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I think if I was indicted by Linus and told I'm a problem over spreading awareness about a position on social media, I too would burn out pretty quickly. That's

I think if I was indicted by Linus and told I'm a problem over spreading awareness about a position on social media, I too would burn out pretty quickly. That's how you crush motivation. There's a deeper issue in open-source culture where harshness and gatekeeping drive away passionate contributors.

naasking 2y ago
Maintaining the Linux kernel is all about gatekeeping. How else do you keep out bad code?
- chpatrick 2y ago
  From what I've seen this is excellent code, some people just really don't like Rust.
  - Vilian 2y ago
    The last drama wasn't about the guy not liking drama, he just don't like nor want to maintain a codebase with two languages, but I think they really need to say it directly instead of calling it canser and leaving people to think he was calling rust cancer and not multiple languages codebase cancer
    - tcmart14 2y ago
      Im pretty sure he specifically said the cancer was trying to inter-op 2 languages in a code base and not Rust. Even went on to say that he thinks Rust is good and recommends people implement new Greenfield projects in it.
  - greenavocado 2y ago
    Aside from hatred of Rust and Rust developers there is a bigger problem. The Rust guys are twisting the C developers' arms to iron out API semantics because there is so much behavior and API usage that can't be defined in C and it's driving C devs insane. The Rust people are doing the right thing but doing the right thing is extremely annoying for the C devs.
- bezier-curve 2y ago
  What does social media have to do with bad code, though?
  - Supermancho 2y ago
    > What does social media have to do with bad code, though? Nothing. That's why this was said: >> *There's a deeper issue* in open-source culture where harshness and gatekeeping drive away passionate contributors. It's separate gatekeeping. I entertained getting involved in the kernel for about 3 days, in college. The process is so complex, I just went on to do other fun things. The drama will turn off others. Organizational apathy is much worse, imo. I have quit jobs for this reason and that was when I got paid to stay.
    - naasking 2y ago
      I disagree. Provoking up a mob on social media will not endear you to anyone. You're just making the gatekeeper's jobs harder, and since their job is hard enough, they will simply gatekeep you to simplify things. Regardless of whether you think the project should be maintained differently, that's not your call, that's their call. Fork it if you want different policies.
      - bezier-curve 2y ago
        > Provoking up a mob Isn't that also what Linus is doing but on a professional forum, which is even worse? The issue comes down to de-escalation, and there wasn't enough on both sides. It's also not unreasonable to expect more from a figure head who is a role model in open-source development in general.
        naasking 2y ago
        A maintainer's job is to keep contributors on track and in line so the project moves in the right direction, and he did so on the forum in which it's supposed to happen. Not sure what the issue is.
talldayo 2y ago
It's not really unprecedented. Reminds me of Paragon Software trying to merge their code for an NTFS driver and getting told-off because the driver code was so awful: https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/06/github_merges_useless_garbage_says/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/06/github_merges_useless... If you want your code merged in the kernel, you have to think about things from Linus' perspective. You cannot in any circumstances try to shame someone into adopting an enormous and unsustainable workload.
- kombine 2y ago
  As that kernel maintainer clearly stated this was not because the code was awful, but because the code was written in Rust and it was therefore cancer.
  - caspper69 2y ago
    That's not what he said. From the horse's mouth (lkml; Hellwig's headers chopped for brevity): On Thu, Jan 16, 2025 at 02:17:24PM +0100, Danilo Krummrich wrote: > Since there hasn't been a reply so far, I assume that we're good with > maintaining the DMA Rust abstractions separately. No, I'm not. This was an explicit: Nacked-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> And I also do not want another maintainer. If you want to make Linux impossible to maintain due to a cross-language codebase do that in your driver so that you have to do it instead of spreading this cancer to core subsystems. (where this cancer explicitly is a cross-language codebase and not rust itself, just to escape the flameware brigade). --- Hellwig was abrasive and unreasonable. But there is no need to perpetuate, repeat, and repost absolutely one-sided, self-serving misrepresentations of the words he used. You don't need to paraphrase. You don't need to guess. You don't need to distill or simplify. He wrote English so we could read it; stop paraphrasing. It's unhelpful at best and nefarious at worst. Edit: I think it's very telling that there is a crowd here that would literally downvote the actual quote. Actually it's more sad than anything.
    - sneedle 2y ago
      [dead]
bigstrat2003 2y ago
"spreading awareness about a position" isn't a very accurate way to describe what happened. This is the guy who said he wanted to use social media to create a "hall of shame" for kernel developers. Of course Linus told him to knock it off, that's ridiculously unprofessional behavior.
- cogman10 2y ago
  Yup, I think it went too far. The fact is, you need buy in from other devs and if a dev won't buy in you need to work out a way to avoid them or avoid conflict. It sucks, it slows things down, but frankly making it a "them vs us" is a sure fire way to make them oppose any change you want to make. Public shaming even more disastrous as there's no better way to entrench someone in a position.
  - __float 2y ago
    I'm not entirely convinced they meant to truly make a public hall of shame. It sounded to me like a list of "friends who want to get more involved, I'll let you know who to avoid". Then, I read the interactions that sparked that post, and I could totally understand the frustration from OP's part. Linus being unwilling to take a real stand on maintainers blocking Rust just because doesn't really help.
    - diggan 2y ago
