81–90 of 150 posts
Although it doesn't specifically mention it, this kernel supports Apple's Magic Trackpad 2, which is a real blessing. Original source: https://github.com/robotrovsky/Linux-Magic-Trackpad-2-Driver I've been using this since last night, and with some tweaking, it works really well.
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)?
The idea is that Linus stepped away for a second to reconsider his style of responding on mailing list and which caused the Code of Conduct silliness.
It is very disturbing for me to see Greg KH being at the top and deciding what goes into Linux. There is history of agenda that doesn't align best with kernel user interests. Can't forget d-bus events very related to this person. I did switch to FreeBSD couple of years ago but I love linux and it is not easiest to observe all the latest events.
Greg KH already decides what goes into the "stable" Linux series (4.y.z, for instance 4.18.15), which is what most people actually use. Besides, he assumed after the 4.19 merge window, and he's handed the 4.20 merge window back to Linus; it's in the merge window that new features come in (after the merge window closes it's mostly only bugfixes), so it's still Linus who gets to decide.
Fingers crossed it is only 4.19, I am kind of seeing this as a bigger event but I may be wrong.
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"Communications involving the project directly" is a good goal, but is ambiguous when e.g. one developer is belittling another in a semi-related forum like their personal Twitter account where they regularly have technical conversations, their HN account, etc. If (hypothetically) Linus were to be nice and polite on LKML, and reply to tweets about bugs saying "Yes, that's a bug, the developer should be retroactively a…
Your example isn’t that ambiguous, that’s a public communication directly about the project. That should be covered by the CoC. However unrelated statements, even very politically incorrect ones, should be outside it’s remit. If for example someone was a virulent racist on twitter. That’s arguably a bad thing, but those statements are unrelated to the project and should have no bearing on contributions to it. (Now th…
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I got down voted last time I mentioned this like it is some sort of conspiracy and not historical fact, but Microsoft literally used the phrase "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" [1] as a strategy to defeat competition. So anytime you hear of them embracing something you would do well to be skeptical of their motives. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
Sure, but that was two CEOs ago, and they were the dominant market player in all categories at the time. They're a different company now.
Their new strategy appears to be cloud services, all in [1]. Desktop, mobile, hardware, patents, dev tools... everything ties back to encouraging Azure use now. They're offering massive partnerships and credits (first one is always free) to attract new migrations. In the last year their managed service primitives (db's, queues, lambdas, lb, etc etc) has matured tremendously, so now it's convenient and practical to quickly build full hosted applications. Like AWS but different.
As they make more open source contributions, forking popular projects and making their own spin on things, there can be MS flavored Kafka and Classic Kafka, for example.
Then once your service is hosted in Azure, with forked nonstandard services and APIs, it's inconvenient to leave: things aren't close enough to other clouds so you need to re-invest. This is the definition of lockin.
Here at $work we have swallowed the whole lure: investment, credits, partnership, migration, custom services. And that lure has big treble hooks in our gills.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/07/26/why-amazon...
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The community was already split. Those who tolerated his behaviour and those who didn't.
I don't think it was, at least not that black and white. If the community really was that split the project would not have survived for 20 years. Surely we would have seen a fork where the involved factions split off. I think this is a very vocal minority in play here. From my understanding these changes did not come from any of the core contributors but rather from activists. The used divide and rule; if you don't s…
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?
From reading peoples' complaints, they're worried that the CoC can/will be used to beat "problematic" developers into submission and reduce their ability to speak and discuss freely. I think it's completely overblown. If a person's ability to discuss software development requires them to belittle others for their sexuality or political observation or gender or anything else not related to software development, then t…
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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 would like to extend this point: "I'd rather have Linus Torvalds telling me I'm an idiot and my code is shit, than ... releasing kernel with my shitty code and EVERYONE thinking that I'm an idiot".
Or, "releasing kernel with my shitty code and ruining the day for a lot of people."
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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…
It allows us to codify the spirit of the law, to be used as a fall-back plan when the letter of the law is being gamed. CoC's allow judgement, in contrast to zero tolerance policies which prohibit judgement.
One of orgs I volunteer for had our own #metoo drama. Actual rape, assaults, harassment, etc. Some stomach turning stuff. It made the news. There have been some out of court settlements.
Per the bylaws, we didn't have any way to remove the perpetrator. Adopting a CoC allowed the org membership to impeach the leader. (Maybe like a vote of no confidence works in parliamentary systems.)
Concerns about CoC's being weaponized, misused, abused... Whatever. Of course there's always oversteer, friendly fire. As if abuse didn't exist before CoC's.
I happily accept those occasional failures and let the balance be figured out over time. Rather than going back to denial and inaction.
In other words, I choose 98% awesome over 100% terrible, and happily work to further reduce that 2% gap.
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Someone has stated their worries on the LKML: https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/19/234
> Some elements of the Code are unobjectionable; sexual advances, for instance, have no place on the lkml (though they may at, say, a conference, and not everyone can reliably predict whether they are unwelcome) ' 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.