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Linux Community To Adopt New Code of Conduct (kernel.org)
Following Linus Torvalds' public apology for his behavior over the years, the Linux Community said it will be adopting a new "Code of Conduct", which pledges to make "participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation."
Just imagine how quickly kernel technology will advance now that the mailing list is a designated safe space for special snowflakes.
Our Pledge
===========
In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as
contributors and maintainers pledge to making participation in our project and
our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body
size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and
expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality,
personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
Our Standards
=============
Examples of behavior that contributes to creating a positive environment
include:
* Using welcoming and inclusive language
* Being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences
* Gracefully accepting constructive criticism
* Focusing on what is best for the community
* Showing empathy towards other community members
Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants include:
* The use of sexualized language or imagery and unwelcome sexual attention or
advances
* Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
* Public or private harassment
* Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or electronic
address, without explicit permission
* Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a
professional setting
Our Responsibilities
====================
Maintainers are responsible for clarifying the standards of acceptable behavior
and are expected to take appropriate and fair corrective action in response to
any instances of unacceptable behavior.
Maintainers have the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject
comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are
not aligned to this Code of Conduct, or to ban temporarily or permanently any
contributor for other behaviors that they deem inappropriate, threatening,
offensive, or harmful.
Scope
=====
This Code of Conduct applies both within project spaces and in public spaces
when an individual is representing the project or its community. Examples of
representing a project or community include using an official project e-mail
address, posting via an official social media account, or acting as an appointed
representative at an online or offline event. Representation of a project may be
further defined and clarified by project maintainers.
Enforcement
===========
Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be
reported by contacting the Technical Advisory Board (TAB) at
. All complaints will be reviewed and
investigated and will result in a response that is deemed necessary and
appropriate to the circumstances. The TAB is obligated to maintain
confidentiality with regard to the reporter of an incident. Further details of
specific enforcement policies may be posted separately.
Maintainers who do not follow or enforce the Code of Conduct in good faith may
face temporary or permanent repercussions as determined by other members of the
project’s leadership.
What's the difference between "gender identity and expression" and "sexual identity and orientation"?
You can still be harassed if you have opinions we don't like, though.
RMS is not a kernel développer you know.
I assume "works for Intel" is still fair game, right?
Log in or piss off.
This is how the snowflakes kill off technology; by making it effectively socially illegal to do things based on the technical merits by allowing people to claim to be offended by technical craftsmanship.
After this no longer will good ideas be judged on their technical merits; No, that's not PC anymore. It must be INCLUSIVE to other non-technical requirements that will dumb down the technical requirements and make the end product worse.
I really, really, really wish these had been handled non-concurrently. It's virtually impossible not to analyze or comment on the two events together, which leads to some unsettling connotations for some.
While I think Linus taking a breather to maybe not be as much of a dick while still demanding high quality code is an admirable moment of self-reflection, the roots of this Code of Conduct are quite unsettling.
One really can't discuss the wording of the CoC without discussing the Contributor Covenant and the larger philosophical goals of the Post-Meritocracy manifesto.
From the CC:
From the PMM:
These are explicitly political documents... and they should be addressed as such. I don't think anyone has a problem with "don't be a jerk, and don't make it personal" in an open source project. Arguably, Linus has stepped over the line on occasion. The adoption of this document goes far beyond rectifying a mere lack of teeth in telling people to "Be excellent to each other"
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
We were here first. Get the hell off my lawn.
It was about time they apply wheaton's law. "Don't be a Dick !" https://dontbeadickday.com/
How does one show empathy via email? Its Just a flickering set of pixels which some meatheads loom at and react to. Impossible to predict
Things like experience and gender/sex have no place in a virtual project over the internet. you want the best experienced homo sapiens. For the rest - they don't have to reveal it.
Is everybody insane?!
https://regmedia.co.uk/2015/07...
This is the end of Linux as we know it. The "Code of Conduct" is teeming with words and phrases that indicate the project is now going to be policed by Social Justice Warriors who will micro-manage everything. It means that the Linux kernel is no longer a meritocracy.
The only "code of conduct" ought to be: "my code doesn't care about your feelings". You can't develop good code in a Safe Space.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
BULLSHIT.
-- Linus Torvalds, LKML, 21/1/2018
COMPLETE AND UTTER GARBAGE.
-- Linus Torvalds, LKML, 21/1/2018
WHAT THE F*CK IS GOING ON?
-- Linus Torvalds, LKML, 21/1/2018
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The only "persons" who can meet such a standard are corporate entities.
For everyone else, the definitions of racism, sexism and what is or isn't harassment will just keep being tweaked and changed.
But a company like IBM, who directly aided the actual Nazis in WWII, can never be accused of racism - because they have a HR policy that is compatible with blah blah.
Get ready for hyper-fragmentation.
US companies are not " literally any professional workplace". There are more cultures on this planet you know.
The difference between what gender you feel you are(including gender dystopia) VS what gender you like(homo/hetro/bi/non- sexual) . Just dressed up in field appropriate technical jargon to avoid being imprecise, at the cost of being inscrutable
It's VERY obvious he is being railroaded, right?
I wonder why
So if I noob it up on the kernel mailing list none of the senior engineers with salaried work to do can tell me to fuck off? Sweet!
The unintended consequence of this will be that formerly open source but mission critical projects will just go into closed development like Android to keep the noobs and trolls out.
While i hated the community because so many are jerks, it does represent 'freedom' not to have some sort of "overlord PC cop" getting involved. It will end up doing more harm than good.
Of course the preference would be where you dont need one, and everyone just acts like adults by default, but being forced to act like someone else wants you to, no thanks.
If you describe someone as âoea pussyâ, intending to convey something negative about their behavior, are you being a dick?
compilers don't care, so don't be nasty on account of this sort of stuff.
I want to be allowed to criticize people's political stance, their use of their privileged socioeconomic status, their gender expression (macho behavior), their religious beliefs (especially when these go against rationality or sexual freedom). I also don't think I could tolerate people in nazi uniforms claiming protection of "personal appearance".
