. You are the one without anything to add to the conversation, and this kind of comment is not welcome here.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 18:24 UTC (Wed) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]
well in fairness the military has its own code of conduct and legal code that is distinct from that of civilian society...but it does have a code of conduct that is written down.
that might be a sane first step, write down a code of conduct for the lkml. writing down a code of conduct does not necessarily imply politeness, it simply gives everyone a point of reference and a guage of expectations.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 10:06 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] Do they really feel threatened, or did someone's feelings get hurt?I love this recent quote from Reg Braithwaite: Hey! If you need to"Tell it like it is without worrying about people's feelings," how come you try so hard to hurt their feelings?It summarizes the attitude towards "feelings" in many toxic communities.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 18:09 UTC (Wed) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
My take is, if it ain't broken, don't fix it! And also: it is better to be right than polite :-)
We have enough professional incompetence to deal with in other places; don't let it overtake the kernel by enforcing a fake code of conduct.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 18:44 UTC (Wed) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link]
I have seen a lot of supposedly working systems and organizations collapse suddenly because they had been broken for a long time but nobody wanted to notice the issues until it was too late.
Not saying that this is the case, but there are a lot of assumptions behind "if it ain't broken."
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 10:45 UTC (Thu) by simosx (subscriber, #24338) [Link]
The Linux kernel is being used in almost every device, so at the moment any affected people will sadly be collateral damage, and new people will appear to take their place. This is wrong.
Firstly, because the Linux kernel development sets the tone for other free software projects. And in other free software projects they are struggling to get contributors. And because they are struggling, those that manage to somewhat make it, are those that respect their contributors.
Secondly, the current brutal attitude forces to have hierarchies. And if for some reason those on the top go away, then there will be no technically mature replacements. If you look back in history and the empires, there was a successful emperor/leader that would conquer the world, and then chaos because no good replacement was there to lead for the next generation.
Ingo posted a very interesting message on this thread Posted Jul 17, 2013 18:58 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
message ID 20130717181440.GA16955@gmail.com
Subject: open conflicts vs. hidden conflicts (was: [ 00/19] 3.10.1-stable review)
<snip>
In short: you are wrong on many levels.
1)
Your notion that conflicts and insults somehow hurt group cooperation is wrong. It is a scientific fact that open conflict _helps_ cooperation while hidden conflict hurts it.
There's a famous psychological study that examined the cooperation patterns within string quartets playing music (Murnighan & Conlon, 1991): it evaluated different string quartets, examining their internal 'politics' and their conflict resolution techniques.
Effective, successful string quartets embraced open conflict: they honestly told each other when they messed up, not avoiding confrontation. Open conflict allowed them to eventually play music as a team, incorporating the concerns of all the musicians.
'Polite' string quartets on the other hand generally played poorer music, because each musician played individually, not as a team. The conflicts were never really resolved.
With a quick search I have not found the original study on the open web, but here's a citation of it:
> " Murnighan 84 Conlon (1991) found that effective string quartets accepted conflict as positive, and incorporated one another's concerns into the final product, whereas less successful quartets typically avoided conflict."
> http://www.delta.gatech.edu/papers/maximizing.pdf
[ I think this study might explain in part why the high tech industry is so strong in northern Europe: honesty pays off. ]
2)
Your notion that insults are harmful because they 'hurt' is misleading to such a level that it's almost wrong.
Insults do hurt of course, but that argument misses the full context: in real life the typical substitute for an avoided open conflict is not singing kumbaya around the camp fire, but _hidden_ conflict.
Hidden, suppressed conflicts, office politics and passive-aggressive behavior are _far_ more harmful than the occasional four letter word:
There was a recent study that showed that 'giving the cold shoulder', 'the silent treatment' and other forms of passive-aggressive violence activate exactly the same brain regions as being physically injured. (!)
The difference between Linus's chiding of maintainers who messed up and 'hidden' conflicts is significant:
1) passive-aggressive violence can go on essentially forever, without outsiders noticing it. You won't notice it even on lkml, and yes, it occurs all the time ...
2) passive-aggressive violence _thrives_ in 'polite', 'professional' environments that supress open conflict. Hidden violence also occurs in a lot of 'polite' open source projects that I know.
3) so the net duration of the conflict is _far_ shorter in the Linus case.
I will pick an honest, colorful Linus flame over workplace mobbing or other forms of substitute passive-aggressive violence any time of the day.
3)
I couldn't cite a single example where Linus flamed me unprovoked, unjustified, just for the sake of letting off steam or any other petty reason. I've not seen Linus flame newbies and I've not seen him micro-manage people over unimportant details.
In the large majority of colorful flames the flame was over something that _matters to the kernel_ - and heck do I prefer a top level maintainer who cares and who is honest, over someone who is indifferent or sloppy ...
Ingo posted a very interesting message on this thread Posted Jul 17, 2013 19:13 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Ingo's message came in after the article was written; that's the hazard of writing about ongoing conversations. Here it is for those wanting to see it in original form.
Ingo posted a very interesting message on this thread Posted Jul 18, 2013 8:18 UTC (Thu) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link]
Ingo's message is indeed a very good reading. It seems to me that it would be a good idea to update the article with a reference to it.
Ingo posted a very interesting message on this thread Posted Jul 18, 2013 10:10 UTC (Thu) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
Just looks like skillful justification of bad acting to me.
The same red herring as always. Posted Jul 17, 2013 19:30 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (subscriber, #56129) [Link]
open conflict != insults and verbal abuse. It's perfectly possible to communicate unambiguously without resorting to swear words and verbal abuse, and if Linus and Ingo aren't capable of that, then it's due to their lack of communication skills.
Example:
The same red herring as always. Posted Jul 17, 2013 21:11 UTC (Wed) by rbuchmann (subscriber, #52862) [Link]
I fully disagree.
It's almost impossible to communicate unambigously, no matter wich words are used.
I don't know if the four-sides model of communication is well non outside Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-sides_model.
"Ok, what kind of ass-hat idiotic thing is this?" and "The following is a bad idea" don't tell the same story and they are both ambigous.
I think that somethink like "Greg, you really disappointed me because I know you know better" would be more clear and polite (my interpretation comes from the Linus' explanations regarding his swearing referenced elsewhere).
The same red herring as always. Posted Jul 17, 2013 21:37 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] I think that somethink like "Greg, you really disappointed me because I know you know better" would be more clear and polite Are you really sure? To me Linus version translates to "Greg, you are really slow today and you are doing something really stupid, please stop and we'll be able to work from there" while your version translates to "Greg, you've disappointed me so much I can no longer even express it, I don't even have any swear words left and thus I don't know how I can continue to work with you". I will expect to see something like "I remove you from list maintainers and will no longer pull patches from you. This is the end." in the next line. P.S. And this not just my opinion as you can see.
The same red herring as always. Posted Jul 17, 2013 23:16 UTC (Wed) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]
I don't see either of "Ok, what kind of ass-hat idiotic thing is this?" and "No way will I pull this kind of crap" to be abusive.
If he'd written something along the lines of "Ok, what kind of ass-hat idiot wrote this thing?" it would have been abusive though.
I don't mind having my work criticized as long as it's justified. And for Linus to use such words the critique probably is... What I do mind is people calling me stupid if I'd do a bad job (though if I'd keep doing the same kind of bad job over and over it'd be nice to be told that maybe I should look for a different project to work on).
And at least in my case a harsh reaction against shitty code is far more effective to get my attention than something like "This code isn't what I'd expect", "I won't pull this", or similar.
In my opinion the lack of explanation of *why* something is crap is the big problem here, not the use of harsh language. Telling someone that they're doing it wrong, but not telling them what the right way is usually quite unhelpful, unless there's only one other way it could be done or if the proper way of doing things is already documented and part of things that you're expected to have read before submitting code.
So, for instance something like "The coding style here is fucked up beyond repair, go fix!" is enough (since there's a CodingStyle document that everyone who writes kernel code is expected to follow), but "This code is a total clusterfuck, I won't pull this" isn't, since it doesn't convey *why* the code sucks.
The same red herring as always. Posted Jul 18, 2013 6:00 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Telling someone that they're doing it wrong, but not telling them what the right way is usually quite unhelpful, unless there's only one other way it could be done or if the proper way of doing things is already documented and part of things that you're expected to have read before submitting code. This is latter case. If you want to write driver for the hardware then you need to know how said hardware works. And in today's world of level-triggered IRQs devices must be explicitly silenced in IRQ handler before interrupts are enabled again. The code in question violates this fundamental principle. Worse: there are no way to write said code without violating this principle. I don't even know what to compare it to... well, I think "you are supposed to not just hang up wheel on the axis, it must be fastened up with screws, too, or lives will be in danger". Only here screws are not just not attached - bolts are used for fancy ribbons which means that can not ever fasten these screws and make car safe again! I remember how my brother-in-law talked to guys who did that after minor fix in his car - Linus message looked nice in comparison. And I fully understand why: car which loses it's wheels on the highway because someone "honestly forgot" to use screws is not something which should ever happen. Dead machine is less of a problem then dead person I guess which explains why Linus used relatively mild curses here. In my opinion the lack of explanation of *why* something is crap is the big problem here. What lack of details? Linus explained quite well why such design can not be ever implemented correctly. Note: problem here is not even code of this concrete function, but with the fact that offered design requires such function - which in turn guarantees that there will be deadlocks on some systems.
Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy Posted Jul 17, 2013 19:43 UTC (Wed) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link]
Ingo is deliberately conflating conflict and insults, immediately from the get-go.
Yes, of course honest and open disagreement is vital. And even if you're honest and open, if you're insufficiently blunt the communication can be inefficient.
But that can be done better without abuse. Throwing in a bunch of f-bombs and calling the other person names doesn't make the conflict more open and honest or even more blunt. Sarah isn't advocating that core developers stop telling others that their patch is awful, that their approach won't work at all, or that they've completely misunderstood the kernel development process. She's saying that all of these things can be said without telling people "SHUT THE **** UP!" and calling them idiots.
It's quite trivial to change a couple lines of either of the emails Sarah linked in a way that makes them no less blunt but considerably less abusive.
It's conceivable that someone could still try to make a case for abuse- something along the lines of "Linus does this so as to be sufficiently awful and repulsive to scare off people who would waste his time; if he stated his disagreements more simply we'd have more development process scaling issues." But I don't really buy it.
Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy Posted Jul 17, 2013 20:11 UTC (Wed) by biehl (subscriber, #14636) [Link]
"to scare off people who would waste his time"
That is my pet theory. I think swearing is Linuses "No brown M&Ms".
Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy Posted Jul 17, 2013 20:29 UTC (Wed) by Tobu (subscriber, #24111) [Link] It's part of the argument (emphasis mine):From this messageYes. And I do it partly (mostly) because it's who I am, and partly because I honestly despise being subtle or "nice". The fact is, people need to know what my position on things are. And I can't just say "please don't do that", because people won't listen. I say "On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle", and I mean it. And I definitely am not willing to string people along, either. I've had that happen too - not telling people clearly enough that I don't like their approach, they go on to re-architect something, and get really upset when I am then not willing to take their work. Sarah, first off, I don't have that many tools at hand. Secondly, I simply don't believe in being polite or politically correct. And you can point at all those cultural factors where some cultures are not happy with confrontation (and feel free to make it about gender too - I think that's almost entirely cultural too). And please bring up "cultural sensitivity" while at it. And I'll give you back that same "cultural sensitivity". Please be sensitive to _my_ culture too. […]
Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy Posted Jul 17, 2013 21:36 UTC (Wed) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]
I agree with Linus' point about on the internet no-one can hear you being subtle. In fact, in real life people sometimes don't hear you either. For some reason a flat "no" is sometimes too subtle.
