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Its not just women that are being put off. I'm a man, and when I worked for an IHV, I dreaded every interaction with the Linux kernel community due to the ton

Its not just women that are being put off. I'm a man, and when I worked for an IHV, I dreaded every interaction with the Linux kernel community due to the tone of the interactions. It was by far the most hostile community we engaged with. I often submitted patches through either junior developers in our company who were Linux enthusiasts, or through friends who were established in the Linux community just to avoid dealing with the people on the subsystem list. By contrast the *BSD communities were far more helpful, as were the closed-source MacOSX and Solaris driver/kernel mailing lists, as well as the private interactions with folks from Apple and Sun.

zeveb 11y ago
> By contrast the *BSD communities were far more helpful I think I'd take Linux Torvald's criticism over Theo de Raadt's any day of the week…
- webaholic 11y ago
  You are narrowing it to only Linus. It goes much deeper than that.
  - drewg123 11y ago
    Indeed -- it was the subsystem maintainer (and a few people on the list) that were the problem. We never dealt with Linus himself.
- drewg123 11y ago
  I was speaking mostly of FreeBSD -- that's the only BSD we had direct support for. We did have some friendly interactions with OpenBSD, but not directly with Theo.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  The Linux kernel is structured in a tree-like hierarchy such that most neophytes will likely never directly encounter Linus, but be chewed off by a subsystem maintainer long before that. In contrast, Theo is just another hacker who also happens to be project leader, compared to the more "ivory tower" approach of Linus.
- debacle 11y ago
  I'd be happy with a bit of criticism from either.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    So, it appears, would Sarah. But that's not why she has left.
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    There's a huge difference between criticism, and saying you wish that someone was retroactively aborted.
  - craftkiller 11y ago
    If Theo ever criticised my code I'd frame it and keep it at my desk!
    - Kristine1975 11y ago
      I'd prefer a cheque by Donald Knuth ;-)
wpietri 11y ago
Ditto. I'm just done working in environments where people aren't serious about collaborating respectfully. I've tried it both ways. I do much better work when I don't have to worry about dealing with aggressive assholes all the time.
gambler 11y ago
Its not just women that are being put off. I find it peculiar that you start with this sentence, even though the OP says nothing about women in general. It seems that identity politics in such discussions has become so common that it is assumed be there by default.
- lighthawk 11y ago
  Not true. Quote from the post: "I did not want to work professionally with people who were allowed to get away with subtle sexist or homophobic jokes." My 2p: I think sexism, racism, etc. is wrong. I think we all need to be more considerate. But, I also think Linus should be allowed to be a total ass if he wants, and so can the others, if they really have the best interests of Linux in mind. You could argue that if they are being asses, then they don't, but some communities just have people with a rough way of dealing with others, e.g. drill sergeants in the Marines. That said, you can allow people to be asses and still not allow sexist, racist, etc. remarks.
  - nommm-nommm 11y ago
    I personally believe being a hardass like a drill Sargeant is in a different league altogether than racism/sexism/homophobia. You can be dead serious without being awful. In fact I would argue that they are the exact opposite. Hardasses are someone you respect.
    - lighthawk 11y ago
      > You can be dead serious without being awful. And I agree. That is why I wrote: "That said, you can allow people to be asses and still not allow sexist, racist, etc. remarks." I live with women and girls and respect the hell out of them. We also have homosexual extended family members. I just think that you can also allow people to have angry disagreements as long as they don't cross the weirdo, sexist, racist, homophobe line. Some people need to escalate in order to resolve things because they have technical skills but not people skills. If every great project had to be composed completely of people with great people skills, we'd not have many of the projects we have today (Linux, Rails, etc.).
amyjess 11y ago
> Its not just women that are being put off. I'm a man, and when I worked for an IHV, I dreaded every interaction with the Linux kernel community due to the tone of the interactions. It's stuff like this that also drove out Con Kolivas, who was a fairly well-known kernel hacker before he got sick of it all and quit. One of the things that drove him out was that other kernel developers cast doubt on his loyalty the project, and in one case refused to merge his patches, because his day job isn't a tech job (he's a doctor). He eventually started kernel hacking again, but nowadays he just makes his own patchset that he distributes himself, and he refuses to submit anything to the LKML or have anything to do with mainline.
- w8rbt 11y ago
  I used to use his scheduler patches. This was many years ago. He seemed reasonable and he knew what he was doing. I only knew him through email (never met him in person), but I hated to see him go. I think others continued/improved upon his initial work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Con_Kolivas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Con_Kolivas Also, Alan Cox left kernel development in 2009 for similar reasons. http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/07/29/1925224/Alan-Cox-Quits-As-Linux-TTY-Maintainer-mdash-Ive-Had-Enough http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/07/29/1925224/Alan-Cox-Qu...

