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I've read a few things about the latest happenings with regards to Linus and the kernel, but I feel like I'm missing something here. Can someone summarize for me, or point me at a good summary? Edit: Who is Greg KH and why is this significant and what is the relationship between Greg KH and Linus (and the community)?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The CoC being a political document is expected, it is laying the boundaries that define acceptable behavior, an inherently political task. On that ssamw tangent, the GPL series of license is inherently political. I personally like the political ideology espoused, but some do not despite how other licenses leave these developers with many users and proprietary forks, buf no added code, docs or community.
> The CoC being a political document is expected I agree that both CoC and GPL are political. Developers need to understand something: CoC a political document written by someone opposing one of important principles of free software, meritocracy. https://postmeritocracy.org/ Now here's a big difference: linux was developed under GPL from the very beginning. If you didn't like the politics behind GPL, you didn't contr…
And communication is (or should be) an important component for a lead dev.
Linus is a great guy, but some remarks of his were completely unnecessary and overly abrasive. (Without exact technical details about why the code is shit.)
Linus may have been sincere in his writing, people saw him as this verbally abusive boogeyman who would tear people apart, which led him to become that type of person more and more. The embrace and extend going on over in Redmond right now is threatening though, what better time to use your clout and power over a competitors org (that your a member of now) than when you have forked what depended on their software, ex…
People have been worried about scaling Linus for years, but it seems like there was not much focus on scaling the Linux developer community in general. Contribution quality was maintained through harsh criticism and personal attacks at times, and Linus didn't seem to care if this intimidated people into never contributing at all. Linux has matured, and it's time to acknowledge that some of the rough edges (antisocial aspects) of hacker culture need to go to ensure the project can continue to grow and attract the best code from everyone.
Re: Valve, they've been working on Linux support ever since the Microsoft app store was announced. They see it as a threat to Steam, so first they made the Steam box, Steam for Linux, and now the new DirectX -> Vulkan translation layers (they've also contributed a lot of work to the graphics stack). This isn't some new reaction, it's a strategic hedge they've been working on for the better part of a decade.
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I believe the biggest worry is that the CoC is loosely worded, but gives lots of power for removing people from the community that don't abide by the too-loose rules. This leads people to fear that contributors, some of them long-term, may be removed because of things like political views, even if they don't come up in a mailing list discussion, or if they were said by the person 30 years ago on Usenet. A lot of othe…
I see. I agree that any such code of conduct should be limited to communications involving the project directly, and be the minimal set of rules necessary to ensure civility.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the biggest worry is that the CoC is loosely worded, but gives lots of power for removing people from the community that don't abide by the too-loose rules. This leads people to fear that contributors, some of them long-term, may be removed because of things like political views, even if they don't come up in a mailing list discussion, or if they were said by the person 30 years ago on Usenet. A lot of othe…
I see. I agree that any such code of conduct should be limited to communications involving the project directly, and be the minimal set of rules necessary to ensure civility.
I do agree on the other hand that digging up 30-year-old Usenet posts would tend to just get everyone in trouble and a code-of-conduct process should ignore them, or at most provide ample opportunity to distance oneself from those statements and then go with what's said today.
My preferred solution is to make sure the party handling the code of conduct process is someone who seems level-headed and likely to use their judgment well. It means you move away from codified rules, but it also means rules can't be gamed. For Linux the enforcement body is the Technical Advisory Board, which I think is a little weird precisely because it's a technical body and not necessarily a good-at-people one, but we can see how it goes. For small projects the enforcement body is typically the project founder, and if you don't think the founder will handle things reasonably, no code of conduct can make them trustworthy.
I’m seeing a lot of people stating that they’re worried about this code of conduct. Since I’ve not read it or any commentary about it, can someone tell me why it’s so worrying? Is there a sincere fear that Linux will be damaged as a result? If so, how?
Here is a good starting point to research the critique of this document: https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/12004#note-6 . Its point is particularly apt: > Given a choice between only two extremes, I'd far rather have Linus Torvalds telling me I'm an idiot and my code is shit, then exist in an offense taking culture where various forms of criticism are re-branded as "harassment." However, the Linux copy has cut one of…
I’m seeing a lot of people stating that they’re worried about this code of conduct. Since I’ve not read it or any commentary about it, can someone tell me why it’s so worrying? Is there a sincere fear that Linux will be damaged as a result? If so, how?
Someone has stated their worries on the LKML: https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/19/234
I feel like one of the neat things about a code of conduct is it provides cleanly defined answers for people who are genuinely unsure whether sexual advances are welcome at professional conferences.
Linus may have been sincere in his writing, people saw him as this verbally abusive boogeyman who would tear people apart, which led him to become that type of person more and more. The embrace and extend going on over in Redmond right now is threatening though, what better time to use your clout and power over a competitors org (that your a member of now) than when you have forked what depended on their software, ex…
> The embrace and extend going on over in Redmond right now is threatening though, what better time to use your clout and power over a competitors org (that your a member of now) than when you have forked what depended on their software, extended it to work on your platform, and now want to take the wind out of their sails. Can you explain that a bit more? Are you saying Microsoft is using their clout to change the l…
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The CoC being a political document is expected I agree that both CoC and GPL are political. Developers need to understand something: CoC a political document written by someone opposing one of important principles of free software, meritocracy. https://postmeritocracy.org/ Now here's a big difference: linux was developed under GPL from the very beginning. If you didn't like the politics behind GPL, you didn't contr…
Meritocracy is meaningless without an utility function. And communication is (or should be) an important component for a lead dev. Linus is a great guy, but some remarks of his were completely unnecessary and overly abrasive. (Without exact technical details about why the code is shit.)
I'm not sure what you mean in the context of Free Software/Open Source. FOSS is something that is useful to everybody, and meritocracy ensures that the folks who are the most knowledgeable decide how it's developed.
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It’s really not a fringe belief outside of your circles - “meritocracy” is one of those things that sounds like a good idea, like “communism”, but organisations and structures defining themselves by those words very rarely practice what they preach. A meritocracy would never allow harassment of people on the basis of things that have nothing to do with their code - it would take a hard stance against sexism and haras…
>but organisations and structures defining themselves by those words very rarely practice what they preach Is there some sort of evidence for this? >A meritocracy would never allow harassment of people on the basis of things that have nothing to do with their code - it would take a hard stance against sexism and harassment, it would attempt to communicate in a way that doesn’t drive people away from the project in a…