This is going to be what is used most of the time:
What that actually means in practice is that you cannot safely go through someone's code review and leave honest comments that demonstrate that the product is fundamentally bad. Welcoming and inclusive refer to a specific emotion which is to make things as warm and bubbly and positive as you can. Well, a lot of the time you can't do that.
What they want is to create for FOSS the same space they have in corporate America where HR, not line management, deals with things like personality conflicts that blow up. It's not going to make people polite, it's going to make people afraid to just be blunt with active, thin-skinned people who cannot stand to hear that their contribution is not good enough.
...that a software community should try to make of people a piece of software. Good luck with the debugging.
E Proelio Veritas.
Sure, you should be able to behave. In an open source endeavor, I see a formal document saying so as superfluous. You want to kick out someone for being a bad actor, kick them out. It's not like they can come back and sue you for not accepting their contributions. Professional environments engage in codifying a code of conduct because they want things as clear as possible to protect against wrongful termination suits if they decide they need to terminate someone for being a racist. If the kernel community wants to disassociate from a jerk, they shouldn't need a document to justify that action.
Formality in various forms can cripple open source communities. It is a significant contributor to bureaucracy.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
If you can behave to the standards which would be required in literally any professional workplace in 2018, you don't need to be involved.
Says a jackass who came along last week and wants the project to suit him.
yep, plenty of bacteria and spore cultures which have more culture than you will ever experience. :-)
passphrase = vegetate
Documentation cares about gender. In many languages, many other words in a sentence have to agree in gender with the noun they relate to. The most common of these is pronouns ("he" or "she"), but they also include occupation words, adjectives, and sometimes even verbs and second-person pronouns ("you"). Use a noun of a different gender in Spanish, Polish, or Hebrew, for instance, and you change endings of a lot of the words in the sentence. So in order to say anything substantial in those languages about a person who contributed code to Linux, you have to make the other words agree with the contributor's gender. They require this in part because the word order in those languages is not quite as that of English.
The hard part is when the "unsure" gender gets translated to languages other than English. Though English allows use of the plural pronoun "they" to refer to singular animate indefinite gender, and adjectives don't agree, many languages lack an analogous provision for nonbinary or unspecified gender. In Spanish, all nouns are -o or -a; in French, bare or -e; in Hebrew, bare or -a. What should be used when describing the contributions of a nonbinary contributor?
When no one is allowed to be angry, what happens next?
lol fag
Systemd in our linux, and now SJWs.
Screw this I'm going home.
Welcome to the real world, Det. John Spartan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Thank you. f**ing SJWs --- You got fined for violating the verbal morality statute
There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Who gives a fuck? Linux either encouraged or directly brought us systemd, binary logs, DBUS, GNOME assholes (Pottering foremost among them), Wayland, PulseAudio, and loads of other garbage. It's become the cesspool of the *nix variants and wasn't every really that great to begin with. Is someone impressed that Linux runs Java programs on Android? Fuck that I'm a Unix nerd, and I don't give one single fuck about a phone platform no matter what kind of fanfare it gets. Meanwhile the "masturbating monkeys" (Linus's words) in the BSD crowd have been working circles around Linux for years, in my opinion. They've also done it with a minimum of hype and SJW wrangling. However, to be fair, FreeBSD has a code of conduct, too. Also, there was some SJW bullshit wrangling over a Hitler quote in fortune recently, too. The problem with that kind of crap is that the social justice warriors run off all the people writing the code. They are annoying, preachy, judgmental and generally inhibitory of any technical progress due to their disruptive handwaving over issues nobody but them or their identity group cares about.
Why?
Is the Rust group full of people who's demographics people were insulted?
There is a difference between judging a particular idea and deeming it wrong vs. insulting a person due to their demographic, psychological and biological situation.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I know some will cry afoul saying this is sjw bs - but being a troll comes easy. Seeing past your biases and those of your society and culture leads to more kernel developers - and thus a better kernel.
It's pretty obvious who the asshats in the community are, now we just need to hope that the social justice warriors don't go overboard and maybe we can get some useful, positive change.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
One less Linux user here.
I have a major lack of understanding of what is wrong with Social Justice or what is wrong with anyone who pushes it as an idea.. Obviously, I am not from the USA but as someone who has worked in IT for a long time, is slightly dyslexic, really good at sums and went to a "nice" private school presumably I should be as horrified as some people here that we are being encouraged to treat other people decently.
Social justice is a good idea. Being a warrior for it sounds good but I am probably not threatening enough. Anyone else who wants to is fine by me but I am not a sociopath.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
I had no code of conduct. I do not have one now. I use Lunux so I am de facto part of said community.
What is next: white males have a new code of conduct?
So fuck off with your code of conduct. I do not even vare how good it is and how much I might agree with it. I will never be ok with any opt-out.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Yeah, that's right, I said 'you' ... bwa ha ha! Stick that in your code of conduct!
The kernel is an engineering project. As such, meritocracy is the only sane way to run it - just like building bridges or ships - if your code is good then it's in, no matter who you are or what you or anyone else identifies you as. There's simply no reason to accept someone or their work if it's sub-standard no matter how hard their lives have been (or are perceived to have been).
The issue of diversity is a social issue and has to be/needs to be solved elsewhere.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
There is a difference
This is frequently wrong. The "victims" frequently argue that the criticism is actually motivated by their special circumstances and the precious "difference" you naively think will be clung too disappears.
He is hardly gone and now this. The PC-police must having their iltimate orgasm. What the fuck where they smoking?
Cunts. The lot of them. And not in the nice Australian way.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Most of them are hysterical white dudes (pretending to be women) suffering from mental illness.
This is a cancer. It will metastasize.
RIP, Linux. It was fun while it lasted...
Pushing for the PC agenda in order to please feminists and leftists generally ends up badly.
This is the same rubbish that places like Twitter and Yahoo obsess over.