      Someone wrote (https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/208e1fc3-cfc3-4a26-98c3-a48ab35bb9db@marcan.st/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/208e1fc3-cfc3-4a26-98...): > To back up Sima here, we don't need grandstanding, brigading, playing > to the crowd, streamer drama creation or any of that in discussions > around this. Marcan replied (https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/208e1fc3-cfc3-4a26-98c3-a48ab35bb9db@marcan.st/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/208e1fc3-cfc3-4a26-98...): > If shaming on social media does not work, then tell me what does, because I'm out of ideas. Then Linus replied (https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/CAHk-=wi=ZmP2=TmHsFSUGq8vUZAOWWSK1vrJarMaOhReDRQRYQ@mail.gmail.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/CAHk-=wi=ZmP2=TmHsFSU...): > However, I will say that the social media brigading just makes me not want to have anything at all to do with your approach. > Because if we have issues in the kernel development model, then social media sure as hell isn't the solution. The same way it sure as hell wasn't the solution to politics. To me, it sure sounds like Marcan is making the case that they tried other venues, didn't feel like it worked, so they resolved to using their social media following to shame kernel developers if they didn't stop.
righthand 2y ago
You’re right, it’s mostly any open source code projects too. I’ve tried to contribute to projects where they ignore my merge request and take my code and merge it in under their own account. I call this behavior “demonstrating the moat” in which the Maintainers are more concerned with maintaining a moat around their project that they actively go out of their way to prevent contribution under the guise that your contribution did not correctly cross the moat. Even if the moat is mostly decorative and ceremonial.
- tayo42 2y ago
  Open source is just what the name means though, the source is open. It doesn't also imply something like open contributions.
  - righthand 2y ago
    Then turn off merge requests if you don’t want your project accepting contributions. Remove your CONTRIBUTING.md. Stop being welcoming if all you want to do is show off your source code. Don’t have a document explaining that I need to sign an agreement to contribute.
jazzyjackson 2y ago
Not to mention stalkers ? Doesn't matter how much you love a community, one or two psychopaths can maybe it simply not-worth-it. It's hard enough in physical spaces to remove abusers (usually the abused just stop showing up), I can't imagine there's an answer for preventing this kind of behavior in online spaces
chongli 2y ago
Brigading has no place in open source communities. There are some members of the Rust community who believe C is obsolete and that C programmers should either switch to Rust or get out of the way. This is an extremely toxic attitude that has no place in the Linux kernel! The fact remains: Rust doesn’t solve all of C’s problems. It trades them off for a whole lot of new problems, many of which are challenging to address in a kernel development setting (and much less of a problem for userspace software). This makes the “C is obsolete” position even harder to defend and ignoring the concerns of long-term kernel maintainers is not going to get anywhere! I think these folks ought to learn the lesson of Chesterton’s Fence [1] before continuing on their journey to promote Rust, which does a lot of great things! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...
- mustache_kimono 2y ago
  > Brigading has no place in open source communities. Agreed. > There are some members of the Rust community who believe C is obsolete and that C programmers should either switch to Rust or get out of the way. This is an extremely toxic attitude that has no place in the Linux kernel! Would you care to share some examples of the Rust for Linux community who have said this? I'm unaware of Hector or anyone else saying anything similar? Or is this just a fear of yours? I think we should be very clear -- believing the future of systems programming is mostly memory safe isn't the same thing as saying "C programmers should...get out of the way".
  - chongli 2y ago
    I didn't say Rust for Linux community, I said Rust community. Here's an example [1]. You don't have to search online forums and mailing lists very long to find countless others like this. The problem with the brigading (which has been done by the Rust for Linux community) is that it invites these zealots into the conversation. It's totally inappropriate and not at all constructive towards a compromise. Plus the stated goal of Rust for Linux is to enable people to write drivers in Rust, not to rewrite the whole kernel in Rust. Yet there are countless people in the wider Rust community that believe Rust is the future and every line of C code still in use should be rewritten in Rust. It's gotten so prominent that "Rewrite it in Rust" has become a meme at this point [2]. There are now many developers in other languages (C and C++ especially) who reject Rust simply because they don't like the community. [1] https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/general-linux-open-source/1524789-asahi-linux-lead-developer-hector-martin-steps-down-as-upstream-apple-silicon-maintainer/page7#post1524944 https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/general-linux... [2] https://goto.ucsd.edu/~rjhala/hotos-ffi.pdf https://goto.ucsd.edu/~rjhala/hotos-ffi.pdf
felipec 2y ago
Linus didn't say he was the problem, he said he should consider that maybe he was the problem. That's an invitation to self-reflection. We all should consider that, in every discussion. The opposite is to think that everyone who disagrees is by definition wrong, which can never be productive.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
geodel 2y ago
Ok, so you are just "spreading awareness" but Linus is "indicting". I guess it is good if you and Linus go their separate ways.
- bezier-curve 2y ago
  This is a rude comment that isn't downvoted because of hive mind effects. Not biting.
  - hitekker 2y ago
    You’re not biting because it’s true. Linux said no brigading. Hector resigns twice and in the second time, despite saying he wouldn’t elaborate on Rust vs Linux, proceeds to blame Linus and start another social media brigade.
    - bezier-curve 2y ago
      Your comment has nothing to do with someone trying to ironically gatekeep me from commenting on Linus' public behavior in response to my comment about gatekeeping.
      - bezier-curve 2y ago
        Love how people can be openly hostile towards me on this website, and I get downvotes and misdirected frustration for pointing it out.
        CRConrad 2y ago
        Oh, bullpucky. People are hostile towards you because A) you employed ludicrously tendential wording, and B) when this was pointed out to you, you refused to own up to it -- or, more probably, to even realise or acknowledge it to yourself. In stead you went on to whine about "gatekeeping". This kind of rant is typical of the public behaviour of the (typically young and "woke") modern social-media "developer" crowd, and your behaviour here only illustrates why so many dislike them. If there are any "hive mind effects" here, they're in your mind.
neonate 2y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42972062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42972062 ("Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel" from last week, 1014 comments)

