On kernel mailing list behavior [LWN.net]

On kernel mailing list behavior

Posted Jul 18, 2013 21:59 UTC (Thu) by dgm (subscriber, #49227)
In reply to: On kernel mailing list behavior by diederich
Parent article: On kernel mailing list behavior

> 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?

to post comments

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.