I'm surely not the only person who has had to maintain bad code that was committed because everyone was being too polite.
I can completely understand his point about not having that many tools at hand.
Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy Posted Jul 18, 2013 9:43 UTC (Thu) by willnewton (subscriber, #68395) [Link]
I'm not sure I do. Ultimately he can choose not to pull your changes, what could be a stronger tool than that? I don't see why that would have to be accompanied by verbal abuse (not that it usually is of course).
To be perfectly honest I think a bigger issue for new contributors is apathy and indifference. Most new contributors if Linus were to flame them would go out and get a framed copy!
Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy Posted Jul 18, 2013 10:24 UTC (Thu) by Tobu (subscriber, #24111) [Link] Pulling or not pulling is binary. If most of the work in a pull request is useful or necessary, there's pressure to accept the pull request. For someone who has to take hundreds of pull requests, they need to shape the work that gets sent to them by documenting their expectations very clearly, being even more clear when those expectations fail to be met, and if warranted, flaming publicly so others may learn. Documentation/ManagementStyle also mentions ways to diminish the personal impact of flames which is their obvious downside (make them humorous and over the top, reserve them to people who should know better, don't be sanctimonious, spread the love and learn to apologise). The initial topic of the linux-stable thread was expectations and policy for -stable and late -rcs. The policy was strict in both cases, but people were sending a rather higher volume of insufficiently tested non-regression work to Greg; at which point something to the effect of will I need to shout at people? came up.
Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy Posted Jul 18, 2013 16:46 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
You can be unambiguously, unsubtly clear without going on the attack.
I certainly would not argue for passive-aggressive behavior; be clear, but don't be rude.
Perfectly reasonable, unambiguous responses to bad code or even bad patterns of behavior from a contributor:
"I don't want to see code like this ever again."
Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy Posted Jul 22, 2013 20:45 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]
( for the people for whom kernel code is more interesting than pop culture:
In his autobiography _Crazy From The Heat_, David Lee Roth explains why the touring rider for Van Halen's first big 24-semitrailer stadium tour included, buried down around item 126 or so, something like "a bowl of M&M's in the dressing room reception area, with no brown M&Ms".
The *reason* for this item, which looked pretty goofy, and of which much light and fuss was made when it leaked to the public -- and which the band never admitted to at the time, *because it would then stop working* -- was that theirs was the first tour with lots of really heavy equipment rigged way up over top of tens of thousands of audience members, and they were thoughtful enough to realize that if they killed a substantial number of those because someone had not done their job properly, no one would ever do that kind of tour again -- quite aside from it ending their careers and possibly putting them up for manslaughter charges.
So they put the Brown M&M rule in the rider, and that gave them an easy way to check whether the promoter had properly read the rider, and implemented everything on it. They did, in fact, once come in and find brown M&Ms in the bowl, and they stopped everything and did a full inspection of the rig... and as I remember it, did find some dangerous practices, which they had corrected before showtime.
So things like that may in fact have non-obvious but desirable side effects, which drive why they exist. If you need more on this, go watch GI Jane, and find out how hard it is to become a SEAL. And why. And think about how many places the Linux kernel is now. And how many places it's going. )
Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy Posted Jul 27, 2013 21:55 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
So, being vicious to people in a working environment[1] is acceptable because of, uh, Van Halen and brown M&Ms, and also Navy SEALs?
Sorry, not really seeing the connection here.
[1] which has never happened anywhere I have ever worked to the degree it happens on lkml, and I worked in the City of London, a famously vicious place
Ingo posted a very interesting message on this thread Posted Jul 18, 2013 16:58 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
An intentionally adversarial environment requiring active support and defense of ideas does indeed produce far better results than one completely averse to negative feedback.
None of that requires flaming people to a crisp.
Code, sure; people, no. Even if you need to call someone out on a pattern of bad code to stop more from happening in the future, that still doesn't require flaming them.
Ingo posted a very interesting message on this thread Posted Jul 18, 2013 22:07 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] An intentionally adversarial environment requiring active support and defense of ideas does indeed produce far better results than one completely averse to negative feedback.It's also unnecessarily stressful. I for one could not possibly participate in any development process that was 'intentionally adversarial'. How many others are there like me?
Ingo posted a very interesting message on this thread Posted Jul 19, 2013 12:05 UTC (Fri) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"It's also unnecessarily stressful."
So is the 100% PC-US-Coprporate-style, all-day, every day, crap.
"I for one could not possibly participate in any development process that was 'intentionally adversarial'. How many others are there like me? "
I for one could not possibly participate in a 'every opinion is valid' kumbaya development process, how many others are there like me? (yes me too can make an Appeal to the masses argument)
Ingo posted a very interesting message on this thread Posted Jul 19, 2013 14:38 UTC (Fri) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
>> An intentionally adversarial environment requiring active support and defense of ideas does indeed produce far better results than one completely averse to negative feedback.
> It's also unnecessarily stressful. I for one could not possibly participate in any development process that was 'intentionally adversarial'. How many others are there like me?
"Intentionally adversarial" here just means the same as it does in "adversarial legal system": one in which different people argue different ideas or points of view, and those ideas or points of view may get argued against as appropriate, necessitating active advocacy, support, and defense.
Every time a patch submitter is required to say not just what they've changed but *why*, or a reviewer asks for benchmarks proving that the patch helps, or a reviewer says the code isn't clean enough and offers a list of proposed changes, that's what I mean by "adversarial". It doesn't mean the interactions need to be uncivil; it just means ideas are not automatically accepted and untouchable by others. It's OK to say "this is not acceptable".
By contrast, if you completely disallow negative feedback, how can you reject patches to preserve the quality of the project you're maintaining?
Ingo posted a very interesting message on this thread Posted Jul 22, 2013 20:36 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]
Thank you thank you *thank you* dlang.
Focus on the code, yes, but... Posted Jul 17, 2013 19:06 UTC (Wed) by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896) [Link]
I agree that it's generally best to focus on the issues in the code or approach, and not on the person.
That said, I don't think these messages by Linus and others constitute "advocating for physical intimidation and violence" or even "advocating for verbal abuse". Not at all.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 19:12 UTC (Wed) by Tobu (subscriber, #24111) [Link] I have had rather positive experiences interacting with kernel maintainers; my only want is for more of it, which must be the common case for contributions at the periphery. And whenever Linus pops into some discussion I'm reading, he communicates clearly and well and brings something to the discussion. So I'm trusting the kernel community, and Linus particularly. Since Sarah posted her thread, which broke off from the recent stable discussion, the opinion I've made is that she's working really hard at getting offended. The “What was said” paragraph in this article is clear enough, but I've noticed another striking example on her blog comments. As far as diplomacy and communication skills are concerned, I'd rather interact with a Linus than a Sarah, and I'll look up to the former and not the latter. Maybe the flip side of a passionate advocate is someone who's at least a little bit self-righteous and prone to black and white thinking. Anyway, I'd prefer good examples to opinion leaders, from what I've seen so far.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 21:21 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] The “What was said” paragraph in this article is clear enough, but I've noticed another striking example on her blog comments. I believe this is the proper link. And yes, it really sad that people like Sarah who tend to thwart honest discussion (because noone is allowed to talk honestly near them because they can easily be offended) are valued more in today's world then people who actually do honest work. Note that both examples which blog post points to (this one and that one) are so awful I don't know how people can blame Linus for strong words. Try an experiment: I bet you'll hear a lot of similar words - and for similar reason.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 21:34 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] A lot of folks will think it's not relevant, but it's still amusing to consider that the second of Linus's rants (the one toward Rafael) was a complete mistake on his part. The regression he was cursing about did not exist...
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 21:51 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Sure - and both sides apologized in the end. Rafael apologized for his "but it's a fix" explanation (which is quite obviously is not a justification for regressions) and Linus apologized for his rant. But Linus reacted on the facts he had at the time and it surely looked to him like a totally crazy idea: we don't tolerate regressions is pretty well-established rule of kernel development and only few very serious things can affect it. "But there is ready-to-use-exploit in the wild" may qualify while "but it's a fix" does not - and Rafael should know that, he's not a newbie at this point!
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 23:24 UTC (Wed) by tbird20d (subscriber, #1901) [Link] And yes, it really sad that people like Sarah who tend to thwart honest discussion (because noone is allowed to talk honestly near them because they can easily be offended) are valued more in today's world then people who actually do honest work.Careful there. You're implying that Sarah thwarts honest discussion and doesn't do honest work. Are you familiar with Sarah's work in the kernel? Frankly, if it were an the option I'd much rather submit code to Sarah than to Linus - not because I think she'd be easier on my code, but because I think she'd be more constructive with her criticism.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 1:46 UTC (Thu) by Tara_Li (subscriber, #26706) [Link]
*shrugs* Then encourage Sarah to start her own fork of the Linux Kernel.
Heck, we've had plenty of cases in the past where it became obvious that Linus doesn't scale well, and where it showed that his interest in the Kernel per se have faded. If Sarah asked, Linus would probably be *glad* to hand ultimate control over the kernel community to her - except that he can't.
Linus controls, in a sense, everything about the community *except* one detail - the fact that he's the one in control. That is decided by the community itself, based on his track record. And complaints about his civility are hardly new. But when all is said and done, people trust Linus, most likely because they know what he says is what he considers the unvarnished truth. He has proven able to admit when he's wrong, but he's also been proven right an insane amount of the time.
Perhaps Sarah should be discussing her opinion of Linus' civility with Ms. Amanda McPherson, Ms. Angela Brown, Ms. Jennifer Cloer, or Ms Karen Copenhaver. They're part of the Management Team that actually pays Linus at the Linux Foundation - so you could say they're his enablers.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 11:09 UTC (Thu) by simosx (subscriber, #24338) [Link]
It is actually Jim Zemlin who is at fault here.
Have a look at his mystifying talk at http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/185-jennifer-clo...
He looks surprised that even if things are done /wrongly/ at the Linux development, the Linux kernel appears to come out OK.
What Jim is missing is that the Linux kernel is used in almost all devices. No matter what deficiencies exist in the development, at the moment there will be people around to replace the disaffected.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 22:12 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
You appear to have no understanding of how kernel development works. Jim Zemlin is not a king. He does not 'reign'. He is not even Linus's boss in any real sense: he pays Linus, but if he tries to tell Linus what to do, and Linus disagrees with it, Linus could jump ship somewhere else in a microsecond. Linus has so much bargaining power in this relationship that in a very real sense he is *Jim's* boss -- Jim's job, like the organization he heads, wouldn't exist without the kernel Linus has spent the last 22 years on, after all.
(This is true of major contributors to other projects too. You think someone could order the GCC developers to do something seriously stupid? No, they'd jump ship if it came down to it, and they'd even know where to go: one of the other companies employing GCC hackers. To know what those are, they only need to be able to read the bit after the @ on the development mailing list they follow every day.)
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 11:10 UTC (Thu) by simosx (subscriber, #24338) [Link]
> *shrugs* Then encourage Sarah to start her own fork of the Linux Kernel.
I think this is called 'being patronizing'.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 16:48 UTC (Thu) by Tara_Li (subscriber, #26706) [Link]
No, it's the whole point of open-source licensing. If you don't like *ANYTHING* about the code, the process, whatever - you are free to take it and do something else. In the case of the GPL2, you can fork the project, keep on building from that base, and cherry pick things you find useful from the other guy's tree. Of course, they're cherry picking things they find useful in return - again, go back to RMS who started this whole mess. If, as Sarah says, civility in the environment is so important - her branch will take off and fairly quickly overshadow the Linus-lead branch.
Though in truth, I don't think that would happen.
I'm of two minds on the civility bit...
