Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 27, 2016 0:55 UTC (Wed) by weaselkeeper (guest, #74881)
In reply to: Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes by pheldens
Parent article: Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

The antics of the SJWs are getting annoying. Coding is about coding, not what genetalia you have, or how well or poorly you tan.

Show me the code should be the only criteria.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 27, 2016 8:33 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (2 responses)

Show me the code should be the only criteria.

I don't think anyone disagrees that code incorporated into the Linux kernel (or other important open-source software product) should meet certain quality standards.

However, people who can actually code to those standards don't tend to fall fully-formed out of the sky. There are loads of work to be done, and there is a huge untapped reservoir of people who are, in principle, willing to contribute but can't be bothered, for reasons like the toxic atmosphere they're likely to encounter in case their contributions might be found sub-standard (whether they actually are or not). With appropriate training and mentoring, many of these people could become productive members of the open-source development community, and we all win.

There are people like Karen Sandler who are part of the effort to establish and promote initiatives that provide such training and mentoring to various groups of folks. This effort should be commended. Defaming such people as “SJWs” doesn't help anyone except the egos of those doing the defamation.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 27, 2016 17:56 UTC (Wed) by weaselkeeper (guest, #74881) [Link] (1 responses)

I agree we shouldn't encourage toxicity in a project. Especially toxic witch hunts like the one that occured in the opal project recently.
Criticising someone's code, isn't toxicity. It's quality control. Dragging in behaviour from outside the project is inappropriate.

The term SJW was self applied, it wasn't created by others, it was created by the ones who applied it to themselves. That their behaviour made it a label of derision, is no ones fault but theirs.

Zemlin on the Linux Foundation's by-law changes

Posted Jan 28, 2016 9:21 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

Criticising someone's code, isn't toxicity. It's quality control.

That's certainly one way of looking at it. But there is – abstractly speaking – still a difference between “Your code sucks dead hamsters through a straw. Go away.” and “That's not bad – if you changed this-and-such like this, that would play better with so-and-so, and your code would be more useful.” It seems that there are people who enjoy the former style of interaction a lot more than the latter, and that contributes to the toxicity issue.

In any case, making efforts to provide the latter style of interaction in order to encourage contributors who would be turned away by the former increases the chances of their creating good and usable code in the future. If somebody decides to raise money and use it fund this sort of endeavour in order to increase the level of participation on the part of minorities (in the open-source development community) such as women, developers from third-world countries, or for that matter left-handed people, that is their prerogative and should be viewed favourably in the broader context of ensuring a higher level of good-quality code submissions in the future.