8 ms·

They make it clear; they signed on to participate in a meritocracy with reputation rewards, and they think that is being taken way from them. https://postmerit

They make it clear; they signed on to participate in a meritocracy with reputation rewards, and they think that is being taken way from them. https://postmeritocracy.org/ https://postmeritocracy.org/ That is exactly what the people pushing the new CoC are claiming.

throwanem 8y ago
Which of the people signed on to that manifesto are also arguing in support of the Linux kernel CoC?
- dx87 8y ago
  The creator of that site, Coraline Ada Ehmke, is also the creator of the new Linux kernel CoC.
  - throwanem 8y ago
    More accurately said, Ms. Ehmke is the creator both of the Post-Meritocracy Manifesto site, and of the CoC adopted by the Linux kernel project. Far more is being made of this situation than seems merited by the facts. That it's easy to do I recognize, but that ease is no excuse.
    - bitwize 8y ago
      Coraline Ada Ehmke has also been known to stir up shit when she doesn't think her CoC is being enforced aggressively enough. She basically treats the document as a way to Eich people she doesn't like out of any open source contribution, as happened with the Opal project. This would present a problem, except the Linux governance model doesn't actually confer power to a person or persons to exclude contributors from the kernel. Linus and his underling maintainers are still individually free to accept or reject patches from anyone. CoC complaints would be handled by the Tech Advisory Board, but they can't issue orders or blacklists to maintainers. Funny thing is, I suspect that this is by design, to make Linux development resistant to covert or open hostile action from the likes of Microsoft. Pending a drastic change in the process, you can all keep calm and carry on using Linux.
      - throwanem 8y ago
        Do you have receipts for that first paragraph? I feel like, if you have them, it'd be worth showing them, for an allegation like that one.
        erics32 8y ago
        https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941
        throwanem 8y ago
        @elia's last commit to Opal was about two weeks ago, and that issue dates from 2015. That doesn't seem to add up to what you seem to argue that it does.
        bitwize 8y ago
        It's enough to establish that Coraline's goal is to collect the scalps of people she disagrees with, and the Contributor Covenant is one prong of her strategy. Whether or not she was successful is another matter, but as for intent, it's right there in the title -- "Transphobic maintainer should be removed from project". The Contributor Covenant is quick and clear to emphasize that removal is a penalty for violation of the code, or for not taking sufficient steps as a maintainer to ensure that guilty parties are sufficiently unpersoned. I'm opposed to racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia too, but damnit, if I'm a maintainer and Alex Jones has a good patch, I'm going to clip out the attached verbiage about Hillary Clinton being a literal demon and roll the patch into my next rc. I'd be doing the project a disservice not to. The OED has entries that were submitted by an insane murderer from the asylum (look up William Chester Minor).
        throwanem 8y ago
        One incident, three years ago, which came to nothing in any event? I think we must differ in our definitions of 'enough'. Are we looking at an established pattern of behavior which is suggestive of current intent? Or are we instead looking at a single moment of excess, whose outcome provided a salutary lesson since taken firmly to heart? There's not enough here to know - the claim has yet to be substantiated, if substantiation there be. eta: As it happens, I'd take Alex Jones's patch, too. But I would require it be resubmitted anonymously, and without inflammatory verbiage. If not so resubmitted, I would not merge it. Yes, it does the project a disservice to reject good code. But software, like every made thing in the world, is made by people. It is not unreasonable for me to look at the sort of people who attend upon Alex Jones, and then at the sort of people who find his presence so distasteful that they will not associate themselves with anything he's touched however fleetingly, and decide which sort of people I prefer to include, by my actions, in my pool of potential contributors. If the latter group seems to me