LWN: Comments on "After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)"

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

ras — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 00:27:56 +0000

> A friend of mine, who is a Christian, told me about one of his work colleagues.

A beautiful story.

My personal experience has been Christians (but you could substitute any any idealistic belief for "Christian" - like open source) who loudly promulgate that belief are unpleasant to be around. But people who you learn by accident they attend their Christian church regularly after knowing them for some time are the kindest, nice people you could hope to meet.

As for Linus, this quote by George Bernard Shaw sums it up for me:

> The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Both Linus and Stallman have been towering forces of progress in my world. Neither of them are the most pleasant people to be around. But I guess if your mission is to force someone out of their comfortable rut, things are going to become a little unpleasant at times.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

koenkooi — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 04:27:51 +0000

Also known as Popper's Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

raven667 — Fri, 28 Sep 2018 16:25:27 +0000

The important thing about tolerance as a value that is constantly and loudly misunderstood by many is that is is a two party contract, I tolerate you as long as you tolerate me, if one person fails in that by being intolerant then they no longer earn tolerance. Without that understanding then calls for tolerance just becomes another tool for the socially powerful to dominate, where they demand tolerance for themselves and their behavior but are unwilling to extend that courtesy to others. So it isn't so much that you have a "right" to have others tolerate your behavior, its that you can earn tolerance by how well you tolerate and treat others.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

codeofdrama — Fri, 28 Sep 2018 11:21:10 +0000

It's not exactly a UDHR, but as an intellectual exercise, I've been thinking about what useful rights a social contract might contain.

Of the rights I've come up with, the unifying theme is tolerance. Practically this means that the powers-that-be (owners, moderators, etc.) won't ban/moderate people for the sole reason of exercising one or more of the rights, even though the powers-that-be might have the formal right to ban/moderate anyone for any reason whatsoever.

A simple example could be: A participant has the right to use Oxford spelling.

Where it gets interesting is when people self-select out of a community because they find a right intolerable.

I see these sort of rights as a supplement to compelled, and prohibited behaviour in describing the boundaries of social interaction.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

dgm — Fri, 28 Sep 2018 06:59:39 +0000

If articulating the value system of the community is the goal, then a *code* of conduct is a rather imperfect mechanism. A code fixes specific behaviors, but not the reasons for them.

I think a declaration of principles would be more adequate. Universal Declaration of Hacker Rights anyone? (sounds like a job ESR would love).

Mathematically talented and socially talented.

zdavatz — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 17:00:54 +0000

Mathematically talented people can learn from socially talented/trained people and vice versa.

If you are mathematically taletend because you have "the right genes", are raised by a single mother and because of your talents with numbers can evade daily social conflicts then well, you miss out on the social learning.

Vice Verca being a highly talented sales person and not respecting and understanding the Hacking skills of a great software engineer will not bring you further in life (if you are confronted with software in your professional environment).

ADHD/ADD personalities in general profit a lot more from professional coaching because their strong genes/skills often feal intimidating to other people with a lesser skillset.

Coaching can soften this punch and even make you more successful while improving the quality of your work even more.

Your environment shapes your social behavior. To change your social behavior you have to change your environment i.e. visiting a coach when you think it could help you.

Picked up by CNBC

marcH — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 08:07:28 +0000

Different people and/or contexts use the word "Linux" for different scopes. It's sadly confusing but that's just how people speak so trying to find who's "right" or "wrong" seems pointless.

> > That's marketing for you

I'm struggling to see what "marketing" has to do with any of this; maybe that's a use of the word I never saw before.

you don't need to be persecuted to have a good reason to fight against persecution

jschrod — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 01:21:03 +0000

> And a lot of people seem to ONLY differentiate between white and non-white, presumably because they don’t like white men (if I’m being unfair).

????????? did you forget to insert a "non-" in front of "white"?

I live in Europe. AFAICS, the USA has a president who was voted into office mainly because of people who don't want to "differentiate between white and non-white, presumably because they don’t like *non-*white men" (emphasis mine).