It eases things along, lubricating where people's egos rub together, but it also seems to reduce bandwidth, increase latency, and all too often fail integrity tests, requiring resending of the message and all too often slipping around integrity tests, contaminating the communications with falsehoods.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 20:13 UTC (Fri) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
No, it's "being patronizing" just as GP said.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 3:28 UTC (Thu) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]
> Frankly, if it were an the option I'd much rather submit code to Sarah than to Linus - not because I think she'd be easier on my code, but because I think she'd be more constructive with her criticism.
I've never worked with Sarah because I don't do USB work, so I can't comment on what it's like to work with/for her. But I've have worked with Linus, and I have been on the receiving end of his rants. Most of that was actually in private emails and it was more misunderstanding between the two of us.
That said, when Linus has commented on my work, I have found it to be actually very constructive. More constructive than pretty much any other developer I worked with. There has been times that I have disagreed with him (on minor things), but he definitely knows how to run the Linux community, and I really believe he's the main reason for most of the Linux kernel success.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 10:17 UTC (Fri) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
"he definitely knows how to run the Linux community"
Well... except Linus was a bit of a git with the Bitkeeper thing, which was hugely and unnecessarily divisive for the community. Then there was the IDE thing. And a few other things, just a few isolated smudges on an otherwise legendary record.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 14:28 UTC (Fri) by kh (subscriber, #19413) [Link]
> As far as diplomacy and communication skills are concerned, I'd rather interact with a Linus than a Sarah
I really agree. I am not even sure what Sarah is complaining about, at first I thought it was salty language, but there are many examples of her using the same. Then I thought she was complaining about threats of violence, but I don't see how anything Linus said could be taken as a serious threat. On the other hand, I definitely would be afraid to say /anything/ to Sarah after this, between her equating Linus's emails to real threats and misogyny on her personal blog (where there is no real connection), and the threatening behavior of her supporters who seem to wish to shout anyone down who says anything positive about Linus, or public calls to employers to muzzle Linus and his supporters.
It seems to me like this was something Sarah had planned in her head for quite some time, and she got impatient waiting for Linus to really explode, so decided to jump on any little statement, blowing it out of proportion as necessary. (I also think equating this to sexual violence in the military really belittles the terrible things that some have gone through while serving their country.)
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 18:49 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
> I really agree. I am not even sure what Sarah is complaining about,
I believe you that you are coming by your confusion honestly as many people are confused the same way.
The complaint by Sarah is abusive behavior by Linus against others, not herself, abusive behavior including being personally insulting, calling people names and other public berating and shaming of contributors.
> On the other hand, I definitely would be afraid to say /anything/ to Sarah
Sarah is not a shrinking violet and is certainly capable of speaking her mind and interacting with the LKML community, however she would seem to be a poor target for abusive comments or threats. Were you intending to make abusive comments to others online? Even on LWN that really isn't permitted, Editor #1 will step in for people who get too far out of line.
> threatening behavior of her supporters
I haven't seen any threatening behavior by supporters so I don't know what you are talking about, or maybe we have different ideas of what we find to be a threat, but I should point out that supporters are independent actors, such as yourself or myself and their behavior is their own responsibility.
> wish to shout anyone down who says anything positive about Linus, or public calls to employers to muzzle Linus and his supporters
I would ascribe that behavior to those who argue that Sarah shouldn't be allowed to express her opinion and should keep quiet, not those who argue for professional, adult discourse when speaking in a public mailing list professionally, to other professionals. The only shouting and calls for muzzling I have seen are towards Sarah, not Linus.
> It seems to me like this was something Sarah had planned in her head for quite some time
I wouldn't presume some Machivellian malevolent intent, I would start by presuming that Sarah is a human being and is motivated by much the same things that any other person. She saw some behavior that she thought was BS and instead of letting it slide this time, called Linus out on it.
This is a worthwhile discussion to have and we are now having it.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 19:03 UTC (Fri) by kh (subscriber, #19413) [Link]
No need to look far:
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 19:30 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
I'm sorry, what are you expecting me to see here?
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 19:31 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
> Were you intending to make abusive comments to others online? Even on LWN that really isn't permitted, Editor #1 will step in for people who get too far out of line.
Our dear leader #1 mostly steps in to kick sexist trolls. And whatever Linus is, he's definitely not a sexist idiot.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 20:23 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
While there is one example of this in recent memory, #1 has stepped in and handed yellow cards to several different instances of unacceptable behavior, not just for gross sexism.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 19:54 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Tolerance works both ways.
I've been plenty of places were being polite to somebody is actually a insult. It's a sign of friendship and trust that you can call somebody a "fucking piece of shit" and call you out strongly when they think you are doing something stupid. Being polite in these situations is actually a sign that they are probably really pissed off with you and/or are suspicious of you.
A lot of people come from a very privileged and polite society and can't understand why everybody can't be nice like them. When they go out of their wall to call people out on their behavior publicly and try to force changes in behavior to match what they are used to in their specific cultural context they are actually being the ones being offensive and intolerant.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 22:01 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Of course, this is extremely cultural. I can guarantee that, while icy politeness concealing vicious hatred is a British 'thing', calling people a fucking piece of shit is *also* not exactly going to get them thinking that you are overflowing with love for them.
Such minefields are probably best avoided in any transnational endeavour.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 21:50 UTC (Wed) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
> Ingo Molnar and Linus are advocating for verbal abuse.
> Not *fucking* cool.
An interesting juxtaposition.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 22:06 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
An interesting conflation. Swearing is not inherently abusive, and abuse does not inherently require swearing.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 22:22 UTC (Wed) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
Here's another one:
> Not *fucking* cool.... Keep it professional on the mailing lists.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 23:13 UTC (Wed) by raghavadesai (subscriber, #86327) [Link]
If someone looks only the abusive part of the code review comments form
Linus/or any one else they are missing the bigger picture of what he/they are trying to convey in the review.
Should you feel offended?
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 0:06 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Expressing anger and frustration is inconsistent with a desire that people behave in a professional manner towards each other?
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 3:25 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
No, but I think she really shot herself in the foot by using course language. Which is too bad, because she has a valid complaint.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 4:13 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Again, what does coarse language have to do with it?
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 16:52 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link] Perhaps a venn diagram will help:------- ------- | | | | | A | | B | | | | | ------- -------Group 'A' are those who think coarse language is fine. Group 'B' are those who think it is boorish. Why slice off the support of group 'B' when you don't have to, especially when there is nothing to be gained in return?
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 17:05 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
A group that refuses to support something they agree with because of the way the argument was presented is (based on experience) unlikely to be of any significant use in the first place.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 17:22 UTC (Thu) by mgalgs (subscriber, #85461) [Link]
The point is you usually don't use the `F-word' at work (or in most `professional' settings), so it is a bit of a foot-shooting. Unfortunate, because she has some very valid points...
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 17:28 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Her concern is clearly the use of insulting or abusive language, not the use of swearing. Do you really think anyone would read what she wrote and think "Well, I agree that we should behave in a more respectful manner towards each other, but because she said fuck I'm going to go and insult some patch submitters instead"?
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 9:31 UTC (Fri) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link]
> The point is you usually don't use the `F-word' at work (or in most `professional' settings)
I do.
(We actually don't use F-words because we don't speak english)
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 26, 2013 9:52 UTC (Fri) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]
Really?
I've never worked anywhere that saying 'fuck' was off limits.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 27, 2013 22:02 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
As with so many things it depends on the context. It is acceptable in the UK to say 'fuck' as a response cry, e.g. after you stubbed your toe (if they banned that they'd have nobody with English as their native language left that could work for them at all). It is borderline acceptable to call code fucking awful (I tended to do it as a self-deprecating joke for code I wrote myself, but even then it's best not to do it if members of high management are around as they had their senses of humour surgically removed). It is defintely not acceptable to e.g. call another person, especially a coworker and *most* especially a customer a 'useless fucker' let alone anything more severe.
So it's all contextual.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 29, 2013 13:13 UTC (Mon) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]
I meant the word itself.
Many many words can be used in ways that are workplace-unacceptable. Or even human-being-unacceptable.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 20:33 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
Citation needed
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 20:42 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Well, despite asserting that you think Sarah has valid points, your contribution to the discussion has been to pick on her use of language rather than helping to figure out ways to improve things. Would you have been if she'd left out the word "fucking" in her email?
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 12:19 UTC (Fri) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"Group 'A' are those who think coarse language is fine. Group 'B' are those who think it is boorish. Why slice off the support of group 'B' when you don't have to, especially when there is nothing to be gained in return? "
Why slice off the support of the existing group 'A' when you don't have to ?
This whole line of argument is predicated on the postulate that a puritan-hypocritical form of communication is 'better' and would be universally accepted.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 23:43 UTC (Wed) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]
And now she's getting flak on her personal e-mail and blog because – as a woman – she dared to challenge the god and saviour of the unwashed brogrammer herd.
Eris, how incredibly annoying are the misogynists…
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 16:02 UTC (Fri) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]
Umm, in all fairness -- while Linus _has_ written some rather harsh emails when encountering stupid (in his opinion) code, the specific email which Sarah replied to and which to her suggested "advocating violence" (a) was rather mild in comparison and (b) IMHO suggested nothing of the sort. Not when taken in context.
I'd compare this to a policeman who repeatedly watches somebody run a red light, and then that same policeman gives me a citation because my bike's back light blinks (this is not allowed in Germany).
I would not have much respect for this policeman and, if this pattern persists, for the police in general -- no matter what other good/necessary stuff they do for society otherwise.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 22:04 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
> I'd compare this to a policeman who repeatedly watches somebody run a red light, and then that same policeman gives me a citation because my bike's back light blinks (this is not allowed in Germany).
I don't think that this is a great analogy. In the LKML case, there's a "straw that broke the camel's back" effect whereas the police officer is closer to cherry picking their citations. Should Sarah have waited for a "Top 10" rant to raise the issue? Replied to one of the older "Top 10" rants? I don't think either of those options are necessarily better.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 1:00 UTC (Mon) by fuhchee (guest, #40059) [Link]
It'd be tragic if the reason Sarah spoke that way in this thread was to try to fit in more with the coarse language already deployed nearby.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 17, 2013 23:36 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
First off, the e-mail Sarah reacted to wasn't all that bad, but I understand where she's coming from. Generally speaking, there is quite a bit of abuse on open source mailing lists and other discussion forums (and I have been guilty of engaging in that from time to time - apologies to anyone that was on the receiving end of that stupidity).
Second, there is no doubt that many of high level Linux contributors practice the cult of Linus. It doesn't matter what he says or does, they will always try to defend it - no matter how silly. Of course, Linus is an absolutely brilliant guy. Nevertheless...
The abusive behaviour that happens in all those forums would normally get people fired in any half decent western corporation. And for a good reason. There is _always_ a way to say want you want without abuse.
I find Linus' comments about non-belief in politeness really hilarious. Being polite is not a religion - you don't have to believe in it. We do it in civilised societies because it works. Not having manners is not any particular culture - it's a lack of one. We even have laws that enforce "manners" (e.g. noise). These are purely practical - nobody's freedom is more important. So, we "turn down" a notch what everyone is allowed to do, so that we can all live in peace.
Ingo seems to be confusing conflict (actually, standing up for you own beliefs, opinions, solutions etc.) and abuse. Totally unrelated. In fact, offending people as a way of getting what you want can (and many times does) result in getting the opposite.
Most of the abuse that happens on the Internet is due to the fact that the person you are about to abuse is not standing in front of you. Somehow, many people turn into high school kids when they are about to post online. It is pathetic. Yours truly included at times.
We should just stop with that nonsense.
