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Kernel Contributor Corbet Says Linux Community Is 'Intimidating'
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.'"
Add it to the list!
He tried to break into the clique, but Linus preferred someone he knew who essential ripped off Kolivas' work instead of someone that did all the hard work.
http://apcmag.com/why_i_quit_kernel_developer_con_kolivas.htm
http://apcmag.com/why_i_quit_kernel_developer_con_kolivas.htm
This space for rent.
He is kind of right, but I would say the relative challenge of understanding the kernel code is far greater than the social challenge of getting involved. I mean, you can't expect to just sign up to lklm and say, "Hey guys, assign me a project!" Why would they even believe that you can handle it? As likely as not, you'll just make things worse. Start by understanding the code, doing some debugging, and once you are actually doing productive things, people will be more likely to believe you can do more productive things.
Qxe4
hard to break into.
There, fixed that for ya.
And let's note Jon knows whereof he speaks; he's not just the Editor/Publisher of the almost-10 year old LWN, he's also a fairly well-respected device driver author.
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?
You what's actually harder then Getting in the kernel community, Writing Good Kernel Code!
an incomplete sentence
Bow-ties are cool.
You what's actually harder then Getting in the kernel community, Writing Good Sentences!
Bow-ties are cool.
The Linux kernel is not some hobbyist tinker toy. It is an extremely serious, mainstream and global-scale project. If it were more inclusive rather than exclusive, there would be MUCH risk in stability and security as I firmly believe that there would be attempts at installing exploitable code within the kernel. These types of problems have already occurred in F/OSS projects all over and we know that there are parties out there who are willing to to to GREAT lengths to accomplish their goals.
With all this, I have little doubt that the present condition is for the best.
Are you against opensource then?
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Flamebait, what the heck?
I once had a signature.
begun in the subject line.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
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.
...then you can really get chewed out by Linus because you should have known better. It's not just from the outside it's a tough crowd all the way, but you also have to remember these people write the most key component of any good server. There are many places where having a developer, even if he's not the world's greatest is better than having none at all. The kernel isn't one of those places, if you can't take the heat then get out of the fire.
Think of it more like chess, the rules are simple but the most effective implementation hard. Hell, I know a couple geeks who built their own OS, but I think the scheduling was just a round robin. Well a lot of bright people have thought quite a lot about it, and the kernel performs to some level. It's like a grandmaster chess player, he can't learn anything from a player ranked below 2000, it'll only be rehashing the same simple ideas and walking into the same traps that people have walked into before.
Of course there's also the asshats that think that just because they know how to write an operating core, they're god's gift to mankind. But, I've run into those in quite a few other areas too...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The arrogance is intentional and deliberate. These people aren't getting paid for this, and simply don't have time to deal with noobs. Nor do they have time to screen patches from everyone who is trying to be helpful. Some intimidation is necessary to weed out those who aren't really serious and haven't made a concerted effort to fully understand the problem before contacting the kernel developers.
Unix developers have always had an attitude, but in my experience they have been far more tolerant than Microsoft Developers (who insisted we rewrite all the Winsock2 code Intel was doing for them for free to better suit their revision control system) or that paragon of arrogance, the original SCO. When I worked for Amdahl UTS, one of my coworkers got the comment in his annual review that he "has little tolerance for mediocrity". Problem is, he thought this was a GOOD thing, while his manager was using it as a negative to justify a bare cost of living raise. Yes, they don't suffer fools easily, so make sure you do your homework first and get your facts straight before talking to them. Really, they are a lot like slashdot posters who rush to point out even the most minor mistakes in a post.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
really fucking annoying.
Bow-ties are cool.
Something that I've always found interesting is the whole social structure that permeates different internet projects. In particular -- and I qualify this with nothing but my own paltry observations -- it's exceedingly difficult to break into anything that involves skill (particularly the programming sort) because not only is the existing structure built on skill, but it is also built on familiarity. If, say, Bob is well known for doing 'foo,' and you step in one day after cobbling around your own for a while and demonstrate that you're not half bad at 'foo' yourself, there's an exceedingly good chance that you'll fade into the noise unless Bob (or someone who speaks to Bob quite a bit about 'foo') notices what you've done and says something about it.
At that point (absent of any response), the prospective developer has a few choices -- keep cobbling and work up some more 'foo,' and bring that into the light once it develops, seek out Bob to talk shop that he might let you in on some of the nuances that you may not have seen in development wishlists/buglists/etc., start clamoring over what he/she's already done in (erroneous) hope of getting recognition, or move on to developing 'bar.'
Granted, I haven't done any Linux development yet, but that's what I've been seeing in other things. That whole breaking in process is difficult because those insecurities about people responding underwhelmingly (or negatively) to your work don't really go away, whether you're coding or doing scientific research. It may well benefit the Linux development community only to work with those who have the drive to continue despite those discouraging possibilities, but it won't necessarily be a huge recruitment tool to get people into developing in the first place.
"What's the use in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes?" --Fourth Doctor, "Robot"
The Linux kernel codebase is bloated, but very flexible. Code from the same codebase runs on home WiFi routers with 4MB of RAM and on some of the largest supercomputers and mainframes. You can't say that about the Windows codebase.
The Linux community is very open and egalitarian! *Anyone* can get called an idiot for saying something stupid or posting a retarded patch!
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