Linux Kernel Adopts 'Code of Conflict' 93
Motor was one of several readers to note that a small patch recently added to the Linux kernel contains guidelines for discourse and dispute resolution within the community. It's called the "Code of Conflict." Quoting:
Your code and ideas behind it will be carefully reviewed, often resulting in critique and criticism. The review will almost always require improvements to the code before it can be included in the kernel. Know that this happens because everyone involved wants to see the best possible solution for the overall success of Linux. .... If however, anyone feels personally abused, threatened, or otherwise uncomfortable due to this process, that is not acceptable. ... As a reviewer of code, please strive to keep things civil and focused on the technical issues involved.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess Linus needs a new job.
I'm sure, the first time Linus behaves like an ass towards someone, this code of conduct will get explained away and rendered completely irrelevant.
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I wonder he doesn't rant against the creator of that code.
Re:Well (Score:5, Funny)
SIMPLE! He'll just revert the patch. Problem solved!
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He's never really been an ass to someone on a personal level, unless you think calling out devs who do stupid things like including changes to the kernel which break userspace programs is being an ass. Plus, if you check out the membership of the Linux Foundations Technical Advisory Board, who are going to be responsible for hearing abuse reports, you'll see that its populated with some real stick-up-their-ass SJWs.
Matthew Garrett and Sarah Sharp for starters. Who are the other ones?
Don't be so sure of that! (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be so sure of that.
The same thing was said when unwanted changes started happening to GNOME, Firefox and Debian.
With GNOME and Firefox, it was said early on that bad UI changes were just experimental, and could be ignored. If they were bad, they'd be reverted. Well, they did turn out to be bad. They were very bad, in fact. Yet they were not reverted. Once they were in place, they were pretty much considered as being locked in. Any critics were ridiculed and silenced. There was no going back at that point. What is the end result? GNOME is basically a dead project, and Firefox is near death.
A more recent example is, of course, Debian and systemd. Despite being absolutely disastrous for many Debian users (I'm talking about systems that no longer booted properly, which is about as bad as it gets), systemd is still being pushed upon the entire Debian community. Given its many flaws, it should never have made it into Debian in the first place, and even now that it has, it should be removed. But it won't be. Any critics are ridiculed and silenced. Like with GNOME and Firefox, we're seeing Debian dying before our very eyes.
Linus' leadership role is on its way out, I fear. Linux is done, too. It's suffering from the same disease that has affected GNOME, Firefox and Debian: technological correctness taking a backseat to political correctness. It's no longer considered acceptable to point out technical flaws with people's work. Instead, shitty software is accepted and even admired in some cases, while those who stand for doing things right get treated like utter shit and censored.
Re:Don't be so sure of that! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like the sunk cost fallacy in play. Lots of investment in a bad decision makes people feel obligated to stay the course because of the unrecoverable development time.
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Which is almost always tied to some individual's ego or vision. Old guard vs progressives. The new pups can't stake their claim and make a name for themselves without tearing up the existing drapes. If it turns out the interior decoration was a very deliberate product of significant consideration then the "innovate or perish" argument is made. Fear of change vs fear or irrelevance. King Arthur of the round table is supposed to swoop in and save the day with his infinite wisdom, but Merlin retired and over t
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Once Red Hat decides that two different package management strategies are impractical, you can be sure that systemd will be made to no longer accept the Debian method.
Once that happens, who needs Debian?
Speak for yourself! ... at least in the case of FF (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to take it for granted that the changes made to Firefox were universally bad for all users, and that everyone hates them.
As a regular user of Firefox on multiple platforms (Android, Fedora, and Windows), I have no problem with the changes they have made. I like the customization of the new menus and I like my tabs on top (though I could of course revert back to the old way if I wanted to, because they made it customizable and configurable). Almost everything they've done with Firefox from the 3.x releases up to the latest stable has been a net positive change for me, even when I've occasionally scratched my head at questionable decisions. Even their choices to completely disable certain broken websites have turned out for the better, because in every case where I've had such a broken website that I depended upon, the developers have come around to fixing the problem instead of making people run IE 6 or a patched browser that's deliberately insecure.
The UI changes are not what is killing Firefox. The disruptive security policy enhancements that break sites are not what is killing Firefox.
