Linux 4.19 • Hacker News Board

Re: Linux 4.19

#111

Post by ufo » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 2:56 PM UTC

binaryapparatus wrote: post #83

cesarb wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is stable different from latest? I am not sure how much independent decision space he has, otherwise we would have d-bus in stable long time ago. Maybe I don't know the process well enough but I would be surprised that Greg can merge something that isn't approved in latest. Fingers crossed it is only 4.19, I am kind of seeing this as a bigger event but I may be wrong.

Parent poster was referring to the "LTS" kernels: https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html

A good number of Linux distributions are based on an LTS release instead of a mainline release.

Re: Linux 4.19

#112

Post by dvfjsdhgfv » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:02 PM UTC

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #104

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meritocracy is meaningless without an utility function. 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.

The issue is that calling a system meritocratic doesn't give a functional definition of merit, and people tend to evaluate merit in very biased ways; see e.g. the halo/horn effect [1]. Possibly the simplest and most pervasive bias, though, is that work by familiar people is viewed as more valuable than work by unfamiliar people (cf. nepotism, cronyism, NIH). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

OK but this is a completely different discussion: defining what meritocracy means vs. rejecting it altogether.

The dynamics of open source projects is a very interesting issue, but in general in most healthy environments it works like this: someone sends a patch, and it looks really good. They send another one, and another, and everyone can see that these patches are actually useful (not fixing typos in the comments...). With time, whether in formalized or informal way, that person has more and more to say as others respect their opinion. Why? Because they demonstrated they know the project, they devote their time to it, they can make reasonable decisions. So they are trusted more than a random guy who just joined yesterday, even though the same person - with time - can prove themselves and reach the same or better position in the project. This is called "meritocracy" and it's the base of most FOSS projects.

Of course it's not ideal and there are abusers - overly protective maintainers who refuse patches from anyone, or small groups of friends who dislike newcomers - but in general it works very well and I see no reason to destroy it.

Re: Linux 4.19

#113

Post by mbrumlow » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:05 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #54

m1el wrote: post #24

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…

You should accept the politics if you agree with them. Linux should change its politics if its major contributors agree they should be changed, and at least seven of them - including Linus himself - do. I'm not sure why this is controversial - the people who can implement the CoC are the same people who generally decide where the project goes, same as always (just ask the people behind GRSecurity). I'm not sure why s…

I think the problem has to do with how this potcular CoC came about to be the de facto CoC. There is a lot of evidence in screenshots and wayback machine that suggest that this CoC was strongarmed into a lot of projects, and the ones that resisted have been put into a bad light.

Not to mention the author of the CoC started this process while working at Github by making it easy to add a CoC and badgering projects that don't have a CoC to add one. Low and behold the author's CoC is the first one and recommended for all projects.

I think many people who seem to hate the CoC would be fine with a community driven and created CoC -- what they really dislike is the particular CoC and the political agenda of the author of said CoC. I wonder how it got into 40k+ projects near overnight... And then this used as a beating stick "40k others have done it why have you not?". This type of attitude is unhealthy for everybody.

The said CoC is the "Contributors Covenant".

There is so much more to say about this CoC. I can only hope that the open source community will build a proper CoC that is truy community driven and actually has the goal of bringing people together vs being a stick to hit people with.

Re: Linux 4.19

#114

Post by ChrisSD » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:06 PM UTC

forgottenpass wrote: post #108

ChrisSD wrote: post #45

I think all this handwringing over the CoC would have more weight for me if: a) It came from major Linux contributors. b) It didn't assume a conspiracy to not only oust Linus but also get him to dance to their tune.

You're using a line of argument that I see quite often in day to day stuff (outside the kernel) so I have to push back on this. >would have more weight for me if [...] It came from major Linux contributors. The group of people you would give the most weight to the opinion of are also the group under the most pressured not to voice dissent publicly. It isn't wrong to look to them or give large weight to their position…

Perhaps. But usually if their blood is boiling they will leak indirectly as anonymous sources, via unnamed "friends", or whatever other euphemism the press likes to use.

Re: Linux 4.19

#115

Post by vertex-four » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:08 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #74

icebraining wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there some sort of evidence for this? What type of evidence would change your mind? > The new CoC is founded on an ideology that explicitly rejects it. The GPL is also founded on an ideology that rejects proprietary software, yet Linux is used by plenty of companies who develop such software. "Foundations" are just an origin story. What part of the actual text of the CoC prevents a meritocracy? > If that were th…

> Reusing the previous example, the purpose of the GPL was to drive out proprietary software; yet the people using it in Linux do not yield it that way. That was an outcome that was hoped for, not a purpose. The purpose is pretty explicit in the preamble paragraphs [0] - to promote a certain style of freedom. As a body, the Free Software community wouldn't deny that if creating non-free software is legal, then free s…

You can be autistic, not good in social situations, and still not abuse, harass, or discriminate against people. Associating abuse and harassment with being a fundamental part of autism is not ok. Autistic people can fully understand "do not perform this behaviour again" - they can also understand consequences of their behaviour, including both positive ("people like to talk to me more and are more accepting of my ideas if I do X") and negative ("I will be removed from this community if I do X"). If anything, a clear, structured description of what behaviour is and is not acceptable - such as described in a code of conduct - is incredibly useful for many autistic people.

Please do not make the argument that autistic people cannot learn to control their behaviour again.

