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I have contributed some trivial commits (so far) and though I encountered some harsh comments it was nothing I felt was overly personal. But of course, my exper
by lolo_ 11y ago
I have contributed some trivial commits (so far) and though I encountered some harsh comments it was nothing I felt was overly personal. But of course, my experience is pretty limited at this point.
I get the impression that the level of these issues varies wildly depending on the subsystem in question. For example, Greg Kroah-Hartman is friendly and helpful to a ridiculous degree, I literally don't understand how he gets so much done and maintains helpfulness (and he's working on the staging drivers with some of the roughest code in the entire kernel.)
I feel sorry that Sarah has had this happen, and it's sad that this could happen to anyone, but in particular it's sad that it's happened to a woman when we have such a massive under representation of women already in our industry and probably even more so in the kernel.
I don't know what the answer is, but for those areas of the kernel that are a problem a balance needs to be found between directness and talking to somebody like a human being.
As for Linus, I think he gets somewhat misrepresented in many places. His vitriol is reserved for senior kernel maintainers who should know better and do things which (in many cases) could very negatively impact users, I've seen a number of threads where he's been let's say, less than civil, which were all about kernel code breaking user code and the subsystem maintainers saying 'well they're doing it wrong so let's just break their applications'. In those kind of circumstances you're glad that Linus strongly objects.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago> As for Linus, I think he gets somewhat misrepresented in many places. His vitriol is reserved for senior kernel maintainers who should know better and do things which (in many cases) could very negatively impact users Which sure doesn't make the already thankless task of becoming a senior kernel maintainer any more appealing. And it creates a terrible culture where people see that and perpetuate it.
- maxxxxx 11y agoDoes Linus ever make mistakes and does he receive the same treatment?
- qntm 11y agoBetter question, does Linus ever say extremely nice, encouraging, generous things and make the front page of HN for doing so?
- reitanqild 11y ago> encouraging, generous FWIW he created (one of?) the worlds most used OS kernels and shared it freely sparking all kinds of projects and businesses. As for the rudeness, I feel that is hugely overrated. Compare hime to someone like the "developer evangelist" who got two developers fired because they said something to each other that s/he didn't like and see what I mean. Edit: comments welcome, I have enough points but I cannot learn what mistake I made if nobody tells me.
- chris_wot 11y agoMaking the world's most used kernels doesn't give you the right to be a bully. Ironically, I largely believe he isn't.
- munificent 11y agoYour quote cut off the critical word "say".
- morsch 11y agoI assume you're being downvoted because you're bringing up a highly controversial issue which is, at best, tangentially related.
- JoshTriplett 11y agoAnd doing so in a way that paints it in the most favorable possible light for one position, in addition to using technical skill as a free pass for them making personal attacks.
- maxxxxx 11y agoI have seen lots of posts where he explains things patiently in a lot of detail. I just wonder if he gets the same tough treatment he gives to others when he is wrong. And if he takes it well. I am assuming that sometimes like most of us he is totally wrong.
- koliber 11y agoDo some of those senior maintainers then only reserve their harsh words for the most senior people just below them? And then those for those just below them? A culture in any group flows from the top down. Praise in public, criticize in private.
- jes5199 11y ago> the level of these issues varies wildly depending on the subsystem in question this is exactly what some kind of official minimal expectations would help: bring the worst offenders up to the level that's normal in most groups
- s73v3r 11y ago"As for Linus, I think he gets somewhat misrepresented in many places." He's told multiple people he wishes they were retroactively aborted. I don't know of many ways that can be interpreted.
- digi_owl 11y agoThat was a general exclamation after finding out that Debian had patches that read data at 1 byte (yes byte, not kilobyte, not megabyte, byte) at a time (complete with round trips through kernel/user space context switches between each read). It was never directed at anyone by name, nor did anyone ever go look for who had put in the patches. And it was after what seemed to have been a frustrating bug hunt related to reports of poor performance in that subsystem.
- s73v3r 11y agoHe's said it multiple times, and has pointed it at specific people. It is absolutely not an acceptable thing to say on something as public as the Linux Kernel mailing list. Not to mention that when others see him do that, they believe it gives them free range to do the same thing.