As somebody who provides support to the Ubuntu community (and helps manage one of the largest Linux support sites), I feel your brief experience with a few grum

As somebody who provides support to the Ubuntu community (and helps manage one of the largest Linux support sites), I feel your brief experience with a few grumpy old tramps in an IRC channel —over a decade ago— is not reflective of what we currently do. We've moved long way since then. And your experience is certainly not reflective of anything in the article, which is about Kernel developers. The LKML is its whole own world with its own set of problems (mostly volume and competence related) and very few downstream communities model themselves on it. For example, Ubuntu and Ask Ubuntu both require their community members to follow the Ubuntu Code of Conduct[1] if they want to remain part of the community. That codifies being respectful into everyday tasks. Edit: That's not to say that LKML is fine as is. It needs to retain developers and many don't enjoy being abused by seniors... It just has very little to do with your comment. [1] http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct