
Linux Code of Conflict - dezgeg
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=b0bc65729070b9cbdbb53ff042984a3c545a0e34
======
SwellJoe
Lovely grumpy ol' Linus. I admire him for being willing to try doing something
a little bit differently to make the kernel a more welcoming place for
developers who aren't part of the old school he was raised in. I'm only
slightly younger than Linus, and I have made more than my fair share of rude
comments in various Open Source mailing lists...but, well, I'm no longer
convinced it's the only or even best way to get things done in a community.

And, I enjoy that it's called "code of conflict", as it's clear that getting
code into the kernel is still going to involve a fight, it's just going to be
a civil one wherein everyone is following some basic rules ("no hitting below
the belt", so to speak).

~~~
eeZi
[https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux....](https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=ddbd2b7ad99a418c60397901a0f3c997d030c65e)

Note how Linus did not ACK the commit. Haha.

~~~
jgrowl
That's hilarious. Classic Linus.

------
doppp
Linus adpots a Finnish approach to leadership known as "Management by
perkele." [1] I'd imagine most people who's unfamiliar with this sort of
culture to be extremely offended, especially now that there is this movement
towards political correctness and caring for another's feelings.

Someone also brought up Sarah Sharp. This was discussed heavily in the
/r/linux subreddit [2] about a year ago.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_by_perkele](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_by_perkele)
[2]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1idt79/kernel_develop...](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1idt79/kernel_developer_sarah_sharp_tells_linus_torvalds/)

~~~
digi_owl
Frankly my impression of Torvalds is that his reference to "management by
perkele" was meant as a self-deprecating joke, that sadly the web has taken at
face value.

The guy seems to have a sense of humor that goes over most peoples heads.
Maybe they are too desensitized by the outrageousness of stand up "comedy" to
pick up on it...

------
iveqy
I guess we have Sarah Sharp to thank for this. It took over 2 years for this
to come so far and it's a quite complicated subject.

[http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/22/sarah-
sharp](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/22/sarah-sharp)

~~~
pvdebbe
More like one and a half to me

------
cookiecaper
It occurs to me that Linus's occasional "smackdowns" can be seen as a
necessary and realistic form of discipline. Since Linux is developed in the
open, these disciplinary discussions occur before a worldwide audience. One
could argue that disciplinary mails should be taken off-list to allow the
individuals involved to save face, but it could be counterargued that such
mails are relevant and important to the kernel's overall development process
and shouldn't be obscured lest other developers make the same mistakes.

The high visibility of Linus's posts expose him to a lot of bleeding heart
criticism, but it doesn't really say anything about how useful or important
the mails may or may not be; in short, the criticism that Linus is "mean"
doesn't say anything about the efficacy of the management style.

When management actually has to happen, when the manager actually has to step
in and try to correct someone who isn't doing their job correctly, it's never
a popular thing. The political impulse is to rally behind "the little guy". We
all respond easily and quickly to the stories of spurned employees who were
"totally mistreated" by the Big Bad Employer. Because of this, it's easy to
look in and criticize Linus for sending a "mean email", but probably not very
fair.

We all want to sympathize with our peers, and no matter how much we may like
them on a personal level, it seems there is an almost irrepressible instinct
to want to denigrate our bosses. That makes it easy to criticize the calls
when we're on the sideline and not bearing the responsibility for the outcome.
The actual knowledge of that responsibility and all that comes with it,
including the massive flood of disastrously uninformed critics and the need to
bite the tongue as they take their swipes, is "the weight" that persons in
positions of high responsibility sometimes discuss. While it's easy to
acknowledge the hypothetical existence of such a phenomenon, I think it
doesn't really crystallize until one finds some measure of "the weight" on his
or her own shoulders.

I hope we can all save a bit of empathy for the decision makers on the other
side of the coin after getting an earful from and commiserating with our
disgruntled contemporaries, even if it's just on LKML.

