Kernel prepatch 4.19-rc4; Linus taking a break

Yes that could be a concern. One of Linus's jobs is to say no, no to crap code, that doesn't/shouldn't change (I'm at least unaware of anywhere in the CoC that says Linus must now happily accept any old crap), perhaps just the way he says no... for better or worse.

You'd be able to have more intelligent debate, be happier, and have more influence if you moved past that paper tiger.

Because your code is being judged by squishy meatbags rather than immaculate silicon saints, the only way to achieve that is for all code submissions to be developed in private then submitted anonymously, without comment or explanation, and passed through a stylistic sanitization system before it comes into view.

Yeah, because telling people to act decently to each other is *just like* the architecture of evil described in 1984. No difference whatsoever, except, uh, all of it. (In particular, note that in 1984 the state acted extremely indecently to everyone -- but this code of conduct is principally directed at the behaviour of the *kernel maintainers*, i.e. *the power structure*. This is the very opposite of 1984.)

Got examples of this from the many many projects that have had codes of conduct for a long time?

That sounds very much as proof right there that a Code of Conduct really is necessary in the first place.

It's a shame the staff there seem to be more willing to put up with this nowadays; in the distant past they've gone as far as to ban distro maintainers from the distro's own forum for abusive conduct. The mailing lists didn't follow suit and became a fire hazard as a result.

* because they care for the software
* because they care for the people
* because they care for themselves
* because they don't (want to) care at all
* because they are forced to
* for no reason

So, definitely not a value system.

I am not, however, speaking from experience.

I expect "public discussion" would just involve endless bikeshedding by well-intentioned supporters of the idea arguing over the subtle implications of every word in the document, in parallel with the flamewar between them and people who fundamentally oppose the idea of behaving nicely, plus the trolling from people who don't care but think it's funny to wind people up, and the discussion would be entirely unenlightening.

By having a group of community leaders make the decision through private discussions, and choosing a widely-adopted document that has already been extensively reviewed and revised in other communities, we avoid all the bikeshedding and are left with only the flamewars and trolling, which is an improvement.

Who cares who wrote it? Does it have immaterial bad people cooties that follow it around if you dislike the person who wrote it? Surely the *content* is the thing to be concerned about? At most the identity of the author may be relevant in determining rationale-of-author, and in this case it seems very unlikely that anyone will care: what matters is how the *people who it applies to*, i.e. in this case the kernel development community, interpret it.

This isn't what Ms. Ehmke means by "post-meritocracy," though.

Literally no one is objecting to the *principle* that subpar contributions should be (politely) rejected (perhaps with some accompanying constructive criticism if you have the time, though obviously you're not being paid to be their teacher so if you'd rather not be one then a simple "Sorry, but I'm afraid this falls short of our standards in X way" suffices), that the people who know the most should be the ones we listen to when making decisions, etc. This strawman gets raised all the time as an excuse to avoid addressing the actual issue, probably because addressing the actual issue makes them uncomfortable and so they'd rather not since they're not personally affected by it; but it's not what anyone's actually arguing against.

What Ms. Ehmke (and many many others, not just here but in a wide array of domains, fields, and disciplines) are objecting to is the way that the concept of "meritocracy" has been deployed *in practice* as a weapon to silence contributions (even *excellent* contributions) from members of marginalized out-groups. In effect, what ends up happening is that the rhetoric of meritocracy is transformed into a thought-terminating cliche, as an excuse to avoid the sort of introspection and self-reflection that would lead members of a given community to realize that in reality they're actually acting as anything *but.*

I don't know where you're located, but here in the US about 15 years ago a lot of the rhetoric used to justify the security state, imperialist military adventures, etc. of the Bush administration was that we were "defending freedom." Of course, if you think about it a bit you realize that pissing off people in other countries for no reason other than that they happened to have the same religion as a handful of murderous jackasses and/or come from the same fuzzily-defined part of the world only pisses them off and makes it more likely that they'll resent us, increasingly intrusive surveillance is actually kind of oppressive, etc. But because "defending freedom" is such a powerful idea (Who could be against that? Especially in the good ol' US of A, undoubtedly the freest country in the world, right?), and because that rhetoric was deployed with such force, it was enough for literally millions of people to turn off their brains at that point and go right along with it.