PS. I wonder if Linus is telling his kids to behave in life (e.g. towards the teachers) like he sometimes does on the mailing list. I would think not, but then again - who knows.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 0:03 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> Being polite is not a religion - you don't have to believe in it. We do it in civilised societies because it works.
Do you have any idea how much does your "it works" contradict "is not a religion - you don't have to believe in it"?
The point -- oh, yeah, subscribe me to the cult of Linus (NOT) -- is that, at least for some people, it does NOT work. As Linus himself explained, being polite, at least for him, undermines the way his words convey his emotions relative to some technical topic, and he thinks that said emotions are important in the decision-making process for his project.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 0:16 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> Do you have any idea how much does your "it works" contradict "is not a religion - you don't have to believe in it"?
I do. There is no contradiction. It is the same as saying that one does not believe in science - it is not a matter of belief. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.
> As Linus himself explained, being polite, at least for him, undermines the way his words
That is the kind of excuse that many abusers make. For instance, we heard many times: "I have to hit my wife - she provokes me". And some such crap.
PS. Yes, I used a physical abuse example.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 0:21 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> For instance, we heard many times: "I have to hit my wife - she provokes me".
OOPS - part of it fell out. Should be:
"I have to hit my wife - she provokes me - if I don't hit her, she won't get the message not to do it next time."
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 11:14 UTC (Thu) by simosx (subscriber, #24338) [Link]
Or "The child is screaming. A slap on the face is what works. Debating with the child does not work."
I think these are the analogies that need to be put forward to show how moronic are the attitudes of Linus, Greg and others.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 2:30 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> It is the same as saying that one does not believe in science - it is not a matter of belief. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.
Nope. I'm sorry, but your "it works" affirmative is not akin to saying "science" but "the effectiveness and safety in the use of anlodipin as a medication for arterial hypertension". Yes, some social constructs are based on politeness. Some professional social constructs are based on politeness. And they work. But you are making the statement that *only* they work, and that they work *because* of the politeness.
Guess what? Being impolite also works. There are lots of social constructs that are based in being impolite as the de facto etiquette. And they don't fall apart. Do you know why? Because it's even more efficient in avoiding social mistakes than being polite all the time. So, if my best friend says to me "you are an imbecile" and I reply "at least I am not as ugly as you", when one of us is *really* upset with the other and calls him an idiot, it may even pass as the "normal banter". And gives time for both to calm down before someone takes offense. But if we refer to each other as "best buddy" and "smart man", the stress situation could escalate more easily.
I suspect the politeness-based social constructs work in spite of the politeness, but I can't prove *that*.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 3:05 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
First, your example of an exchange between best friends is hardly an example of civility in the workplace or generally in society. The underlying relationship between best friends allows for forms of communication that are simply not possible or acceptable in the workplace, around your neighbours or other citizens you may bump into on the street. In other words, when you say to your best friend "you're an idiot", it doesn't have quite the same meaning that it would if you said it to a person that is building a piece of software with you, works with you or just lives next door. In other words - that exchange is not abusive - because both parties accept (through the nature of the friendship) this kind of communication. So, if anything, this just proves my point.
Second, the human history directly contradicts your proposition that being abusive (impolite) works. It doesn't and as a race humans are rejecting it more every day. You don't have to go back much to find proof. Be it racial, sexual, religious, child or any other kind of abuse is not accepted any more in modern, civilised societies.
So, absolutely, "politeness" (i.e. being considerate and not abusive) is absolutely the underpinning of every civilised society.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 14:31 UTC (Thu) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]
You start off being polite, and if that doesn't work than you get nasty. Otherwise you just waste everyone's time and people end up even *more* pissed off.
That is basically how Linus does it.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 23:55 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
This is exactly how it should _not_ work. I still remember telling the general manager (and owner) of the company I worked for (in front of other people that were present in the meeting) to stop yelling at me, because he is not my father. He did stop and never tried that again.
Abuse is never OK. There is a difference between aggressive and assertive. Google it if you don't believe me.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 1:25 UTC (Fri) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]
IF I WRITE MY REPLY IN ALL CAPS, AM I ABUSING YOU?
Yes? No?
There's a huge difference between yelling face to face and on email. The problem with text is that it's much harder to tell the degree the person is upset with you, or disagrees with you.
When Linus disagrees with me, I take his level of emotion as a gauge of how much he disagrees with me. If he says "you shouldn't do it that way", it sounds like he doesn't like it, but he doesn't really care that much about it, and may still let me do it if I really want to. If he says "Only a f*cking idiot would do it that way", it's clear that I screwed up and need to change the way it was done. It's about communication, that's all.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 2:01 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> IF I WRITE MY REPLY IN ALL CAPS, AM I ABUSING YOU?
> Yes? No?
All I can tell is that you are shouting. Now, depending you what you are saying, it may be yes or it may be know. Compare:
WE WON THE GAME! YAY!
with
YOU STUPID MORON!
Pretty easy to figure out, really.
> If he says "Only a f*cking idiot would do it that way", it's clear that I screwed up and need to change the way it was done. It's about communication, that's all.
Well, maybe you are are a buddy of Linus and you guys have exchanges like this in private. If that is the case and you are both cool with that, that's fine.
However, if you are not buddies, this kind of exchange may be considered abuse by you. Also, there is the problem of a the list being _public_. Other people may take offence to that kind of exchange, as it may sound intimidating to them. For instance, Sarah did - which then makes it inappropriate.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 2:02 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
> may be know.
Er, sorry. Should be "may be no", of course.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 12:23 UTC (Fri) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"This is exactly how it should _not_ work."
Nonetheless, it does.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 3:10 UTC (Fri) by Tara_Li (subscriber, #26706) [Link]
And it's not like you can't be quite abusive being extremely polite. The British Upper Crust, and the American Gentile South proved that a long time ago. Why, one might argue that bringing Gentility and Civility to the unwashed masses is the burden of some specific group.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 15:52 UTC (Fri) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]
Sure you can, but if the recipient is not part of the same society your abuse will flow through their brain without affecting any of their neurons the way the sender intended.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 6:27 UTC (Thu) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]
while i agree with everything else you say...your relation of noise laws being somehow extended to common civility (speech, general offensiveness etc) carries no water whatsoever.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 0:10 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] Really curious - why do you think so? Here is a direct quote for NSW POEO Act (which is the state law where I live): ‘Offensive noise’ is defined in the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 as being noise: Obviously, there is the harm/regulations bit, but the rest is really about being considerate.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 18:19 UTC (Fri) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]
we do not need to consider by metaphor, extension, or suggestion as to how something like a noise law impacts speech. specific limits of speech and free expression have been tested repeatedly in detail in the supreme court, for exactly this reason - so someone can't come and tell me that a noise ordinance somehow implies a speech limitation.
i can't blare my music at 1am but i can most certainly (for example):
(1) create a private club that bans women
(2) start a camping troop for children that bans gays
(3) refuse to offer even trivial assistance to someone in life-threatening danger near me
all of these examples have been validated by the supreme court, and oddly enough no one suggested that noise ordinances were relevant
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 21, 2013 12:45 UTC (Sun) by renox (subscriber, #23785) [Link]
I think that 1 and 2 are also legal in France and I see no real reason why this should be illegal (you are free to make a club with whatever stupid rule you want and I am free not going into your stupid club), but 3 isn't legal here, we have "non assistance a personne en danger": we can be charged for not helping someone in danger, this is rarely enforced but the law is there.
discriminations Posted Jul 21, 2013 14:18 UTC (Sun) by Tobu (subscriber, #24111) [Link] (2) isn't legal in France either, and gets taken seriously. You'll probably be able to find examples of (1); but the “private club” defence wouldn't hold for commercial operations and is just there to discourage complaints. As far as most scouting activities splitting children by gender, local organisations do accept both genders and give them equal treatment. This is unlike the US situation where there are gender-specific institutions. </sidebar>
discriminations Posted Jul 23, 2013 14:52 UTC (Tue) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"you'll probably be able to find examples of (1); but the “private club” defence wouldn't hold for commercial operations and is just there to discourage complaints"
Really ? there is no women-only gyms ? or do you mean they are 'illegal' ?
" As far as most scouting activities splitting children by gender, local organisations do accept both genders and give them equal treatment."
Separate but equals... hum.. where did I heard that before ... ? ah! yes.. "Plessy v. Ferguson"
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 9:07 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
If with "any half decent western corporation" you mean "any half decent US corporation" then please say so. Because believe it or not, there are parts of the ("western") world that view the typical US politeness as being over polite and dishonest.
This would have been less imposing on the rest of the world:
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 10:29 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Yup. For example, in Russian there's a phrase "American smile" - it means a smile without any actual feelings behind it.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 23:52 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
I have worked for Australian, US and Indian companies. All of them had explicit policies that ensured the communication between employees is of a very high standard. No abuse was permitted anywhere.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 1:43 UTC (Fri) by bloopletech (subscriber, #71203) [Link]
I have worked for several companies, in Australia and the US, and these policies are generally disregarded by the majority of people.
I'm not saying that's good or bad, but the presence of policies does not imply that (a) the policies are good or (b) that people respect the policies.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 2:10 UTC (Fri) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link]
Well, then these companies you worked for are obviously not "half decent", are they? Abuse should never be condoned.
For instance, examples of hitting children and women were mentioned in the comments. So, I guess it would be OK for me to then smack women and younger people in the office around to get what I want, right? Absolutely not.
Nobody ever claimed that no work needs to be done to reduce the amount of abuse in general society and workplace. In fact, this whole discussion started because there is more work to be done.
Policies must be voluntarily obeyed to be effective Posted Jul 19, 2013 7:51 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
When a policy doesn't work you have to fix the policy. Some of us care about the real world, not your internal emotional state except in so far as that has consequences in the real world.
The pretence that "We have a policy forbidding X, so X doesn't happen" is a terrible sort of delusion because those too far from the action to see X continue anyway might believe you and act as though it's true.
For example, the current _policy_ here says that track workers will all interrupt what they're doing, stand up and walk off the tracks into a place of safety before any train passes. No doubt in the imagination of whoever wrote this rule there was only one "road" and it was mere "common sense" that track workers would want to get out of the way. But in reality a lot of work happens at complex multi-road sites. The workers can see (or think they can see, or even just guess from experience) that a particular train won't pass near to them, and they wave it through but remain on the railway and thus in danger. Approaching trains are loud and (at night) heavily lit, masking any danger from other trains nearby so that even when they're correct about the train they can see, they may be wrong about whether they're actually safe.
People who don't understand why policies don't work usually insist that workers who disobey the policy should be disciplined. That ought to work, right? But it won't, it just creates the impression that management are capricious, arbitrarily punishing some workers whose behaviour was fine, for a merely technical violation of a rule that makes no sense. Even showing the workers why their current practices are dangerous through the video reconstruction of accidents (including fatal accidents) turns out not to make a dent. Humans are largely oblivious to their mortality and will take small temporary gains for a significant risk of death without qualms. The only way to fix the problem is to come up with a policy that the workers are _willing_ to obey but which is also safe.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 21, 2013 0:40 UTC (Sun) by krakensden (subscriber, #72039) [Link]
> Ingo seems to be confusing conflict (actually, standing up for you own beliefs, opinions, solutions etc.) and abuse. Totally unrelated. In fact, offending people as a way of getting what you want can (and many times does) result in getting the opposite.
It's not a useful distinction. All conflict is abuse when it's somebody saying no to you. There's no endgame where people won't take it personally.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 21, 2013 3:57 UTC (Sun) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
> All conflict is abuse when it's somebody saying no to you.
No. Do you feel that way? If someone contradicts you in any way do you feel personally slighted and abused? I don't feel that way, I'm happy to take constructive criticism, unless the other party goes out of their way to be personal and insulting. I would think it the same in most professional environments, do you have a different experience?
