Kernel Contributor Corbet Says Linux Community Is 'Intimidating' 177
An anonymous reader writes "Key Linux kernel contributor Jonathan Corbet has admitted the developer community can be intimidating and hard to break into. He highlighted the issue during his Linux.conf.au presentation on the Linux kernel. Corbet expressed concern about the exclusivity of the kernel community, but says it's doing well regardless. He said in a period of just over a year, 55,000 individual changes from 2,700 developers (representing 370 employers) were made to the kernel, equaling 2.8 million lines of code. Corbet called the process 'alive and active.'"
I fault the internet (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think this is necessarily a flaw in Linux kernel development, because I've seen the same sort of thing all over every internet-based community. Think about the forums, chat rooms, and even discussions on this very site. 'Good' input is secondary to both 'loud' and 'popular', to the deficit of the community.
Part of it is that the text removes a good deal of the context behind the words. To be sure...
However I think there exists a general lack of morality/ethics/whatever in terms on internet communication. Never in a town hall meeting is it considered productive to shout that your opponents are "F~ING STUPID" and yet this tactic works exceedingly well on the internet. I assume that in person this behavior is taboo, but online anything goes. At a minimum you would pretend to listen and use some form of tactful technique to move forward. Online the aggressor seems to hope the opposing voices will simply stop participating in the conversation.
Does anyone have any links to research or the like on this topic?
Further, is there anything resembling Roberts Rules of Order for an online forum, email, etc?
Back to the topic at hand, what if the Linux kernel developers held voice-based meetings on controversial topics? Or at least adopted a code of conduct that demanded civility?
Re:sabotage (Score:3, Interesting)
Only one time have I read about someone inserting code that was malicious into the project. That code was automatically identified by the tools used to analyze it. As far as vulnerable, wall that's really a hype word used by neuroelectronic. What he believes is that the code just gets dumped into the kitty and is used automatically. No, it is not, it goes through a very thorough review process before it is even accepted, then it is edited to comply.
That's just FUD on your part dude.
Too many changes anyway. (Score:4, Interesting)
If anything, the Linux kernel changes too much. It ought to settle down into a tight little kernel that's changed only for rare bug fixes. The "monolithic kernel" concept has gotten somewhat out of hand. Arguably, no USB device driver or printer driver should be in the kernel or have any significant privileges. That alone would cut way down on kernel mods.
Re:I fault the internet (Score:3, Interesting)
Out of curiosity, how do you weigh your bollocks against Torvalds/Kolivas square-off?
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/07/07/28/1836247/Torvalds-Explains-Scheduler-Decision [slashdot.org]
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/07/09/24/1210236/The-Linux-Identity-Crisis [slashdot.org]
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/09/06/0433209/Con-Kolivas-Returns-With-a-Desktop-Oriented-Linux-Scheduler [slashdot.org]
IIRC, Torvalds behaved like a total tool in rejecting the idea, and another developer basically stole the concept and made his own implementation, which got accepted.
Sounds like the same-ol'-same-ol' to me.
Re:Kolivas knows it best (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah. Either that or he wasn't accepted because he is a wining bitch with whom people with a clue don't like to work. There are three sides to every story: Side A, Side B, and what really happened. Your post is at best misinformative. I have no vested interest in either side per se, but having read the E-Mails from the Linux Kernel mailing list (which evidently makes one of us) I tend to agree with the side I just identified.