It impedes work and wastes time faffing about unrelated nonsense.
Development of the Linux Kernel just slowed to a crawl and this will be its downfall.
One day after Linus makes a statement there is already debate, a new "policy", dissent, and more debate. All that spent accomplishing absolutely fucking nothing of value and certainly not accomplishing anything relating to kernel development.
RIP Linux
Since we want to gravitate towards human rights with our code of conducts why not include association, political or otherwise? An alternative code of conduct:
All speech outside of code and its technical merits is forbidden. Want to talk? Go out with your friends. No statements about code flavours or other qualitative properties without quantitative demonstration are allowed. There is only one coding style. Harsh punishments awaits those who violate these rules. Code is the only salvation. Give yourself to it.
Why?
Is the Rust group full of people who's demographics people were insulted?
"Whose", thanks, and no, rust is mozilla's "better C" with a CoC, a toxic safe space-obsessed community, and an advocacy strike force that will advocate rewriting everything in rust, including linux. Now that linux has succumbed to the same madness, you do the math.
Level of experience? Just wait til the first newbies flood in. That's be the first tenet to be violated.
The ultimate irony is that the only reason Linux doesn't have smell I/O drivers is that the only person to reverse engineer the nose and "emitter" hardware was a homophobic Nazi and all the maintainers blackholed his address. Had he managed to slip his drivers in, then Linux users' computers could support discrimination against smelly people. But instead, Linux computers are smell-blind, so the users are too.
Wanna smell? Run Windows.
You mean unprofessional conduct like trying to impose neo-Marxist identity politics on a meritocratic technical project?
Unprofessional conduct such as setting up a system of anonymous denunciations and secret tribunals?
You mean the TAB is going to launch a campaign of character assassination, doxxing, and death threats against people they don't like? Or does it limit itself to leaving security bugs in the Linux kernel because the TAB disapproves of their political views?
Well, I suppose in the plus column we have that we're really due for a complete kernel rewrite anyway.
Linus has been replaced by a gender confused individual with bright red hair whose only coding accomplishments appear to be in Ruby on Rails (Coraline Ada Ehmke)
That's the truth. Linux stopped being good in the 00s. Android is basically a nightmarish JVM OS, not Unix, regardless of what irrelevant kernel is at the bottom of the stack of rubbish. If you wanted Unix you should have used iOS. Also, the BSD communities are toxic as hell, and it has nothing to do with Hitler quotes. Too bad SJW CoCs don't make communities non-toxic; they just make them toxic in different ways.
Extreme example - Nazi would still be able to contribute as long as Nazi-related speech is kept out of commits, discussions, mailing list, and group events.
The problem with this example is that Trumptards and their Republican fluffers aren't smart enough to write code, much less generate a pull request.
Pestering the senior engineers is harassment, not criminal harassment, but they won't care about that. A polite ban-hammer is still a ban-hammer!
If you don't accept our new Code of Conduct you can suck my dick!
The absolute requirement to address people with welcoming and inclusive language means that even this is not possible:
If you can behave to the standards which would be required in literally any professional workplace in 2018, you don't need to be involved. If you can't do that, there are plenty of forums to write angry posts about SJWs while you wrote your own OS.
That's kind of an odd statement, regardless of your feelings.
The "meritocracy" is who built Linux. The SJWs didn't.
When the culture of the group says it is okay to make ad hominem attacks, then questions of motives are inevitable. Cut the gordian knot by talking about code by discussing the actual code and not the people writing it.
We were here first. Get the hell off my lawn.
It's not your lawn, and it never was. It's the users' lawn. That's why it's GPL-licensed. Or alternately, it's the users' lawn because it's GPL'd. Either way... still not yours.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...or there's a pod under his bed.
This sig left unintentionally blank.
...and apparently I've completely failed to notice it over the years.
(Or maybe it hasn't?)
How many of you keyboard warriors complaining about "people's feelings" were abused in high school? Do you remember that shit? This is about defining that bad behaviour and excising it to make a healthier community. You can still reject code. You can still reject changes. You just can't be an asshole/bully about it.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Can any project prosper when technical success is no longer top priority?
Is there any way of forking off the whole damn thing to leave the SJWs to flounder in their own safe space? Linus has capitulated. I liked him better as a competent asshole than in his new incarnation as a wimp. But NO ONE OWNS THE CODE. Or something. These open source licenses confuse me.
Forking is divisive and fragmenting, you say? Compared to what?
0. Zero.
Booooooooooooo! *throws tomatos at Linus and others*
Not a problem, so long as they can all gather and regroup somewhere else.
Here's a name for the new fork of the Linux kernel: Galt's Gulch.
Complain about the code, not the person. Nobody cares about your sex, gender-less-ness, religion, race. Keep that crap to yourself.
And please don't submit shit code.
who would gain from damaging linux (assuming all your fears are true)? Does anyone have solid info on any funding of this CoC? On the person/people behind it? Behind them?
Why the fuck aren't any of you asking this question?
Most of that software is crap. Possibly Wayland is crap too but I'm not familiar with it. None of it is part of Linux, though. A better distro wouldn't run a single one of those things.
"participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex
characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation."
It's good see they left it acceptable to harass people of different personal beliefs, religions, or political persuasions.
Name a time when Linus ever attacked someone's "identity". You can't because it didn't happen.
95% of the berating about race is people like you bemoaning the presence of so many white people in the space. The reason why a non-white getting berated and abused by a white person in these spaces makes headlines is because it's a "man bites dog story" compared to the other way around.
I've known a few brilliant individuals. I've known many meek individuals. But I've yet to encounter both traits in the same person.
(Then again, how would I know?)
Meekness doesn't work. Sooner or later, a brilliant individual will figure this out.
Any coder worth his salt knows this is a red flag.
Anyone who doesn't see this is not a good coder.
I'll look past your racist comments on trolls for now, and call bullshit on your premise.