naasking 2y ago

Maintaining the Linux kernel is all about gatekeeping. How else do you keep out bad code?

chpatrick 2y ago
From what I've seen this is excellent code, some people just really don't like Rust.
- Vilian 2y ago
  The last drama wasn't about the guy not liking drama, he just don't like nor want to maintain a codebase with two languages, but I think they really need to say it directly instead of calling it canser and leaving people to think he was calling rust cancer and not multiple languages codebase cancer
  - tcmart14 2y ago
    Im pretty sure he specifically said the cancer was trying to inter-op 2 languages in a code base and not Rust. Even went on to say that he thinks Rust is good and recommends people implement new Greenfield projects in it.
- greenavocado 2y ago
  Aside from hatred of Rust and Rust developers there is a bigger problem. The Rust guys are twisting the C developers' arms to iron out API semantics because there is so much behavior and API usage that can't be defined in C and it's driving C devs insane. The Rust people are doing the right thing but doing the right thing is extremely annoying for the C devs.
bezier-curve 2y ago
What does social media have to do with bad code, though?
- Supermancho 2y ago
  > What does social media have to do with bad code, though? Nothing. That's why this was said: >> *There's a deeper issue* in open-source culture where harshness and gatekeeping drive away passionate contributors. It's separate gatekeeping. I entertained getting involved in the kernel for about 3 days, in college. The process is so complex, I just went on to do other fun things. The drama will turn off others. Organizational apathy is much worse, imo. I have quit jobs for this reason and that was when I got paid to stay.
  - naasking 2y ago
    I disagree. Provoking up a mob on social media will not endear you to anyone. You're just making the gatekeeper's jobs harder, and since their job is hard enough, they will simply gatekeep you to simplify things. Regardless of whether you think the project should be maintained differently, that's not your call, that's their call. Fork it if you want different policies.
    - bezier-curve 2y ago
      > Provoking up a mob Isn't that also what Linus is doing but on a professional forum, which is even worse? The issue comes down to de-escalation, and there wasn't enough on both sides. It's also not unreasonable to expect more from a figure head who is a role model in open-source development in general.
      - naasking 2y ago
        A maintainer's job is to keep contributors on track and in line so the project moves in the right direction, and he did so on the forum in which it's supposed to happen. Not sure what the issue is.

