Sharp: Closing a door [LWN.net]

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 20:15 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: Sharp: Closing a door by alankila
Parent article: Sharp: Closing a door

But ultimately, you're agreeing with me that the code is only important because of the good that it brings to people. If you had absolutely beautiful code that didn't benefit any people, then you'd agree with me that the code wasn't worth very much except maybe as an aesthetic object.

Now, the thing is that you can have beautiful code that benefits millions of people and whose development hurts "some random developer". But wouldn't it be better to have beautiful code that benefits millions of people and whose development is less hurtful to "random developers"?

In a slightly more subtle way, you yet again appeal to the same false dichotomy as others attempting to justify bad behavior: That we can have either good code or good behavior but not both.

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Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 21:19 UTC (Thu) by shmget (guest, #58347) [Link] (7 responses)

"others attempting to justify bad behavior:"

I think what you are persistently missing is that we are not in agreement wrt what constitute 'bad behaviour'.
You assume that 'your' views on the topic are universal.. that we all would be happier in an hypocritical, repressed environment, were conflict is left to fester and handled via backstabbing, rumor mills, and other passive-aggressive, superficially polite ways.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 21:32 UTC (Thu) by fuhchee (guest, #40059) [Link] (3 responses)

Ms. Sharp has made a followup posting, some of which may be interpreted as her assessment of "bad behavior". It includes references to "microaggressions" and "known harassers" and "code of conduct" and "leadership ... at least 30% new voices" and "spectrum of privilege" and "cultural change" and of course many variants of "diversity".

http://sarah.thesharps.us/2015/10/06/what-makes-a-good-co...

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 21:42 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

Her list sounds horrible to me, because it requires kicking your experience, enthusiastic, productive people out periodically to make room for 'new' people (both in development and in 'leadership')

The Linux Kernel community hits most things in most categories of her list, but there are also a lot of things that are subjective.

She then seems to say that unless every item in every category is met, she deems the whole category and effort a failure.

She's welcome to try and organize and run a project per her criteria, but I don't think I would want to operate under those rules.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 9, 2015 17:34 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> Her list sounds horrible to me, because it requires kicking your experience, enthusiastic, productive people out periodically to make room for 'new' people (both in development and in 'leadership')

Unfortunately, here in the real world, all the evidence is that having someone in the same position of leadership for a long time results in that person becoming a real problem :-( There is a REASON that most democracies limit the amount of time a person can be President or whatever for. I used to be a fan of Margaret Thatcher. Until she developed Maggielomania. MOST leaders get to the point where they like power, and will hang on to it come hell or high water.

How long has Linus headed the Linux project? He seems to have kept himself remarkably grounded, but he's been around a heck of a long time. Too long? I don't know, but all the stats say yes, too long. ESR has burnt himself out, he's no longer that respected. RMS seems to be shooting himself in the foot far too often today :-( I hate to say it, but I think more and more long-time luminaries can no longer see the wood for the trees :-(

As a chemist, one historic example I like is Dalton. As a student and a young man, he was a remarkable scientist. As a respected elder sage, he was one big unmitigated disaster, holding back Chemistry for ages.

A possible counter-example is Churchill, but he regularly swung between power and political wilderness - that was probably a great help in keeping his feet on the ground.

Cheers,
Wol

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 9, 2015 17:52 UTC (Fri) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]

The reason I believe that Linus is still around and doesn't look anywhere close to burning out, is because he never micromanages. He gives maintainers lots of room to run their subsystems the way they seem fit. When there's in-fights within a subsystem, or competing systems, he doesn't get involved unless one side is totally off the mark and isn't changing. He's stated before that he doesn't want to get involved in those controversies, and wants the subsystems to figure things out themselves.

His biggest pet peeve (and he restated it again in Dublin), is breaking backward compatibility with user space. The majority of his rants that make headlines has mostly been due to maintainers thinking they could break a user application in the next release for whatever reason. Push that too much, and you will suffer the wrath of Linus. And usually for good reason too.

Linus has been very consistent in his leadership. I don't see him stepping down any time soon.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 22:20 UTC (Thu) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link] (2 responses)

Your reply calls to mind the old adage "If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem". The people pointing to a problem, of whom Sharp is just one recent example, most certainly are aware that their criteria for bad behaviour are not shared universally. If there were universal agreement, there would not be a problem.

Nor is it likely that the people pointing to a problem believe that any single standard or code of behaviour will make everyone happy. But "you can't please everyone" is a very weak defense for a status quo where many people are unhappy, or where many people who perceive that they would be unhappy if they joined choose to stay away altogether.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 8, 2015 23:07 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

by the same argument, there are a lot of people who are happy with the current situation and who have said they would be very unhappy with the proposed rules

so for them, the people annoying them about changes that they don't want are the problem.

Sharp: Closing a door

Posted Oct 15, 2015 8:45 UTC (Thu) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link]

The people pointing to a problem, of whom Sharp is just one recent example, most certainly are aware that their criteria for bad behaviour are not shared universally. If there were universal agreement, there would not be a problem.

Oh, they are pretty much shared universally. It's just that some misshapen person cult tends to glorify some "hero's" bad traits along with the rest until he as well as others relish in considering them a mark of quality.

It's like greed and selfishness being glorified because you admire the effects of being rich.