"More people" doesn't automatically lead to better code. Even suitably educated people might not cut it. You need a certain kind of curious educated creative mind, from a certain kind of culture. If your culture isn't fostering those traits, then you'll get less people from that background.
It's been well known that kids growing up in households with access to books and a culture of reading, or learning music, and all that, have a better time expressing themselves later. That's typically middle class and up. How many books do you find in lower class homes (regardless of skin colour!)? How many lower class people end up kernel contributors? And why is that?
But we could put it to the test in a different way, too: Scoop up a bunch of people from a Chinese university's CS department and see how many would make good kernel developers. Now try the same with a European university. And an American one. And an African one (yes, there's universities down there). And an Indian one. And, say, a Brazilian one. And a Russian one, why not.
I think you'll see striking differences. Lots of education, presumably to comparable standards, but vast differences in output and quality of output. Maybe less so in individual cases but certainly when taken as a group. Of course, I haven't actually tried this, but I think it might be a worthy experiment. Of course, it's wildly politically incorrect to suggest any such thing; it'll get shot down for "racism", even though I said I expected culture to be the driving factor behind any differences. Actually suggesting to compare being not politically correct and codes of conduct being quite the thing in politically correct circles should tell you much already.
This is not going to work because the real problem is about time. It takes significantly longer to be nice and show patience than it does to be mean and to the point. Someone with Linus' responsibilities just isn't ever going to feel like they have the time to be nice to everybody. If you want to improve peoples' attitudes in something as huge as the kernel community, than you need to change the heirachical structure to something with a lot more depth. Linus shouldn't be dealing with 2/3 of the people he is currently dealing with. If he isn't directly interacting with them, then they won't be getting offended by him either. Those people should be interacting solely with developers with less responsibility and therefore more time to be nice.
>if jackasses could fly this place would be an airport...
This will cause a Fork and most likely for the better.
If you can't berate people over trivial software matters in email, what's the point?
Here's a good article that discusses the issues with meritocracy.
The premise of meritocracy is that those who perform best should receive the most compensation, whether in the form of promotions or pay. In other words, performance should correlate strongly with salary and status. The problem is that systems that claim to be only merit-based are often anything but. The author then argues that those who refuse to consider the possibility of bias often make very biased decisions. When you accept the possibility that people are biased arbiters and act to remove those biases, you end up with a system that is much closer to the premise of meritocracy.
We all have biases that influence our decisions, but it's our choice whether to address them or not. To give you an example, as an instructor grading written assignments, I tried to grade all students by the same standard and be unbiased. There was a student who had given very low effort on previous assignments, failed to turn in some work, and ignored my emails expressing concern for his grade.
However, on a subsequent short essay (2-3 paragraphs) essay, I took off several points. When I finished grading the entire class, for some reason, I felt I should go back and revisit his assignment. Upon reading it again, I felt a higher grade was warranted, and adjusted it accordingly. I knew next to nothing about the student except his name and his prior performance in my class. Because he had performed poorly in the past, I probably assumed this assignment would also be of low quality, and that bias affected his grade. Make no mistake, the previous low grades were warranted, but they had biased my decision on the current assignment. The problem is that even when we think we're unbiased, we still make biased decisions. In this case, the solution is probably to use blind grading on Canvas and remove student names during grading.
To be clear, the author of the article is saying that performance should be strongly correlated with pay. However, people are biased arbiters and do a poor job of evaluating performance. As a result, many "meritocracies" do a poor job of promoting those with the most merit. Identifying and addressing those biases actually produces a system that is much closer to the premise of meritocracy.
The extremists from the left, the cultural Marxists, the SJWs have so far destroyed anything they got their hands on: Academia, schools, the media. Linux will be no exception.
If there is any doubt on their agenda, read "The Post-Meritocracy Manifesto", but in fact, the title says it all. What we're experiencing is a Maoist cultural revolution and the new mob rulers will install themselves in each and every corner of society.
There is no shortage of talented people, and as such, there is no need to make room for everyone. There is a fair number of excellent developers with a thick skin, and it's more than enough to make a project like the linux kernel progress at a steady pace. There is no need to broaden the circle to people that are supposedly good but don't like to have their feelings hurt.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
You bunch of alt-right snowflake faggots!
No one cares about your meritocracy or your feelings. If you can't behave professionally, then get out. No one wants you in the workplace.
Actually, "we" have been here since the 90s, and whatever sad entitlement or privillege you feel you deserve which means you don't have to follow basic standards of comportment, I got news for you: you are entitled to nothing and the future is making it clear it doesn't want you. Go cry somewhereabout how unfair life is.
"You didn't build this."
It occurs to me that the FOSS community is one place where it is actually possible for John Galt to take his last train ride.
Maybe someone can fork the kernel and salvage something from this sordid mess. Or maybe itâ(TM)s time to start over from scratch. This time lose the GPL too. Hippie-free software for the masses!
A gigantic rectal injection OF SOCIAL JUSTICE!
"Nobody should be harassed..."
BULLSHIT!
If someone is consistently submitting broken, shit code that results in broken, shit systems, they should be called out for it.
If that makes them do better? WIN! We get a dev worth a damn.
If that makes their fee-fees hurt and they leave? WIN! One less useless ass-dragger.
Now, when you make a pointed explanation of why someone's efforts simply aren't worth including, you'll get tears and aggro and white-kniting and accusations of racism, sexism, multiple X-phobias, fascism, etc. Plus you get to look forward to unfounded accusations of sexual assault in an effort to drum you out of the community so these power-mongers can take control and start dictating to everyone else.
FUCK
THAT
NOISE
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I don't use it, never have, but I believe it's still in the kernel and last I heard, it worked fine. If the CoC can be used to say a working piece of code must be removed from the kernel simply due to unrelated deeds of the author which are abhorrent to some or all community members (*outside the context of the project itself*) then the CoC is toxic and should be reverted. Pretty simple IMHO.
