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IMHO Some of the responses here are missing the point. That seems to be a common theme as of late: "I don't like the argument or I'm already on side 'X' in this

IMHO Some of the responses here are missing the point. That seems to be a common theme as of late: "I don't like the argument or I'm already on side 'X' in this fight, so I'm going to setup a straw-man to attack so I can avoid engaging the core premise of the article." Her post isn't about keeping a private repo or being selfish. It's about "I am not your therapist or punching bag, nor is it my job to educate you, so why would I waste my time submitting my patch and dealing with a toxic community? What am I supposed to gain from that interaction, other than being insulted, belittled, and having my patches ignored?" She is hardly the only person who stays far away from contributing to the Linux kernel (and other projects) thanks to certain nasty and emotional segments of "community". Those people don't show up in stats. No one knows they exist. The project just has a reputation for being full of assholes, so many really talented people choose to stay away (or strictly limit their involvement). This can become a self-reinforcing cycle where only assholes can be heard, resulting in design-by-asshole rather than design based on technical merit. Assholes (by virtue of being assholes) usually immediately dismiss this by claiming anyone making such complaints is technically inferior (or is intrinsically unsuited to contributing because of their age, gender, or other attribute). I'll also point out that acting out like this is purely emotional knee-jerk behavior - the exact opposite of merit or technical arguments. Linus is perfectly capable of criticizing patches on technical merits without calling people morons in the process. In the past he has chosen to lash out emotionally for one reason or another. Perhaps he had a bad day. Perhaps he just enjoyed insulting other people. Perhaps he thought he was better than them and wanted to show off how superior he was. None of us can really know the underlying reason, but at the end of the day it hardly matters. I really want to stress my last point: lots of people (including here on HN) are trying to make a self-evidently Orwellian case that adopting a CoC and setting community standards is somehow trading technical merit for soothing people's feelings... in defense of another contributor's ability to lash out emotionally. One has to engage in some especially motivated reasoning to make such prima-facia false claims. A code-of-conduct basically boils down to "don't attack people personally and don't belittle, harass or intimidate other contributors". Or perhaps in simpler terms: "act like a professional". Being professional means giving direct and honest feedback. Lying to avoid hurt feelings is the opposite of professional!

jancsika 8y ago
That's all well and good. But none of it explains why the author says the current changes taking place in the Linux project reinforce her decision not to participate in Linux. How does a code of conduct and a hiatus for the guy who was cursing at people reinforce the decision to stay away? The only way that makes sense is if she weren't previously aware of any of the documented cases of Linus' abusive behavior, and that seems quite unlikely given she was already using her own "shadow ecosystem" years ago.
- DuskStar 8y ago
  It also makes sense if you view codes of conduct as inherently toxic and a sign of a hostile community, and don't view Linus's cursing as particularly out of line. After all, Linus tended to chew people out for what they did or what they made, not what they were. Not everyone views having a CoC as a good thing. If they did, this whole set of drama wouldn't be a thing in the first place...
- Pfhreak 8y ago
  I believe you are misinterpreting her post. I believe she's trying to communicate that the eruption of toxic behavior in response to the addition of a code of conduct reinforces her decision to stay away, not the code itself.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  But none of it explains why the author says the current changes taking place in the Linux project reinforce her decision not to participate in Linux. I can't speak for the author, so I can't explain that to you. What I can tell you is that virtue signaling is vastly more common than people actually doing the right thing and nasty behavior frequently gets a great deal worse during periods when people are very visibly and openly trying to publicly address the problem in some manner. My observation is that a common outcome is the metaphorical guillotines come out, people on their high horses behead all the bad guys, pronounce themselves to now be the good guys in charge and then business as usual follows. So, for example, if the issue is sexism, terrible evil asshole sexist pigs take the fall to be promptly replaced by more men, not a mixed gender group of leaders, and you hear a lot of smack talk about more women being in the pipeline and someday this will result in gender parity while nothing really changes. But you should be nice to the new men in charge since they beheaded the bad guys and, clearly, in twenty years this will pay off for women. If the issue is racism, well, clearly, racist white supremacist assholes get removed and are promptly replaced by new white people who will obviously treat people of color better -- someday, but probably not today, but you should believe they are the good guys. After all, they were so kind as to behead your enemies. Etc. If you are part of an "oppressed" group, you eventually get burned out on watching all the white guys fight over which white guys are less evil while no one actually does much of anything to genuinely include women, people of color, etc. And you don't really care to get in the middle of this mess knowing that none of these people actually has your best interest at heart and every last one of them will be happy to trample you underfoot in service of convincing virtue signaling. Some of the most vicious fights are the ones about how to be respectful and well-mannered. Those frequently get ugly real, real fast and only go down hill from there.

jancsika 8y ago

That's all well and good. But none of it explains why the author says the current changes taking place in the Linux project reinforce her decision not to participate in Linux. How does a code of conduct and a hiatus for the guy who was cursing at people reinforce the decision to stay away? The only way that makes sense is if she weren't previously aware of any of the documented cases of Linus' abusive behavior, and that seems quite unlikely given she was already using her own "shadow ecosystem" years ago.

DuskStar 8y ago
It also makes sense if you view codes of conduct as inherently toxic and a sign of a hostile community, and don't view Linus's cursing as particularly out of line. After all, Linus tended to chew people out for what they did or what they made, not what they were. Not everyone views having a CoC as a good thing. If they did, this whole set of drama wouldn't be a thing in the first place...
Pfhreak 8y ago
I believe you are misinterpreting her post. I believe she's trying to communicate that the eruption of toxic behavior in response to the addition of a code of conduct reinforces her decision to stay away, not the code itself.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
But none of it explains why the author says the current changes taking place in the Linux project reinforce her decision not to participate in Linux. I can't speak for the author, so I can't explain that to you. What I can tell you is that virtue signaling is vastly more common than people actually doing the right thing and nasty behavior frequently gets a great deal worse during periods when people are very visibly and openly trying to publicly address the problem in some manner. My observation is that a common outcome is the metaphorical guillotines come out, people on their high horses behead all the bad guys, pronounce themselves to now be the good guys in charge and then business as usual follows. So, for example, if the issue is sexism, terrible evil asshole sexist pigs take the fall to be promptly replaced by more men, not a mixed gender group of leaders, and you hear a lot of smack talk about more women being in the pipeline and someday this will result in gender parity while nothing really changes. But you should be nice to the new men in charge since they beheaded the bad guys and, clearly, in twenty years this will pay off for women. If the issue is racism, well, clearly, racist white supremacist assholes get removed and are promptly replaced by new white people who will obviously treat people of color better -- someday, but probably not today, but you should believe they are the good guys. After all, they were so kind as to behead your enemies. Etc. If you are part of an "oppressed" group, you eventually get burned out on watching all the white guys fight over which white guys are less evil while no one actually does much of anything to genuinely include women, people of color, etc. And you don't really care to get in the middle of this mess knowing that none of these people actually has your best interest at heart and every last one of them will be happy to trample you underfoot in service of convincing virtue signaling. Some of the most vicious fights are the ones about how to be respectful and well-mannered. Those frequently get ugly real, real fast and only go down hill from there.