What's killing Firefox is the critical mass of Google Chrome, because it's being pre-loaded onto PCs out of the shop; is much faster for general use (faster page rendering and startup, so don't give me JS benchmark results), and more compatible with more sites. There is huge word of mouth support for Chrome among Joe User type people now -- people who swore by IE just a couple years ago. There's also Chrome's app store, which is causing many third party devs to release stuff that only supports Chrome, leaving competitors in the dust. Firefox may be able to match Chrome in some limited respect in some of these things, but they simply don't have the same word of mouth support that Chrome does among the vast majority of users. Oh, and it's the default browser on the mobile OS with the largest installed base in the world (since ICS anyway).
Rather than Firefox being especially bad in any particular way (except for its abysmal startup time on mechanical hard drives when the files aren't in page cache), it's pretty much just that Chrome is better for your regular user who doesn't care about privacy, just functionality and speed. They are losing to a superior competitor. Even though they are accelerating the rate at which Firefox is getting better, Chrome is accelerating way faster than they can muster.
Re:Don't be so sure of that! (Score:4, Interesting)
The exact same thing of over engineering is happening in the C++ community. :-(
At the risk of being down-voted, Scott Meyers, a C++ guru, has an absolutely beautiful talk on _why_ C++ has become a complete clusterfuck of complexity, and bad ad hoc design at a D conference of all things!
DConf 2014: The Last Thing D Needs (Scott Meyers)
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com].
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Despite being absolutely disastrous for many Debian users (I'm talking about systems that no longer booted properly, which is about as bad as it gets), systemd is still being pushed upon the entire Debian community. Given its many flaws, it should never have made it into Debian in the first place, and even now that it has, it should be removed.
Yeah I know. The Debian unstable branch suddenly had stability problems and people freaked out about something that was given in the title.
Given how there's not a single stable Debian release with systemd I would say that everything is working exactly as it should, always has, and that everything is right in the world.
Don't get me wrong I see an impending train wreak, but I'll reserve my criticism for when the carnage happens, not when the train is peacefully travelling on its tracks.
There are no complaints
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Linus' leadership role is on its way out, I fear. Linux is done, too. It's suffering from the same disease that has affected GNOME, Firefox and Debian: technological correctness taking a backseat to political correctness. It's no longer considered acceptable to point out technical flaws with people's work. Instead, shitty software is accepted and even admired in some cases, while those who stand for doing things right get treated like utter shit and censored.
Linus isn't going anywhere. The code of conflict basically says "Your code will be criticized, deal with it. If you're subject to personal attacks, here's where you can complain." Note that Linus' infamous rants have always been direct criticisms of the code, so he won't be affected by this. The code doesn't promise anything more than "[resolution] of the issue to the best of their ability".
Re:Well (Score:5, Interesting)
I would hope someone like Linus did not have to spend even a nanosecond worrying about useless crap like this. Seems like an email I got today from some idiot entrepreneur trying to sell training courses about "The spread of negativity". Negativity is the best weapon against up-jumped stupids, or the worst: stupid by committee. I used to work for a company that "forbade" negative feedback. They hardly exist anymore, selling lousy products only a few customers buy. The problem was that they let everyone have a voice, even the stupids. There was no way to convince the stupids they were stupid. If you provided any data at all that was not in support of the stupidity, it was viewed as negative and not allowed in to the discussion. This is an example of rule by stupid, and while somehow the US government ekes by, it tends to ruin most serious endeavors. In my opinion, the best way of shooting down stupid is to publicly elucidate all the reasons their idea is stupid. They can either fix it if they're not as stupid as they appear, or because they're truly stupid, they can go away and stop bothering everyone which has a surprisingly high benefit to productivity.
It's shame if someone has to resort to racist/sexist/etc. remarks to explain to you why an idea is stupid, there are better ways. One should point out to them how stupid their feedback really is, if by invoking inalterable, irrelevant, and unsupportable facts of existence in a pejorative manner they undermine the goals of their own project. Assuming sufficient evidence is provided about the technical issues at hand, however, one should ignore the stupid commentary and focus on the evidence of technical stupidity, and either eliminate it if possible, or abandon the idea. But with any luck people who have a demonstrated track record of success can continue to tell you how stupid you are and not run afoul of the "rules". I say this and at one point in recent history I am fairly sure Linus threatened death on me and my kind, but he was right to do so, there was a lot of stupid-by-committee at work and it was making everything really stupid. Being threatened did very little to address the root cause of the problem, but it did highlight the symptoms that were previously being ignored because it was inconvenient to the stupids who had assumed role of alpha-geek. Those stupids did eventually back off, as it became clear their stupid was not being well tolerated by a community outside their control.