talldayo 2y ago

It's not really unprecedented. Reminds me of Paragon Software trying to merge their code for an NTFS driver and getting told-off because the driver code was so awful: https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/06/github_merges_useless_garbage_says/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/06/github_merges_useless... If you want your code merged in the kernel, you have to think about things from Linus' perspective. You cannot in any circumstances try to shame someone into adopting an enormous and unsustainable workload.

kombine 2y ago
As that kernel maintainer clearly stated this was not because the code was awful, but because the code was written in Rust and it was therefore cancer.
- caspper69 2y ago
  That's not what he said. From the horse's mouth (lkml; Hellwig's headers chopped for brevity): On Thu, Jan 16, 2025 at 02:17:24PM +0100, Danilo Krummrich wrote: > Since there hasn't been a reply so far, I assume that we're good with > maintaining the DMA Rust abstractions separately. No, I'm not. This was an explicit: Nacked-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> And I also do not want another maintainer. If you want to make Linux impossible to maintain due to a cross-language codebase do that in your driver so that you have to do it instead of spreading this cancer to core subsystems. (where this cancer explicitly is a cross-language codebase and not rust itself, just to escape the flameware brigade). --- Hellwig was abrasive and unreasonable. But there is no need to perpetuate, repeat, and repost absolutely one-sided, self-serving misrepresentations of the words he used. You don't need to paraphrase. You don't need to guess. You don't need to distill or simplify. He wrote English so we could read it; stop paraphrasing. It's unhelpful at best and nefarious at worst. Edit: I think it's very telling that there is a crowd here that would literally downvote the actual quote. Actually it's more sad than anything.
  - sneedle 2y ago
    [dead]

bigstrat2003 2y ago

"spreading awareness about a position" isn't a very accurate way to describe what happened. This is the guy who said he wanted to use social media to create a "hall of shame" for kernel developers. Of course Linus told him to knock it off, that's ridiculously unprofessional behavior.

cogman10 2y ago
Yup, I think it went too far. The fact is, you need buy in from other devs and if a dev won't buy in you need to work out a way to avoid them or avoid conflict. It sucks, it slows things down, but frankly making it a "them vs us" is a sure fire way to make them oppose any change you want to make. Public shaming even more disastrous as there's no better way to entrench someone in a position.
- __float 2y ago
  I'm not entirely convinced they meant to truly make a public hall of shame. It sounded to me like a list of "friends who want to get more involved, I'll let you know who to avoid". Then, I read the interactions that sparked that post, and I could totally understand the frustration from OP's part. Linus being unwilling to take a real stand on maintainers blocking Rust just because doesn't really help.
  - diggan 2y ago
    Someone wrote (https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/208e1fc3-cfc3-4a26-98c3-a48ab35bb9db@marcan.st/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/208e1fc3-cfc3-4a26-98...): > To back up Sima here, we don't need grandstanding, brigading, playing > to the crowd, streamer drama creation or any of that in discussions > around this. Marcan replied (https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/208e1fc3-cfc3-4a26-98c3-a48ab35bb9db@marcan.st/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/208e1fc3-cfc3-4a26-98...): > If shaming on social media does not work, then tell me what does, because I'm out of ideas. Then Linus replied (https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/CAHk-=wi=ZmP2=TmHsFSUGq8vUZAOWWSK1vrJarMaOhReDRQRYQ@mail.gmail.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/CAHk-=wi=ZmP2=TmHsFSU...): > However, I will say that the social media brigading just makes me not want to have anything at all to do with your approach. > Because if we have issues in the kernel development model, then social media sure as hell isn't the solution. The same way it sure as hell wasn't the solution to politics. To me, it sure sounds like Marcan is making the case that they tried other venues, didn't feel like it worked, so they resolved to using their social media following to shame kernel developers if they didn't stop.

righthand 2y ago

You’re right, it’s mostly any open source code projects too. I’ve tried to contribute to projects where they ignore my merge request and take my code and merge it in under their own account. I call this behavior “demonstrating the moat” in which the Maintainers are more concerned with maintaining a moat around their project that they actively go out of their way to prevent contribution under the guise that your contribution did not correctly cross the moat. Even if the moat is mostly decorative and ceremonial.