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 21, 2013 15:36 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] If someone contradicts you in any way do you feel personally slighted and abused? Ah, so now my POV suddenly matters? But when supposed "victims" Sarah raises on her flag come and say that they don't feel insulted and abused it somehow does not matter? And yes, I've seen people who've felt slighted and insulted when people pointed out that they may be wrong (if you want an example the look for the yet-another-tempest-in-a-teapot right here). I don't feel that way, I'm happy to take constructive criticism, unless the other party goes out of their way to be personal and insulting. And some people are not happy to take "constructive criticism" at all. There are cultures where you are not supposed to criticize anything publicly - at least not directly. Should we all stop using word "no" on mailing lists to not offend such people? I would think it the same in most professional environments, do you have a different experience? First we need to define what "professional environments" even means. Because there different viewpoints. For example there are this video which explains that professionals are guys who never ship shit, who are always ready do deliver, who don't slow down when project ages, who can easily adapt to changes in requirement, etc. Like all the real professionals: good carpenters, good janitors, good cooks. And not like all these amateurs who develop spaceships and cars, mobile phones and large bridges, skyscrapers and yes, software, too. By this measure I never worked in real professional environment thus I wouldn't know how such work is done. But I've participated in different kinds of projects and I'm ready to admit: as you go from amateurs to professionals (from more challenging work to less demanding and stable one) the more environment represents Sarah's ideal.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 14:46 UTC (Mon) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link] There is a lot of middle ground between "people should shout as loud as they like and nobody should complain about it", and "nobody should say anything that might offend anyone". There are cultures where you are not supposed to criticize anything publicly - at least not directly. Should we all stop using word "no" on mailing lists to not offend such people? I can say "no" in this case while also believing Sarah's request is reasonable. I don't see any contradiction.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 4:48 UTC (Thu) by ras (subscriber, #33059) [Link]
Sarah is right in one aspect. There is another way of handling this, a way can guarantee mostly civil discourse.
In fact it is the way most projects end up doing it. In the end they have a gut full of the abuse and trolls, so they take advantage of their position of power and appoint themselves as the projects censors. In the some cases, this ends up meaning some people are thrown out of the project by the ruling cabal.
As others here have pointed out, Linus doesn't appoint himself head of anything beyond his own tree, so he is unlikely to take that approach. As far as I can tell, he takes only the other way that works: nominate some principles and defend them with all the vigor you can muster, and encourage everyone to ignore anything else. People who agree with your principles tend to follow. Anybody who doesn't spend their time focusing on them is ignored, withering into obscurity.
There is no doubt in my mind the second approach produces the best projects, technically. But as I said, most projects end up taking the first approach. The difficulty of the second approach is it requires someone with outstanding technical ability and social skills without an ego to match. A rare bird indeed.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 6:23 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] The difficulty of the second approach is it requires someone with outstanding technical ability and social skills without an ego to match. Do you mean to imply that Linus does not have a huge ego? He does. But he also knows when to admit his own mistakes - and this is rare quality. Usually people either have "outstanding technical ability" or they are ready to admit their errors, guys like Linus are rare, indeed, but it's not because he lacks in an ego department.
Cultural differences Posted Jul 18, 2013 6:25 UTC (Thu) by Seegras (subscriber, #20463) [Link]
What I see here at first glance is cultural differences. Linus (still) is basically a European, and swearing is what we do. From Romania to Iceland, from Sicily to Finland.
We don't have any of those problems with swear words those puritan pukes in the USA managed to push into the mainstream. We don't know any seven words you can't say in TV, and we write "fuck" as "fuck" (unless influenced by above culture of puritan miffies; as sadly happens ever more often).
It's also a question of being explicit, of saying what you mean. And the misdirected self-censorship of avoiding certain words is just adding ambiguity and hypocrisy to the language.
Cultural differences Posted Jul 18, 2013 9:10 UTC (Thu) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]
It's not swearing that Sarah finds problematic, she's pretty capable of using swearwords with gusto. Do read the discussion (and her comments on her blog); she's making quite a good point.
There is unfortunately a fundamental point missing in this article. Posted Jul 18, 2013 8:30 UTC (Thu) by jsorensen (guest, #83220) [Link]
Most people will agree that being nicer to each other is better, but reality is that it doesn't work that easily. The quotes from Rusty show this very well.
The big problem here is that the strong advocates of pushing out rules for lkml behaviour are thinking in terms of their own standards and rules and expect those to be what should be applied to everybody.
Linus hit it spot on in his reply here:
"The thing is, the "victim card" is exactly about trying to enforce
The kernel community doesn't respect country borders, we cover close to every culture. What is considered beyond rude in the US may be considered normal in Scandinavia, while some things considered normal in the US would be considered beyond acceptable elsewhere.
Off-list polite discussions when something gets out of hand are likely to work well. On the other hand, formalizing things too much has a high risk of leading us much closer to the nannystate.
There is unfortunately a fundamental point missing in this article. Posted Jul 18, 2013 10:58 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] Linus totally missed the point because Sarah was not playing the "victim card". Just because she's a woman making this point doesn't mean she's complaining about sexism. The point she's making is that there is a difference between saying "this patch is unacceptable" (or even "this is an idiotic idea") and shouting "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" and she was complaining about the latter, not the former. And it's not the f-word she's objecting to either.
There is unfortunately a fundamental point missing in this article. Posted Jul 18, 2013 11:08 UTC (Thu) by jsorensen (guest, #83220) [Link]
Again you're missing the point. I deliberately did not make any references to the sexism comments, because that has *nothing* to do with this discussion. Unfortunately this is the first thing some people pull out, the moment a female raises such an issue.
The point is that there is no universal set of rules that are applicable across the set of cultures we are covering and Sarah is pushing for her set of rules and playing the victim card as Linus correctly pointed out!
There is unfortunately a fundamental point missing in this article. Posted Jul 18, 2013 11:34 UTC (Thu) by simosx (subscriber, #24338) [Link]
> Again you're missing the point. I deliberately did not make any references to the sexism comments, because that has *nothing* to do with this discussion. Unfortunately this is the first thing some people pull out, the moment a female raises such an issue.
You twist rsid's reference to 'sexism' which is not fine. His point is not about 'sexism' and I think it is evident enough.
> The point is that there is no universal set of rules that are applicable across the set of cultures we are covering and Sarah is pushing for her set of rules and playing the victim card as Linus correctly pointed out!
There is a fallacy here. It's the one that you set the goals so high as a way to accept no action to be taken.
Being civil is something that many people can achieve, and there are smaller free software projects that can do this, and they thrive. Actually, for smaller project, if they can be civil is the only way for success. Linux is so big that collateral damage is not a problem yet.
Think about disciplining children. Many people would still consider smacking a child is the most cost-effective method of discipline. There are other ways, parents simply do not know them and they suffer [just to be preemptive, I am NOT conflating that the Linux kernel issue is a father-child issue].
There is unfortunately a fundamental point missing in this article. Posted Jul 19, 2013 10:19 UTC (Fri) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
> Linus totally missed the point because Sarah was not playing the "victim card".
Linus intentionally missed the point.
There is unfortunately a fundamental point missing in this article. Posted Jul 20, 2013 7:54 UTC (Sat) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
You see, this appears to be a contended point..
There is unfortunately a fundamental point missing in this article. Posted Jul 20, 2013 7:55 UTC (Sat) by deepfire (subscriber, #26138) [Link]
You see, the fact whether Sarah played the victim card or not is a contended point..
Judgements vary.
A plea against COC's Posted Jul 18, 2013 14:41 UTC (Thu) by mgross (subscriber, #38112) [Link]
Please god, no code of conduct for kernel development! Its a road to hell sold on good intentions. It destroys trust, it encourages tattle telling, reduces organizations into self censorship and political correctness hallway monitoring. (FWIW I also find them insulting for some reason I can't quite explain. but, this fact about me is not part of my argument against them.)
Social norms are "social" until they are codified into law. CoC's are basically laws (with limited government enforcement) They limit freedoms and expression in the name of "protecting the children".
I think its more than enough to have anyone periodically ask if it was really necessary to be a huge ass in that case or could the same message been given a bit less personally?
Strong messages defining priories in real time are critical in hierarchical yet loosely coupled organization of strong personalities with high IQ's to get the people working with common priorities/values. Especially for Sr helpers. If they don't line up behind the leader then the leader can't trust them and the work can't scale. Delivering strong messages is an effective way of removing ambiguity, getting the message across and building trust that the helpers are working coherently with the directions, priorities and expectations set by a leader.
Sure, you can argue that what is the different between that and a CoC. CoC's are written down is the difference. Priorities and values are more dynamic.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 15:38 UTC (Thu) by PlayDough (subscriber, #91822) [Link]
The biggest issue I find with the "kernel mailing list behavior" is what appears to be some degree of "snobbery" directed at newcomers.
While I don't find the particular examples in the article particularly offensive, the LKML (and the RT list and the linux-ppc list, and probably others) is far from a friendly place. And it certainly discourages input from people. Within our company, I have become the "go to" guy when dealing with kernel issues because I seem to have the skin tough enough to weather the responses (if any) because nobody else wants to deal with people on the list.
In my experience, when posting on the LMKL, whether patches, questions, or general commentary the initial response to newcomers is usually either to be ignored or told to come back when they know more. This type of initial response turns people off. I'm an old internet fart and remember the days of usenet flamewars (both a flamer and a flamee), so perhaps I'm conditioned to this type of culture. But this isn't the usenet days, and the internet isn't limited to well educated and connected university folk.
Two communities I find very easy to work with are the #kernelnewbies and #ubuntu (and unrelated to the kernel, the postgres folk are great as well). In my experience, these groups show patience with newcomers, and then become much more direct and forceful if advice given is ignored.
While certainly the kernel community (and leadership) is recognized as a gathering of brilliant, dedicated individuals, I think it is also looked upon as some sort of nobility. And that nobility sometimes treats others like commoners.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 23:20 UTC (Thu) by andresfreund (subscriber, #69562) [Link]
> In my experience, when posting on the LMKL, whether patches, questions, or general commentary the initial response to newcomers is usually either to be ignored or told to come back when they know more. This type of initial response turns people off. I'm an old internet fart and remember the days of usenet flamewars (both a flamer and a flamee), so perhaps I'm conditioned to this type of culture. But this isn't the usenet days, and the internet isn't limited to well educated and connected university folk.
I can definitely see where you're coming from. Although I think that's partially caused by trying to keep the volume of the list on the "nearly" side of "nearly unhandleable". If LKML would cater to the general audience it would have a multitude of the current traffic.
So stuff like kernelnewbies or distro specific channels exist to fill that ,rather big, niche.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 14:44 UTC (Fri) by PlayDough (subscriber, #91822) [Link]
> I can definitely see where you're coming from. Although I think that's partially caused by trying to keep the volume of the list on the "nearly" side of "nearly unhandleable". If LKML would cater to the general audience it would have a multitude of the current traffic.
Sure, I get it. To keep LKML relevant, it helps to keep the clueless and the chatty off of the list.
> So stuff like kernelnewbies or distro specific channels exist to fill that ,rather big, niche.
I guess the issue is that area in between newbies and experts. Sorta where I fall. I've been tangentially involved with kernel drivers since the 0.99 days, but never waded in more than knee deep. I can figure out most of the issues that come up with our drivers. But when I have trouble figuring things out, #kernelnewbies is too basic (typical response is "Hmmm, try LKML") and LKML is to advanced ("Come back when you have more data.").