The danger is that, by the time someone tries a move like the above, the people in control of commits for the CoC are solidly against ever revising it...
Except for autistic people who have a hard time dealing with all these new social rules.
Or schizophrenics, etc. Mental illness is just white privilege.
Fuck those assholes!
And the best thing is, there's no way to ever be forgiven. Every offense is a lifetime ban.
Regarding those who are ejected from the Linux Kernel Community after this CoC:
Contributors can, at any time, rescind the license grant regarding their property via written notice to those whom they are rescinding the grant from (regarding their property (code)).
The GPL version 2 lacks a no-rescission clause (the GPL version 3 has such a clause: to attempt furnish defendants with an estoppel defense, the Linux Kernel is licensed under version 2, however, as are the past contributions).
When the defendants ignore the rescission and continue using the plaintiff's code, the plaintiff can sue under the copyright statute.
Banned contributors _should_ do this (note: plaintiff is to register their copyright prior to filing suit, the copyright does not have to be registered at the time of the violation however)
Additionally when said banned contributors joined the Linux team, they were under the impression that it was a meritocracy: in-fact this belief was stated or ratified by those within the governing body regarding Linux when the contributors began their work (whatever that body was at that time, it could have been simply Linus, or Linus and a few associates).
The remuneration for the work was implied to be, or perhaps stated, to be fame as-well as a potential increase in the contributors stature, in addition to membership in the Linux Kernel club or association, or whatever it is that the Linux Kernel Community actually is (which a court may determine... it is something, suffice to say).
Thusly for work, consideration was promised by (Linus? Others? There are years of mailing list archives with which to determine).
And now that consideration has been clawed-back and the contributors image has been tarnished.
Thus the worker did work, however the other side of the implied, or perhaps written (email memorandums), understanding has been violated (once the contributor has been banned under the new non-meritocratic "CoC").
Damages could be recovered under: breach of contract, quazi-contract, libel, false-light. (services rendered for the contractual claims, future lost income for the libel claims)
In addition to copyright claims. (statutory damages, profits)
For greatest effect, all rescission should be done at once in a bloc. (With other banned contributors).
Contributors: You were promised something, you laboured for that promise, and now the promise has become a lie. You have remedies available to you now, as-well as in the close future.
Additionally, regarding those who promoted the Code of Conduct to be used against the linux kernel contributors, knowing full well the effect it would have and desiring those effects; recovery for the ejected contributors via a tortious interference claim may be possible.
Linux used to suck, but now it officially sucks.
If you can behave to the standards which would be required in literally any professional workplace in 2018, you don't need to be involved.
Well said emperor Jahoda. Obviously "professional workplace" is some kind of standard open source must follow... because?..??.. well.. obviously... because you say so!!
Will you by decree force open source members to write documentation? Order them to work on anything other than what they damn well please? Are you to interview contributors making sure they meet education and background requirements? Will there be drug testing? Will they be forced to participate in meetings or else face dismissal? Will you verify identity? Exclude old people from working on projects? Many professional workplaces conduct regular performance reviews. Are you going to do that as well? If I don't meet expectations on my performance reviews or my drug test does not come back clean will I be banned from contributing?
If you can't do that, there are plenty of forums to write angry posts about SJWs while you wrote your own OS.
Fragmentation is exactly what you can expect from open source projects and communities when unnecessary politics are injected. More forks, less coordination, less interoperability.
Some people look at code of conduct and what they see is oppression and intolerance. They see cowardly people who would rather censure and silence others than tolerate utterances they themselves find offensive, disagree or could possibly "offend" or "trigger" someone somehow. To them codes of conduct are disappointing, dangerous and contrary to the values of free society.
It's been a while since I've seen so many people acting so threatened by a document telling them to simply not be complete and utter assholes. It's rather galling that so many people against such social contracts have the nerve to call others "special snowflakes" when they can't even bear being held accountable for their own rudeness. After all, engineers should not care how terribly they are treated, they are just unfeeling machines to be worn down and eventually replaced when they don't immediately perform up to par. The only people who deserve a free pass are the jerks who can't treat others with respect unless it "has been earned". And that's apparently what a true meritocracy is: letting jerks be jerks just because they feel like it.
Subject says it all. If you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen.
Who is the malign force behind the undemocratic imposition of this petty-authoritarian CoC on an unconsenting community? That person or organization is almost certainly also responsible for the ignominious purge of Free Software world hero Linus Torvalds.
Follow the money - Progressives are always bankrolled by big money financialists and their running dog "non profits". Only a tiny minority of the population support their totalitarian policies. Without the big money they would be nothing but fringe wingnuts ridiculed by everyone.
Follow the legal threats - Progressives always use the iron boot of the police state. There's no way they could impose their deeply unpopular puritanism without the violent coercive power of the state. Linus and perhaps other Linux leaders are probably being blackmailed with legal threats.
Let's find our villain, so we know who is working so hard to destroy the Freedom in Free Software. #ResistTotalitarianism
Does anyone need "new code of conduct"? So until now harassment was OK? Really? What kind of a generation we have these days that needs written code of conduct to tell them to avoid harassment. In my young days that was something that your mother, your adult neighbors thought you when you were a child and if you were in disagreement your father explained this through your butt. Later if you still didn't listen, you boss fired you on the spot the first time you harassed someone.
I bet dollars to doughnuts that Linus is right 99.99% of the time but some wordings in his mails really sound childish. I get that he has to deal with sub-par kernel engineers from company X pushing an agenda and being really stupid and they deserve an ass-chewing, but if I were him I'd wait a day before sending that response and rephrase it in such a way that everyone knows the only douche wide and far is the guy insisting on having crap merged into the kernel.
That would be way more effective and way more embarrasing.
I suspect Linus is going to get some advice on this and then start doing exactly that. It will be a little more work, but finding a secretary in helping him formulate those mails or someone good in wording doing some editing when he needs to publicly push back on non-sense in a steadfast manner shouldn't be to much hassle.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
There is no slippery slope. Never is. It's always a straight fall of a cliff. This is the point where sub-par coders who worry more about what pronoun to call their dog rather than putting out a working product start to take over.