to be more likely to contribute good code, then I'm not going to put them off by having Alex Jones on my contributor list. If that costs the project a good patch, then that cost is still less than the other - if I've evaluated correctly, and if the patch has merit, someone not so divisive will submit another like it before very long. Of course, most people don't give a damn either way, and mainly just want to do the work they're doing and land their changes with a minimum of fuss. Which is more or less the point that I'm trying to make here: this is neither an attempt to install a blood estrogen titer in the code review process for Linux kernel contributions, nor to ensure that Linux kernel development is a clubhouse admitting only pale penis-bearing people of power. Everyone attempting to make a substantive contribution, of whatever sort, to the process, is doing so in good faith, out of a genuine belief that their contribution will improve the quality of the result. But I appreciate that's hard to keep sight of, when Twitter and ESR and /g/ join in, in their inimitable fashion to add only heat and no light.
- throwaway5250 8y ago
  It seems likely that most or all of the signatories would be in favor of the new CoC. (Perhaps some don't feel that it goes far enough.) Given the author's toxic Twitter comments, I'm suspicious of the motivations here.
  - throwanem 8y ago
    Which toxic Twitter comments are those? I'm having some difficulty finding them.
    - throwaway5250 8y ago
      Example: https://twitter.com/coralineada/status/1042249983590838272 https://twitter.com/coralineada/status/1042249983590838272 This pretty much rules out "good faith".
dukoid 8y ago
Is this somehow some kind of Miguel de Icaza 2.0 stunt by MS?
noobermin 8y ago
I don't understand this. What is this manifesto trying to accomplish? I consider myself a leftist (although somewhat disenchanted these days, but that's another story). I find it somewhat unjust and illogical that in our world of plenty people still are in want. For example, the USA produces more food than needed to feed everyone, yet people still starve and few have access to healthy affordable food. It's one argument if food really was in 2018 a scarce resource, but since it no longer needs to be, depriving it from people seems unjust to me. Same for clean drinking water, clean air, etc. So I have that stance when it comes to material resources, but open source isn't really like that. The rewards are "reputation" which isn't a necessary need for life like food or water or healthcare is, so I don't see why a redistribution of reputation is necessary from that left perspective. I suppose contributions to F/OSS places nice footnotes on one's resume, but if that's the reason then this idea of post-meritocracy is attacking the problem from the wrong end, which involves the actual material realities of access to education and basic needs suffered by certain people. And, sorry, let's keep it real, if you have enough clout and are placed in such a situation that you can worry about open source in the first place, you are materially better off than the vast majority of people in the US, so I don't see it as that high on the list in terms of priorities social justice honestly. So I don't get what this is for other than it being easier than actually materially improving the lives of disenfranchised people.
- Viliam1234 8y ago
  > What is this manifesto trying to accomplish? Political points for its author. Because factually, it is crap. Where is "the exclusion of underrepresented people in technology"? Providing high-quality software for free, that is inclusive for poor people (both the poor people in rich countries, and the average people in poor countries). A lot of free software supports localization anyone can contribute to, which is inclusive for speakers of minority languages (instead of having to write your own software, or petitioning a huge corporation, you just download a text file and translate a few lines). Free software can be used by everyone, black or white, male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, cisgender or transgender, whatever; all code is available for all people. Somehow this all means nothing. What we need instead is to make sure there are not too many white cishet guys contributing to all this stuff. Now people whose only contribution is bringing conflict are kicking out those who contributed code, in their free time, for the benefit of everyone.