Perhaps a #kernelundergraduates? :)
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 20, 2013 14:25 UTC (Sat) by Tobu (subscriber, #24111) [Link] #kernelnewbies is also good for the undergraduate stuff. You're still learning, but you can also contribute some educated help. Some of the people who hang in there will probably like interacting with skilled learners.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 17:00 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
One thing I had hoped to see in this article, and was disappointed not to: a statement that LWN's quotes page and similar reporting has historically tended to propagate and glorify many of the most colorful tirades and flames, and in an effort to not encourage such behavior the quotes page will avoid that in the future.
That's not to say LWN shouldn't report on such responses as appropriate when they form part of a discussion, and I trust LWN's reporting to make the situation clear, but the quotes page should definitely avoid glorifying the most offensive messages as entertainment. It's like the Open Source equivalent of TMZ reporting on celebrities. Let's not.
Propogation and glorification Posted Jul 18, 2013 17:22 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Could you give some examples, please, as to where you think that we have inappropriately glorified such behavior? It would be good to know where we are perceived to have gone over the line.
Propogation and glorification Posted Jul 18, 2013 18:14 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
Let me start by saying I think LWN is far better than most tech press about not muckraking. But even then, that's something that should be explicitly stated; it's not an unreasonable editorialization to toot your own horn on that front and make it clear that you're making an effort in this area.
That said, a few examples from a quick skim (and I've likely missed some, especially since I only checked recent kernel quote pages).
https://lwn.net/Articles/530215/
https://lwn.net/Articles/507109/
https://lwn.net/Articles/501768/
https://lwn.net/Articles/486377/
https://lwn.net/Articles/453967/
One from outside the quotes page:
And, to get meta for a moment:
(Understandable sentiment, but there's an obvious difference in target between "review code in public" and "embarass people in public".)
Propogation and glorification Posted Jul 18, 2013 20:08 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] OK, so...The Russell King quote was definitely marginal. The point was that many developers don't see much reason to work on documentation because they don't think it will be read. There was a better quote in that conversation that I could have used, though, granted. It's not like this was even an amusing flame. For this one, Linus was having fun with the code, yes. Was it really that bad? (I'll note that we're now a year in the past, incidentally). In this one, Steve was expressing his frustration with users who want a problematic (and arguably nonsensical) system configuration to work. It was not aimed at anybody in particular. Who was offended by this one? Here is really just a restatement of the no regressions policy, along with an expression of frustration with people who ignore that policy. It communicates a clear point. This one talks about the evils of rebasing in the context of a particular problematic pull request. Among other things, it seems like a proper service to LWN readers, who have a relatively high chance of being the authors of pull requests, to let them know how Linus feels about rebasing of trees. This one, you said, is "a good example of the kind of thing not to encourage". I don't think that Linus is amenable to encouragement from me in any direction. In this case, we had the definitive end to an ongoing disagreement that had been documented here; I felt the need to document that as well. Should I pretend that Linus's involvement didn't happen? I thought that Linus's disinterest in the alleged bypassing of normal kernel procedures was an important part of the story. The last one was from a G+ post; it was already highly visible. If nothing else, it documents how Linus claims to feel on this topic. You're not the first to call that one out, though; perhaps it would have been best skipped over. In other words, most of those quotes were chosen for a specific reason that was not "it's a creative flame." Doubtless some of the choices could have been done better. But I have to ask what you think should be done differently in general; should LWN pretend that these discussions don't exist? Is it really your position that we should not have quoted any of those seven messages? You seem to have looked at about two years worth of history, during which, I would guess, LWN has posted probably 5-10,000 messages from the kernel mailing lists. Even if all seven examples were a mistake, it's still a pretty low rate, I would think. Anyway, I will try to be more careful in the choice of quotes. But not, I don't think, to a point of presenting a distorted picture of how specific conversations go. I'm not sure that would help anybody. Thanks for pointing these out, it really does help to know what readers think.
Propogation and glorification Posted Jul 19, 2013 0:45 UTC (Fri) by rgmoore (subscriber, #75) [Link] For this one, Linus was having fun with the code, yes. Was it really that bad? (I'll note that we're now a year in the past, incidentally). That quote was also paired with one that shows the exact opposite tendency; Matthew Garrett changed a magic number from a submitter because it spelled out something offensive in leetspeak.
Propogation and glorification Posted Jul 19, 2013 1:35 UTC (Fri) by bloopletech (subscriber, #71203) [Link]
As a paid subscriber to LWN, I would like to express the opposite opinion: I 100% enjoy the colourful tirades and flames, and would not like to seem them diminished by manipulative editorialising.
I understand what you are trying to accomplish, and I empathise (though not necessarily agree) with the goal of raising standard of behaviour.
However, the Quotes page is there to report on what _actually happened_, and I think that editorialising it in such a way that quotes are rejected, not because they are uninteresting or unamusing or have limited impact, but because they represent actions people might not agree with, is manipulative.
I don't want to brew a storm in a teacup, but I think it's important to delineate the boundary between reporting and editorialising.
Propogation and glorification Posted Jul 19, 2013 10:27 UTC (Fri) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link]
Jon, I would tend to agree with those who opine that you occasionally appear to express approval of behaviour that an impartial observer might regard as abusive. You certainly seldom criticize it. However, I will not support these assertions with examples, I will just provide my "me too". And also my "thank you on balance for being Jon".
Propogation and glorification Posted Jul 19, 2013 12:41 UTC (Fri) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"Thanks for pointing these out, it really does help to know what readers think. "
OH! wait a minute... who electing him reader-representative...
Please do _not_ change a things.. these quotes, and especially the one selected here, are a nice part of my weekly LWN entertainment.
I know I'm going to find insightful and educative article, but I am also looking forward to the 'quotes' section, hoping for a good chuckle or two
Propogation and glorification Posted Jul 29, 2013 8:59 UTC (Mon) by fb (subscriber, #53265) [Link]
FWIW, I am trying to keep away from this discussion (from what I gather I think the situation with the kernel will have to get worse before it gets better). Joining now because it is somewhat LWN related. I site a care a lot about due to its quality.
I'd like to add a +1 to that comment asking LWN to be careful in its quotes section to avoid glorifying or celebrating abusive and or rude behavior. While each and every one of those quotes had somehow a reason behind them (at least in the author's mind), giving prominence to those quotes helps IMHO reinforce the notion that such a behavior is acceptable.
I'm taking the time to mention this because LWN is great and I enjoy it a lot. It is due to LWN that I get to be pointed to quite a few excellent emails such as the one from the first quote here https://lwn.net/Articles/515867/.
Propogation and glorification Posted Aug 6, 2013 9:38 UTC (Tue) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]
> Anyway, I will try to be more careful in the choice of quotes.
Please, don't.
I'm late to the discussion since I was on holidays -- but, as a paid subscriber (and a quite early one, at that), I want to add my voice that "josh" is not a representative of my view. Your quotes shows what happens "in the scene" and you should not start to filter them (and thus, your report on the reality that happens) for some perceived standard of politeness of some readers.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 17:01 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
I found the initial quoting in this article a bit too selective. Leaving out the parts of Ingo's and Linus's mails describing Greg (half-jokingly, but still) as physically intimidating in person leaves out the context that makes Sarah's mail seem reasonable. That quoting, followed by the sentence
>Whether these messages constitute "advocating for physical intimidation and violence" or even "advocating for verbal abuse" will be left for the reader to decide.
really bothered me, as though the article was intentionally trying to make Sarah's mail seem absurd.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 19:38 UTC (Thu) by mylogic (subscriber, #75038) [Link]
Whether the article "really bothered" you or "seemed absurd" will be left for you to decide. I think they were just quoting her claims and restating the argument for the reader.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 22:26 UTC (Thu) by price (guest, #59790) [Link]
The point is that the article purports to quote her claims and restate the argument, but it leaves out a crucial part that makes Sarah's complaint look just unmoored from the reality she's responding to. When the article explicitly invites the reader to decide how well her complaint matches reality, that's not a fair thing to do.
I'm sure the omission is unintentional. I hope our esteemed editor will correct it.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 22:49 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] I'll not make substantive changes to the published article, no. That is not, IMO, the right way to do things, even if I thought changes were warranted. We don't try to hide our mistakes.As you might imagine, I spent a lot of time on this article, trying to make it as fair and correct as I could. One thing I could not do was take Linus's joke about Greg's size seriously, and I cannot believe anybody else would either. Do you honestly believe anybody was suggesting that Greg should go and physically attack people? I restricted the quotes to what the people involved were actually advocating for.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 15:46 UTC (Fri) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
I don't think Linus was seriously advocating *violence*, but joking aside, he was most certainly drawing a parallel between the effects of being physically intimidating and being verbally intimidating. Remember that the whole point that kicked off the thread was telling Greg to be harsher so people would send him less mail and not try to get fixes into stable that should go into later -rc kernels.
Or, in other words, yell and rant more so people don't see you as friendly. Be intimidating.
I have the same reaction to that notion that Sarah did: seriously, is *that* how we're going to put it?
Now, the problem the original thread wanted to solve made sense: patches shouldn't go into stable in preference to later -rc kernels. However, that doesn't seem like a problem best solved via ranting and raving.
So, while I didn't take Linus's joke about Greg's size as anything but a joke, in the long-standing tradition of "ha ha only serious", I do think the parallel between physical intimidation and verbal/written intimidation was entirely serious, and I think *that's* what made Sarah's mail reasonable.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 17:26 UTC (Fri) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"Now, the problem the original thread wanted to solve made sense: patches shouldn't go into stable in preference to later -rc kernels. However, that doesn't seem like a problem best solved via ranting and raving."
and yet that same thread illustrate that Linux does not have the same problem than Greg, and an offender even explicitly said why: Linus would shout him down if he tried. Whereas Greg would not...
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 14:47 UTC (Mon) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link] The problem wasn't that Greg didn't "rant and rave" before, but rather (as far as I can tell) that he didn't say anything at all.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 15:57 UTC (Fri) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
> I'll not make substantive changes to the published article, no. That is not, IMO, the right way to do things, even if I thought changes were warranted. We don't try to hide our mistakes.
As an aside, regardless of my comments about the article, I *do* agree entirely with this policy, and I applaud you for not hiding mistakes. Apart from typos, I don't generally think published articles should be changed without very visible indications of the change.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 18:19 UTC (Fri) by jonabbey (subscriber, #2736) [Link]
I noticed the delay in your posting this article, and I appreciate the thought and effort that went into it, Jon. I was pretty peeved by the coverage over at Ars Technica, and was looking forward to your take.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 18:44 UTC (Fri) by price (guest, #59790) [Link]
Certainly I don't think you should hide your mistakes. But that's not what a correction is -- it's the opposite. You fix the mistake and say explicitly that you've done so. You could even add it in brackets without modifying the existing text, so that everyone can see exactly what the original version was.
As for the substance of this particular mistake, I think josh's detailed sibling comment explains it well. I think Linus was clearly joking too, but there's a difference between "complained about a joke" and "invented talk of physical violence that just wasn't there". You've invited readers to infer that Sarah did the latter (and several comments show that readers have), and that's not accurate or fair.
Even if you disagree on the substance here, I hope you'll consider correcting mistakes (transparently, of course!) in the future.
Thanks again for this article and LWN's excellent coverage in general.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 22:10 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]
> As for the substance of this particular mistake, I think josh's detailed sibling comment explains it well. I think Linus was clearly joking too, but there's a difference between "complained about a joke" and "invented talk of physical violence that just wasn't there". You've invited readers to infer that Sarah did the latter (and several comments show that readers have), and that's not accurate or fair.
For the record, Price, I drew that inference, and it was from the clear text of the message, not because anyone invited me to.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 22:50 UTC (Mon) by price (guest, #59790) [Link]
Well, let's be clear here. As I wrote, the article invited readers to infer that Sarah invented talk of physical violence. I.e., that she imagined that there had been some such talk when there hadn't been.