Linux by tumblr. Spooky. Just in time for Halloween.
... they wrote a complicated version of "We will all try hard not to be assholes."
Great. Awesome. I am over-effing-welmed.
Can we now get on with improving the kernels power management on laptops? Thanks.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Are they kicking Torvalds out of the project?
"...participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone."
Or to be more inclusive and future-proof:
"...participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for sentient beings."
Not Linux Only!
This blog is in a need of something related.
I personally decided to contribute to Windows (much more friendly coders & moderators),
after be bullied at Linux.
What part of this are you not getting?
Being blunt, no matter how civil, is not "welcoming and inclusive." As I said: welcoming and inclusive refer to a specific emotion which is to make things as warm and bubbly and positive as you can.
You are reading this through your "reasonable person" glasses, not through the glasses of the sort of person that actively pushes codes of conduct on every project bigger than a 1000 LOC and 1 maintainer.
As it stands, I agree with you, but that's not relevant here because your normal, sane reading is not what the activists intend to use.
Have you noticed how these authoritarian CoCs are always imposed without a popular vote and without the consent on the communities they are forced upon? I wonder why...
That's a false dichotomy.
It's not surprising that the Slashdot "community" upmodded a logical fallacy; that's what "communities" do.
He's a user too, jackass.
I'm reporting this post to the Linux committee. I am deeply offended that I am not allowed to contribute to the kernel because my genes make me anti professional. I should not be discriminated against because it isn't my fault. It's my genes. Blame my parents.
It used to be the case that good code got in. However, in recent times, probably do to the graying beards of the maintainers and the swelling pool of contributors, there has been a lot of added bureaucracy that really diminishes the chances of a good piece of code making it through the gauntlet—not for technical reasons, but just simply because it gets forgotten or dropped for non-technical, process reasons.
So left-handers and tab-users are still fair game for abuse?
(There's a reason the TAB key is on the left of the keyboard...those bastards!)
www.sjbaker.org
blah blah blah blah blah
Lol, ok buddy. You seem to have some pretty strong views about this. And as far as the community going back to however you percieve it to have been in whatever golden age, well, wish in one hand, shit in the other. See which one fills up first. Change with the times, or they will leave you behind. Period, the end.
FYI, the "Using welcoming and inclusive language" part you've cited comes from "Examples of behavior that contributes to creating a positive environment" section. In practice, we only have to pay attention to the "Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants" section, because those are the ones that'll get people banned.
tl;dr: Nobody's forcing anyone to use "welcoming and inclusive" language. That's just a "pie in the sky" ideal that'll never happen in practice.
The real shame is that it took him this long.
Kriston
I'm not taking sides. Being a dick is not OK. My point is, that such SJWdom IS being a dick! That is its only and exclusive point! SJWs don't give a rat's ass about protecting anyone from harm. They only care about "finding" things, to bully people with, to assert their privilege dominance.
I hope this trick of playing the victim to disguise that you are the bully, will soon be recognized by the public, and then that game will quickly stop working and die.
Kumbaya Linux , Kumbaya!
when they stopped being able to speak coherently to the code and instead resort to forum style insults of your bad or never code again. If you can't coherently put in a PR , this code will break because of X, Y, Z and A,B,C will be better then you're as responsible as anyone for a code of conduct.
That's the point!
It doesn't mean you are safe from bullying and harassment.
It only means that you get to bully and harass anyone for any "reason" you can pull out of your ass, whenever you are #triggered, and if only you act like your victim is the offender, and you're the victim (or rather, proxy), you got the CoC on your side.
It is analogous, to how libertarian/neocon fatcats say "freedom" and everyone assumes "freedom from harm", while they only mean "freedom from your freedoms. especially freedom to do whatever I want, even if it harms you".
It's true weapons-grade newspeak.
just turned into a buch of CoCsuckers!
I volunteer to be the BUFFER_ZONE for all verbal abuse, at a minimal rate. By the hour, every quarter or so -- negotiable.
No worries -- I will not ever contribute code for the linux kernel. But I would like to be of service during this time.
The new CoC neglected to mention 'planet of origin'. Who do I sue?
He's a user too, jackass.
He's just one of billions. His share is a blade of grass. That's why we all have to share, so we can use more than that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I propose to FOSS projects not infested with SJW-s to configure spam filter with words frequently used by SJW-s, like "white male", "gender", "entitlement", "code of conduct", "harrasment". That at least partially will keep them away
Now how the Hell are we supposed to rip on someone's shitty code and general incompetence?
Maintainer's Hurtful Comment: "We don't merge kernel code just because user space was written by a retarded monkey on crack."
Contributor's Complaint: "[Piercing whine] The Maintainer's comment was harassing and hurtful by ridiculing my autism and other learning disabilities when calling me retarded, belittled both me and my contributions as unimportant by revealing my minority status as an uplifted rhesus monkey, and has created an exclusionary and hostile working environment by holding me up to ridicule by publishing private information about my struggle with non-prescription drugs."
Enforcement Kangaroos: "After careful review and deliberation, this Technical Advisory Board has determined that the while the Maintainer in question has maintained the kernel with an exceptional level of quality and transparency for many years. Further, the Technical Advisory Board finds that the Contributor has made no positive contribution of any kind an any point to this Project and an objective analysis has shown that the Contributor has proven to be an ongoing hindrance to this Project.
"Nevertheless, despite the facts uncovered by this review, the Technical Advisory Board has determined that the Maintainer has not followed or enforced the Code of Conduct in good faith, continues to express public distain and disregard for the Contributor. The TAB has decided that while the Maintainer's comments are objectively true and the Maintainer's actions are objectively justifiable, that the Maintainer is, effective immediately, permanently removed from the Project because the appearance of meanness is more important than the actual success of the Project."
Nokia has no smartphoneðYOEZ
And I'd argue that LLVM just had brain drain to other projects (GCC). Don't know about Kubernetes, never heard of it. Meanwhile there's been a few high profile kernel hackers that dropped off the map because they got tired of harassment.
If a code of conduct is what's needed to put a stop to pointless pissing matches than I say go for it. Nerds can be abrasive, but they can also follow rules if they're laid out.
Besides, one man's "social justice" is another's treating people with respect.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
My experience (and the experiences of literally everybody I know in a majority of OSS communities) is that the "SJW"'s write all the code while the right wingers just whine and complain that their PRs don't get merged. There is a measurable technical skill that the right visibly lacks; it's why they have been vanishing from STEM fields like crazy. I personally haven't been able to hire anyone to the right of Hillary Clinton because no right winger has passed the basic logic test required of junior developers in over 10 years.
This includes Linux, several BSD's, a large amount of frameworks, firmware, etc. The story is always the same. It's almost become a running joke.
No argument whatsoever, brother. However, FYI, one Linux distro does avoid that shit for the most part and that's Devuan (and Slackware and a handful of others). Problem for me is, I still prefer BSD after tasting it. Once I understood that Linux was just a box of parts and BSD was an engineered whole, it made sense to me why I had always sensed so much suck from Linux. I missed out on 386BSD. Was a Linux user (SLS and Slack mostly) from 1993 until around 1998. Then I started playing with NetBSD off and on, but mostly ran Linux for the display drivers up until about 2010. Then after rotating between Free, Net, and Open BSDs for a few years I gave up on Linux completely when Systemd gained acceptance in Debian, Fedora, and RHEL. To quote Rollins: "At first I didn't see at as kind, but you did me a favor when you left me behind." BSD has just rocked so much harder. I do still keep Devuan around on a USB drive to play some games, though. Hehe, sad, because that's what I used to say about Windows.
Wayland also == crap. Asshole devs who dropped XDMCP because "Dhaeerp, it's hard." and tried to pawn off some crippled X11 server for retards by retards. Let me restate more briefly: it came from the Fedora / GNOME crowd. There, now you really know how bad it is.
If you allow people the bigots and Nazis hate to compete, you'll get more good code to choose from than if you limit prospective contributors to, well, people the bigots and Nazis approve of.
Or you can have a walled garden, with less good code because you've excluded a huge class of people who can write code, from whom to choose the good writers. Just like Microsoft or Apple, who need Linux these days, because they can't do the job...
davecb@spamcop.net
I'm genuinely stunned by all the people here arguing that the CoC is somehow saying what code will or won't be included. It says no such thing. It says, in arguably too many words, "Don't be an asshole".
Where is this notion coming from that it will force bad code into the project or push out good code come from? From where I sit, it looks like an immense example of people arguing in bad faith. They have a huge axe to grind with SJWs, so they leap on any perceived opportunity to blame the ills of the world on them.
Grow the fuck up, people. The CoC is very similar to the usually unwritten rules I worked under in several coding jobs and they made for a much better -- as in more productive and more enjoyable -- work environment.
NOT substantiated - ad hominem attack
Just wondering if this "New Code of Conduct" isn't some indication of a slow slide or an eventual crash dive to oblivion.
As usual, the people who want to bitch about others' spelling and grammar are terrible at it themselves. I could tell you were really trying. You failed for using a conjunction as the first word of a sentence. There should be a comma between "actual" and "educated" in the context that you used. There should be a comma after "so bad anymore. " Single quotation marks are not used for the purpose of quotation, but that didn't stop you! The last statement of the first paragraph is not a sentence. The last "thing" you call a sentence, is a pair of fragments that should probably be separated by a semicolon, but at a minimum, it should have had a comma after "please."
Two arguable mistakes you demonstrated were saying "so bad anymore," and "devo." The first phrase is an archaic use of "anymore" in America. We would say something along the lines of "are so bad these days." The second phrase is not a word. What the hell is "just devo?"
You failed, poser. GTFO and let us REAL grammar Nazis do the real work, umkay?
Stephen Hawking is an unequivocal DICK. He believes exactly in the hard knock, tough love mantra you're busy denouncing. Listen to an interview, any interview, and somewhere in there he will throw some shade at the haters and he'll stroke his own ego. He may not say "You're a fucking shit for brains retard that needs to choke on a bag of baby dicks and DIE" but he's being a judgmental ass all the same. Just because you're physically handicapped, doesn't mean you can't also be an egotistical douche nozzle. He proved it time and time again.
Because they strongly imply somebody screwed up earlier, you know.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Computers are dead. You can go home.
Anyone ranting about "the bigots and nazis" isn't likely to have anything good to contribute. At least, nothing good enough to make up for the...*ahem*...toxic atmosphere they brought along with them.
I call bullshit. Most nerds are libertarians. I'm not a partisan of any kind but that's been my experience, and from the high pitched sound of your whining, I can tell who has more of that. Tell it to James Damore, Linus, Deraadt, etc... Let's not even talk about Stallman and ESR who are right off the political map (so left they are right? So right they are left? *shrug*). If you are in the position to hire folks, you aren't likely to be a good judge of technical skill anyway, Mr. Coward. You probably hired the fucking H1Bs at Disney. You sound like the kind of person who's angry (butthurt?) that the term "Social Justice Warrior" has taken on such a negative connotation because you know that's exactly how you think of yourself. Just a guess, Mr. Coward, but try getting out of Seattle sometime.
I take it by "toxic as hell" you mean: "I whined, but nobody ran over and helped me up." Yeah, I know. I like that.They do tend to like you to read the man pages, Coward. It's not Ubuntu or OSX for a reason, but you definitely aren't gonna understand that.
"stand in a sitting manner"
"shout in a silent manner"
This simply makes no sense, sorry.
Excellent example for Orwellian doublethink, though.
Torvalds 2.0: Patricia Torvalds on computing, college, feminism, and increasing diversity in tech
https://opensource.com/life/15/8/patricia-torvalds-interview
Lick those boots!