Re: Well (Score:2, Interesting)
You can't argue with stupid people or even explain to them why they are wrong. Why? Because they are too stupid to understand. And guess what happens in real life? Most people are stupid. Humanity edges ahead with minor periods of great advancement until stupid people take over and take us backwards again. And again. And again. And yet again.
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Negativity is the best weapon against up-jumped stupids
Ironically, no, no it is not. Positive reinforcement is superior because it doesn't make people feel bad about themselves, which leads to more negative behavior.
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>The only positive behavior stupid people can do is to leave.
And that's negative behaviour when they certainly can offer a positive behaviour: Learning. Which, I'm assuming according to you, is impossible for them. But even if that's impossible there's another option: Just have them get work done under supervision and ask them not to comment.
Otherwise you're re-inventing the yes-man atmosphere.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
I've know a few people like you over the years, and they were basically impossible to work with. The problem is that they went around loudly proclaiming that everyone else was stupid, but when their own ideas were dumb it was impossible for them to accept. No matter how well reasoned the argument, no matter how often it was pointed out they could never back down for fear of being branded stupid, the very thing they despise the most.
Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone is born knowing nothing and has to learn. If you can't deal with that it's your problem. Becoming antagonistic just creates an environment in which "stupid" prevails because people are either too afraid of being branded to speak up or too cock sure of themselves to accept they were wrong.
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Re:Well (Score:5, Interesting)
You can have negative feedback without negativity.
Negativity is a virus that once it infects and takes hold, spreads rapidly and kills productivity and innovation.
Negative feedback though is a positive thing, provided it's done correctly - i.e., it's not negativity, it's constructive criticism. The difference is that negativity focuses on the bad alone, while constructive criticism focuses on the rehabilitation.
"This design is stupid. You're an idiot" is a negative statement that spreads negativity. "This design is stupid because you're not using the new architecture features that are going to be present in the new release and instead trying to reinvent the wheel" is negative feedback that becomes constructive because it now presents a resolution to the problem.
It also turns the feedback giver from someone who always says no to someone who provides helpful assistance.
If all you do is complain and bitch about everyone doing crap for work, one of two things happens - either it infects others and it turns into everyone bitching about everyone else and no work gets done, or you'll find yourself isolated as being difficult to work with. Add in racism/sexism/etc and other offensive comments (which have no place in the modern workplace or anywhere for that matter) and either you're out of a job or no one wants to work with you anymore.
Hell, even Linux goes on rants, but at least he tries to justify his rant by giving feedback on what's wrong. He lacks tact and diplomacy, but at least he clearly explains why it's bad, and he attacks the technical content, not the person.
Re: (Score:3)
Brilliant analysis.
Facebook started this crap of only allowing up votes. Parts of Reddit are now following the "Herp. Derp. Upvote only" mentality not thinking about what this really means.
Down-votes are important so that when something has incorrectly been up voted, the community can self police and auto-correct itself.
As another /. poster said [slashdot.org]:
"How did we end up in the situation where the sham of Political Correctness became more important then Technical Correctness??
One of the reasons /. has bee
Re:Well (Score:4, Interesting)
I find it quite amusing that calling someone who, despite repeated being told not to do certain things, an idiot is considered being abusive, while the kind of behaviour that usually provokes such outburst in the first place is A-OK. I guess most people really are idiots and assholes, and as such sympathize with the "victim" when one of their kind gets called out.
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
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They can feel abused. Who cares?
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Depends on content.
1. This code doesn't apply to Linus. ...
Get a thicker skin (Score:1, Insightful)
Point 1, Out in the non open source world, you have to deal with dicks all the time. People who will scupper a project rather than not get their way and will constantly whine about everything. Why do you think most companies produce mediocre software products and the bigger they are, the closer to junk their stuff is.
