This is going to address both the CoC and Linus’s announcement as there is a ton of overlap and I don’t want to edit my post:
The OP in this thread definitely should have been reworded and had a direct link to the LKML. I thought it was interesting that Linus himself acknowledged that he needed a break to better understand relationships with people. That was all I was trying to say.
I think a lot of people misunderstood my comment of:
His attitude has been on a steady decline the last 25 years. He’s often condescending, rude, and inappropriate at the worst times.
To say that he’s always been an asshole and should piss off. Not at all what I was saying.
Compared to his e-mail from the beginning and humble disagreements with Tanenbaum, his comments of kill yourself, you should have been aborted, shut the fuck up, etc. are polar opposites of what he started as. Some on here have said he’s always been like that, but I hadn’t seen it as obvious as it is today. Maybe that’s confirmation bias or just more content on Linus today than back in the 90s and 2000s.
Somehow, this translates to millennial social justice warrior lambasting of a project versus asking people to treat each other with respect. This slippery slope is indicative, at least partially, of the toxicity within the Linux community. Probably indicative of why most I.T. departments are treated as an afterthought at most companies as well. This entitlement of demanding respect when not deserving it. But you’re right, “””millennials”””.
In hindsight, it’s easy to read Linus’s comments as someone in geek culture ragging on someone else.
“OMG stop being a bitch!” is something my friends and I would say together when gaming back in the day.
“Dude, bro, did you really just make a PR reverting the bug fix from last week? Are you shitting me?! Maaaaan get it together!” We’ve said on the job while laughing and giving the dev a hard time.
Reading interactions, watching videos, and understanding how Linux/Programmer/Geek culture works, you can let a lot of things roll off as “joshing around”.
That being said, people have left the project. People are put off from contributing to the project. That’s when it starts becoming a problem, I think. The comparisons to Steve Jobs and Elon Musk is gross and inaccurate, I think? Linus, and Linux by extension, strives to be different than those organizations.
“It’s just words”, “he’s just being straightforward”, etc. – Again, people can be harsh critics and straightforward without personally attacking someone. If you want to use that argument, “just words” have attributed to many people committing suicide or committing murder. NO ONE IS CENSORING LINUS. I’m pretty sure he can still say “Dude, this code is fucking wack. Fix (n-1)^2.” If he gets blasted, then I’m sure he’ll create a pull request to eliminate the code of conduct. How is this any different than Stallman keeping an abortion joke in the man pages?
Next, no one is saying Linus is a bad person. No one is saying the Linux kernel hasn’t come a long way. In fact, looking back at the context of the time he was “called out” by Sarah Sharp, I agree with his sentiment that the stakes are high and you need to be aggressive to get to the top. That being said, today is different than 2013. Today Linux has been adopted by AMD, Intel, HP, Cisco, Microsoft, Dell, Lenovo, IBM, NASA, etc., etc., etc., the list goes on, quite possibly, forever.
Now that you’re on the top, it’s okay to start functioning like a business and flesh out some ground rules. As others have mentioned, namely @freqlabs, the only people that seem to be complaining are those not contributing, which is typical, and a small minority of actual developers. Most people seem to think there isn’t going to be an impact.
How would there be? One person made a comment about “SJW infiltrating Linux” and not liking meritocracy, who cares? You guys think the Linux project is going to be abandoned because people cry wolf on Twitter? Take their shitty pull request, and then immediately make another wiping it out.
Google is full of SJW hounds, do they jeopardize security and stability to satisfy cringe worthy people? If so, I’d love to see a source on that. Those people bitching would get rekt so hard that their entire platform would crumble in a weekend. This would be the equivalent to McCarthy accusing the U.S. Army of being Communist. Anyone remember how that ended? Tl;Dr NOT WELL.
I initially said some dude got fired, from what I recall, for saying Women have smaller brains or something. What he was actually fired for was saying Women have a difference in genetic makeup. My initial write up was not claiming what he said was what he said, nor was I saying what he said was right or wrong, nor was I trying to analyze what he said into any sort of sense. It was something I recalled from memory, I never followed the story or read into it, I saw a headline several months ago. These sort of things tend to send me into an overnight revolutionary so I don’t even bother anymore. The point is that Google fires people for violating code of conduct rules but the quality of their code remains solid and top of the line. I don’t care what the guy said nor do I care if it has any merit. As someone else said, technology and genitals don’t go together, so we shouldn’t think about them in the same context. Inb4 “WHAT ABOUT SEX ROBITS?!”
There seems to only be a couple of people on this forum fearmongering. I understand it’s popular to label everything you don’t like as SJW or “””liberal”””, but not all social change is bad. This is a tiny change (be nice and welcoming) in a community that supposedly offers a technical sect of people sojourn; those that are undesirables, the freaks, the geeks, and a mix of the above. This is the last refuge for people that have never fit in anywhere in their lives. People that weren’t artistic can create art, people that were too weak or small to perform in sports are now superstars, and those that lacked inspiration can be craftsmen in one of the best trades in the modern world.
Stop turning this into something it’s not.
Also, quoting Breitbart and The New Yorker -_- Can we please keep this kid friendly and garbage free? Thanks.
