The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 28, 2018 23:34 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
In reply to: The kernel's code of conduct, one week later by daniel
Parent article: The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

> In an alternate universe, Linus accepted my patch, the Bitkeeper documentation was moved out of the kernel source to some web page as I suggested, and we began to build Git in 2002 instead of 2005.
In another alternative universe Linux would have tried to use CVS and the just-released newfangled SVN to manage the source code. The strain of maintaining it would have alienated more and more developers, also taking a lot of developer time.

The continuous developer problems would have caused Linux to stagnate. Eventually companies like the nascent Google lost all the interest in it. By the end of 2004 most of Google servers were migrated to Microsoft Solaris (as Sun was acquired by Microsoft). Unfortunately, that allowed MS to exert significant pressure on Google and prevent them from displacing Microsoft on the Web.

From that everything else was inevitable. And so by 2020 only one large software company remained in the world, reigning over most of the industry with an iron fist.

Thank you for ruining the life of a whole alternative universe, you genocidal monster.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 29, 2018 1:22 UTC (Sat) by daniel (guest, #3181) [Link] (11 responses)

You appear to have made your post without reading mine. I always wanted something like Git, after I came to understand the nature of distributed revision control. I played a significant part in achieving it. This is in no way consistent with your post.

Did you really just call me a genocidal monster? That would make you completely out of step with the notion of treating your colleagues with respect, and indeed, with reality. Perhaps you might wish to retract that.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 29, 2018 4:44 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (10 responses)

> You appear to have made your post without reading mine. I always wanted something like Git, after I came to understand the nature of distributed revision control. I played a significant part in achieving it. This is in no way consistent with your post.
I read it. It distinctly lacks any actual alternatives to BK. I was kinda following SVN development at that time (running pre-1.0 builds and all that) and I was looking at other VCSes. There was nothing really competitive with BK for decentralized development.

> Did you really just call me a genocidal monster? That would make you completely out of step with the notion of treating your colleagues with respect, and indeed, with reality. Perhaps you might wish to retract that.
Well, you've just doomed a whole alternative universe to a life under the totalitarian control of Microsoft. What else can we call you?

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 29, 2018 6:48 UTC (Sat) by daniel (guest, #3181) [Link] (6 responses)

> What else can we call you?

Who is "we"? I thought that you are I and the rest of us were "we". Rhetoric such as yours above is a textbook example of the exact opposite of collegial behavior.

Besides that, the words you attempt to put in my mouth, the analogy you attempt to draw, is wildly wrong. Please go back, read, understand. You missed a lot of the story, did you even read my original post? I doubt you did. And please stop trying to be funny, it is entirely inappropriate in this context. Abuse is often cast in the form of a joke. I didn't get it.

Perhaps you just need to decompress. My suggestion: go see what happened in the US capitol today. There are parallels.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 29, 2018 8:47 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (2 responses)

> Who is "we"? I thought that you are I and the rest of us were "we".
There's this whole alternative universe to call you. Duh. Since you're so fond of imagining what would have happened.

> You missed a lot of the story, did you even read my original post? I doubt you did. And please stop trying to be funny, it is entirely inappropriate in this context. Abuse is often cast in the form of a joke. I didn't get it.
Yes I have. Why do you assume that people don't read stuff?

In the original thread you've made a move that was absolutely and utterly disrespectful to core developers, like not even CC-ing Jeff Garzik (the doc author) when submitting their removal patch. Nice touch that.

So you got disrespect in return. Perfectly understandable.

> Perhaps you just need to decompress. My suggestion: go see what happened in the US capitol today. There are parallels.
Yes. But not the ones you're implying.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 29, 2018 9:17 UTC (Sat) by daniel (guest, #3181) [Link] (1 responses)

> There's this whole alternative universe to call you. Duh

Would you please stop that. Just stop it.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Oct 1, 2018 18:06 UTC (Mon) by ms-tg (subscriber, #89231) [Link]

> > There's this whole alternative universe to call you. Duh

> Would you please stop that. Just stop it.

Fascinating -- haven't we all just now observed a *real-world* example, right here in the comments of LWN, of the sorts of interactions that all of this discussion about the CoC have centered around?

From my observation of this discussion, I have the following questions:

(a) Is it abuse to extrapolate, in response to another poster's alternate history, "ad absurdum" alternate history?
(b) Is it abuse if, in doing so, one off-handedly refers to the other poster as a "genocidal monster", and expecting the context of an obvious, but not explicitly stated "ad absurdum" comment to excuse the insult as good humor?
(c) Is it abuse if, in such an exchange, one poster feigns to not understand such a context in order to render the other's comment as abuse? Did such feigning just occur, or was there a genuine misunderstanding of intent (possibly on my own part)?
(d) Is it abuse to repeatedly imply that the other has not read your comment, when a more generous interpretation would assume that they were responding to it?

After all the discussion had on the CoC -- I'd really love to see how the principles aspired to can be applied to this exchange?

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 29, 2018 13:35 UTC (Sat) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (2 responses)

Daniel, the post was really just an amusing way of saying "we can't really know what would have happened had the kernel community not gone with BK". It was not meant, as far as I can tell, to be abusive in any way; surely you don't think anybody is really calling you a "genocidal monster"? The OP was just having fun running a fantasy to an extreme conclusion.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 29, 2018 14:02 UTC (Sat) by mjblenner (subscriber, #53463) [Link]

While that's all true, the <<I'm specifically not calling you [insulting term]>> thing is really not cool.
(A specific example from an Australian Senator sticks in my mind)

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 29, 2018 20:57 UTC (Sat) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link]

For what it's worth, I think a lot of the language quoted from Linus and others was often intended that way.

When people are angry they sometimes go over the top in an odd attempt to soften the blow by taking it to the point of silliness. But that often backfires.

I think as a rule if you're angry or arguing with someone, it's better not to be insulting, even as a joke. They're probably not in a mood to get the joke.

This is an odd case, though, as it seemed so obviously silly from the start.

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 29, 2018 6:53 UTC (Sat) by daniel (guest, #3181) [Link] (2 responses)

May I also draw your attention to the main payload of my longish post above:

> How would you have done it better? I would like to know.

Honest question. What would you have done? Nothing, perhaps?

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 30, 2018 9:25 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

FWIW I would definitely have done nothing because my reaction to social conflict is to run away. (I'm not saying *this* would have been the right thing to do, either, but it would have had the same net effect on the path of future events, i.e. none to speak of.)

The kernel's code of conduct, one week later

Posted Sep 30, 2018 23:49 UTC (Sun) by daniel (guest, #3181) [Link]

I'm going to follow your lead and run away now. I composed a longish and potentially interesting post that would have gone here, then posted it to "drafts".