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Matthew Garrett Forks the Linux Kernel
jones_supa writes: Just like Sarah Sharp, Linux developer Matthew Garrett has gotten fed up with the unprofessional development culture surrounding the kernel. "I remember having to deal with interminable arguments over the naming of an interface because Linus has an undying hatred of BSD securelevel, or having my name forever associated with the deepthroating of Microsoft because Linus couldn't be bothered asking questions about the reasoning behind a design before trashing it," Garrett writes. He has chosen to go his own way, and has forked the Linux kernel and added patches that implement a BSD-style securelevel interface. Over time it is expected to pick up some of the power management code that Garrett is working on, and we shall see where it goes from there.
Another guy whose wasting his efforts on a project that will never be picked up by a mainstream distro and thus will die a slow, quiet death.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: Linux is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Linux community when IDC confirmed that Linux market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Linux has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Linux is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict Linux's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Linux faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Linux because Linux is dying. Things are looking very bad for Linux. As many of us are already aware, Linux continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
All major surveys show that Linux has steadily declined in market share. Linux is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Linux is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. Linux continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, LInux is dead.
Good on you for putting wotrk in and not just words in. I'm interested to see how many contributors will support the fork.
Twinstiq, game news
I don't actually mean to sound snide but can someone explain to me why I should care about this as an end user? TFS reads like someone got their panties in a bunch over some arcane detail and couldn't bear to not get his way. Is there some amazing benefit to users in this or is this just some developer having a snit because Linus disagreed with his preferences?
Just for the people who don't know what the fuck securelevel is (NetBSD's flavor in this case)
Not going back to Linux, but this really is a worthwhile addition.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Hopefully he will keep his branch in sync and offer back his contributions like other developers who have done the same thing.
Many developers felt that working on the main Linux kernel tree involved too much politics and in-fighting and chose to maintain their own dev branches for their patches. Any that keep their trees in sync have successfully continued to contribute, and left the politics for when their projects were ready for merging. Any that didn't keep in sync, well . . . at least we don't worry about those projects anymore.
This is how it's supposed to work. Whether he can make a functioning team or not is an open question, but at least he can see if a more polite environment gets better results.
The ideal Linux kernel fork would panic if it detected a systemd infection.
Branching happens all the time, either to develop a feature or because it's doing something that upstream won't accept. One man maintaining his own patches isn't a fork. A fork would imply that that you're planning to diverge from or replace the project you branched from, nothing in his post indicates he wants to compete with Linux or the LKML. He's just saying I'll make my own patches and provide them for those who want them, but I'm not going to bother trying to upstream them. Kinda like Debian and Ubuntu, Canonical made a lot of patches for Debian but they weren't trying to fork it. They just rebased off it every six months, being a downstream variation. He's making a downstream variation with some interface from BSD. Big whoop.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Remember that forks sometimes do succeed.
Take Linux. It forked from OpenBSD which itself was forked from QNX with smatterings of FreeBSD code.
QNX programmed itself from vacuum tubes and trace wires left on the ground at Quantum Software in Ottawa one evening. Dan Hildebrand (RIP) apparently had something to do with this metamorphosis.
Meanwhile across the ocean, FreeBSD was forked from Windows 95 which itself came from the unholy union of MS-DOS and the GEM environment. MS-DOS was bought from a company in Washington State and was a fork of CP/M. GEM was a stand alone thing and should never have been born.
Where was I? Oh yeah, CP/M. CP/M was a copy of Apple's SOS used in the Apple
Apple SOS was a mix/fork of Apple ProDOS and TRS-80's OS; I forget the name, not important. Radio Shack forked their TRS-80 OS from some source code they saw in Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition.
Fact.
Trolling is a art,
Although this project will probably never end up being used in any wide way, shouldn't the Linux community be concerned that it's running talent away with a poor culture?
If this were happening at our office, we'd all be concerned about brain drain.
Why should a person face a gauntlet of incivility and vitriol, one that you liken to a frying pan, to contribute to an open source project?
Code reviews, design reviews, that makes sense. Being referred to someone at a lower paygrade rather than the top tier of kernel devs, sure. These things are stressful but essential. I'd stand to lose considerable self-esteem from them, but there's nothing I can do about that but get better.
But if I went into a code or design review at work and got a Torvalds-style response, I'd be reporting the person to HR and finding a more civil person to work with. If I couldn't work around them and nobody was making them change, I'd find another job. I could try to modify the problematic person's behavior, but that would be stressful and unlikely to work, and I shouldn't have to act as my coworkers' parent.
Garrett found that there was no HR to appeal to, no way to work around Torvalds, and no way to change him. So he did in fact get out of the frying pan. He doesn't deserve to be seared whenever he gets anything done, so he's not tolerating it. Now he's getting the same things done in a way that normal people will be happier with.
This isn't a deficiency on his part. He merely doesn't want to deal with something that normal people shouldn't have to deal with.
