Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 5, 2015 15:16 UTC (Mon) by epa (subscriber, #39769)
Parent article: Sharp: Closing a door

It has been mentioned a few times that the style of discussion among Linux kernel developers is rather harsh. But what are the examples of projects that do a better job? Perhaps LWN readers could nominate the development communities that manage to combine rigorous technical review and high standards with a welcoming attitude towards newcomers and a respectful style of discourse. I could point to the perl5-porters code of conduct. That is a lightly moderated list; does moderation make a difference? I can't imagine any moderator having the guts to tell Linus to tone it down, but for projects it may be a workable option.

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Posted Oct 5, 2015 15:45 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

GCC does a better job, in my opinion, at combining technical excellence and treating people with respect.

(Full disclosure: I used to be on the GCC steering committee, gave it up because of lack of time as my work took me in a different direction).

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 5, 2015 15:57 UTC (Mon) by troy.unrau (guest, #73654) [Link]

It's been a while since I was actively contributing, but in my experience: KDE. They actively work to extend their community to the wider world and be inclusive of all of its diversity. This extends both towards the relevant gender and sexuality conversations, but also to economic or social circumstances.

The KDE e.V. (the nonprofit body) has spent a lot of time and effort promoting these values, however membership in the e.V. is ultimately made up of contributors to KDE, so it reflects the will of the membership.

From their Code of Conduct https://www.kde.org/code-of-conduct/

> In order for the KDE community to stay healthy its members must feel comfortable and accepted. Treating one another with respect is absolutely necessary for this. In a disagreement, in the first instance assume that people mean well.

> We do not tolerate personal attacks, racism, sexism or any other form of discrimination. Disagreement is inevitable, from time to time, but respect for the views of others will go a long way to winning respect for your own view. Respecting other people, their work, their contributions and assuming well-meaning motivation will make community members feel comfortable and safe and will result in motivation and productivity.

Looking back, the thing I miss the most about KDE is the community. I don't think that people who have left kernel development would say the same.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 5, 2015 18:27 UTC (Mon) by einar (guest, #98134) [Link]

> It's been a while since I was actively contributing, but in my experience: KDE.

As a current contributor, I don't know. I don't claim I can read other people's minds, so this is just "anecdata", but there are a few occasions where my line of thinking doesn't align with the one of other KDE contributors, but I prefer to stay quiet rather than just comment, because on the Internet (and outside of it, unfortunately), people are getting quite rabid if you mention issues that are dear to them.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 6, 2015 11:28 UTC (Tue) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link]

Same here, KDE is usually very friendly and welcoming.

The harsh tone of the kernel list would not be accepted uncommented there.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 6, 2015 21:48 UTC (Tue) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link]

It's been a while since I was actively contributing, but in my experience: KDE.

Well, this Qt talk is in German but the speaker spends an inordinate amount of time trash-talking women, in particular his girlfriend.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 5, 2015 16:35 UTC (Mon) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

I've been deeply impressed with the welcoming nature of the Rust community.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 6, 2015 5:57 UTC (Tue) by edomaur (subscriber, #14520) [Link]

Yes, totally agreed.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 5, 2015 16:39 UTC (Mon) by leoc (guest, #39773) [Link]

The Rust community has a code of conduct that extends even to their subreddit.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 5, 2015 21:09 UTC (Mon) by rodgerd (guest, #58896) [Link]

I am not a postgresql dev, so I can't comment on what goes on in backchannel discussions, but I follow most of the mailing lists as a postgresql user, and they have an excellent community. Very helpful and positive.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 6, 2015 3:25 UTC (Tue) by andresfreund (subscriber, #69562) [Link]

We have/had our share of ugly fights, on public lists. Luckily that doesn't happen continuously. But if you'd scale the development community by two/three orders of magnitude, or wherever Linux is, that'd likely also be different.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 6, 2015 8:38 UTC (Tue) by rodgerd (guest, #58896) [Link]

You think so? Part of what has impressed me is that people will show up with... pretty flame-baity sounding questions on the user mailing lists ("I've been trying to migrate from mysql to pg, why is it so slow?" type of things) and they generally get very high-road responses ("tell me a bit more about your use case and the tuning you've done so far"), often from well-known individuals like Greg Smith.

Enough of the leading figures seem committed to good behaviour I suspect that even as teh community grows they take ther cue from the positive examples.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 6, 2015 10:12 UTC (Tue) by andresfreund (subscriber, #69562) [Link]

> You think so? Part of what has impressed me is that people will show up with... pretty flame-baity sounding questions on the user mailing lists ("I've been trying to migrate from mysql to pg, why is it so slow?" type of things) and they generally get very high-road responses ("tell me a bit more about your use case and the tuning you've done so far"), often from well-known individuals like Greg Smith.