zeveb 11y ago

> By contrast the *BSD communities were far more helpful I think I'd take Linux Torvald's criticism over Theo de Raadt's any day of the week…

webaholic 11y ago
You are narrowing it to only Linus. It goes much deeper than that.
- drewg123 11y ago
  Indeed -- it was the subsystem maintainer (and a few people on the list) that were the problem. We never dealt with Linus himself.
drewg123 11y ago
I was speaking mostly of FreeBSD -- that's the only BSD we had direct support for. We did have some friendly interactions with OpenBSD, but not directly with Theo.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
The Linux kernel is structured in a tree-like hierarchy such that most neophytes will likely never directly encounter Linus, but be chewed off by a subsystem maintainer long before that. In contrast, Theo is just another hacker who also happens to be project leader, compared to the more "ivory tower" approach of Linus.
debacle 11y ago
I'd be happy with a bit of criticism from either.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  So, it appears, would Sarah. But that's not why she has left.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  There's a huge difference between criticism, and saying you wish that someone was retroactively aborted.
- craftkiller 11y ago
  If Theo ever criticised my code I'd frame it and keep it at my desk!
  - Kristine1975 11y ago
    I'd prefer a cheque by Donald Knuth ;-)

wpietri 11y ago

Ditto. I'm just done working in environments where people aren't serious about collaborating respectfully. I've tried it both ways. I do much better work when I don't have to worry about dealing with aggressive assholes all the time.

gambler 11y ago

Its not just women that are being put off. I find it peculiar that you start with this sentence, even though the OP says nothing about women in general. It seems that identity politics in such discussions has become so common that it is assumed be there by default.

lighthawk 11y ago
Not true. Quote from the post: "I did not want to work professionally with people who were allowed to get away with subtle sexist or homophobic jokes." My 2p: I think sexism, racism, etc. is wrong. I think we all need to be more considerate. But, I also think Linus should be allowed to be a total ass if he wants, and so can the others, if they really have the best interests of Linux in mind. You could argue that if they are being asses, then they don't, but some communities just have people with a rough way of dealing with others, e.g. drill sergeants in the Marines. That said, you can allow people to be asses and still not allow sexist, racist, etc. remarks.
- nommm-nommm 11y ago
  I personally believe being a hardass like a drill Sargeant is in a different league altogether than racism/sexism/homophobia. You can be dead serious without being awful. In fact I would argue that they are the exact opposite. Hardasses are someone you respect.
  - lighthawk 11y ago
    > You can be dead serious without being awful. And I agree. That is why I wrote: "That said, you can allow people to be asses and still not allow sexist, racist, etc. remarks." I live with women and girls and respect the hell out of them. We also have homosexual extended family members. I just think that you can also allow people to have angry disagreements as long as they don't cross the weirdo, sexist, racist, homophobe line. Some people need to escalate in order to resolve things because they have technical skills but not people skills. If every great project had to be composed completely of people with great people skills, we'd not have many of the projects we have today (Linux, Rails, etc.).

amyjess 11y ago

> Its not just women that are being put off. I'm a man, and when I worked for an IHV, I dreaded every interaction with the Linux kernel community due to the tone of the interactions. It's stuff like this that also drove out Con Kolivas, who was a fairly well-known kernel hacker before he got sick of it all and quit. One of the things that drove him out was that other kernel developers cast doubt on his loyalty the project, and in one case refused to merge his patches, because his day job isn't a tech job (he's a doctor). He eventually started kernel hacking again, but nowadays he just makes his own patchset that he distributes himself, and he refuses to submit anything to the LKML or have anything to do with mainline.

w8rbt 11y ago
I used to use his scheduler patches. This was many years ago. He seemed reasonable and he knew what he was doing. I only knew him through email (never met him in person), but I hated to see him go. I think others continued/improved upon his initial work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Con_Kolivas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Con_Kolivas Also, Alan Cox left kernel development in 2009 for similar reasons. http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/07/29/1925224/Alan-Cox-Quits-As-Linux-TTY-Maintainer-mdash-Ive-Had-Enough http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/07/29/1925224/Alan-Cox-Qu...