The project leader insults people a lot and is too distracted by a name to give my code a fair evaluation, so I'm going to stop trying to work with him in my free time and instead work on my own, where I can get things done without a ton of useless fighting.
There's plenty of puerileness here, but not from Garrett.
Although this project will probably never end up being used in any wide way, shouldn't the Linux community be concerned that it's running talent away with a poor culture?
No.
Anyone with any real experience in hacking the Linux kernel already knows what they're getting into. It is also very widely known that Linus is incredibly fair in his assessments. If you provide useful contributions, no worries. If your commit is a total brainfart, you'll get a rejection, but the abuse won't come unless you decide to be a dumbass or get all arrogant about it.
It's about as fair as it gets.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Believe me, I can't stand SJWs, but there comes a point when the whole community just has an asshole elitist behavior, when they aren't elite at anything other than being nominees for biggest douche in the universe award.
And he isn't coming into your home or office and berating you in person.
And that makes a difference... how, exactly?
It's not about "interminable arguments over the naming", the only one doing that is no else than Matthew, in attempt to pigeonhole his agenda.
This dates way way back to 98. Matthew tried to push gradual openbsd-ish "lock down everything" levels few times, while Linus and his club keeps firm stance "inherited bitmaps or gtfo" every time.
This is ultimately BSD "give user limited but easy to use tool" vs linux "provide powerful [albeit not as intuitive] tools, let user do the job". Think pf vs iptables. I personally stand with linus on this one, as providing flexible tools (instead of easy to use, but limited) is ultimately what made Linux a winner - people can bend the system for more usecases, instead of being restricted by simple and easy to use, but often hopelessly limited tools.
Guys, this is not a dick-sucking contest. If you want to parse PE binaries, go right ahead. If Red Hat wants to deep-throat Microsoft, that's *your* issue. That has nothing what-so-ever to do with the kernel I maintain. It's trivial for you guys to have a signing machine that parses the PE binary, verifies the signatures, and signs the resulting keys with your own key. You already wrote the code, for chissake, it's in that f*cking pull request.
By the time SCALE 11 hit, Matt was no longer working at redhat. people moved on. A Fork was always an option for Matthew...just perplexed as to why he decided to do it 2 years after...
Good people go to bed earlier.
Athiesm Plus
I remember that clusterfuck well...it was a total crapload of pure stupid, with dickheads like PZ Meyers jumping on the bandwagon.
Garrett is the idiot who, while working for Red Hat, screeched that a kernel developer Ted Tso was a 'rape apologist' on a mailing list - completely untrue and a disgusting lie.
Ahh yes, "rape apologist", the specious accusation that keeps on giving. Needs no basis in fact or reality to be used, smears the target nicely, and makes the accuser feel like he/she is "helping the world".
The people that use this term to accuse others of some supposed behavior can't even agree on what it means, and by some definitions if you've ever looked at a woman on the street and thought she was attractive, you're a "rape apologist". If you've ever looked at nude images of women on the internet, you're a "rape apologist". The list goes on and on and most of it is genuinely insane.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
What talent? The SJWs are all pretty talented at being hypocritical and shedding crocodile tears at the UN, but they don't seem to be any good at actually writing code.
If they were then Zoe Quinn's "game" would have been more than reams of self-pitying text and some multiple-choice. A teenage script kiddie could do better.
Sarkeesian would have several AAA titles under her belt instead of just talking about how everyone else should make games to suit her.
That female kernel dev from yesterday would have forked the kernel herself or done something really impressive if she had the chops-- instead she apparently couldn't hang with the real bad asses and tried to make it sound like it was everyone being mean to poor little her. But as far as I can tell she butted into some good-natured ribbing between friends on the mailing list and got all offended at remarks that had absolutely nothing to do with her.
Ellen Pao is precisely the same way: lots of talk and being offended but has never actually accomplished anything aside from ruining Reddit (love it or hate it).
Poetering is the only programmer target of persecution I've ever heard of that actually doesn't deserve the hatred and who has actually accomplished something. But, oh, look: he's not a SJW and he doesn't make a living from being permanently offended; he makes a living writing code and gettin' stuff done (regardless of whether you hate systemd).
The FOSS community will be much better off without the SJW "contributions". Kernel development should be done by programmers not by self-righteous whiners who complain on twitter about how offended they always feel instead of fixing bugs. We'll never hear of this fork of the kernel ever again because the people behind it are not trying to make good software. I'm not saying that Linus' methods are efficient or effective, just that the goals are different.
This is the "deepthroating Microsoft" he's referring to: https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/2/21/228
It was a pretty stupid idea, and it isn't surprising that Linus shot it down.
Indeed, people should just take vicious verbal abuse.
Which is nonsense, and completely non-arrogant, technical arguments have been met with vicious personal attacks and verbal abuse. There's a shockingly large number of emotionally immature and insecure people in the Kernel community, and a great many people meet the wrath of those people for no good reason.