throwanem 8y ago

Which of the people signed on to that manifesto are also arguing in support of the Linux kernel CoC?

dx87 8y ago
The creator of that site, Coraline Ada Ehmke, is also the creator of the new Linux kernel CoC.
- throwanem 8y ago
  More accurately said, Ms. Ehmke is the creator both of the Post-Meritocracy Manifesto site, and of the CoC adopted by the Linux kernel project. Far more is being made of this situation than seems merited by the facts. That it's easy to do I recognize, but that ease is no excuse.
  - bitwize 8y ago
    Coraline Ada Ehmke has also been known to stir up shit when she doesn't think her CoC is being enforced aggressively enough. She basically treats the document as a way to Eich people she doesn't like out of any open source contribution, as happened with the Opal project. This would present a problem, except the Linux governance model doesn't actually confer power to a person or persons to exclude contributors from the kernel. Linus and his underling maintainers are still individually free to accept or reject patches from anyone. CoC complaints would be handled by the Tech Advisory Board, but they can't issue orders or blacklists to maintainers. Funny thing is, I suspect that this is by design, to make Linux development resistant to covert or open hostile action from the likes of Microsoft. Pending a drastic change in the process, you can all keep calm and carry on using Linux.
    - throwanem 8y ago
      Do you have receipts for that first paragraph? I feel like, if you have them, it'd be worth showing them, for an allegation like that one.
      - erics32 8y ago
        https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941 https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941
        throwanem 8y ago
        @elia's last commit to Opal was about two weeks ago, and that issue dates from 2015. That doesn't seem to add up to what you seem to argue that it does.
        bitwize 8y ago
        It's enough to establish that Coraline's goal is to collect the scalps of people she disagrees with, and the Contributor Covenant is one prong of her strategy. Whether or not she was successful is another matter, but as for intent, it's right there in the title -- "Transphobic maintainer should be removed from project". The Contributor Covenant is quick and clear to emphasize that removal is a penalty for violation of the code, or for not taking sufficient steps as a maintainer to ensure that guilty parties are sufficiently unpersoned. I'm opposed to racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia too, but damnit, if I'm a maintainer and Alex Jones has a good patch, I'm going to clip out the attached verbiage about Hillary Clinton being a literal demon and roll the patch into my next rc. I'd be doing the project a disservice not to. The OED has entries that were submitted by an insane murderer from the asylum (look up William Chester Minor).
        throwanem 8y ago
        One incident, three years ago, which came to nothing in any event? I think we must differ in our definitions of 'enough'. Are we looking at an established pattern of behavior which is suggestive of current intent? Or are we instead looking at a single moment of excess, whose outcome provided a salutary lesson since taken firmly to heart? There's not enough here to know - the claim has yet to be substantiated, if substantiation there be. eta: As it happens, I'd take Alex Jones's patch, too. But I would require it be resubmitted anonymously, and without inflammatory verbiage. If not so resubmitted, I would not merge it. Yes, it does the project a disservice to reject good code. But software, like every made thing in the world, is made by people. It is not unreasonable for me to look at the sort of people who attend upon Alex Jones, and then at the sort of people who find his presence so distasteful that they will not associate themselves with anything he's touched however fleetingly, and decide which sort of people I prefer to include, by my actions, in my pool of potential contributors. If the latter group seems to me to be more likely to contribute good code, then I'm not going to put them off by having Alex Jones on my contributor list. If that costs the project a good patch, then that cost is still less than the other - if I've evaluated correctly, and if the patch has merit, someone not so divisive will submit another like it before very long. Of course, most people don't give a damn either way, and mainly just want to do the work they're doing and land their changes with a minimum of fuss. Which is more or less the point that I'm trying to make here: this is neither an attempt to install a blood estrogen titer in the code review process for Linux kernel contributions, nor to ensure that Linux kernel development is a clubhouse admitting only pale penis-bearing people of power. Everyone attempting to make a substantive contribution, of whatever sort, to the process, is doing so in good faith, out of a genuine belief that their contribution will improve the quality of the result. But I appreciate that's hard to keep sight of, when Twitter and ESR and /g/ join in, in their inimitable fashion to add only heat and no light.
throwaway5250 8y ago
It seems likely that most or all of the signatories would be in favor of the new CoC. (Perhaps some don't feel that it goes far enough.) Given the author's toxic Twitter comments, I'm suspicious of the motivations here.
- throwanem 8y ago
  Which toxic Twitter comments are those? I'm having some difficulty finding them.
  - throwaway5250 8y ago
    Example: https://twitter.com/coralineada/status/1042249983590838272 https://twitter.com/coralineada/status/1042249983590838272 This pretty much rules out "good faith".

dukoid 8y ago

Is this somehow some kind of Miguel de Icaza 2.0 stunt by MS?

noobermin 8y ago

I don't understand this. What is this manifesto trying to accomplish? I consider myself a leftist (although somewhat disenchanted these days, but that's another story). I find it somewhat unjust and illogical that in our world of plenty people still are in want. For example, the USA produces more food than needed to feed everyone, yet people still starve and few have access to healthy affordable food. It's one argument if food really was in 2018 a scarce resource, but since it no longer needs to be, depriving it from people seems unjust to me. Same for clean drinking water, clean air, etc. So I have that stance when it comes to material resources, but open source isn't really like that. The rewards are "reputation" which isn't a necessary need for life like food or water or healthcare is, so I don't see why a redistribution of reputation is necessary from that left perspective. I suppose contributions to F/OSS places nice footnotes on one's resume, but if that's the reason then this idea of post-meritocracy is attacking the problem from the wrong end, which involves the actual material realities of access to education and basic needs suffered by certain people. And, sorry, let's keep it real, if you have enough clout and are placed in such a situation that you can worry about open source in the first place, you are materially better off than the vast majority of people in the US, so I don't see it as that high on the list in terms of priorities social justice honestly. So I don't get what this is for other than it being easier than actually materially improving the lives of disenfranchised people.

Viliam1234 8y ago
> What is this manifesto trying to accomplish? Political points for its author. Because factually, it is crap. Where is "the exclusion of underrepresented people in technology"? Providing high-quality software for free, that is inclusive for poor people (both the poor people in rich countries, and the average people in poor countries). A lot of free software supports localization anyone can contribute to, which is inclusive for speakers of minority languages (instead of having to write your own software, or petitioning a huge corporation, you just download a text file and translate a few lines). Free software can be used by everyone, black or white, male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, cisgender or transgender, whatever; all code is available for all people. Somehow this all means nothing. What we need instead is to make sure there are not too many white cishet guys contributing to all this stuff. Now people whose only contribution is bringing conflict are kicking out those who contributed code, in their free time, for the benefit of everyone.