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> This infighting is only going to hurt the kernel in the long run. Every time this "discussion" comes up, I walk away with the feeling that Linux kernel develo

> This infighting is only going to hurt the kernel in the long run. Every time this "discussion" comes up, I walk away with the feeling that Linux kernel developers are unreasonably hostile and impossible to work with. It makes me wonder why new people would ever bother trying to contribute anything. Well, this is your take, as you explicitly wrote "I walk away with the feeling". My take is: The kernel developers are the ones doing the actual work, which legitimates their opinion of doing things. If too many people aren't happy with the way the linux kernel is developed, they are free to fork it and develop in the way that they see fit. Luckily, the kernel seems to be doing fine.

tedivm 2y ago
The kernel is doing fine today, but I don't think that's sustainable. The average age of the maintainers seems to be rising, and plenty of skilled people completely avoid kernel development explicitly because of the hostility and, frankly, assholish behavior that comes from the folks on these mailing lists. Eventually a lot of these people are going to age out, retire, or otherwise move on. I do think there will be a crisis moment at some point in the future.
- ta8645 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - n144q 2y ago
    > At least, it was exactly that environment that gave us the amazing product that has changed the world. You need some extraordinary evidence to claim things like that. To stretch things a bit, it's like saying, while male dominated the field of engineering in the 60s (and still do), it was exactly that kind of environment that made it possible for humans to get to the moon. Can you actually prove it? Really? It's hard for me to imagine using git will slow down kernel development compared to sending patches in emails.
    - ta8645 2y ago
      > You need some extraordinary evidence to claim things like that. No. It's a legitimate possibility. Maybe it wont happen. But maybe it will. There's a reason that military training is meant to be hard though, and not filled with comfort and affordances for personal feelings. > To stretch things a bit, it's like saying, while male dominated the field of engineering in the 60s (and still do), it was exactly that kind of environment that made it possible for humans to get to the moon. Can you actually prove it? Really? No human has been back to the moon since that male dominated field sent them there. And when they added women, they couldn't produce a shuttle that could work without huge budget overruns, or reliably. And the only example of a real surge in a return to space, is run by an asshole dictator at Space X. > It's hard for me to imagine using git will slow down kernel development compared to sending patches in emails. No, that definitely worked out great. It was created by a gruff guy who was an asshole to everyone, and wrote the basics of Git by himself in a week.
- caycep 2y ago
  how forkable is the whole thing? I mean, it is several decades of code but...
  - mort96 2y ago
    It's not.
    - jen20 2y ago
      What?! Almost every major server and desktop Linux distribution ships a kernel full of patches, which are absolutely forks. That’s before we start getting into the crazy town of the embedded world. Clearly the software can be forked. The question is whether the community can - and that is yet to be seen.
      - mort96 2y ago
        All those "forks" are dependent on regularly rebasing their patch sets on top of mainline (or they never get updated and lose what semblance of support they had once the SoC they were made for reaches EoL), so they're pretty much irrelevant to this conversation. We have seen no indication that it's feasible for anyone to hard-fork the kernel and continue development in a way that's independent from what we today call "mainline".
    - convolvatron 2y ago
      its totally forkable. in fact its totally possible to write a 99% workalike. the issue here is whether or not the broader community would ever seriously consider using an alternative, and whether contributors, particular commercial ones writing drivers for products, would ever agree to maintain two versions.
- Filligree 2y ago
  Also it's, y'know, written in C. I used to know C. It was my first language, and I spent a fair bit of time in it, but that was before compilers started to treat undefined behaviour as an excuse to break reality. Arguably I'm not smart enough, or disciplined enough, to write C. This may be the case, and therefore I have naturally focused on other languages. Rust, to no-one's surprise, is my current favorite. I've never contributed to the kernel — for more reasons than just the language — but the language would be reason enough on its own. C programmers are getting rare...
  - Longhanks 2y ago
    Why are you projecting your own feelings onto others? There’s plenty of people who write C, there’s plenty of newcomers who start writing C and if they’re willing to, they can find guidance, mentoring, and tooling to improve their skills. If that’s not the path you want to pursue, that’s fine. But C isn’t going anywhere soon and if you go to any university/college, there’s lots of C being taught and lots of people eager to learn.
- bechampion 2y ago
  they don't avoid it cause the hostility , they avoid it case we live in this high level era , where nobody knows where code runs or how it runs.
pyrale 2y ago
> The kernel developers are the ones doing the actual work, which legitimates their opinion of doing things. Both sides of the argument are kernel developers here, though.
- Longhanks 2y ago
  Well, one side just quit. And that particular side was told by Linus Torvalds himself that his way of Social Media brigading is inappropriate for kernel development, and that the current process works. I choose to believe Linus. His work on and guidance of the kernel used to and still does work pretty great.
  - steveklabnik 2y ago
    The person who quit was not the author of the patch, or a member of Rust for Linux.
    - alchemio 2y ago
      So they stirred a whole lot of drama for not much, potentially harming R4L.
      - steveklabnik 2y ago
        I am not willing to pass a value judgement on his decision to do this, but I do agree that I don't think it ended up being helpful to R4L.
    - iczero 2y ago
      The person who quit wrote the Linux graphics driver for Apple M-series GPUs in Rust. edit: I may have gotten some things confused, please see below
      - mort96 2y ago
        No. The person who quit upstream kernel work is Marcan, the head of the Asahi Linux project. The person who developed the kernel driver for M-series GPUs is Lina.

