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Is political correctness necessary to have a thriving community / open source project? Linux seems to be doing fine. I wouldn't personally care either way but
by jack_pp 10mo ago
Is political correctness necessary to have a thriving community / open source project?
Linux seems to be doing fine.
I wouldn't personally care either way but it is non-obvious to me that the first version would actually hurt the community.
- whatevaa 10mo agoLinus famously was quite strict and cursed quite a bit when somebody pissed him off with stupidity.
- cinntaile 10mo agoHe's not exactly a role model when it comes to communication.
- antonvs 10mo agoPerhaps he should be. This idea that we should tolerate terrible things and only respond to them politely seems to produce bad outcomes, for some mysterious reason.
- ethbr1 10mo agoThe problem with that is always people. Because one person is judging that "terribleness" before being entitled to flame, changes to that person influence their ability to objectively make that assessment. Say, when their project becomes popular, they gain more power and fame, and suddenly their self-image is different. Hence it usually being a more community-encouraging approach to keep discussions technical without vitriol. Flaming is unnecessarily disruptive, not least because it gives other (probably not as talented) folks a license to also put their worst impulses to text.
- csoups14 10mo agoAny analysis of Github's functionality that begins and ends with blaming individuals and their competency is deeply mistaken while being insulting. Anyone who has ever worked at a large company knows exactly how hard it is for top performers to make changes and it's not difficult because the other people are stupid. At least in my experience, almost everyone holding this "they must be stupid" opinion knows very little about how large organizations make decisions and knows very little about how incentives at different levels of an org chart leads to suboptimal decisions and results. I would agree with you that being overly polite helps no one, but being correct does, and what they initially wrote isn't even right and it's also insulting. There's no value in that.
- throwawaymaths 10mo agoIDK being able to produce a good product in a corpo environment sure sounds like a competency issue. > how hard it is for top performers to make change then you're not a top performer anymore? seems pretty straightforward > they must be stupid one can be not stupid and still not competent
- nottorp 10mo agoBut should you care about MS's internals? Product is useless, you move along. Save your compassion for those actually needing it.
- IgorPartola 10mo agoI am not convinced of this. Being rude and insulting someone’s intelligence is rarely a good trait. Linus got away with it due to the unique circumstances: leader of an incredibly popular open source project and a gatekeeper to a lot of access to it. My argument against how he handles things has always been that while it may seem effective, we do not know how much more effective he would be if he did not curse people out for being dumb fucks. And it doesn’t seem like this is a requirement for the job: lots of other project leaders treat others with courtesy and respect and it doesn’t seem to cause issues. The reality is that it is easy to wish more people were verbally abusive to others when it isn’t directed at you. But soon as you are on the receiving end of it, especially as a volunteer, there is a greater than not chance that you will be less likely to want to continue contributing.
- infecto 10mo agoI think this is a good way to put it and I agree with it. Linus is a jerk and I would never want to work with him. Doubly so with zig maintainers who call other groups of people losers or monkeys. Shows a clear lack of maturity and ability to think.
- IgorPartola 10mo agoEh. Linus has a long history of abusive behavior towards other Linux contributors but also apparently apologized for it and started amending his ways. The Zig person I do not know by reputation, let alone in person. One post that he later chose to amend based on feedback is not enough for me to pass that kind of judgement. If anything, the fact that he updated it shows the opposite of lack of maturity. Adults can get frustrated. What they do with it is what matters.
- infecto 10mo agoAdults don’t call people losers or monkeys in social media. I am not passing judgement, it is simply not acceptable.
- 10mo ago
- tryauuum 10mo agoGitHub can suck my ass, I think this is the most suitable feedback to them I've spent more than a month trying to delete my account on GitHub, still couldn't do it
- Levitz 10mo ago>Is political correctness necessary to have a thriving community / open source project? Not at all, but this reads like childishness rather than political correctness.
- madwolf 10mo agoNot calling other software engineers 'losers' is not about political correctness. They're "losers" because they take their product on a path you don't like? Come on. Linus can be emotional in his posts because Linux is his "child".
- gortok 10mo agoHow you treat others says everything about you and nothing about the other person. In this case, the unnecessary insults detract from the otherwise important message, and reflect poorly on Zig. They were right to edit it.
- SoftTalker 10mo agoOn the other hand some notable open source leaders seem to be abrasive assholes. Linus, Theo, DHH, just three examples who come to mind. I think if you have a clear vision of what you want your project to be then being agressively dismissive of ideas that don't further that vision is necessary just to keep the noise to a low roar.
- oaiey 10mo agoYeah, bad behaviors of others does not excuse yours.
