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It's pretty hard to kick Linus out of his own project. That's how he does things and that's what his contributors will apparently put up with. I guess it works

by enneff 11y ago

It's pretty hard to kick Linus out of his own project. That's how he does things and that's what his contributors will apparently put up with. I guess it works for him. But I don't want to work with people who behave like Linus does (at his worst), regardless of how good they are. The people who do contribute to the Go core are very talented hackers who also manage to treat each other with respect, so obviously it can be done.

spotman 11y ago
Agreed on the hard to kick linus out of linux. However, this is an interesting discussion. Linus (to my knowledge, please feel free to post evidence otherwise) has not been racist or displayed misogynistic behavior, has he? So, here you have a very talented indivdual, who is very opinionated and uses some coarse language at times. While I could also go without the coarse language, he is often right (not saying 100% of the time, but he has earned his reputation) and I would absolutely hate if by adding a CoC you lose people like him. So, the CoC could clearly articulate that linus-like behavior is ok, and racism is not, it makes it hard to police. Especially when on this very thread, you say you would rather not work with people like that, so then do we add coarse language to the CoC too? Thoughts?
- tptacek 11y ago
  You should read the Django Code Of Conduct before venturing further into this discussion, because what 'enneff is talking about isn't simply harassment. What they're trying to do is set expectations about decorum and professional courtesy; for instance, if you're on the mailing list or IRC channel and someone asks a question with an "obvious" answer that has been covered 10 times before, how are community participants expected to respond to that? Lots of communities without codes of conduct get testy, hostile, inhospitable, snarky, or obstreperous when those kinds of things happen, and that makes the community harder to engage with, especially for newcomers.
  - spotman 11y ago
    Thanks for your reply - I will read it. This is something that is interesting to me, and I hope it doesn't come across as I am taking sides - but more asking questions and expressing my first initial fears, given my experience with some engineers who are 'rough around the edges' but are invaluable in their experience. For the record I am in no way saying I want the community of golang to put up with this stuff. It should even be un-cool to use bad language, and of course completely not-ok-at-all to be racist, or harass people, etc. I certainly won't stop using go if there is a CoC. I simply hope that it doesn't turn into a framework for people not having thick skin when an someone who does not have a soft approach is giving out useful information. If it is truly gotten so bad that we have to have that to also have a wider effort of dealing with really bad stuff like racism or harassment then I guess so be it. Maybe my head is in the sand, but I was curious what has happened like this in the go community? More my bigger question which no one has really commented on, but, why not have this on the go-nuts forum as a CoC for the forum, and have it on the IRC channels? For example, HN has some guidelines, such as the don't be overly negative thing and what not. So, can communities like email groups, irc, and sites like HN not help our culture along enough? Curious to hear people's objective thoughts on this. I did some quick research. Django has a pretty elaborate CoC. Python is very brief, and leaves a ton open to interpretation. Ruby on Rails doesn't appear to have one. Ruby does not have one. C does not have one. What communities has this been a problem in? I have heard of some in Python. Just curious as this is a new issue to me, and being in this industry for 15 years, I have just gotten use to terse people, and have experienced very little harassment or racism. I see articles lately dealing with misogyny, but have yet to have to deal with that fortunately. Possibly, I am just lucky?
    - sanxiyn 11y ago
      > And being in this industry for 15 years, I have experienced very little harassment or racism. I see articles lately dealing with misogyny, but have yet to have to deal with that fortunately. Possibly, I am just lucky? I think a moment of thought would be enough to conclude that yes, you are just lucky.
      - 11y ago
- sanswork 11y ago
  We know what the community is like with Linus because we can live it. We don't know if his actions or reputation have pushed away other even more talented people though. We don't even know if a few influential people early on telling him his behaviour was not ok might have changed it completely for the better. I don't think a lot of Linus' behaviour is ok but he gets away with it because it is so entrenched now.
  - spotman 11y ago
    so, just to be clear, you you would vote for a CoC that would not put up with people that are coarse like linus, even if they do not harass people or engage in worse activities? On the one hand, I would love if we could change those people, so that they could still contribute, but be better behaved. However, trying to change people is usually not very effective. But on the other hand, personally, if I had to take the chance to learn something from someone while ignoring what I dislike about them, vs not learning that thing, I would choose to learn it, every time.
    - sanswork 11y ago
      Yes I would. You can learn from Linus sure, but you can learn just as effectively from him if he isn't badly behaved. Do you think he acts like that towards his family? Of course not because he knows it isn't acceptable. It's just become acceptable on the lists. What you can't do because of his bad behaviour is learn from any of the people that have avoided entering the community because of the toxicity. Linus is good but he's not omnipotent. It only takes one person like him becoming acceptable to make a community toxic and kill off any hope of a lot of people entering the space. You talk about how people just need to grow thicker skins but the truth is they don't. They can just avoid the community and share their talents elsewhere and that is where the true loss comes from.
      - spotman 11y ago
        I hear you, I really do. I wish I had not met so many brilliant people that have the linus attitude. I would say maybe linus influenced them, but they are both on the windows and linux sides. These people I continue to work with because they have taught me so much. They have been hard on me when I have been wrong and they have mentored me. I certainly would not be where I am if I did not grow thick skin. However, I would definitely draw the line if I was ever harassed or was in a toxic community. I never got into IRC or Python. Maybe thats the key? Linux, on the other hand, I don't classify as "toxic", overall, do you? I do occasionally read the LKML ( I don't subscribe ) and I have certainly seem some edgy behavior there, and times I think its overboard. Opinionated? Check. Intimidating? Check. But toxic? It's really hard to speculate how many people have avoided working with linux because of this. There is certainly other communities such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc. They seem to not have anywhere near the traction linux has, which would lean to indicate that what we are talking about did not hinder the success of linux, or prevent people from contributing to it at large.
coldtea 11y ago
>But I don't want to work with people who behave like Linus does (at his worst), regardless of how good they are. I, on the other hand, am all for it. I can't stand working with PC people though...