tedivm 2y ago

The kernel is doing fine today, but I don't think that's sustainable. The average age of the maintainers seems to be rising, and plenty of skilled people completely avoid kernel development explicitly because of the hostility and, frankly, assholish behavior that comes from the folks on these mailing lists. Eventually a lot of these people are going to age out, retire, or otherwise move on. I do think there will be a crisis moment at some point in the future.

ta8645 2y ago
[flagged]
- n144q 2y ago
  > At least, it was exactly that environment that gave us the amazing product that has changed the world. You need some extraordinary evidence to claim things like that. To stretch things a bit, it's like saying, while male dominated the field of engineering in the 60s (and still do), it was exactly that kind of environment that made it possible for humans to get to the moon. Can you actually prove it? Really? It's hard for me to imagine using git will slow down kernel development compared to sending patches in emails.
  - ta8645 2y ago
    > You need some extraordinary evidence to claim things like that. No. It's a legitimate possibility. Maybe it wont happen. But maybe it will. There's a reason that military training is meant to be hard though, and not filled with comfort and affordances for personal feelings. > To stretch things a bit, it's like saying, while male dominated the field of engineering in the 60s (and still do), it was exactly that kind of environment that made it possible for humans to get to the moon. Can you actually prove it? Really? No human has been back to the moon since that male dominated field sent them there. And when they added women, they couldn't produce a shuttle that could work without huge budget overruns, or reliably. And the only example of a real surge in a return to space, is run by an asshole dictator at Space X. > It's hard for me to imagine using git will slow down kernel development compared to sending patches in emails. No, that definitely worked out great. It was created by a gruff guy who was an asshole to everyone, and wrote the basics of Git by himself in a week.
caycep 2y ago
how forkable is the whole thing? I mean, it is several decades of code but...
- mort96 2y ago
  It's not.
  - jen20 2y ago
    What?! Almost every major server and desktop Linux distribution ships a kernel full of patches, which are absolutely forks. That’s before we start getting into the crazy town of the embedded world. Clearly the software can be forked. The question is whether the community can - and that is yet to be seen.
    - mort96 2y ago
      All those "forks" are dependent on regularly rebasing their patch sets on top of mainline (or they never get updated and lose what semblance of support they had once the SoC they were made for reaches EoL), so they're pretty much irrelevant to this conversation. We have seen no indication that it's feasible for anyone to hard-fork the kernel and continue development in a way that's independent from what we today call "mainline".
  - convolvatron 2y ago
    its totally forkable. in fact its totally possible to write a 99% workalike. the issue here is whether or not the broader community would ever seriously consider using an alternative, and whether contributors, particular commercial ones writing drivers for products, would ever agree to maintain two versions.
Filligree 2y ago
Also it's, y'know, written in C. I used to know C. It was my first language, and I spent a fair bit of time in it, but that was before compilers started to treat undefined behaviour as an excuse to break reality. Arguably I'm not smart enough, or disciplined enough, to write C. This may be the case, and therefore I have naturally focused on other languages. Rust, to no-one's surprise, is my current favorite. I've never contributed to the kernel — for more reasons than just the language — but the language would be reason enough on its own. C programmers are getting rare...
- Longhanks 2y ago
  Why are you projecting your own feelings onto others? There’s plenty of people who write C, there’s plenty of newcomers who start writing C and if they’re willing to, they can find guidance, mentoring, and tooling to improve their skills. If that’s not the path you want to pursue, that’s fine. But C isn’t going anywhere soon and if you go to any university/college, there’s lots of C being taught and lots of people eager to learn.
bechampion 2y ago
they don't avoid it cause the hostility , they avoid it case we live in this high level era , where nobody knows where code runs or how it runs.

pyrale 2y ago

> The kernel developers are the ones doing the actual work, which legitimates their opinion of doing things. Both sides of the argument are kernel developers here, though.

Longhanks 2y ago
Well, one side just quit. And that particular side was told by Linus Torvalds himself that his way of Social Media brigading is inappropriate for kernel development, and that the current process works. I choose to believe Linus. His work on and guidance of the kernel used to and still does work pretty great.
- steveklabnik 2y ago
  The person who quit was not the author of the patch, or a member of Rust for Linux.
  - alchemio 2y ago
    So they stirred a whole lot of drama for not much, potentially harming R4L.
    - steveklabnik 2y ago
      I am not willing to pass a value judgement on his decision to do this, but I do agree that I don't think it ended up being helpful to R4L.
  - iczero 2y ago
    The person who quit wrote the Linux graphics driver for Apple M-series GPUs in Rust. edit: I may have gotten some things confused, please see below
    - mort96 2y ago
      No. The person who quit upstream kernel work is Marcan, the head of the Asahi Linux project. The person who developed the kernel driver for M-series GPUs is Lina.