Undermining

jschrod — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 01:00:50 +0000

> > I feel like you wanted me to be a salesman for the CoC.
>
> Not at all, no; in fact, I made a point of saying otherwise.

If you wanted to do so: you didn't succeed. I re-read your post to check it.

FWIW: This is a comment about your posts and the style of your posts in this thread, and not about your viewpoint concerning the CoC.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

nix — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 20:17:37 +0000

Yeah. Solve this and you've probably solved the troll problem and saved civilization. It's probably quite hard. :/

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

wahern — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 18:06:55 +0000

Sure, there are open questions about how it would apply to common open source work. Nonetheless, someone could still cause headaches for particular companies with threats of litigation, using this as leverage for compensation.

Also consider that the *intent* of the right is to allow authors who *regret* their licensing decision to recover their rights. There was a similar statutory right prior to the 1976 Copyright Act, but caselaw had developed that permitted authors to contract specifically not to exercise the right, which effectively then became part of standard agreements. The 1976 legislation was intended to restore an *inalienable* right to terminate so that authors get a proverbial second bite at the apple. So whatever the open questions are (e.g. for a work where the license grant is accompanied by third-party distribution, what's the relevant grant date, initial publication or reception?) courts are more likely than not to favor an interpretation that gives effect to the spirit of the law.

That said, I don't mean to fear monger or spread FUD. We make too much about the effect of licensing. Larger social and economic forces typically dominate. I doubt few if any FOSS authors would ever even consider the possibility of termination (though this CoC controversy is an interesting development, it's probably just alot of bluster and hurt feelings). Most small and medium sized companies are willing to use FOSS even under significant legal uncertainty. Conservative large corporations tend to follow in due course via acquisition, technological necessity, price, etc. Finally, for large collaborative projects its more feasible to replace an individual contributors code, and increasingly the code is corporate sponsored work for hire, for which there's no statutory termination right.

But to simply say that FOSS is immune.... Let's just say that when it comes to these big open questions in copyright, FOSS legal advocates at Stanford, Harvard, etc, unfortunately have an abysmal track record. Most notably, they were wrong about constitutional limits on copyright duration, wrong about the ability to return public domain works back under copyright, and wrong about the copyrightability of APIs. In these and other cases they failed to appreciate the prevailing disposition by courts to favor *strong* and *broad* copyrights. Unlike in patent law, there's no indication that courts perceive actual or potential harmful abuse in copyright. It's unfortunate, but it's the reality. You can't wish it away.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

farnz — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 11:20:44 +0000

One thing that I've seen repeatedly in written communication is that someone who's naturally brusque but not unhelpful and who has a cultural background that is biased towards brevity and brutal honesty over circumlocution and pleasant language appears to be a brutal evil monster over e-mail, IM, etc. I could well believe that this is true of Uli - in person, he sees the cues that tell him that his language is slipping over the line and corrects back to where he wants to be, while there's no such cues on the Internet.

Worse, correcting these people on the Internet often backfires badly - instead of coming across to them as replacing the cues they subconsciously follow in person, it comes across as harsh criticism.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

nix — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 10:02:31 +0000

Uli is one of those people who is completely, almost shockingly, different in person from his written communication on the Internet. In person I agree with your assessment -- but most of his communication with new glibc hackers was on the net, and *that* was definitely not kind, patient and helpful. Impatient and brusque to the point of unhelpfulness is actually an *understatement*. It definitely drove people away; not only new glibc hackers, and not only people who weren't already extremely thick-skinned (case in point: davem). It led to the creation of mailing lists and entire *forked projects* whose sole reason for existence was that Uli was not involved.