by enneff 11y ago

spotman 11y ago

Agreed on the hard to kick linus out of linux. However, this is an interesting discussion. Linus (to my knowledge, please feel free to post evidence otherwise) has not been racist or displayed misogynistic behavior, has he? So, here you have a very talented indivdual, who is very opinionated and uses some coarse language at times. While I could also go without the coarse language, he is often right (not saying 100% of the time, but he has earned his reputation) and I would absolutely hate if by adding a CoC you lose people like him. So, the CoC could clearly articulate that linus-like behavior is ok, and racism is not, it makes it hard to police. Especially when on this very thread, you say you would rather not work with people like that, so then do we add coarse language to the CoC too? Thoughts?

tptacek 11y ago
You should read the Django Code Of Conduct before venturing further into this discussion, because what 'enneff is talking about isn't simply harassment. What they're trying to do is set expectations about decorum and professional courtesy; for instance, if you're on the mailing list or IRC channel and someone asks a question with an "obvious" answer that has been covered 10 times before, how are community participants expected to respond to that? Lots of communities without codes of conduct get testy, hostile, inhospitable, snarky, or obstreperous when those kinds of things happen, and that makes the community harder to engage with, especially for newcomers.
- spotman 11y ago
  Thanks for your reply - I will read it. This is something that is interesting to me, and I hope it doesn't come across as I am taking sides - but more asking questions and expressing my first initial fears, given my experience with some engineers who are 'rough around the edges' but are invaluable in their experience. For the record I am in no way saying I want the community of golang to put up with this stuff. It should even be un-cool to use bad language, and of course completely not-ok-at-all to be racist, or harass people, etc. I certainly won't stop using go if there is a CoC. I simply hope that it doesn't turn into a framework for people not having thick skin when an someone who does not have a soft approach is giving out useful information. If it is truly gotten so bad that we have to have that to also have a wider effort of dealing with really bad stuff like racism or harassment then I guess so be it. Maybe my head is in the sand, but I was curious what has happened like this in the go community? More my bigger question which no one has really commented on, but, why not have this on the go-nuts forum as a CoC for the forum, and have it on the IRC channels? For example, HN has some guidelines, such as the don't be overly negative thing and what not. So, can communities like email groups, irc, and sites like HN not help our culture along enough? Curious to hear people's objective thoughts on this. I did some quick research. Django has a pretty elaborate CoC. Python is very brief, and leaves a ton open to interpretation. Ruby on Rails doesn't appear to have one. Ruby does not have one. C does not have one. What communities has this been a problem in? I have heard of some in Python. Just curious as this is a new issue to me, and being in this industry for 15 years, I have just gotten use to terse people, and have experienced very little harassment or racism. I see articles lately dealing with misogyny, but have yet to have to deal with that fortunately. Possibly, I am just lucky?
  - sanxiyn 11y ago
    > And being in this industry for 15 years, I have experienced very little harassment or racism. I see articles lately dealing with misogyny, but have yet to have to deal with that fortunately. Possibly, I am just lucky? I think a moment of thought would be enough to conclude that yes, you are just lucky.
    - 11y ago
sanswork 11y ago
We know what the community is like with Linus because we can live it. We don't know if his actions or reputation have pushed away other even more talented people though. We don't even know if a few influential people early on telling him his behaviour was not ok might have changed it completely for the better. I don't think a lot of Linus' behaviour is ok but he gets away with it because it is so entrenched now.
- spotman 11y ago
  so, just to be clear, you you would vote for a CoC that would not put up with people that are coarse like linus, even if they do not harass people or engage in worse activities? On the one hand, I would love if we could change those people, so that they could still contribute, but be better behaved. However, trying to change people is usually not very effective. But on the other hand, personally, if I had to take the chance to learn something from someone while ignoring what I dislike about them, vs not learning that thing, I would choose to learn it, every time.
  - sanswork 11y ago
    Yes I would. You can learn from Linus sure, but you can learn just as effectively from him if he isn't badly behaved. Do you think he acts like that towards his family? Of course not because he knows it isn't acceptable. It's just become acceptable on the lists. What you can't do because of his bad behaviour is learn from any of the people that have avoided entering the community because of the toxicity. Linus is good but he's not omnipotent. It only takes one person like him becoming acceptable to make a community toxic and kill off any hope of a lot of people entering the space. You talk about how people just need to grow thicker skins but the truth is they don't. They can just avoid the community and share their talents elsewhere and that is where the true loss comes from.
    - spotman 11y ago
      I hear you, I really do. I wish I had not met so many brilliant people that have the linus attitude. I would say maybe linus influenced them, but they are both on the windows and linux sides. These people I continue to work with because they have taught me so much. They have been hard on me when I have been wrong and they have mentored me. I certainly would not be where I am if I did not grow thick skin. However, I would definitely draw the line if I was ever harassed or was in a toxic community. I never got into IRC or Python. Maybe thats the key? Linux, on the other hand, I don't classify as "toxic", overall, do you? I do occasionally read the LKML ( I don't subscribe ) and I have certainly seem some edgy behavior there, and times I think its overboard. Opinionated? Check. Intimidating? Check. But toxic? It's really hard to speculate how many people have avoided working with linux because of this. There is certainly other communities such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc. They seem to not have anywhere near the traction linux has, which would lean to indicate that what we are talking about did not hinder the success of linux, or prevent people from contributing to it at large.

coldtea 11y ago

>But I don't want to work with people who behave like Linus does (at his worst), regardless of how good they are. I, on the other hand, am all for it. I can't stand working with PC people though...