Outside of his silly comments about marginalised people, it does genuinely seem a little strange that maintainers of the project view themselves as some sort of punisher-style police force.
Karol Herbst Steps Down as Nouveau Maintainer Due to Linux's Toxic Environment
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Re: Karol Herbst Steps Down as Nouveau Maintainer Due to Linux's Toxic Environment
#12Recent and related:
Give up 70% of the way through the hyperstitious slur cascade
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/give-up-seventy-percent-of-...
I've yet to see anyone put this quote in context to show that the user of it meant it to be racist or offensive. Absent that context I take issue with people singling it out as an example of toxicity.
I'm not even convinced that we've hit the 70% mark on this hyperstitious slur cascade. I know a lot of people take offense at it, and if this keeps going then we'll certainly hit 70% within the tech world very quickly as people drop the phrase like a hot potato, but as of right now I'm not comfortable with the way that this maintainer is being attacked for a single phrase.
If they've demonstrated a pattern of toxicity, let's talk about that pattern, not about one hyperstitious slur.
Re: Karol Herbst Steps Down as Nouveau Maintainer Due to Linux's Toxic Environment
#13It's as predictable as it is concerning how much the Rust community has hitched its wagon to the US progressive movement. Is this an attempt to remove an adversary in an engineering debate by appealing to a political alliance? Or an attempt to remove a political adversary by appealing to engineering arguments? Either way, both politics and engineering are bound to suffer for it.
Re: Karol Herbst Steps Down as Nouveau Maintainer Due to Linux's Toxic Environment
#14Outside of his silly comments about marginalised people, it does genuinely seem a little strange that maintainers of the project view themselves as some sort of punisher-style police force.
That’s sort of what the phrase has started to mean because of how it’s used by many American police officers. It has more reasonable historic meanings.
Re: Karol Herbst Steps Down as Nouveau Maintainer Due to Linux's Toxic Environment
#15Outside of his silly comments about marginalised people, it does genuinely seem a little strange that maintainers of the project view themselves as some sort of punisher-style police force.
The context that's missing for a lot of the left leaning people hearing this is that much of the population of the US still sees police officers as heroes worthy of emulation. The thin blue line between order and chaos is a powerful image for a lot of people, and it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with being a punisher style police force.
Re: Karol Herbst Steps Down as Nouveau Maintainer Due to Linux's Toxic Environment
#16What's so wrong about the thin blue line statement? I didn't know about this phrase before so I read the wiki page. Isn't the usage correct? Kernel maintainers need to ensure the kernel code doesn't become a unmaintainable ball of mud.
The statement's recent place in the public consciousness is largely because it was used as a pro-police slogan against the BLM/"police abolition" movement in the US. The Rust community, being overwhelmingly progressive, is already sensitive about supposed dogwhistles, as well as words that cause them negative associations, in computing (in the vein of "master"->"main" renamings); having that slogan used as a metaphor for keeping out changes that they want in a technical debate would be felt by some of them as an open taunt or provocation.
Re: Karol Herbst Steps Down as Nouveau Maintainer Due to Linux's Toxic Environment
#17Outside of his silly comments about marginalised people, it does genuinely seem a little strange that maintainers of the project view themselves as some sort of punisher-style police force.
That’s sort of what the phrase has started to mean because of how it’s used by many American police officers. It has more reasonable historic meanings.
The "historic" meaning directly references a military regiment standing their ground against the enemy (see "thin red line"). This particular quote has always evinced a highly adversarial attitude.
Re: Karol Herbst Steps Down as Nouveau Maintainer Due to Linux's Toxic Environment
#18Recent and related: Give up 70% of the way through the hyperstitious slur cascade https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/give-up-seventy-percent-of-... I've yet to see anyone put this quote in context to show that the user of it meant it to be racist or offensive. Absent that context I take issue with people singling it out as an example of toxicity. I'm not even convinced that we've hit the 70% mark on this hyperstitious…
It seems to be a largely American thing to think the phrase is bad (reasonably so, given how it has started to be used) and many others seem to not know what it means, evidenced by only understanding the current law enforcement use or their admission that they had to read wikipedia.
That said, for many people, it is a hostile phrase that refers to privileges that law enforcement provide for each other and those close to them but not others. Things like letting people out of tickets, misapplying situational judgements to make a victim look like the perpetrator, lying on the stand about it, etc.
In that context, it’s a phrase with bad optics. I see presumably why they chose the phrase but that also presumes they were not aware of how it’s used by many American police officers. It would otherwise seem incredibly tone deaf; well past the 70% figure among those circles.
Re: Karol Herbst Steps Down as Nouveau Maintainer Due to Linux's Toxic Environment
#19What's so wrong about the thin blue line statement? I didn't know about this phrase before so I read the wiki page. Isn't the usage correct? Kernel maintainers need to ensure the kernel code doesn't become a unmaintainable ball of mud.
The statement's recent place in the public consciousness is largely because it was used as a pro-police slogan against the BLM/"police abolition" movement in the US. The Rust community, being overwhelmingly progressive, is already sensitive about supposed dogwhistles, as well as words that cause them negative associations, in computing (in the vein of "master"->"main" renamings); having that slogan used as a metaphor…
Hah, maybe Ted Ts'o is a savvier political operator than I took him for. Invoking a seemingly innocuous (to the mainstream) phrase with heavy undercurrents (to a minority) just to trigger their ire and making them seem unreasonable to any outsider is a great strategy if you have as yet been unsuccessful refuting the central arguments for Rust in the kernel on technical grounds.
Re: Karol Herbst Steps Down as Nouveau Maintainer Due to Linux's Toxic Environment
#20Recent and related: Give up 70% of the way through the hyperstitious slur cascade https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/give-up-seventy-percent-of-... I've yet to see anyone put this quote in context to show that the user of it meant it to be racist or offensive. Absent that context I take issue with people singling it out as an example of toxicity. I'm not even convinced that we've hit the 70% mark on this hyperstitious…
It seems to be a largely American thing to think the phrase is bad (reasonably so, given how it has started to be used) and many others seem to not know what it means, evidenced by only understanding the current law enforcement use or their admission that they had to read wikipedia. That said, for many people, it is a hostile phrase that refers to privileges that law enforcement provide for each other and those close…
But "those circles" is not "the entire Linux community", and it's unreasonable to expect the entire community to keep up with a small circle's latest slurs.
For most of the US for most of history, "the thin blue line" has been an unequivocally positive phrase describing people who stand up for what's right and protect against chaos. Whether we should have seen it that way is irrelevant to the question of whether we can reasonably expect an average Linux kernel maintainer to both be aware that some people take offense at it and adjust their language accordingly.
This kind of language policing is inherently discriminatory against older people who spent their early lives immersed in mythology surrounding police and haven't been exposed to the cultural shift, not to mention against people who live outside the US, were exposed to US media, but can't be bothered to keep track of US politics.