That's... not really how to build a community, or how to keep development thriving once you're gone.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

cortana — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 09:56:10 +0000

I believe I was thinking of https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html#203. There's an explanation in plain English at http://www.sfwa.org/2013/08/second-bite-apple-termination... and some remarks on its applicability to free software at https://www.jstor.org/stable/29763031 (which I haven't read because I don't want to make an account):

> Unlike traditional copyright licenses, Free Open Source Software (FOSS) licenses have been termed copyleft rather than copyright. This is because the intention of copyleft licenses is to utilize intellectual property law to keep the source and object code of the licensed software available to anyone who would like to use it at no charge. The termination provision of the Copyright Act of 1976 could undermine or even destroy the FOSS movement. Potentially, licenses of FOSS programs, which are old enough for the termination provision of the Copyright Act to apply, could be terminated as early as 2013. This article provides a brief discussion of FOSS licenses and the termination provision of the Copyright Act of 1976. It also describes the limitations on an author's rights in computer programs under 17 U.S.C. § 106. Finally, it presents a possible resolution, which lies in the Copyright Act's safe harbour provision for adaptation of computer software.

(typos in the above are my own)

It seems this was even discussed on LWN a while back: https://lwn.net/Articles/61365/

Please!

nix — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 09:46:43 +0000

Sorry! I shouldn't wait days with the recent comment page open: I miss new stuff doing things like that (like the editor telling me to stop it). :/

But lexicographic pedantry is always justified :P

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

sfeam — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 01:07:25 +0000

If they hold sole ownership of the copyright -- maybe. The statutory text you link to distinguishes single-owner works from multiple-owner works. If it applies to linux at all, for example, previous nonexclusive copyright could only be withdrawn by agreement of a majority of the copyright holders. I see no provision for any single author to remove permission for only a small piece of a larger work. Then there's the separate issue of whether the 35 year window resets every time a revision of the work is released, which would make the whole provision moot for any work with continuous development/release.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

wahern — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 00:21:05 +0000

s/technical defaults/technical details/

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

wahern — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 00:19:44 +0000

U.S. Copyright provides a statutory termination right. Basically, 35 years from a license or transfer an author can unilaterally terminate the grant. Contracts, promises, or other contrivances aimed at precluding the right are void, and courts will not punish an author for exercising their right. The intent of the right is to allow authors to remedy youthful mistakes, valuations made before the market becomes clear, etc--the court really doesn't care. See https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html#203 and https://www.copyright.gov/title37/201/37cfr201-10.html

Richard Stallman and others are of the opinion that the technical defaults of the notice requirements make statutory termination largely irrelevant to the viability of FOSS as a practical matter. But I think its quite clear that an irate author (particularly an author's whose contributions are effectively irreplaceable without rewriting the entire work) could cause serious headaches for large corporations using foundational FOSS software. The 35 year window is fast approaching for some older works; time will tell what happens.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

ceplm — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 20:48:52 +0000

No, perhaps, you are right and it is not necessary.

First of all, I truly acknowledge, that particularly Ulrich is really exceptional smart guy. I have had one experience where I still believe I was right and he was not (and although he never admitted, but later the change I was suggesting silently went into glibc), but I have many situations where seconds after he learned about the question he quickly dismissed it, and author of the idea only after long time (a year in one case) understood that Ulrich was actually right and he was wrong.

However, this is not the point of this thread. I still hold that polite conversation (which is IMHO more important than any CoC) should be always centered *ad rem* and not *ad personam*. It is almost always correct to say that *something* is completely stupid idea (of course, coherent reasons for such judgment should be always provided), but it is never right to say in such discussion that *somebody* is stupid.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that some of the quotations mentioned by the Newyorker article are completely out of line in this area (and of course, I can find you similarly inappropriate in my opinion statements from Ulrich and others). I used to be lawyer, so I am used to rather rough treatment, and I can give whatever I get.

However, if we want to make our project friendly to newbies (and girls), and I want, it is better to go out of your way to keep discussion clean of *ad personam* arguments. See, Guido's efforts which really led to Python conferences having most ladies around (I was shocked when PyCon CZ '18 had at least one third of ladies, if not more). I cannot say that it would lead to decrease of quality of code, more like just contrary. More eyes make more bugs shallow and it doesn't matter which toilet uses their owner.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

lkundrak — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 16:17:17 +0000

> in the department of offending others, Ulrich is the master.