And they abuse because they know they can get away with it and others like you will apologize and defend it.
Because you can always press delete, close the window, and walk away. Preferrably without posting a big rant complaining about why you’re ragequitting first, but whatev’s
i have little coding knowledge and have no idea how kernel coding collaboration works
but i tend to side with linus
if he verbally abused me i'd first make sure i didn't do something so stupid it warrants such a response (in case you want to say 'nothing warrants verbal abuse', we're adults, not children) before deciding to move away.
Here's an example of Linus ranting on someone:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/...
Yes, it's pretty harsh. But I can't honestly say that what Linus said was wrong.
You're not wrong Walter. You're just an asshole.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Nope. No talent is valuable to a group effort if it comes with emotional baggage that cannot tolerate direct, blunt communication when needed. This mathew garrett guy is a prime example of a prima donna that projects could do without.
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/35...
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/36...
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/33...
Bitching about 'cis' white men *check*
Bitching about 'privilege' *check*
deprecating towards women like he's some kind of hero *check*
'reverse discrimination' isn't a valid criticism of my brand of discrimination *check*
comments disabled "because I don't trust you guys" *check*
These and other posts by him read like first year student polysci essays. It makes perfect sense that linus and co want to keep diseased politics like this out of their community. I'm sure they wouldn't want bible thumper 'developers' telling them they're shits for not integrating jesus into their group culture either.
Only in theory. In practice, hypervisors have had more security issues, not to mention performance issues. Jails are faster and more secure if you look at their track record. Some of the most reknown kernel programmers who have been working on kernels before Unix had a name, and have worked in both hypervisors and jails, have said that hypervisors are a complicated mess for both software and hardware and securing them is a huge issue. Jails are much simpler and with anything security, simpler is better.
That's the beauty of FOSS. If you're in a pissy, childish mood, you can take a copy of someone else's ball and go home to pout. :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
You don't blame Linus? When people are talking about signing and parsing PE binaries, and whether that belongs in the kernel or in userland, you think that it's perfectly acceptable to talk about sucking dicks? That's effective management to you?
I mean, why can't Linus just make his point without multiple references to sucking dicks? Why is that not an option?
That's the point he's making. He's not talking about whether or not Linus is correct, he's talking about the way in which Linus chooses to communicate.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I almost can't wait for 5-10 years down the road when she's completely irrelevant and everyone's making fun of her like they do to Jack Thompson now for having the exact same argument he had.
I'm hoping that it won't take nearly that long...but it probably will.
It'll be interesting to see just how long she can make a living at playing the victim card. To see her at the UN underscores just how ridiculous and irrelevant the UN has become. She and Zoe Quinn should never have been given an audience there. It's shameful and embarrassing.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Given the downmods each of us got in the pile, it seems this is a contentious issue.
Personally, I disagree with your assessment, but that said, I am aware that one person's fair assessment followed by a harsher and unequivocal reply if the assessment is rejected, may easily be seen by another as undue abuse.
I make no apologies for the list, because it reminds me exactly of a typical USAF flightline. Doing something dumb or misguided will get you a direct and to-the-point talking-to; first logical and fair, but increasingly harsher if you continue to resist even listening.
The reasons why are different but just as serious: in the kernel, screw-ups in design and/or direction can eventually destroy the kernel's usefulness and flexibility. On the flightline, screwups in procedure or behavior will eventually get you killed.
The harshness against any whining and/or backtalk in either case is not just someone being a turd - it's a reminder that there are reasons for things being as they are, and any proposed changes had better have a damned good reason up-front.
HTH a little.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I've seen references to "don't get your panties in a bunch", Mr Garrett called "girly" in a negative tone, and a "pussy", in a negative tone. And people wonder why some form the opinion of developers as sexist?
And we all talk about OpenSource as choice, yet when someone chooses to leave a project because of non-technical issues such as language choice from managers, we deride them. So, choice is good, as long as you choose to follow what I tell you...
anyways, carry on.
While I think it's unfortunate that some innocents get caught in the crossfire, the toxicity of SJW culture is simply so damaging that I think the approach of not giving an inch is the only tenable one. Once you start coddling specific individuals by sanctions against other individuals you immediately start up the competition of the most offended, the community fractures into group politics and productivity rapidly dissipates.
There's no utility in being deliberatly uncivil unless it's necessary to get a point across, but as soon as someone starts requiring special snowflake status and demonstrates a sense of entitlement to special care for theirs or others feelings then they should get that discussion shut down asap. Allowing the SJW mindset to start festering will do much more damage than the cost of losing a few good developers.
(And it's hardly the first time Matthew Garrett has figured in an SJW context...)
Indeed!
Not literally of course, but still. Linus has been and still is in charge, and has managed OK.
But has also kicked out quite a number of good professionals, for no other reason than his narcissism, ego and at times completely dysfunctional communication.