This is, in effect, what many observe occurring in communities that claim to value "meritocracy": the language of "meritocracy" becomes so forceful, and consequently that the actions they are taking are in line with that idea, that people in these communities are resistant to examining whether or not their actions are actually counterproductive to that end. The argument, essentially, is that "high standards for contributions" gets conflated with "being rude and unwelcoming to outsiders," such that outsiders who may not be able to meet those standards *immediately* but with practice and revision can get there, will have to wade through numerous cycles of insult and abuse as they improve their contributions to the point where they're acceptable. As the success of Linux shows, lots of people have been willing to do this. But lots of people haven't, and who's to say what they would be able to offer with practice wouldn't be as good as or even better than what we have now? There's literally no harm in trying to be more welcoming to them, since "accept subpar contributions" is in no way a corollary to "be nicer and more constructive in how you inform people that their contributions are subpar," while there's potentially everything to be gained; but people are often resistant to change their ways so they use "meritocracy" to defend and avoid reflecting on behavior that at the absolute best has zero effect on quality (in the highly unlikely case that literally no one who is disinclined to participate would have ever been able to offer an improvement with encouragement) and at worst (much more likely) has the opposite effect.

The reason this gets closely connected to inclusivity of marginalized groups is that, quite frankly, members of marginalized groups are less likely to be willing to put up with this sort of abuse as they iteratively develop their skills and knowledge of the ins-and-outs of a project to be able to make meaningful contributions. Not because they're any less resilient or more sensitive than anyone else, but because they have to put up with so much more of it than everyone else in their everyday life in situations that for all practical purposes they can't avoid, so why in the world would they ever want to put up with even more of this shit in a volunteer, hobby setting? So *in addition* to having a negative effect on the quality of the final product, abusive behavior has a *disproportionate effect* in terms of the extent to which members of marginalized communities feel welcome. This is, of course, compounded in instances where there are direct (conscious or otherwise) attacks on aspects of an individual's identity (e.g. when their name reveals their gender or ethnicity, or those or other aspects such as sexuality, etc. are known for other reasons).

So this is a lot longer than I intended; I'll make one more point and then I'll wrap up, regarding the language of "post-meritocracy." "Post" here does not mean "anti" or "not." Rather, it's better understood in light of terms like "post-modernity" or "post-structuralist." The structuralists (in, say, the study of literature) argued that you could find structural parallels among lots of seemingly distinct works of literature, that you could explain literature in terms of the relationship between its characters, setting, and other elements of the story, etc. Post-structuralists don't reject that; rather, they question the assumption underlying a lot of the early structuralists that there was a single, objectively correct structural representation of a work and it was the task of the interpreter to figure it out. Instead, post-structuralists would argue that there are almost always a host of valid structural interpretations (and also a lot of bullshit ones that rely on ignoring parts of the story that conflict with it, making shit up, not thinking things through, etc.), and are additionally interested in what might cause a particular interpreter to emphasize one particular structural interpretation over another as well as how and why the implications of those multiple structural analyses differ from one another. So the term "post-meritocratic" operates loosely along these lines: it's not about rejecting meritocracy, but rather about critically examining how the concept and rhetoric of "meritocracy" is actually employed in practice.

This attempt at being funny in the context of rejecting a bug() call falls flat in the face of expansion of network culture beyond the original age and culture group that grew up on USENET. In that context perhaps, in light of the CoC - it would be good for more to review the old netequitte rules that arose during that era,

http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html

and for those new to the field, a lifetime supply of the hackers dictionary be placed near all the bathroom stalls in the EE and CS departments, would help much in furthering good comms with us old farts, as well as supply an essential lightness oft missing from some conversations.