Is this sort of gossip even necessary...

From my experience it is rather unfair and incorrect. While sometimes rather blunt in written communication, I found him to be very kind, patient and quite helpful.

It is a mistake to overlook these qualities in fellow hackers just because they weren't overly emotionally considerate in a few of their internet comments. From a couple of comments around here* I've got an impression that some take that as a license to dehumanize them.

*Much more so from the Twitter messages pointed to from them. Perhaps that's because Twitter's character limit encourages people to strip down their thoughts to simple-minded judgements?

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

ceplm — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 11:37:04 +0000

Of course, Ulrich is also smarter than most of his critics combined. Other trait he shares with Linus.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

ceplm — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 11:34:24 +0000

Ulrich Drepper of glibc fame. Linus is and always just has been just a beginning apprentice in the department of offending others, Ulrich is the master.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

paxillus — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 08:33:22 +0000

Examples of behavior that contributes to creating a positive environment include:

Using welcoming and inclusive language
Being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences
Gracefully accepting constructive criticism
Focusing on what is best for the community
Showing empathy towards other community members

Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants include:

The use of sexualized language or imagery and unwelcome sexual attention or advances
Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
Public or private harassment
Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or electronic address, without explicit permission
Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting

Contributor Code of Conduct

"You see, no one wants to admit that they are “that person”. It’s hard to accept that everyone, including your friends, are unconsciously biased. It’s even harder to admit that your friends are slightly racist/homophobic/transphobic/etc. No one wants to recognize the ablist language they use in their every day life, like “lame”, “dumb”, or “retarded”. It’s tough to admit that your conference speakers are mostly cis white men because you have failed to network with minorities. It’s difficult to come to grips with the fact that your leadership is toxic. It’s embarrassing to admit that you may be too privileged and so lacking in understanding of minorities’ lived experiences that you may need to reach outside your network to find people to help you deal with Code of Conduct incidents."
Code of Conduct Warning Mx Sharp

At a push, these comments could be seen as " ...certain norms of certain parts of the US political spectrum"

So, just what are << ... the "norms" of treating people with respect>>?

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

stonedown — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 00:45:59 +0000

And the crux of the matter is this quote from that article "The Contributor Covenant is a code of conduct which transparently attempts to push certain norms of certain parts of the US political spectrum on the rest of the world"

==========

It's not clear to me what "norms" the author is complaining about. Would that be the "norms" of treating people with respect? Is that a deal-breaker for some people?

Please!

corbet — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 22:43:18 +0000

Can we please end this discussion now? It has gone on way beyond any point of usefulness...

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

nix — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 22:40:45 +0000

One might say that systemd is a slave to the kernel in this.

... sorry, the devil made me say it ---

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

nix — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 22:39:19 +0000

I believe this was EU, not US: the whole "moral rights of the author" thing.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

wahern — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 22:32:38 +0000

Slavery != chattel slavery. Obscuring the difference obscures how exceptional and evil chattel slavery was in 18th- and 19th-century America. Eliding the distinctions is one way that advocates promoted and defended the emergence of chattel slavery in the United States, and the legacy of that process goes a long way toward explaining the persistent and particular prejudice against blacks in the U.S.

That said, I'm only responding to the historical conflation in your post, and perhaps by implication the assumption that the the word "slave" in contemporary discourse is predominantly intended to evoke chattel slavery--e.g. that phrases like "I'm a slave to my job" are intended to evoke, directly or indirectly, the African slave trade and its persistent legacy in the U.S. and the Western world. The *real* debate is about how the word is *received*, and in particular how the privileged believe its received by an unprivileged minority.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

nix — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 22:31:38 +0000

Uhhh... the first citation for "slave" in the human slavery sense in the OED is circa 1300 AD in the South English Legendary.

A little before 1904.

(The OED itself was first published in 1884.)

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

joey — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 21:35:32 +0000

If this were possible to do, then every free software developer could extort their user base for continued use of GPL licensed code. That would destroy all free software.