- venturecruelty 10mo agoPeople who are unhappy with Zig are free to use something else and not engage with the community.
- veverkap 10mo agoIf he kept his comments within the Zig community and didn't go all over social media denigrating GH employees, you'd be right.
- venturecruelty 10mo agoYou're allowed to have negative opinions of GitHub employees on social media.
- veverkap 10mo agoCool.
- testdelacc1 10mo agoEven Linus doesn’t act that way anymore. Here’s him a few years ago: > This week people in our community confronted me about my lifetime of not understanding emotions. My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for. > Especially at times when I made it personal. In my quest for a better patch, this made sense to me. I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry. The above is basically a long-winded way to get to the somewhat painful personal admission that hey, I need to change some of my behavior, and I want to apologize to the people that my personal behavior hurt and possibly drove away from kernel development entirely. > I am going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand people's emotions and respond appropriately. He took time off and he’s better now. What you call “political correctness” is what I and others call “basic professionalism”. It took Linus 25 years to understand that. I can only hope that the people who hero worshipped him and adopted a similar attitude can also mature.
- philwelch 10mo agoYeah, that didn’t last. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wjLCqUUWd8DzG+xsOn-yVL0Q=O35U9D6j6=2DUWX52ghQ@mail.gmail.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wjLCqUUWd8DzG+xsOn-yVL0Q=...
- yupyupyups 10mo agoBut you got to give it to him, he does seem to be really good at catching deficiensies early that may accumulate to become serious bugs or security vulnerabilities in the future. Sure, being an asshole is not ok, but being assertive is a must for a person in his position.
- philwelch 10mo agoI’m very much a Linus defender; the kernel is more important than people’s feelings and his approach has maintained a high level of quality.
- testdelacc1 10mo agoIf you’ll notice, he called the code garbage, not the author. Judging by how bad the code was, I think this interaction was fine. This actually shows the progress Linus made in improving himself.
- skeeter2020 10mo agothere's a big gulf between being politically correct and not being a jerk. In this case the community reps can present their concern, motivation and decision without insulting people. It's also not a smart or valid comment; give me any organization over 100 people and I can find something deeply flawed that it hase produced or a very bad decision. Do I then tag everybody who currently works for that organization as "a brain-dead idiot" or similar?
- Copenjin 10mo ago> "eager to inflict" Eager to do what? If it sucks it sucks, but that's a very childish way to frame it, no one did anything on purpose or out of spite. That kind of silliness hurts the image of the project. But bad translation I suppose.
- infecto 10mo agoHmm I don’t think any of the revisions are about being PC but rather not making juvenile comments. Linus has definitely made a lot of harsh inflammatory comments to others, I don’t think it’s the right thing to do and shows his character but at the same time for me at least it comes across as a smart pompous jerk who says things in the wrong way but at least usually has some kernel of a point. The Zig comments come off has highly immature, maybe because they are comments made to unknown people, calling folks losers or monkeys just crosses some line to me. Telling someone to stfu is not great but calling groups of people monkeys feels worse.
- watwut 10mo agoOne can avoid being asshole even if it is not strictly speaking necessary. In fact, if you are an asshole when it is not necessary, then you are an asshole.
- jmull 10mo agoWhat does any of this have to do with political correctness? Not being a dick is quite a different thing than political correctness. Makes me wonder how much to the mass strife and confusion of the internet is simply down to people not knowing what the words they use mean?
- JoshTriplett 10mo ago> Makes me wonder how much to the mass strife and confusion of the internet is simply down to people not knowing what the words they use mean? Or being intentionally misled about them. People who enjoy being awful in various ways have a vested interest in reframing the opposition as "political correctness" in order to make it easier to dismiss or ridicule. The vast majority of usage of the term "political correctness" is in dismissing or ridiculing it.
- lenkite 10mo agoIt has everything to do with political correctness. Honest, blunt language is now de-valued in favor of passive, sanitized, AI-slop language that no longer conveys important information. The revised post forgot to mention the critical point of the bloated, buggy Javascript framework because it would offend someone here. Prefer a blunt, honest dick over a passive, polite liar anyday.
- oaiey 10mo agoIt is politeness, not political correctness. He represented his community with insulting words to the world. In higher ranks of IT it is all about communication. With his lack of proper words he showed these leaders, who decide about the adoption of Zig, that they do not want to communicate with him/the Zig community. As a project/tech leader he is in the business of communications. He recognized this. See link in the article.
- beAbU 10mo agoCalling the devs of Actions "monkeys" has nothing to do about being un-PC or not. It's just plain rude and deeply insulting. It has no place in an a public announcement such as this. Also, Torvalds was rightfully called out on his public behaviour and he's corrected himself.