------
chaghalibaghali
Interestingly, this came to my attention via Twitter as a negative thing
([https://twitter.com/hypatiadotca/status/575225661763153921](https://twitter.com/hypatiadotca/status/575225661763153921))
- I was surprised as other than the title, it seems fairly well-intentioned
and like a move in the right direction.

~~~
hluska
I already wrote this in reply to another comment within this thread, but I'd
like to reiterate my main point.

Hypatia found some serious problems with a security product that a company I
worked for released. She contacted us and I got to work with her for awhile.
Hypatia could have blogged and gotten rather famous because we were all over
the Canadian news then. Instead, she erred on the side of extreme
professionalism, came to us, and responsibly disclosed her concerns.

Based on that experience, I will always argue that Hypatia is not only
freakishly intelligent, but she manages to stay reasonable. Moreover, she was
always interesting and fun to deal with.

Knowing how good she is, I take her criticism quite seriously and I urge
everyone reading this to be kind towards her.

~~~
philh
What do you think her criticism is, that should be taken seriously?

As far as I can tell it boils down to "The kernel people are abusive, Linus in
particular is abusive, and this document doesn't change my mind about that".

~~~
hluska
When I have edited people's writing, at times I have been too scathing and
when I was in my twenties, a few writers even called me abusive. When I am
stressed out and faced with what I consider incompetence, I don't always do a
good job of controlling what I will write. I have deeply insulted people in my
time, including people who were doing things for me for free. Heck, go through
my comment history. A few days ago, I was so scathing on a Show HN that I am
scared I actually destroyed an entrepreneur's confidence.

I'm only sharing this because I'm not particularly qualified to answer this
question. Personally, I don't find LT all that bad, but that might be because
at various points, I have been worse.

Had situations been reversed a decade ago, I would have been much more
difficult for Hypatia to deal with than she was for me. Again, she was
reasonable, she was 100% correct, and she had cause to roast me and the
company I worked for over the coals. Despite this, she was kind and helpful.
Heck, my boss yelled at me every time she emailed me, yet I have enjoyed and
learned from every single interaction I have ever had with her.

In light of how she behaved in contrast with how I would have, I trust that
she is better qualified to make statements like this. Not only is she more
talented than I am, but she is far better at communicating through difficult
times than I am. It is unfortunate that Twitter confines you to 140 character
bursts because 140 does not give much space to be constructive. I hope we get
to hear how Hypatia would change that document because personally, I would
learn from that.

~~~
philh
Better qualified to make statements like _what_? She hasn't said anything
about the document except to pretend to misread part of it, and call it bad
grammar. The rest is insulting Linus and the kernel devteam.

The twitter thread does contain some actual criticisms: "it’s uselessly vague,
blames the victims of abuse rather than the perpetrators, and lays out no
actual process for violations"; "the 1st graf def sets up some apologist
precedents" \- but Hypatia is not the one making them. (I don't think I agree
with these criticisms, but they're better than insults.)

I'm sure she has behaved admirably in other situations. In this situation, she
is not behaving admirably. She is not communicating well through difficult
times. I don't buy the "not much space" argument, because she's not even
_trying_ to be constructive in the 140 characters that she has. (I'm not
saying she's morally obligated to provide constructive criticism, I'm saying
that if she wanted to do so, she could be a lot more constructive than this.)

I'm not saying anything about Hypatia in general. Maybe she's having a bad
day. If I encounter her in another situation, I'll try not to judge her based
on this incident. The fact remains that in this particular twitter thread, she
is behaving poorly.

~~~
calibraxis
That's not how Twitter works. If you're acquainted with her explanations and
what she's linked to, this tweet's background should be clear. (Or at least
you know where to dig more deeply.)

Looking for a nuanced argument in this particular tweet in isolation is
disingenuous. When I want to know what someone means, I investigate deeper.

~~~
philh
If you've learned something interesting by investigating deeper, feel free to
share.

