Sharp: Closing a door [LWN.net]

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 5, 2015 20:13 UTC (Mon) by jhardin (guest, #3297)
In reply to: Sharp: Closing a door by mwcremer
Parent article: Sharp: Closing a door

I'd suggest one data point that should be gathered is: who would leave the kernel development community if they were required to behave in a courteous and professional manner? Then the negative impact of that change could be assessed.

Assessing the positive impact is more difficult. We can potentially assess it based who has already left (e.g., how important was Sarah's contribution), but that's incomplete: how do you assess it based who isn't willing to join currently and might if such a change were made?

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Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 6, 2015 4:13 UTC (Tue) by mrshiny (guest, #4266) [Link] (1 responses)

I find it bemusing that we'd expect kernel developers to leave because we're insisting that they not act in an abusive manner.

In any case, important projects often live on beyond the developer's interest in it. Just look at GlibC. The maintainer was notoriously toxic and difficult to work with. Sure, he was competent, but his departure opened the door for improvements to be made and for other smart people to join the team.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 6, 2015 5:48 UTC (Tue) by daniel (guest, #3181) [Link]

There are more than enough talented and well socialized kernel developers that, if all the abusive ones left, Linux development would continue just fine. Quite possibly accelerate.