In the incredibly rare cases where a person, autistic or not, cannot learn how not to abuse people, they need a full-time carer, who will be able to help them interact with the world in a way which doesn't harm other people. It is not the responsibility of people involved in an arbitrary software community to suffer abuse just to make an abuser happy.

Finally - if you allow abusive people to exist within a community, you by definition exclude everybody who they would abuse. You exclude a number of people who may have greater merit, whether individually or collectively. You just can't see that because you're supporting an abusive person over and above anybody else who might wish to contribute. You're supporting them even while they drive out countless contributors, who you can't see the "merit" of because they're no longer contributing. All you can really see is the merit of abusive people, and you ignore the merit of those they abuse.

Re: Linux 4.19

#116

Post by Fnoord » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #74

icebraining wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there some sort of evidence for this? What type of evidence would change your mind? > The new CoC is founded on an ideology that explicitly rejects it. The GPL is also founded on an ideology that rejects proprietary software, yet Linux is used by plenty of companies who develop such software. "Foundations" are just an origin story. What part of the actual text of the CoC prevents a meritocracy? > If that were th…

> Reusing the previous example, the purpose of the GPL was to drive out proprietary software; yet the people using it in Linux do not yield it that way. That was an outcome that was hoped for, not a purpose. The purpose is pretty explicit in the preamble paragraphs [0] - to promote a certain style of freedom. As a body, the Free Software community wouldn't deny that if creating non-free software is legal, then free s…

I happen to have autism (and, it seems Hans Reiser also has autism, or perhaps his father merely argued that I am not sure). Autism is no excuse for harmful behaviour (such as rude behaviour). As part of a project of reintegrating in society I received specific training to act like NTs in a corporate environment. In any social setting there are lower limits which are lines which should not be crossed. Don't want that? Hire someone who acts like a middleman in those social settings e.g. a secretary.

Re: Linux 4.19

#117

Post by shmerl » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:32 PM UTC

Some important fixes in amdgpu for Vega there. It's finally waking up from sleep properly when using DisplayPort.

Re: Linux 4.19

#118

Post by Fnoord » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:34 PM UTC

davemp wrote: post #100

codetrotter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the page: > Add EROFS (Enhanced Read-Only File System), a lightweight read-only file system with modern designs for scenarios which need high-performance read-only requirements, eg. firmwares in mobile phone or LIVECDs and > It is a experimental project, under the staging directory, and still expects to make changes to the on-disk layout. I see it's included in the 4.19 branch of the Raspberry Pi fork of the ker…

That's really nice. I remember having to use Read-Only on a few Raspberry Pi projects because they have a tendency to corrupt SD cards. Getting a free storage performance boost would really improve usability for my past use cases.

I recommend only writing when it is necessary, so e.g. you might want to log to /dev/null or tmpfs (I chose the latter but it adds up in RAM). Also, disable swap if at all feasible.

On top of that I recommend industrial grade SD cards using (a)MLC. They might be a bit more expensive but it is worth the stability.

I learned this from these posts (among others in the same thread 'Raspberry Pi microSD card performance comparison') [1] [2]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16776344

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16777238

Re: Linux 4.19

#119

Post by comesee » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 3:42 PM UTC

Ragnarork wrote: post #19

comesee wrote: post #7

CoC assumes contributions are primarily due to the conduct of the community and not the intellect/interest of the contributor. The quality of a community isn't primarily measured by its conduct but rather its accomplishments.

>CoC assumes contributions are primarily due to the conduct of the community and not the intellect/interest of the contributor No. That you choose to read into that this way doesn't make it factual. I'd even argue that someone that doesn't behave accordingly (with a sane CoC) doesn't show that much "interest" in a certain way. A contribution shouldn't be accepted on the sole basis that a person actually respected the…

>> CoC assumes contributions are primarily due to the conduct of the community and not the intellect/interest of the contributor

> No.

Yes. If that weren't the case there would be no need for a CoC. Kroah-Hartman's justification for the CoC is the longevity of the project, but the longevity of the project is not affected in any significant way by the conduct of its contributors. Evidence of that is the current success of Linux, which had no CoC for 20 years. Adding the CoC condition will have no noticeable positive effect on the longevity of the project: Linux isn't going anywhere, CoC notwithstanding.

>> The quality of a community isn't primarily measured by its conduct but rather its accomplishments

> Measuring the two is a possibility. That you don't, yourself, include the conduct of a community in your measure of its quality is your choice and yours only.

It's not my choice, it's the truth. Community conduct is not a requirement for a successful project but accomplishments are. Never have seen a project with good conduct but no accomplishments succeed, but I've seen many projects with bad conduct and many accomplishments succeed.

>> I'm curious as to what led to this broadly wrong evaluation of the situation. What lead you to believe that?

You're the one who is wrong, as shown in my trivial counter examples. Simple logic and evidence are the tools I use to evaluate situations accurately.

Re: Linux 4.19

#120

Post by KozmoNau7 » Mon, Oct 22, 2018, 4:13 PM UTC

x220 wrote: post #87

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem arises when "belittlement" or harassment is defined by someone's feelings rather than any objective, specific standard.

Which is exactly why there's a board, requiring 2/3rds majority in a vote, after reviewing the evidence in question. A person cannot simply accuse people they don't like and get them excluded for breaching the CoC. It doesn't work that way.

And harassment/belittelment is always a question of feelings. You can't set up a clear concise objective standard. It's a case by case thing.