But, in fact, she quoted Linus saying that Greg "*should* scare [people]", because he is "a freakish giant" who "might squish you". Now, I think this is clearly a joke, and you might argue any number of other claims to the effect that it is obviously a joke, or all in good fun, or the violence it jokes about is relatively mild, or that the other messages in the thread were strictly about words, etc. But no matter how you feel about jokes about physical violence, it doesn't make them not about physical violence.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 23:17 UTC (Mon) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
That's exactly the issue. And the non-joking point of Linus's mail was precisely to draw a parallel between physical intimidation and mailing-list intimidation, by arguing that Greg should flame people to make himself more intimidating, less approachable, and less of a "doormat". That non-joking point kicked off this whole discussion.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 23, 2013 16:10 UTC (Tue) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]
Yeah, no. See, at this point, I have to dismiss you as not living in a world where the sky color is blue.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 27, 2013 21:56 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
FWIW, I agree with him.
(But then the sky outside my window isn't blue. It's black.)
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 23:45 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]
Oh, sure.
But the continuum above and below "reasonable threat" is so well established that it's established *in US Law*: "assault" is what happens when someone makes a threat against you which a reasonable man would construe as a valid threat.
If that midget who punched people's crotches on Scrubs threatened Arnold Schwarzenegger, that wouldn't be an assault, legally. The reverse would. It's what the Russians call "objective circumstances".
A "reasonable person" as the law defines that, and as case law from judges and juries illustrates it, would not construe the comments made about Greg KH as reasonable threats, even in the abstract (as opposed to their being aimed at a particular person *by* Greg), absent a pretty clear indication that Greg has a violent nature and is prone to go about "squishing" people.
So, out here in the Real World, no, it is not in fact reasonable to construe that entire conversation as violence, discussions of or incitement to violence, or anything near it, and the law -- and the reasonable man -- will construe you as a crank if you do.
If Greg KH *said that to Sarah*, *as a total stranger*, it would of course be a completely different situation. But the situation which pertains here would, I think, get an DA yelled at for even filing it, assuming her boss would allow her to. (See, there's no way in English for me to make the boss female too, to complete my point.)
Finally: by going off on a rant about this particular issue in this particular context, Ms Sharp is doing no favors to the people who *are* on the reasonable-person side of the divide; viz all the convention-harassment issues that are presently big topics for discussion on the Net.
Alas, I fear, this conversation -- the whole page of it -- will ultimately prove mostly fruitless as -- as with so many such arguments -- the two sides can't even agree on what the topic is.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 23, 2013 4:42 UTC (Tue) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
We're not talking about "what would rise to the level of a prosecutable threat"; that's a strawman, and nobody in this entire discussion would begin to think *that* of any mail in this LKML discussion.
We're talking about the suggestion that a kernel developer should flame people more to become more intimidating, by analogy with physical intimidation. *That's* what kicked this whole thing off.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 22:11 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]
If you would like to see the article that invites the reader to misjudge what's going on here, that's the one that drew my attention to the issue, Bob mcMillan's piece in Wired today:
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 23, 2013 15:27 UTC (Tue) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"I also got some really awful hate mail that tried to drag my gender in. But I don’t think this is a gendered topic..."
I find it fascinating how some people seems to be perfectly able to apply logic when they write code, and yet seemingly oblivious to it in their real life...
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 27, 2013 21:57 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Her comments all seem perfectly reasonable to *me*. But then we know from your past behaviour on any thread on LWN mentioning women in any way that you are an old-school misogynist, so I'm not surprised you can't figure out the point she's driving at.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 15:30 UTC (Fri) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
> The point is that the article purports to quote her claims and restate the argument, but it leaves out a crucial part that makes Sarah's complaint look just unmoored from the reality she's responding to. When the article explicitly invites the reader to decide how well her complaint matches reality, that's not a fair thing to do.
Thank you, that's exactly the point I was getting at.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 20:00 UTC (Thu) by dpquigl (subscriber, #52852) [Link]
If you're going to complain about that you should also complain about the portion of Linus' email where he jokingly refers to Greg as a giant who might squish you accidentally without noticing which seemed very tongue in cheek to me. I don't see how that statement could be construed as Linus advocating physical violence.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 18, 2013 22:45 UTC (Thu) by Tobu (subscriber, #24111) [Link] The linked email really is a bit absurd, extra lines don't change that: On Fri, 12 Jul 2013 18:17:08 +0200, Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> wrote: > * Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote: > >> On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 8:47 AM, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> wrote: >>> >>> I tend to hold things off after -rc4 because you scare me more than Greg >>> does ;-) >> >> Have you guys *seen* Greg? The guy is a freakish giant. He *should* >> scare you. He might squish you without ever even noticing. > > Greg might be a giant and he might squish people without ever even > noticing, but that's just a grave, deadly physical threat no real kernel > hacker ever feels threatened by. (Not much can hurt us deep in our dark > basements after all, except maybe earthquakes, gamma ray eruptions and Mom > trying to clean up around the computers.) > > So Greg, if you want it all to change, create some _real_ threat: be frank > with contributors and sometimes swear a bit. That will cut your mailqueue > in half, promise! On Fri, 12 Jul 2013 08:22:27 -0700, Linus wrote: > Greg, the reason you get a lot of stable patches seems to be that you > make it easy to act as a door-mat. Clearly at least some people say "I > know this patch isn't important enough to send to Linus, but I know Greg > will silently accept it after the fact, so I'll just wait and mark it > for stable". > > You may need to learn to shout at people. Seriously, guys? Is this what we need in order to get improve -stable? Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation and violence. Ingo Molnar and Linus are advocating for verbal abuse. Not *fucking* cool. Violence, whether it be physical intimidation, verbal threats or verbal abuse is not acceptable. Keep it professional on the mailing lists. If you're worried about fair representation, you should consider that her starting point, “Linus is advocating for physical intimidation and violence”, is a rather extreme misrepresentation. Really the most sympathetic thing to do is to gloss over it and refrain from making any hypothesis on how someone could, in a single bound, leap to such an unfair, distorting, and insulting characterisation. LKML people are forgiving and didn't make the discussion about that, and so does the interesting LWN article. Some other outlets did rise to the bait and give anxiogenic outrage-generating caricatures rather than space for discussion.
Alan Cox Posted Jul 18, 2013 21:03 UTC (Thu) by dougg (subscriber, #1894) [Link]
Now there was a class act: respected, perceptive and a great way of getting his point across with humour. Probably his best skill was dealing with competing egos on the list. Worked on drivers that no-one dared to touch. And his reward was a verbal bucket of !@#$ poured on him for his serial/tty driver work by the big ego himself.
Hopefully the past tense for Alan is only temporary.
Alan Cox Posted Jul 19, 2013 10:30 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link] Very good example. LWN's report from 2009 is here. It shows that it's not just a problem for newbies: even the most senior developers (Alan was once seen as second only to Linus) can take only so much of Linus's flaming.
Alan Cox Posted Jul 19, 2013 18:23 UTC (Fri) by jonabbey (subscriber, #2736) [Link]
I thought that exchange was a good reference point for this discussion as well.
I didn't see Linus flaming Alan in any kind of abusive way, but he was certainly being demanding. Alan decided he had had enough of that, and went away, and he had every right to, but I didn't see anything abusive.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 14:37 UTC (Fri) by petkan (guest, #54713) [Link]
I didn't bother to read the comments, but i did read the beginning of the thread in LKML. One thing that occurs to me is that no one asked if Sarah was in the middle of her monthly cycle. If the answer is yes then she'd have some sort of excuse, although not much.
Seriously, this is getting ridiculous. First there was an "issue" with not enough women in the kernel development. Now i should not be calling my fellow bloody idiot if i deem fit, because some weak-hearted people can't take it.
WTF? Being overly polite isn't much different from being a hypocrite. A good short curse in the right moment is much more effective than thousands of polite words. The same way a punch in the nose in the right moment is better (and more effective) than thousand words. I know, most Americans doesn't like this sort of thinking, but there is a lot more world beside America and i don't really care.
Some skirt is trying to impose stupid rules on something that works just fine for most of us and all of a sudden the levy of idiocy breaks. What is wrong with men these days?..
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 19, 2013 14:45 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] I must say this comment demonstrates what's wrong with some men, certainly. One can disagree with Sarah's point of view without pulling in a bunch of sexist nonsense. No more of that here, please.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 20, 2013 11:21 UTC (Sat) by petkan (guest, #54713) [Link]
Don't worry, Jon, i made my point already. However, your reaction reminds me why i left the US and why i don't like living there. ;)
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 0:09 UTC (Mon) by lacos (subscriber, #70616) [Link]
Oh it's very convenient to chalk up Jon's response to US culture. Your ridiculously "butch" comment was not one bit more welcomed by this male reader from Central Europe.
Reasoning for basic human dignity is clearly an uphill battle when not even
USB XHCI DRIVER
suffices for people like you not to call another person "some skirt".
> something that works just fine for most of us
Y'all simply don't know about most of those for whom this attitude doesn't work. Of course you don't care, but that doesn't make this argument any less invalid. You're only saying "people who put up with the abuse (or don't perceive it as such) put up with it (or don't perceive it as such)".
Read the whole thread, please Posted Jul 20, 2013 10:44 UTC (Sat) by lab (subscriber, #51153) [Link]
So, I actually find this discussion fascinating and important, and I have read every single message in the thread. I would like to strongly encourage anyone, who would like more than a shallow appreciation of the issues discussed, to do the same. Yeah, I know, it takes a while but it's worth it. The root of the thread is here: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.stable/58049/f...
Here's why:
First of all, this is actually one of the most civil, intelligent and enlightening discussions I've read on the Internet for a long time. Compared to the absolute shit commenting, around this discussion, which takes place on most (all?) other places on the net, this is actually a shining example, of how grownups can have a fruitful conversation about difficult matters. It really sets the bar quite high, which in this case is *particularly* relevant, since this discussion is about setting the bar in the first place.
Secondly, since this discussion touches several hotbutton issues, it is very easy to make up one's mind far to quickly, and bottomline the whole thing into easy to digest absolutes, or black and white statements. I would like to submit that there is nothing black or white, and no quick absolutes or obvious right/wrong's to be derived from this. This is difficult adult stuff folks. This is worldcitizen level issues being discussed. It cuts across gender issues, cultural issues, psychological factors, personality issues, management issues, ... in short - everything humanity struggles with on a daily basis all over the place. All of this in probably *the* most highprofile collaborative project in the history of the human race, filled with passionate, opinionated and intelligent people, from all walks and denominations of life. It's *not* easy.
Whatever comes out of this discussion will be read as "wrong" or "right" by some and not by others. That is inevitable, because there *is* no absolute outcome that can result from it. And that is Ok. The only thing that can come out of it, is the project itself, deliberating whether some adjustments to it's process should take place or not, and what the nature of those adjustments should be, and why. That's how it should be.
I must say, after reading the whole thread, I have the highest respect for all the key players involved, and have no doubts about their intentions, or their ability to reach an "as good as can be obtained" outcome. It will never be perfect, and that is both to be expected and quite Ok, for the simple fact that being human means being imperfect, and on a continuous learning journey. The only troublesome thing that could happen IMO, is if the Linux collective project would show itself unable to learn from it's mistakes, and not continue to improve, So far I see nothing like that happening, and I believe it's a key factor to it's enormous sucess.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 17:32 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]
> Greg, the reason you get a lot of stable patches seems to be that you make it easy to act as a door-mat. Clearly at least some people say "I know this patch isn't important enough to send to Linus, but I know Greg will silently accept it after the fact, so I'll just wait and mark it for stable".
