4 ms·

The creator of that site, Coraline Ada Ehmke, is also the creator of the new Linux kernel CoC.

by dx87 8y ago

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.
    - adamrezich 8y ago
      She's not exactly keeping her intentions a secret, her Twitter feed makes them pretty clear https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1041465346656530432 https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1041465346656530432
      - throwanem 8y ago
        I see a whole lot more ugly in the replies to that tweet than in the tweet itself, or in anything else I've seen Ms. Ehmke to say in public. "The CoC is a political document" is a reasonable statement from someone who considers that everything is political. I disagree, and I think a lot of risks attend upon such consideration which Ms. Ehmke and the movement of which she's a part too often fail to recognize. But, disagree though I may with their rationale, at least they have a rationale. Their opposition seems primarily to rely on viciousness. Forced to weigh people who I think are wrong about some things on the one side, and on the other people who plumb the depths of hatred and vileness without the slightest apparent scruple, I hope I may be forgiven for deciding that my sympathies belong with the former.
        adamrezich 8y ago
        "whichever side has the greater proportion of pseudononymous online vitriol directed at them" sounds like a terribly ineffective truth determination heuristic, especially when it comes to public figures like real-name social media users, and political leaders
        throwanem 8y ago
        I agree. If that were the heuristic I were using, I'd be very concerned. But that's not what I said. What I said was that one side has a rationale, with a good deal of which I do not agree, while the other side very rarely takes a breath save to expel it in a tirade of filth. Attempting to compare these like for like just doesn't even work. The hell of it is, there are worthwhile counterpoints to be made, and people trying to make them. But there's no hearing them through all the garbage, and until we figure out how that changes, I don't see any real prospect of a stable modus vivendi.

The creator of that site, Coraline Ada Ehmke, is also the creator of the new Linux kernel CoC.

by dx87 8y ago

The creator of that site, Coraline Ada Ehmke, is also the creator of the new Linux kernel CoC.

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.
  - adamrezich 8y ago
    She's not exactly keeping her intentions a secret, her Twitter feed makes them pretty clear https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1041465346656530432 https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1041465346656530432
    - throwanem 8y ago
      I see a whole lot more ugly in the replies to that tweet than in the tweet itself, or in anything else I've seen Ms. Ehmke to say in public. "The CoC is a political document" is a reasonable statement from someone who considers that everything is political. I disagree, and I think a lot of risks attend upon such consideration which Ms. Ehmke and the movement of which she's a part too often fail to recognize. But, disagree though I may with their rationale, at least they have a rationale. Their opposition seems primarily to rely on viciousness. Forced to weigh people who I think are wrong about some things on the one side, and on the other people who plumb the depths of hatred and vileness without the slightest apparent scruple, I hope I may be forgiven for deciding that my sympathies belong with the former.
      - adamrezich 8y ago
        "whichever side has the greater proportion of pseudononymous online vitriol directed at them" sounds like a terribly ineffective truth determination heuristic, especially when it comes to public figures like real-name social media users, and political leaders
        throwanem 8y ago
        I agree. If that were the heuristic I were using, I'd be very concerned. But that's not what I said. What I said was that one side has a rationale, with a good deal of which I do not agree, while the other side very rarely takes a breath save to expel it in a tirade of filth. Attempting to compare these like for like just doesn't even work. The hell of it is, there are worthwhile counterpoints to be made, and people trying to make them. But there's no hearing them through all the garbage, and until we figure out how that changes, I don't see any real prospect of a stable modus vivendi.