I don't think you can really compare lists geared towards new or irregular users (where people don't know each other, don't have their pet feuds, etc), with a development list like lkml. Don't get me wrong - I think postgres has some great resources in such lists and e.g. the IRC channel. I just don't see it being comparable.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 5, 2015 22:03 UTC (Mon) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]

Mozilla's not perfect, but the harsh language Linus uses would not be acceptable coming from a Mozilla module owner/reviewer.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 6, 2015 0:31 UTC (Tue) by rhekman (guest, #102114) [Link]

"Mozilla's not perfect, but the harsh language Linus uses would not be acceptable coming from a Mozilla module owner/reviewer."

I'm not a member of the Mozilla developer community, so I can't speak to the quality of day to day discourse. However the public campaign against Brendan Eich was an example of how ugly it can get in a popular project when a vocal minority decides that unrelated personal beliefs are more important than technical matters.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 6, 2015 0:40 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I don't recall any Mozilla employee being anything close to harsh in any such discussions. So that seems to be a poor counter example.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 6, 2015 7:56 UTC (Tue) by MarcB (subscriber, #101804) [Link]

Some employees asked him to step back in public (Twitter). That's about the harshest thing one can do, even if using the nicest words.

Those employees where a tiny minority, but that doesn't really help in the beautiful new world of social media outrage.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 6, 2015 16:16 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

We are talking about different things, I think. One is a disagreement of leadership position and it is ok to state that out loud publicly regardless of your rationale as long as you specify it clearly. The other thing is to engage in name calling and so on.

In other words, it is ok to say, this patch is broken, can you fix it by doing foo and bar? It is unnecessarily harsh to say, you have a lousy patch and you are brain dead. Even if you are doing that to someone you know very well, it is a public list and potential contributors are lurking.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 7, 2015 15:06 UTC (Wed) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]

Yeah, it's pretty much the same – if you ignore all facts.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 7, 2015 15:08 UTC (Wed) by MarcB (subscriber, #101804) [Link]

Could you elaborate on those facts?

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 6, 2015 1:27 UTC (Tue) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]

That was not coming from Mozilla module owners or reviewers.

In any reasonably large and open project, jerks are going to show up from time to time, cause trouble, and be abusive. Some of them may be useful contributors, though in Mozilla that's been rare. You can expel them, and we do, but they still cause pain. So any large open-source project will have examples of bad behavior in the community, and you can't eliminate that. Your leaders and mainstays, however, do reflect on the project.

The Brendan situation was different again, though, in that the vast majority of the venom came from people who weren't associated with the project in any way, for whom we were just collateral damage in the culture wars.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 6, 2015 8:40 UTC (Tue) by rodgerd (guest, #58896) [Link]

I'm not sure how a pushback on the idea of appointing a CEO who actively opposes the rights of a chunk of the people participating in the project seems unreasonable to you, unless you think anti-gay campaigners should get a pass that anti-semites, for example, wouldn't.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 6, 2015 8:23 UTC (Tue) by Jezze (guest, #38900) [Link]

The Dolphin community needs a shout out here. It is both friendly and diverse and super productive.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 7, 2015 13:37 UTC (Wed) by malor (guest, #2973) [Link]

Their monthly reports are a ton of fun to read. If that tone permeates their community, they must be having a great time.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 6, 2015 11:46 UTC (Tue) by seyman (subscriber, #1172) [Link]

I could point to the perl5-porters code of conduct.

I actually prefer the Perl6 code of conduct over the perl5 one.

Examples of where it's done right

Posted Oct 6, 2015 14:43 UTC (Tue) by dunlapg (subscriber, #57764) [Link]

It's a good question, but there's a problem with self-selection. Every time this topic comes up, people who are actually on the LKML all pretty much agree that they're fine and there's not really a problem. And the reason they all agree it's fine is that everyone who is not fine with it has left (or don't bother saying anything because they know they're in the minority).

Similarly, I see in this list, "I like the perl community" and "I like the gcc community" and so on -- but for the most part the LKML people like the LKML community too.

I like the Xen community -- I think we have a culture of being direct but respectful. We don't have a formal code of conduct, but as a community we actively value respect and try to maintain that. But how can I tell if that's just because it happens to match my personality, the way LKML matches Linus's?