I promise I'm not being deliberately disingenuous, but I'm honestly not sure
what you think I've done wrong. I've read the article she linked about how
Linus isn't a nice guy. I've read the entire thread. I've now looked at her
main feed, outside of the thread.

I maintain that she is not criticizing the document, she's insulting the
people involved. Do you think that I should be elaborating on the particular
forms of insults that she's using? It doesn't seem relevant to me that her
insults take the form of accusations of abuse, but that's honestly the only
thing I can think of, that you might think I'm being dishonest about.

------
raverbashing
Good

There are _a lot of_ rude people, people who answer in several ridiculous
ways, etc.

Linus answers may be rough, but it's usually a clear answer, and well founded.
There's a lot of worse behaviour out there (especially in subsystems)

~~~
Argorak
_usually_ is the keyword. Sometimes he wants people retroactively aborted.

[https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/6/495](https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/6/495)

You never know when it hits you.

~~~
eljojo
I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Does the end justifies the means?
Should we allow us to have dick developers because the come up with great
code? My moral says no, but my craving for progress says yes. It's a battle
that's been driving me nuts for a long time.

Incidentally, this kind of incidents might slow down progress in the long
term.

update: by this kind of incidents i mean him being an asshole, not people
telling on him. update 2: i don't endorse his behaviour.

~~~
efaref
People seem to think that you should not be allowed to do something if someone
else finds it rude or immoral.

I think censoring people like Linus when they are clearly using hyperbole or
other figures of speech is rude and immoral.

Now what do we do?

~~~
efaref
I guess the answer is to just continue ignoring and censoring people whose
opinions we don't like. I'm cool with that.

------
bracewel
Side note: [http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/](http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/)
is great for Linus smackdowns of the past

------
neindanke
[http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/advisory-
councils/ta...](http://www.linuxfoundation.org/programs/advisory-councils/tab)

Diversity issues aside, is it true that the token Asian was rejected due to
accusations of being a rape apologist?

[http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/18505.html](http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/18505.html)

------
intortus
I love how grudging this is. It's like when someone apologizes for you feeling
a certain way, rather than for what they did. Half the "code" is claiming that
nothing is wrong and the kernel is perfect because reasons, and the TAB is 80%
white guys. Isn't meritocracy perfect?

On the other hand, this is a step in the right direction and I'm not a kernel
developer, so I shouldn't nit pick too much.

~~~
sarciszewski
Why are you judging the TAB members based entirely on their ethnicity and
apparent gender?

"80% white guys" \- yes, and if you don't know who's gay, who's transgendered,
or how these individuals handle conflict, then this observation is kind of
irrelevant.

Being racist and sexist isn't going to help an already toxic environment.

~~~
intortus
There is a well known and studied lack of diversity in the open source
community, and particularly in linux kernel development. Putting this code in
place is meant to address that, so it's reasonable to point out the various
half-measures.

~~~
sarciszewski
And these real social problems are going to be resolved by empowering the
people who are poorly represented, not by bringing people down because of
something they are.

You're in your right to disagree, but the answer to wrong has never been more
wrong. Educate. Raise awareness. Encourage. But snarky remarks about the race
and apparent gender of people? Not helpful.

~~~
fernandotakai
i find quite sad that the same people that say that you shouldn't judge people
for the color of their skins and that we should have diversity also take
people down for being white.

nobody chose to be white, just like nobody chose to be black. you shouldn't
define a person for their skin color, gender or sexual preference, you should
define a person by what they are.

~~~
efaref
Whenever someone says "There are too many [white people|men] in XXX", it
sounds like there's an implicit "... so we should kill some of them" in my
head. That's how offensive it sounds to me.

------
exo762
Linux caving in to pressure at 8th of March? I really don't know what to think
about it.

~~~
Jimmy
8th of March? What's that in reference to?

~~~
davidw
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women%27s_Day](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women%27s_Day)