tayo42 2y ago
Open source is just what the name means though, the source is open. It doesn't also imply something like open contributions.
- righthand 2y ago
  Then turn off merge requests if you don’t want your project accepting contributions. Remove your CONTRIBUTING.md. Stop being welcoming if all you want to do is show off your source code. Don’t have a document explaining that I need to sign an agreement to contribute.

jazzyjackson 2y ago

Not to mention stalkers ? Doesn't matter how much you love a community, one or two psychopaths can maybe it simply not-worth-it. It's hard enough in physical spaces to remove abusers (usually the abused just stop showing up), I can't imagine there's an answer for preventing this kind of behavior in online spaces

chongli 2y ago

Brigading has no place in open source communities. There are some members of the Rust community who believe C is obsolete and that C programmers should either switch to Rust or get out of the way. This is an extremely toxic attitude that has no place in the Linux kernel! The fact remains: Rust doesn’t solve all of C’s problems. It trades them off for a whole lot of new problems, many of which are challenging to address in a kernel development setting (and much less of a problem for userspace software). This makes the “C is obsolete” position even harder to defend and ignoring the concerns of long-term kernel maintainers is not going to get anywhere! I think these folks ought to learn the lesson of Chesterton’s Fence [1] before continuing on their journey to promote Rust, which does a lot of great things! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...

mustache_kimono 2y ago
> Brigading has no place in open source communities. Agreed. > There are some members of the Rust community who believe C is obsolete and that C programmers should either switch to Rust or get out of the way. This is an extremely toxic attitude that has no place in the Linux kernel! Would you care to share some examples of the Rust for Linux community who have said this? I'm unaware of Hector or anyone else saying anything similar? Or is this just a fear of yours? I think we should be very clear -- believing the future of systems programming is mostly memory safe isn't the same thing as saying "C programmers should...get out of the way".
- chongli 2y ago
  I didn't say Rust for Linux community, I said Rust community. Here's an example [1]. You don't have to search online forums and mailing lists very long to find countless others like this. The problem with the brigading (which has been done by the Rust for Linux community) is that it invites these zealots into the conversation. It's totally inappropriate and not at all constructive towards a compromise. Plus the stated goal of Rust for Linux is to enable people to write drivers in Rust, not to rewrite the whole kernel in Rust. Yet there are countless people in the wider Rust community that believe Rust is the future and every line of C code still in use should be rewritten in Rust. It's gotten so prominent that "Rewrite it in Rust" has become a meme at this point [2]. There are now many developers in other languages (C and C++ especially) who reject Rust simply because they don't like the community. [1] https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/general-linux-open-source/1524789-asahi-linux-lead-developer-hector-martin-steps-down-as-upstream-apple-silicon-maintainer/page7#post1524944 https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/software/general-linux... [2] https://goto.ucsd.edu/~rjhala/hotos-ffi.pdf https://goto.ucsd.edu/~rjhala/hotos-ffi.pdf

felipec 2y ago

Linus didn't say he was the problem, he said he should consider that maybe he was the problem. That's an invitation to self-reflection. We all should consider that, in every discussion. The opposite is to think that everyone who disagrees is by definition wrong, which can never be productive.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

geodel 2y ago

Ok, so you are just "spreading awareness" but Linus is "indicting". I guess it is good if you and Linus go their separate ways.

bezier-curve 2y ago
This is a rude comment that isn't downvoted because of hive mind effects. Not biting.
- hitekker 2y ago
  You’re not biting because it’s true. Linux said no brigading. Hector resigns twice and in the second time, despite saying he wouldn’t elaborate on Rust vs Linux, proceeds to blame Linus and start another social media brigade.
  - bezier-curve 2y ago
    Your comment has nothing to do with someone trying to ironically gatekeep me from commenting on Linus' public behavior in response to my comment about gatekeeping.
    - bezier-curve 2y ago
      Love how people can be openly hostile towards me on this website, and I get downvotes and misdirected frustration for pointing it out.
      - CRConrad 2y ago
        Oh, bullpucky. People are hostile towards you because A) you employed ludicrously tendential wording, and B) when this was pointed out to you, you refused to own up to it -- or, more probably, to even realise or acknowledge it to yourself. In stead you went on to whine about "gatekeeping". This kind of rant is typical of the public behaviour of the (typically young and "woke") modern social-media "developer" crowd, and your behaviour here only illustrates why so many dislike them. If there are any "hive mind effects" here, they're in your mind.

neonate 2y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42972062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42972062 ("Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel" from last week, 1014 comments)