Realtime Linux: academia v. reality [LWN.net]

Realtime Linux: academia v. reality

Posted Jul 28, 2010 10:02 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576)
In reply to: Realtime Linux: academia v. reality by pflugstad
Parent article: Realtime Linux: academia v. reality

>Or in other cultures, it's literally the worst possible thing to change your mind as publicly as Linus' occasionally does

The unwillingness for a public figure to acknowledge a past mistake and fix it is the cause of a great variety of societal ills. I don't believe anyone should ever pander to a culture that encourages this kind of poisonous behaviour.

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Realtime Linux: academia v. reality

Posted Jul 28, 2010 22:39 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] (5 responses)

> The unwillingness for a public figure to acknowledge a past mistake and fix it is the cause of a great variety of societal ills.

Okay, I'm with you so far...

> I don't believe anyone should ever pander to a culture that encourages this kind of poisonous behaviour.

...but you lose me here. We're talking about people who have certain expectations, and those expectations are, in fact, valid for their culture. These people may or may not like this aspect of their culture, but it doesn't matter -- so long as they have those expectations, then they are not worthy to participate in kernel development? Explaining to them that things work differently here is somehow "pandering" to their culture?

Realtime Linux: academia v. reality

Posted Jul 29, 2010 1:15 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

the problem is that if changing your opinion is the worst possible thing you can do you are in one of two categories

1. you make the perfect decision the first time, every time

2. you do things wrong, even when you know better.

Since there is no developer who ever qualifies for #1, avoiding changing decisions at all costs would lead to having a bad system, and knowing that it was bad.

so yes, the kernel development _is_ better off by being willing to change decisions, even if that excludes some cultures from participating.

Realtime Linux: academia v. reality

Posted Jul 29, 2010 3:41 UTC (Thu) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

I've seen two suggestions made in this thread:

1) It's somewhat problematic if leaders regularly make very strong, emphatic statements, specifically saying that this is not an ordinary decision but rather one that will never be changed under any circumstances, and then change their minds.

2) If they're going to do that anyway, then maybe that should be explained to newcomers, since their default understandings will otherwise be wildly miscalibrated.

You seem to be arguing about something else, not entirely sure what, and I don't have much to say about it.

Realtime Linux: academia v. reality

Posted Jul 29, 2010 12:25 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link] (2 responses)

>We're talking about people who have certain expectations, and those expectations are, in fact, valid for their culture. These people may or may not like this aspect of their culture, but it doesn't matter -- so long as they have those expectations, then they are not worthy to participate in kernel development? Explaining to them that things work differently here is somehow "pandering" to their culture?

It seems I had misinterpreted the previous post in haste. An explanation of the differences between cultures to the honestly ignorant (I use this word in a purely descriptive way with no unstated implications intended) would be a worthwhile exercise in education (especially when, as I believe, the one culture is clearly superior to the other in a particular way).

So, I retract that statement.

Realtime Linux: academia v. reality

Posted Jul 29, 2010 12:27 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link] (1 responses)

>So, I retract that statement

Which, now that I think of it, is sort of ironic in the circumstances.

Realtime Linux: academia v. reality

Posted Jul 29, 2010 13:05 UTC (Thu) by fuhchee (guest, #40059) [Link]

two words: epic win