Slashdot Mirror
Linux Kernel Adopts 'Code of Conflict'
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.
I guess Linus needs a new job.
So I guess links like this won't be appreciated.
Monstar L
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...
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."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
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”.
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.