Yes, Linus took some time off to “learn empathy” https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/linus-torvalds-apolo...

And I would say on a whole his behavior after 2018 has been less rude although he is still quite frank when necessary. I think it’s a positive change.

I think Linus’s message from 2018 is good perspective here: when someone behaves in a way that harms the mission of the kernel it’s better to try to change that behavior at the expensive of that person’s contributions for a limited time, rather than having the bad behavior negatively impact all other contributors forever.

https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/16/167

The current CoC came out from a particularly bad incident with Linus, which he signed off on at the same time as he went into therapy and started working on himself. There is a remarkable difference in the before and after.

> I'm not arguing that what Kent did was right or wrong, but I would be curious to hear what other ways people work with remote developers who are awful, especially when they work for other companies. You can't just fire them, so I understand the frustration here.

They absolutely can "fire" them, by making a decision not to accept any contribution from them.

Around the time the CoC was being established, Linus went to therapy. If I recall correctly, some people had spoke to him about his behaviors and he decided to do something about it. I think it was done in private so it's unclear how much of it was pressure vs his own decision. His tone has become much less aggressive since.

Linus did take a break to work on his anger issues and he has been very noticeably improved these last 6 years. While I don't think it was due to a tribunal, but I think enough other developers told him in private to work on it.

https://www.theregister.com/2018/09/17/linus_torvalds_linux_...

The CoC is new, so no Linus wasn't subject to it in the past.

I think this CoC nonsense makes me far less likely to contribute to the kernel. CoC's should be nothing more than "Don't be a jerk, and keep it constructive". Kent's interaction in that one instance was jerk-ish for sure. But the last thing we need is some big brother committee bringing down the hammer of shame on key maintainers. Let them have their heated technical arguments. How about we try and not be so easily offended by everything?

I dont think so, It requires an acknowledgement of a back-down... a de-escalation.

Without it your only two choices are to boot him out or let him stay and try to ignore him. One is overly heavy handed the other just formulates escalating toxicity.

I agree with your general point about the effects of such rudeness, but I also think the solution is to actually "just" write to these people (in broad cc) and say "Please consider that, although [you] devs were right, [you] could have expressed [your]selves more cordially. I don't think being that rude improves anything, [and] this behaviour has affected my willing to contribute with the project.". Even if your own email falls on deaf ears, the second or third will trigger reflection. And the 10th will trigger some sort of review by colleagues. After all, at the end of the day, it's a team of adults who are all in it for the same goal, and they should be trusted to be able to handle it like adults when concerns have been expressed in the appropriate manner.

Whereas CoC-driven development risks leading to a chilling effect where you no longer constructively argue about stuff, let alone in a passionate manner (that, admittedly, risks going the wrong side of the fence on occasion), and just let shit pile up because it's not your business to be getting the snake out of the hole and messing with a CoC Panel for it.

And this is even in the 'ideal' case where the CoC Panel has no 'political' ulterior motives. God forbid when this is not the case.

Basically, careful what you wish for.

It's american culture.

And it's corporate because linux is now corporate run. And all these things make sure that no volunteer will ever take part.

No, they had the option of having a real conversation in private about what we could do to improve the overall situation.

Instead what I got was "It'd be a real shame if you're no longer around", and other equally dismissive behavior, and considering this was a situation in which a maintainer was pushing for something that would likely have led to security vulnerabilities and was being dismissive of criticism I didn't feel that was something we could let slide.

Priorities, people.

Just to be clear, Overstreet wrote an email asking someone to “get their head checked” and “get the fuck out of here with this shit”.

I don’t think it’s the CoC committee overreacting. I would reach to HR advising termination if a member of my team did this to someone in writing. This is straight up illegal in my country. If you write this to someone, you will lose if they sue. A lenient sanction and some probation seems fine for someone with a history of good contribution but doing nothing would be wrong.

I’m not sure comparing that to the NKVD is wise.

Regardless of everything else, most people should not be using bcachefs yet. Kent has even stated that unless you're okay not being able to access your data for chunks of time while bugs are being fixed, you shouldn't be using it. The conventional wisdom would be to wait 10 years after a new filesystem is introduced for it to stabilize before switching, so we're looking at summer next year at the earliest.

Pull requests happen through the mailing list, fwiw.

Yeah, it kinda was - https://lore.kernel.org/all/172816780614.3194359.10913571563...

He was refusing to contribute his code according to the rules (by which everyone is meant to abide), avoiding regression testing and creating bugs.

And he certainly didn't help his case with tone deaf comments like this:

> If you're so convinced you know best, I invite you to start writing your own filesystem. Go for it.

Kent is only prevented to merge for a version and mostly because he refused to actually apologise and kind of dig his heels.

Reading his comment on LWN, he seems really really tired. A mandatory break doesn’t look like the worst thing which would happen to him. I don’t think he is a bad person.

> Good code is not written in a democratic way

[citation needed]

In case anyone's looking for that last sentence (quoting Kent here, not my words):

> Get your head examined. And get the fuck out of here with this shit.

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/citv2v6f33hoidq75xd2spaqxf7nl5w...

Arguably a win for the community of users in the long term as those developers who would like a safe environment, more akin to a professional one, will be encouraged to contribute.

In the short term Ken will have to wait for the time out to end, so a loss for sure.

On balance the future is bigger than the present so suffering today for a better future is utilitarian.

And there are a lot of sensitive folk who have been scared off of communities by what they saw. In this thread a couple have commented about the pre CoC community, that they would have contributed but for the fear of getting barked at.

As a younger dev I bailed on some IRC communities after getting weirdly threatened.

Frustration after being very patient with one’s donated time and feeling unreciprocated can lead to frayed nerves and in the short term being rude is brief and often effective - so it is very understandable that this sort of thing will arise.

Good to discuss how we handle these difficult situations of onboarding newbies without scaring some of the lurking next generation of devs.

As a headline this penalty seems harsh, but efforts were made to mediate before the committee made the ruling and proved unsuccessful.

This process is defining the future culture of the kernel code community and it is widely accepted that it should be less toxic and more welcoming and akin to what is expected in a professional context where most devs also function and also have to patiently onboard new developers.

There may be room for improvement of the process, for instance, like in many settings the burden of patient onboarding may need to fall on a community process with an onboarding ramp that doesn’t fall only on the shoulders of those accepting patches.

As a community it behooves us to step in earlier and help new devs polish their contributions before submission.

Especially if we see a fraustration brewing, step in and offer code review to the new developers, who want to contribute, but need some guidance.

Often just guidance about the right questions to ask and where and how to find the answers oneself before asking.

The eternal September doesn’t have to be so, offering to help with onboarding a new dev helps everyone.

Has that fork of Godot Engine that was established to "focus on the code instead of politics" achieved anything besides merging upstream Godot patches and replacing the branding with their own yet? They don't seem to be doing much coding compared to the "political" project they forked.

You don’t get code without people, and the industry is finally realizing that it’s a net negative to have an asshole who produces great code but scares away more productivity than they bring.

We've seen this with Python's CoC and Tim Peters as well. This timeline sucks.

Seems like Kent was a jerk, was given a chance to apologize, didn't, then got kicked out.

Seems like a functioning community to me.

Being a good programmer doesn't absolve you of the need to be a good person to others.

The writing was already on the wall as soon as the CoC was added. It's nothing but a vehicle for control and abuse.