So if they force me to distribute Linux changes due to GPL, but I say disparaging remarks about women, does this mean they can't incorporate my changes?
Sounds like a nice Poisson pill.
I agree that there is Babylonian confusion on the term "left" and "right". I have many older who self define as "left" and have nothing to do with Identity politics or mass immigration.
I, for one, derive my conception of left and right from there actual historic origins which far predate Karl Marx, namely the French revolution. The Jacobins set at the left of the speaker and this is where our political left-right scale comes from. The Terror of Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety was the first "modern" left government.
So "left" my book means totalitarian, etatist, revolutionary, anti-democratic and violent. They stand for total control of the individual, are opposed to personal liberties and want to destroy any cultural and historic identity of their subjects, which they call "progressive". A tell-tale sign of left ideologies is the use of the word "reactionary" for the political opposition.
This definition has served me well, as leftists are the habit of constantly changing and arguing about the ideological fineprint.
> SJWs have all the hallmarks of right-wing extremists
Its the other way around: National socialism is yet another left movement, historically grown out of opposition to Stalin's international (but in reality Russian, i.e. Sowjet-) socialism. The people saw what happened in Russia, considered the right (i.e. the conservatives) as too weak to protect them from the communist mob and turned to the Nazis - and got essentially the same deal. Shit happens.
Maybe you should look up what harassed means before ranting and foaming at the mouth.
I'm sure RedHat wouldn't mind taking over exclusive maintenance of the kernel. Maybe they have a developer or two that are finished working on certain mature projects. I guess they'd rather have them as kernel developers than what they are doing right now.
Just kidding (maybe)
Don asbestos suit and continue working.
To all the people who are afraid this is the end of Linux: Of course it isn't. The whole CoC shenanigans is just a flamewar, albeit a flamewar *about* flamewars. Linux survived lots of those.
It's not as if some text file in a repository has *any* influence on your ability to create good code. And neither does it have any efefct on people recognizing good/bad code.
If it's bad, it won't be accepted, if it's good it will. The people who worked best when being shouted at will probably now fail to improve their patches and the people who work better with gentle pats on the head will probably succeed more often. Which class of people you fall in has nothing to do how good a programmer you are. it's all just politics.
Submitting stuff to an OSS project is *always* fraught with politics, and it always has been.
I canâ(TM)t believe the comments here. This code of conduct is some really basic stuff. All it says is âoedonâ(TM)t be an assholeâ. Most larger companies have similar rules. First of all, I wonder: where do you people work? Is it ok to call people idiots, morons, cunts etc. at your workplace? If not, why should it be ok in free software development? Second: what is it about profanities and insults that is so important that we must protest this code of conduct so vehemently? Does it make for better code? Does it improve peopleâ(TM)s motivation? Their skills? If so, Iâ(TM)d like to see some evidence because to me it sounds pretty damn counterintuitive that you could improve people by yelling at them. Third: what planet are you living on where women, immigrants, gays and people of other minorities canâ(TM)t take criticism but instead calls you a racist/sexist/homophobe? Because to me it has NEVER happened. Seriously, how big of a problem is this? In the real world people donâ(TM)t treat each other like shit. Iâ(TM)m happy Linus has realised this. If you canâ(TM)t bear to abide by such simple rules without throwing a tantrum then you must be a very gentle snowflake indeed.
Code of Conduct: Those Ejected should rescind their license grant.
The grant is not supported by consideration.
It dispenses only largess, and asks for no recompense.
It is a bare license.
Thus it can be revoked by the grantor at any time.
His act of grace bestowed, and his act of propriety can rescind.
The free software world is held up muchly by a gentleman's agreement.
The agreement is that we shall take mutually beneficial actions, vis a vis the field of software engineering, to increase the net freedom available to all.
It is not so much held up by law, regardless of what the lay programmers and users of programmers would imagine to believe.
To turn one's contributions around as a weapon against the contributor:
to tell him he must not say this or that, he must not act this or that way,
lest he be barred from his hobby; let he be barred from freely giving
dispensation, is an abhorrent abuse of his magnanimity
Now this gentleman's agreement is being, or has been shattered.
You will find that the law has no supports to bind him;
but many to fell the ungrateful who saw themselves the inviolate annuitants of his altruism.
Bare licenses are revocable at will. They always have been.
Those who are thrown out of the "Linu
Those who are thrown out of the "Linux Kernel Community" in punishment for not obeying this CoC, who's past contributions count for nothing in the face of those who will throughout the ages to control men in all things; for not "behaving properly" here or there, within their public or private life; for not bending the knee to the Anglo-American religion, should absolutely recind the grant they have dispensed.
They are well within their rights to do so, and hostile action must be met with the same and worse in response.
He was the most hated character in Star Trek. He did *something* to reap that reward.
blah blah blah blah blah
Lol, ok buddy. You seem to have some pretty strong views about this. And as far as the community going back to however you percieve it to have been in whatever golden age, well, wish in one hand, shit in the other. See which one fills up first. Change with the times, or they will leave you behind. Period, the end.
How can these statements be falsified?
After the Hindenburg disaster of 1933 was it time to get on board with genocide because...well... I wouldn't want to be left behind? Heil Hitler.
And already we have people calling for Theodore T'so from being removed for being a rape apologist.
Linux runs a majority of military services both domestically, and internationally... so if that's how someone chooses to relate their point on this matter, it's not completely out of the realm of reasonable. Are you triggered :P (jk idgaf)
For real though, as much as I love Linux, and as much as it will fuck up banking, hospitals, city infrastructure, government systems, public and private domains, smart devices (which are cringey in their own right), IoT, etc.
I kind of want the core coders to make good on their threat to the SJWs, and the community as a whole and pull the "killswitch". I think the entitled types deserve to have services they rely on for their daily lives crumble, so they can learn some common sense.
Oh wait I'm talking about SJWs these people have no common sense