Keep that in mind as you read people promoting this idea.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

mezcalero — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 19:13:10 +0000

Just to shut this down quickly: please see the comment I added to that github issue just now: our use of the master/slave terminology in the systemd sources is exclusively and without exception calls into various kernel APIs that use this terminology in their symbolic names. systemd has not invented any concepts using this terminology, we are exclusively *consumers* of APIs exposed by the kernel under these names.

If you find the master/slave naming problematic, please work with the kernel folks to change it in the APIs. But without that there's nothing we can do really, as these APIs are only available under these names currently.

Lennart

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

dskoll — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 18:14:13 +0000

If, on the other hand, two male (or female) work colleagues - holding hands - walked up to me and made a point of being gay

I'm not sure exactly how one "makes a point" of being gay. I'm also not sure why you feel you can interpret people's motivations with 100% accuracy.

Going back to transgender people for a moment, some transgender people cannot help but be visible because they are readable as transgender people. They are not doing it to be "in your face", but they're doing it because they have no choice. And I worry that you or others may misread their intentions.

In general, in a workplace, you should assume people's motivations are not to be in your face unless you have plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Two gay friends, making me very uncomfortable, but it was very much "this is what we are", and not "pushing it at me", so you just have to accept them as basically decent people with a different value system.

Sexuality and gender identity have nothing to do with one's "value system". They are an integral part of one's identity and not something you can change. (You can suppress them, sure, but you can't change your fundamental nature.)

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

tuna — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 18:03:37 +0000

"Now ok, those who signed off on this are all core kernel devs, not some small time driver guy like me but I would have expected a change of this importance to have far more signoffs and actually be discussed, at least among maintainers if not the entire kernel community. And even if it were decided that a public discussion would be too "'messy", I think the very least to expect would be a public statement of what was wrong with the previous CoC, why they chose this one and what others were considered."

Linux is Linus' project. He can put whatever he want in it.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

johannbg — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 16:34:48 +0000

Robota 1. "From Proto-Slavic *orbota (“hard work, slavery”) derived from *orbъ (“slave”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃erbʰ (“to change or evolve status”), the predecessor to *h₃órbʰos (“orphan”).[1] Cognate with German Arbeit, Dutch arbeid, and Middle English arveth (“difficult; hard”)."

So certain people must be losing sleep over this 2. "A review of master-slave robotic systems for surgery"

1.https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/robota
2.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1438888/

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

lkundrak — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 16:15:34 +0000

> it sounds like the generic Slav word for "work".

Yes, that is the case. Also, "job".

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

cortana — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 16:04:27 +0000

I'm sure I saw something a few years ago about how US copyright law allows a licensor to unilaterally withdraw from a licensing agreement, but I'm not sure how to find it now. I'm pretty sure the purpose was to allow an author who entered into an unfavourable licensing agreement before they became famous to cancel that agreement so that they can earn more money later on.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

Wol — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 16:01:55 +0000

> the meaning of this word shifted to "mandatory work for the feudal lord"

Sounds like what we had by way of tax in the medieval period.

Speaking limited Russian, and knowing not an awful lot of national history of Eastern Europe back then, but it sounds like the generic Slav word for "work".

Cheers,
Wol

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

Wol — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 15:53:11 +0000

> But you probably wouldn't consider it abusive if two newly-married heterosexual coworkers were acting rather like lovebirds in the office (as is usually the case at that sort of stage in a relationship).

That sounds to me like they would be oblivious to EVERYONE in the office.

In other words, by my own criteria, it's not my place to say anything. I probably wouldn't like it - I guess a lot of their co-workers wouldn't like it - but the point I am making is that they are not doing it with the intention of pushing at me.

Cheers,
Wol

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

nilsmeyer — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 13:53:38 +0000

That’s saddening to hear. I found a lot of insight and entertainment here.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

corbet — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 12:38:42 +0000

This seems like an overt attempt to make the thread even longer. This is not helpful; please do not do it again.