Welcome to 2018

Exactly.

I believe a state of ferment about this issue is already ongoing within the FLOSS community, quietly and slowly, since 2017 or probably much earlier. It won't be a surprise if things finally explode in this year. It can involve some high-profile communities and developers.

Disclaimer first, I don't personally know the people at all, nor the politics behind it, I am just an ordinary FOSS user who read a lot of posts all over the web. This comment was not meant to be name-calling or accusation in any sense, to anyone, neither side. Just my humble opinions, no correctness nor accuracy guaranteed in this comment.

1. LKML has been accused for it’s notorious communication style (multiple times, unsurprisingly). In 2013, a core kernel developer, Sage Sharp, couldn’t stand it anymore and she criticized the community, said “Linus Torvalds is advocating physical intimidation and violence. Ingo Molnar and Linus are advocating for verbal abuse”, and calling for etiquette on the list. However, Linus Torvalds and others believed “professionalism” is just bullshit and rejected[0]. As a result, Sage Sharp left the upstream, unfortunately.

I mention this problem because it is not only relevant to Linus’ well-known profanity or the LKML, but a general attitude towards professionalism shared by many hackers, both online and offline, and such bad jokes may be an integrate part of the hacker culture. If a developer said something in a offline conference and considered offensive, it might cause serious and unintended problems.

2. I believe the “0xB16B00B5” magic number in Linux Hyper-V code is an example of this. I originally thought it was just written by an offensive programmer at Microsoft, but years later when I was reading some hacker manuals from the late 90s (Jargon File? But I searched it and found nothing, perhaps my memory is wrong), I realized “B00B5” is probably a hexspeak joke existed for a really long time, and the programmer at Microsoft was not as bad as I firstly thought. I think it’s more about a cultural problem/conflict than sexism, as a Slashdot reader joked…

> This is what you get when you have teenagers in their parents basement writing your operating system. You would get more professional behavior from a large, established corporation. Oh, wait…
(read full debate at [2], both sides have insightful comments)

Also, many hackers are politically libertarian-leaning, so they are probably completely uninterested for creating a “more-friendly” culture, if not against it, potentially making things more troublesome.

3. In 2015, Eric S. Raymond claimed an unnamed source told him, that some “feminists” were trying to set up a honeytrap in order to target Linus Torvalds for sexual assaults[3].

4. 2015-2016, Jacob Appelbaum, you know it. In addition, after Jacob himself has been expelled, today, Chaos Computer Club is still accused for failing to provide a healthy environment for the community by critics for ignoring harassment and enabling abusers[4].

5. 2017, Drupal asked Larry Garfield, a core Drupal and PHP developer, to leave the project because of his involvement in the BDSM subculture[5]. A developer’s personal life can be a source of controversial, even if he was not alleged for any assaults or misconduct as a public figure of the project.

6. The node.js’s meltdown about diversity and sexism[6].

7. Morgan Marquis-Boire[7].

8. Daniel J. Bernstein and Tanja Lange were accused to be an enabler of sexual assault for ignoring the behavior of Jacob Appelbaum, by cryptography researcher Henry de Valence[8]. One of the core Tor developer, Isis Agora Lovecruft also agreed on the issue[9], said “if your problem is a rapist, go after the rapist, but if your problem is multiple rapists, GO AFTER THE DUDE WHO'S ALWAYS BEHIND/NEXT TO HIM”[10].

9. In addition, Isis Agora Lovecruft accused John Gilmore, a well-known hacker and one of the EFF’s founding member, is also an enabler[11]. See her Twitter post for her account of a body conflict during an unofficial afterparty of a EFF conference, because of the use of the N word and refusing to recognize Chelsea E. Manning’s identified gender, and how she believed it is linked it to John Gilmore[12].

10. Gnome Foundation was running out of money because of a failure in financial management on a “Women's Outreach” project[13]. A good target of criticism of political opponents.

11. Mozilla has more political involvements now, supported many political positions for “Internet Health”. Looks good for now, but perhaps can attract political critics somehow later?

12. Oops, completely forgot about the LGBT issue at Mozilla in 2012, and the Memo issue at Google now.

These issues are extremely complicated, some criticisms are insightful, some are politically-motivated, some are overreactive, some are results of ideological and culture conflicts, some are real and serious problems, some are pure dramas. It’s difficult to distinguish them for many cases, and once controversy started, these will be all mixed together and impossible to make things clear.

I don’t have any comments about these. But what I know is, these things have been going for years. If things finally explode, it will be definitely a GREAT STORM within the entire FLOSS community.

Source:

[0] https://lwn.net/Articles/559061/
[1] https://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/07/19/1923200/microso... (Slashdot)
[2] https://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2991199&ci... (Slashdot comments)
[3] https://archive.fo/4mcaE (Phoronix, archived).
[4] https://gizmodo.com/major-hacker-conference-organizers-ac... (Gizmodo, also has references to other issues)
[5] https://developers.slashdot.org/story/17/03/27/2115233/pr...
[6] https://theoutline.com/post/2206/the-node-js-code-of-cond...
[7] https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/29/16715018/morgan-marqu...
[8] https://medium.com/@hdevalence/when-hell-kept-on-payroll-...
[9] https://blog.patternsinthevoid.net/the-ccc-men-who-hate-w...
[10] https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/920360054074753024
[11] https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/920359498048565251
[12] https://twitter.com/isislovecruft/status/920150647445401601
[13] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/14/04/13/1454215/the-gnom...