To get those thick skin callouses, you have to have had a tough time, and that in turns means a bit of hurt. Its the same with software, you need to suffer these idiots a few times to not care
No Zoidbergs (Score:5, Funny)
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And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. ...
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, one girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place.
Zoidbergs win.
Why is it so much easier to be mean than polite? Or to slip into (the passive-agressiveness of) political correctness? Some design flaw there in the human brain/soul.
The full text (Score:5, Informative)
The Linux kernel development effort is a very personal process compared to "traditional" ways of developing software. Your code and ideas behind it will be carefully reviewed, often resulting in critique and criticism. The review will almost always require improvements to the code before it can be included in the kernel. Know that this happens because everyone involved wants to see the best possible solution for the overall success of Linux. This development process has been proven to create the most robust operating system kernel ever, and we do not want to do anything to cause the quality of submission and eventual result to ever decrease.
If however, anyone feels personally abused, threatened, or otherwise uncomfortable due to this process, that is not acceptable. If so, please contact the Linux Foundation's Technical Advisory Board at , or the individual members, and they will work to resolve the issue to the best of their ability. For more information on who is on the Technical Advisory Board and what their role is, please see: http://www.linuxfoundation.org... [linuxfoundation.org]
As a reviewer of code, please strive to keep things civil and focused on the technical issues involved. We are all humans, and frustrations can be high on both sides of the process. Try to keep in mind the immortal words of Bill and Ted, "Be excellent to each other."
Re:The full text (Score:5, Informative)
https://dontbeadickday.com/ [dontbeadickday.com]
It even has a "simple chart" to explain it.
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Shut up, Wesley!
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Linus himself merged it.
I always suspected that one day he would realize his kids were imitating his behavior, and wondered how he would respond. Maybe that's what happened here.
Two code fragments enter... (Score:3)
One fragment leaves.
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Congress should learn to code.... (Score:2)
They can't even write civil code these days.
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Re: (Score:2)
They can't even write civil code these days.
How can they write civil code when all they know is conflict?
Re: A victory for social justice (Score:1)
Aw shit (Score:1, Insightful)
Death by political correctness hops onto the horizon.
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This is not "political correctness".
"Political correctness" has become a meaningless vague term of attack used against anything which involves not being an asshole.
And appropriately ... (Score:2)
Inoculation for Dunning-Krueger (Score:3)
It recently came to me that the kind of behavior they talk about has traditionally been inoculation against the Dunning-Krueger effect.
This would benefit from improvement (Score:4, Insightful)
It does not matter how every person feels. There are some people who get offended about almost anything. The above quote seems to be part of the extreme political correctness that is infecting society—I never imagined that Linux development would go that way. Additionally, if people feel “uncomfortable”, that might well be well warranted and help them to develop.
The quote would be better replaced by something that omits mention of feelings (which are internal and cannot be independently assessed). I suggest appealing to the “reasonable person”, as is commonly done in law. Here is an example: “Personal abuse and threats are unacceptable, as is any behavior that reasonable people would deem to be highly or persistently offensive”.
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I see not evidence that the patch is calling for the extreme that you assume it is. Perhaps a very literal, mindless reading of it would suggest that, but I think most reasonable people would understand that it is assuming both sides are also reasonable.
âoePersonal abuse and threats are unacceptable, as is any behavior that reasonable people would deem to be highly or persistently offensiveâ.
That's just a re-statement of what it already says, but with the word "feel" that you place so much emphasis on removed. You replace it with "deem", which is just as subjective and impossible to independently assess. Try writing an exact definition of "highl
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I think the key there is "reasonable". To deny the existence (and increase) of people with destructively tender emotions would take a certain degree of blindness.
Being constructive is the goal, while both overly offensive people AND easily offended people work counter to this goal. Having a compromise betwixt crybabies and assholes would be a good message to deliver. Feelings vary greatly between groups of people, and outliers hurt productivity due to constant temper tantrums, plus an inability to handle sh
Poor wording (Score:2)
"If however, anyone feels personally abused, threatened, or otherwise uncomfortable due to this process, that is not acceptable."
It's not acceptable to feel abused/threatened/uncomfortable? That could have been worded better.
Uncomftable (Score:2)
Yes, god forbid we should ever make anybody feel uncomfortable.
Might want to re-word that a bit.