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Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

marcan.st

61–70 of 1001 posts

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#61

> But then also came the entitled users. This time, it wasn’t about stealing games, it was about features. “When is Thunderbolt coming?” “Asahi is useless to me until I can use monitors over USB-C” “The battery life sucks compared to macOS” (nobody ever complained when compared to x86 laptops…) “I can’t even check my CPU temperature” (yes, I seriously got that one). This sounds so rough. I can't imagine pouring your…

I don't get that complaint. None of those messages demand anything from anyone or berate Asahi Linux. It's just useful feedback and questions.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#62

Well written. I think the accusations of drama-hunting are unfounded. What else are you supposed to do in the face of persistent "non-technical nonsense"? Linus doesn't seem to care. Definitely a shame. I wonder if it would be in Apple's interests to actively support Linux on Mac. It would make Macs more attractive as developer machines, and I don't see how it would disadvantage them.

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Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#63

I think if I was indicted by Linus and told I'm a problem over spreading awareness about a position on social media, I too would burn out pretty quickly. That's how you crush motivation. There's a deeper issue in open-source culture where harshness and gatekeeping drive away passionate contributors.

"spreading awareness about a position" isn't a very accurate way to describe what happened. This is the guy who said he wanted to use social media to create a "hall of shame" for kernel developers. Of course Linus told him to knock it off, that's ridiculously unprofessional behavior.

Wow, what an uncharitable read. Are you aware of what that term means? He said it was not about literally shaming people, but showing what contributing to the kernel is like, and even clarified it wouldn't be for public consumption. It's a colloquialism for a resource where peers can learn from each other's mistakes. My high school Spanish class had a hall of shame.

It's a magnitude more professional than the extremely over the top and public emails that Linus shares, which HN jerks off over. I too would be burnt out if people were picking apart what I said so closely but clapping when Linus says "this code is retarded"

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#64
Marcan is a legend, it's a shame it ended like this. The communities around certain software technologies can act incredibly hostile and entitled towards developers, paradoxically even more so for free and open source projects. I've seen this many times happen in audio production and game emulation software.

But Marcan clearly has true hacker spirit, I'd wager we'll see him again in the future with an equally cool project. It's often best if the visionaries just spend their efforts to get the ball rolling and then let the project evolve on it's own as they move onto their next challenge.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#65

> But then also came the entitled users. This time, it wasn’t about stealing games, it was about features. “When is Thunderbolt coming?” “Asahi is useless to me until I can use monitors over USB-C” “The battery life sucks compared to macOS” (nobody ever complained when compared to x86 laptops…) “I can’t even check my CPU temperature” (yes, I seriously got that one). This sounds so rough. I can't imagine pouring your…

Open source attracts some of the very worst users. Often people pretending to be trying to help by "suggesting improvements", but just as often entitled people who want to work for free. I don't think policies will change that. It's just something you have to accept when you provide something useful to lots of people for free. Even if you use moderated environments for user feedback (adding the burden of constantly banning people), people will find your email address and complain to you directly. See also: jwz/xscreensaver/Debian drama. Seeing how people treat open source developers makes me hesitant to upload any code I write to a public repository.

I'd expect the worst part for an Asahi project contributor to be the active sabotage some angry Linux kernel devs are trying to pull because they don't like Rust. Users being unreasonable is one thing, but your fellow maintainers are supposed to be allies at least.

I hope Marcan can find a new project to take on that doesn't involve all of this mess.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"spreading awareness about a position" isn't a very accurate way to describe what happened. This is the guy who said he wanted to use social media to create a "hall of shame" for kernel developers. Of course Linus told him to knock it off, that's ridiculously unprofessional behavior.

Yup, I think it went too far. The fact is, you need buy in from other devs and if a dev won't buy in you need to work out a way to avoid them or avoid conflict. It sucks, it slows things down, but frankly making it a "them vs us" is a sure fire way to make them oppose any change you want to make. Public shaming even more disastrous as there's no better way to entrench someone in a position.

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Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#67

Damn shame, both for the burnout and for the project. I was talking to the team which laptops next to get and kind of everyone wanted something like Arm with battery and performance and there are only MBPs (except damn notch) out there. Except no one wants MacOS. And then there's Asahi. I said it might come down to exactly this, what's happening now.

Buying MacBooks and doing your development work in a full screen Linux VM (with e.g. UTM) is a surprisingly good solution, that’s what I’ve done for the past year with no regrets.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#68

I think if I was indicted by Linus and told I'm a problem over spreading awareness about a position on social media, I too would burn out pretty quickly. That's how you crush motivation. There's a deeper issue in open-source culture where harshness and gatekeeping drive away passionate contributors.

Brigading has no place in open source communities. There are some members of the Rust community who believe C is obsolete and that C programmers should either switch to Rust or get out of the way. This is an extremely toxic attitude that has no place in the Linux kernel!

The fact remains: Rust doesn’t solve all of C’s problems. It trades them off for a whole lot of new problems, many of which are challenging to address in a kernel development setting (and much less of a problem for userspace software).

This makes the “C is obsolete” position even harder to defend and ignoring the concerns of long-term kernel maintainers is not going to get anywhere! I think these folks ought to learn the lesson of Chesterton’s Fence [1] before continuing on their journey to promote Rust, which does a lot of great things!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#70

I think if I was indicted by Linus and told I'm a problem over spreading awareness about a position on social media, I too would burn out pretty quickly. That's how you crush motivation. There's a deeper issue in open-source culture where harshness and gatekeeping drive away passionate contributors.

"spreading awareness about a position" isn't a very accurate way to describe what happened. This is the guy who said he wanted to use social media to create a "hall of shame" for kernel developers. Of course Linus told him to knock it off, that's ridiculously unprofessional behavior.

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