> You may need to learn to shout at people.
Really?
*THIS* is what set Sarah Sharp off? Then the problem is even worse than I'd imagined from the fact-free Wired article I read earlier.
The kernel is big. Really big. I mean, you might think it's a long way from one end of the PHP sources to the other, but that's just peanuts to the kernel.
And there are *lots* of people working on it.
I'm going to assume Sarah has never been in management. If she had, she would realize that there is an absolute limit to the size of a team you can manage without having to become somewhat -- or more than somewhat -- of a hardass about people and their habits and what you will allow and what exceptions you will make... and that's all we're seeing here.
Linus, having been at this for 25 years, simply doesn't sugar coat things, and since the management's all being done in public, you *see* that. I guarantee you, 2nd and 3rd tier management in traditional corporations, overseeing hundreds of professionals, is this raw, or worse, it's just that its in private, and you don't get to see it.
But no, this *particular* incident is an overreaction.
Perhaps it's a straw, and Sarah is a camel, but -- while I don't follow LKML in realtime -- I do look in on it occasionally for various reasons, and I can't say I've ever seen anything that qualifies as *abuse*.
I've myself gotten into it with Linus on that list once, and his reply didn't constitute abuse, either.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 17:52 UTC (Mon) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
> I'm going to assume Sarah has never been in management.
I don't know Sarah but I wouldn't assume that.
> ... hardass about people and their habits and what you will allow and what exceptions you will make
I don't believe anyone, including Sarah, is advocating for reducing the quality standards of the kernel.
> ... management's all being done in public ...
While this surely happens I don't think this is as common, required or ideal. Companies with management who abuse and berate employees often end up with high turnover and stories on thedailywtf.com, not with high-quailty output. As Sarah pointed out, over 80% of kernel developers are employed in a professional capacity to do kernel development, so while everyone wants to retain the frank exchange of ideas that fosters quality, we can probably have some minimum standard of behavior that most corporations are able to maintain.
Acting decent toward your fellow human beings and co-workers shouldn't be a significant burden.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 18:08 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]
Certainly, but you, like Sarah, are assuming the consequent: *the sort of abuse she implies simply isn't happening*. Or at least, no one's demonstrated it to *me*.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and all workplaces have standards and practices. If you walk in cold, and say "y'all are doing it wrong", you need a) a much better sales pitch and b) much better evidence than I have seen so far.
This is nothing more than the standards that kept Usenet useful for over 2 decades: be a grownup, and if you're gonna say dumb stuff, make sure your Nomex undies are zipped up first.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 18:36 UTC (Mon) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
> *the sort of abuse she implies simply isn't happening*. Or at least, no one's demonstrated it to *me*.
We can certainly have an honest difference of opinion on that subject, I don't follow LKML so take my opinion for what it's worth, I'm just going by what I've read, but she did provide some examples of what she thought was unnecessary behavior, calling other kernel developers incompetent and stupid, telling them to SHUT THE F**K UP, etc. The tenor used between close friends may not be appropriate when used publicly with what are effectively subordinates, co-workers and strangers. The community on LKML are not just people shooting the breeze, they are largely paid professionals whose livelihood depends on their successful participation, which changes the standard a little bit. Since she did make a statement about this behavior I would extend her the respect of taking her statement at face value unless it is shown to be false.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 19:22 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]
Nope; extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
"Most of the people on LKML are abusive assholes", which is the substance of her complaint as I -- and a lot of other people, apparently -- are interpreting it, is an extraordinary claim.
In other news: Linus and the, oh, top 10 or 12 guys on that list *are*, plus or minus 10%, the close friends between whom you believe such a tone might be justified.
There is, as you suggest, room for difference of opinion on whether the behaviour perceived on LMKL a) is common, b) actually is abusive, and c) is thereby *inherently* inclined to scare off people with useful contributions to make at that level (which is *really* far up in the stratosphere; think about the literally billions of devices the Linux kernel presently runs).
The opinion seems to be (from this thread, anyway) close enough to 50/50 that I'd have to sit down and actually tally it. But it also seems to me that the people alleging it's not abuse are backing up their position with more data and less emotion.
I *am* pleased to hear that, with one or two small exceptions, no one seems to be reacting to Sarah a) on the grounds of her sex, or b) on the grounds of her technical competence -- only, like my response, on the grounds of her management competence, which is *clearly* (to me, anyway) in-scope for this discussion.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 20:27 UTC (Mon) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
> "Most of the people on LKML are abusive assholes", which is the substance of her complaint as I -- and a lot of other people, apparently -- are interpreting it, is an extraordinary claim.
That would be an extraordinary claim but I don't think that is not how I interpreted it and so I don't think that is the claim which was made. I understood the claim to be that Linus will sometimes, not often, go over a line with publicly dressing down contributions that he doesn't like. It is not clear to me what the relationship between Linus and the people being publicly berated is but it can set a tone on the list where that kind of behavior is considered acceptable. There are many maintainers on LKML and elsewhere in the professional sphere who are able to manage people, provide constructive feedback and maintain high quality standards without resorting to name calling and rude behavior.
I dunno, I think that the act of just talking about it probably will make the various actors think a little bit more about what they say and what the audience is when they say it which might move the conversation a few notches over in civility which would be mission accomplished from Sarah's perspective.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 22, 2013 20:32 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]
Definitely, the Hawthorne Effect will likely kick in here, as much as people will say that it won't.
> I understood the claim to be that Linus will sometimes, not often, go over a line with publicly dressing down contributions that he doesn't like.
You understood her complaint to be specific to Linus? Cause I didn't. It sounded to *me* like she was asserting that the LKML in general was a "hostile work environment".
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 24, 2013 10:17 UTC (Wed) by nocturem (subscriber, #92005) [Link]
Preamble:
I should probably get this out of the way here. I am not a regular reader of the Kernel Mailing List and I don’t develop for the Linux Kernel in a professional or amateur role and I couldn’t imagine wanting to it looks more like a religious self flagellating kind of thing, spending hours coding a patch submitting it and getting ragged on because someone else doesn’t like it. However I have an interest in Linux as an admin and I take an enthusiast view towards watching its development. But seeing this kind of public behaviour makes me ashamed of the code in my PC in the same way I would feel bad knowing that my clothes were made by children in a sweatshop. I personally have to say the most fascinating part of this entire fight has not been Sarah or Linus, it would be the bizarre arguments expressed supporting or rebutting the claim of whether there should be a code of conduct within the Kernel Mailing List. The first observation I would make is that these interactions would probably not occur in real life ie somewhere away from the safety of a keyboard. I sincerely doubt Linus would start disparaging the ancestry of a guy twice his size in a pub that spilt his pint. If he did; well Linux may not have a benevolent dictator maintaining the Kernel by the end of the interaction :P
As a follow up point; I can also say with some confidence that this behaviour would not occur in a professional environment in *most* businesses, not without significant consequences. Can anyone remember a time when they were allowed to call their co-workers a useless cunt? No and neither can I and it doesn’t matter how badly they have messed up. Workplaces have liability if their senior staff abuse their junior staff or vice versa (at least in any way that can be proven) and there are many, many lawsuits that have been filed for those reasons and Human Resources in any company you can think of will have policies regarding conduct between employees.
Secondly to all those who have made the most tragically weak apology for Linus’s behaviour that it preserves the delicate quality of Kernel code or even weaker that it reduces redundant traffic in the mailing list that ladies and gentlemen is a horrific fallacy with no supporting evidence.
Thirdly Linux is a free project the people submitting patches do not get paid for their work and hence it is the proverbial gift horse, you shouldn’t look it in the mouth and even if you don’t think it is a stallion you would ride at best you might turn the gift away and suggest that you would rather walk insulting the man or woman who has made this offer only increases the chance that it will not be offered in the future. Yes some companies are paying staff to develop for Linux but not a lot and most of them only have devoted small amounts of their resources to this effort since the gain in market share is tiny.
For the TLDR summary:
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 25, 2013 3:54 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
you started off by saying that you didn't read the kernel list, so you don't really know what you're talking about.
Then you imply that language like calling her "a useless cunt" is part f what's going on, and may even be common.
I have never seen language like that on the kernel list in the 16+ years that I've been reading it, and it's definantly not the time tof thing that's being discussed.
Please go and read the examples of the "bad behavior" and then look at the context before you make any comments
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 25, 2013 5:32 UTC (Thu) by nocturem (subscriber, #92005) [Link]
So just to be clear; are you are stating that I am not entitled to comment on the matter or hold an an opinion based on not having a broader experience with the Kernel mailing list? Please let me know I wouldn't want to have misinterpreted you on this.
I Have read the thread and I found several positions expressed ranging from the belligerent to the conciliatory and I would suspect that the resulting talk at the next Kernel Summit will be very interesting. I notice that you surmised and interpreted my second point regarding communication in a professional setting as being an allagation that such language was being deployed directly against Sarah and others. This was not my intended statement I was using a a deliberately extreme statement as a clear and unambiguous example of language that would be considered unacceptable in a professional environment. There are other examples of bad behavior as you have suggested and most of them would have the author facing a meeting with Human Resources in their workplace. At no point was I directly or indirectly attempting to imply that this language was common within the Kernel development community who's discussion of their own tone has been (perhaps with some irony) cleaner than external discussions on other sites. I apologize if I had left this somewhat ambiguous my point if you did not read the tldr has been mentioned in the thread itself and that is that the tone of discussion, and this is not the overall tone or the regular day to day language used on the mailing list that I am referring to but the few odd examples that make it out into wider public circulation that should be stopped.
Linus admitted that his blast at Mauro was not his proudest moment and more tragically its one of the mmoments the Internet collectivly remembers the best.
If you are uncertain what I am getting at have a look at this: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/lin...
It doesn't have the full story and it doesn't have to point is that from a PR perspective the damage is done. I don't make a habit of reading the mailing list and my perspective is that of an outsider.
There are potentially thousands of programming students and Linux hobbiests (not sure if that is the correct plural :S) who may have seen this as their only insight into the Kernel development community and further there are untold hardware manufacturers whose executive team need only to read one article like this to discourage any interest in associaing with Linux they will just stick to Microsoft cause its safe.
There is grander damage being done to the image of Linux as a whole when this gets dragged out onto the wider internet. And if you read the comments being generated on other sites regarding Linus they are not flattering or accurate but they dont have to be to tarnish the image of Linix as a whole or to scare off potential talent.
So to reiterate I am all for a code of conduct preferably with a nice fluff article in other news pages alluding to it so that instead of the perception of Linux Kernel development being an amateur project filled with flaming and hostile to newcomers it might leave this event with the image of having "cleaned up its act" regardless of its accuracy.
I was open and honest prefacing my opinion as not being intimately informed and would not claim to have years of experience with the community however I have read related articles on several other sites and I am not alone in my position which I feel validates it to a degree.
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 26, 2013 22:26 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
> Linux hobbiests (not sure if that is the correct plural :S)
"hobbyists" (though most-hobby-like wouldn't be the worst addition to the dictionary).
I think you've done a much better job than I could have done at getting across my thoughts on the issue (at least the ramifications; the solution is less clear since a code of conduct is useless if it is either not enforced or an LKML-thickskins list pops up as a replacement).
On kernel mailing list behavior Posted Jul 27, 2013 21:59 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] So just to be clear; are you are stating that I am not entitled to comment on the matter or hold an an opinion based on not having a broader experience with the Kernel mailing list?You are not qualified to comment because you're clearly not paying enough attention to discern which behaviours Sarah was trying to get changed, and which ones *off-list* she pointed at as examples of what she was going through as a direct result of her attempt to get those behaviours changed. The two are not the same.
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