Fact-check on TAB election process

Posted Sep 20, 2018 18:43 UTC (Thu) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642)
In reply to: After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker) by nevets
Parent article: After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

I agree about Sage's characterization of the TAB. I'm still baffled why people who show up to at a specific party at a specific conference are given the right to vote (rather than, say, some metric based on specific contributions to Linux). I have been at that conference in the past (not recently in the last few years, though), and I can confirm as a fact-check to Sage's account: in 2015, the TAB elections that year were done during the LinuxCon Europe in Dublin, in the evening at one of the parties associated with the event, in a loud area slightly off the party floor, and anyone who happened to be in the right place at the right time was permitted to vote, and no one else was.

Fact-check on TAB election process

Posted Sep 20, 2018 18:53 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (7 responses)

TAB elections are no longer held at parties; they are scheduled in a conference room during normal working hours. That was indeed a poor way of doing things; it was recognized and rectified.

Fact-check on TAB election process

Posted Sep 20, 2018 19:34 UTC (Thu) by bkuhn (subscriber, #58642) [Link] (6 responses)

corbet wrote:

TAB elections are no longer held at parties; they are scheduled in a conference room during normal working hours.

An improvement, I agree, but why is suffrage still tied to the logistical, physical, and financial ability to attend a specific event in person?

Fact-check on TAB election process

Posted Sep 20, 2018 19:44 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (5 responses)

Because that is how the TAB charter was written up many years ago; it was meant to enable voting by the core kernel development community.

If you have a better idea for either the selection of the TAB or of a hypothetical future body that would take over CoC issues, the coming months would be a good time to express them.

Fact-check on TAB election process

Posted Sep 20, 2018 23:20 UTC (Thu) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link] (2 responses)

What I find really sad, is that the Linux development community wants most of the logistical and emotional work on reducing its own toxicity done by someone else, at some time in the future, and possibly without disrupting status quo.

Fact-check on TAB election process

Posted Sep 22, 2018 1:56 UTC (Sat) by da4089 (subscriber, #1195) [Link] (1 responses)

The impression I got from Jon's comment was more that this is something that's now clearly been thrown open to change, and that it's unlikely to be resolved overnight.

It won't be the first time that Linux has had a few attempts to get something right before settling on what in hindsight was clearly the right solution.

Fact-check on TAB election process

Posted Sep 22, 2018 11:02 UTC (Sat) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

Also note that the Code of Conduct is effectively part of the Linux kernel source code, and is therefore exactly as amenable to patching, evolution, and incremental improvement to better suit requirements as any other part of the kernel.

Those people who think that “Linux is doomed now the SJWs have taken over” should consider that until the “SJWs” are in charge of Linus's git repository there is not really a lot they can do. I'm pretty sure that if he wants to, Linus can be as politely uncompromising about the quality of code submissions as he used to be rudely or abusively uncompromising, and that if he does manage to adjust his style, his example will influence the rest of the community in due course. But I'm also pretty sure that Linus isn't going to stand for creative games-playing with the CoC on the part of people who would use it to harass other members of the community. If what we're after is a smooth development process with mutual respect and without invective, that sort of thing is as out of place as the behaviour people are criticising Linus for.

Fact-check on TAB election process

Posted Sep 20, 2018 23:29 UTC (Thu) by rodgerd (guest, #58896) [Link] (1 responses)

The PostgreSQL has deliberately made the CoC team separate from the core team precisely to avoid conflicts of interest; perhaps look to them for suggestions.

Fact-check on TAB election process

Posted Sep 21, 2018 3:49 UTC (Fri) by pbonzini (subscriber, #60935) [Link]

The TAB is elected among kernel developers, so it includes some prominent kernel developers, but it is certainly separate from the core team. People like Thomas Gleixner, David Miller, Andrew Morton and Linus Torvalds are certainly core developers but are not on the TAB.

I am not saying that the overlap between TAB and CoC resolution is optimal, but they are certainly not a full overlap with the kernel core team.