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Linus Torvalds On Linux's Code of Conduct (bbc.com)
Linus Torvalds oversees every line of code added to the Linux kernel, but in recent years the male-dominated community has become increasingly divided, reports BBC. Rows about sexism and rudeness led to the creation of a Code of Conflict (CoC) in 2015 which was short -- simply recommending people "be excellent to each other." That has now been replaced by a more detailed Code of Conduct -- which retains the acronym, but attempts to be more inclusive and eliminate insulting and derogatory comments and behaviour. Reader sinij writes: Recently Linux Community adopted a new controversial Code of Conduct authored by Contributor Covenant also known for authoring the Post-Meritocracy Manifesto. In an exclusive email interview with the BBC, Mr Torvalds shared his thoughts on his decision to temporarily step aside, the controversy behind the CoC, and the defects of the community he set up. His thoughts on CoC: The advantage of concentrating on technology is that you can have some mostly objective measures, and some basis for agreement, and you can have a very nice and healthy community around it all. I really am motivated by the technology, but the community around Linux has been a big positive too. But there are very tangible and immediate common goals in any technical project like Linux, and while there is occasionally disagreement about how to solve some particular issue, there is a very real cohesive force in that common goal of improving the project. And even when there are disagreements, people in the end often have fairly clear and objective measures of what is better. Code that is faster, simpler, or handles more cases naturally is just objectively 'better', without people really having to argue too much about it.
In contrast, the arguments about behaviour never seem to end up having a common goal. Except, in some sense, the argument itself. Have you read the Twitter feeds and other things by the people who seem to care more about the non-technical side? I think your 'hyped stories' is about as polite as you can put it. It's a morass of nastiness. Instead of a 'common goal', you end up with horrible fighting between different 'in-groups'. It's very polarising, and both sides love egging the other side on. It's not even a 'discussion', it's just people shouting at each other. That's actually the reason I for the longest time did not want to be involved with the whole CoC discussion in the first place. That whole subject seems to very easily just devolve and become unproductive. And I found a lot of the people who pushed for a CoC and criticised me for cursing to be hypocritical and pointless. I could easily point you to various tweet storms by people who criticise my 'white cis male' behaviour, while at the same time cursing more than I ever do.
So that's my excuse for dismissing a lot of the politically correct concerns for years. I felt it wasn't worth it. Anybody who uses the words 'white cis male privilege' was simply not worth my time even talking to, I felt. "And I'm still not apologising for my gender or the colour of my skin, or the fact that I happen to have the common sexual orientation. What changed? Maybe it was me, but I was also made very aware of some of the behaviour of the 'other' side in the discussion. Because I may have my reservations about excessive political correctness, but honestly, I absolutely do not want to be seen as being in the same camp as the low-life scum on the internet that think it's OK to be a white nationalist Nazi, and have some truly nasty misogynistic, homophobic or transphobic behaviour. And those people were complaining about too much political correctness too, and in the process just making my public stance look bad. And don't get me wrong, please -- I'm not making excuses for some of my own rather strong language. But I do claim that it never ever was any of that kind of nastiness. I got upset with bad code, and people who made excuses for it, and used some pretty strong language in the process. Not good behaviour, but not the racist/etc claptrap some people spout. So in the end, my 'I really don't want to be too PC' stance simply became untenable. Partly because you definitely can find some emails from me that were simply completely unacceptable, and I need to fix that going forward. But to a large degree also because I don't want to be associated with a lot of the people who complain about excessive political correctness.
In contrast, the arguments about behaviour never seem to end up having a common goal. Except, in some sense, the argument itself. Have you read the Twitter feeds and other things by the people who seem to care more about the non-technical side? I think your 'hyped stories' is about as polite as you can put it. It's a morass of nastiness. Instead of a 'common goal', you end up with horrible fighting between different 'in-groups'. It's very polarising, and both sides love egging the other side on. It's not even a 'discussion', it's just people shouting at each other. That's actually the reason I for the longest time did not want to be involved with the whole CoC discussion in the first place. That whole subject seems to very easily just devolve and become unproductive. And I found a lot of the people who pushed for a CoC and criticised me for cursing to be hypocritical and pointless. I could easily point you to various tweet storms by people who criticise my 'white cis male' behaviour, while at the same time cursing more than I ever do.
So that's my excuse for dismissing a lot of the politically correct concerns for years. I felt it wasn't worth it. Anybody who uses the words 'white cis male privilege' was simply not worth my time even talking to, I felt. "And I'm still not apologising for my gender or the colour of my skin, or the fact that I happen to have the common sexual orientation. What changed? Maybe it was me, but I was also made very aware of some of the behaviour of the 'other' side in the discussion. Because I may have my reservations about excessive political correctness, but honestly, I absolutely do not want to be seen as being in the same camp as the low-life scum on the internet that think it's OK to be a white nationalist Nazi, and have some truly nasty misogynistic, homophobic or transphobic behaviour. And those people were complaining about too much political correctness too, and in the process just making my public stance look bad. And don't get me wrong, please -- I'm not making excuses for some of my own rather strong language. But I do claim that it never ever was any of that kind of nastiness. I got upset with bad code, and people who made excuses for it, and used some pretty strong language in the process. Not good behaviour, but not the racist/etc claptrap some people spout. So in the end, my 'I really don't want to be too PC' stance simply became untenable. Partly because you definitely can find some emails from me that were simply completely unacceptable, and I need to fix that going forward. But to a large degree also because I don't want to be associated with a lot of the people who complain about excessive political correctness.
But to a large degree also because I don't want to be associated with a lot of the people who complain about excessive political correctness.
Coming soon to this thread: Those people.
And I'm still not apologising for my gender or the colour of my skin, or the fact that I happen to have the common sexual orientation.
Oh, yes you are, yes you are ... you may not know it yet, but you are ...
We gave them too much attention, took them too seriously, and now we have to alter our own behavior, 'least we be associated with their scum and villainy. What a truly awful time to be alive.
It's obvious he's being railroaded, isn't it?
Surely no one believes that only nazis and fascists have a problem with this right?
There are some devs who are perfectly decent human beings who simply don't want political agendas pushed through software development code of conducts. Is that so unreasonable?
Non-binary people can't fathom a world where the "Us vs Them" extremist thinking is bad. Therefore, if you don't care about PC language, and cowering before the LGBT Crowd's demands, you MUST BE A NAZI!!!!!!!
This isn't about Linus being a Nazi, because I don't even think he is, but when that is HIS fears(being called a Nazi), because he doesn't retreat at being labeled a "white cis male", that is really telling to where we are as a society. And only a few of us find this to be actually frightening?
I don't care what people are, really. I just don't want to be told what I must do, what I must say, especially when it is being backed by the full power of government. This is nothing more than Nazi like bully tactics. People should take a long look at how Nazi's actually worked. The Political Correct Left is more like Nazis than anything.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
My problem is that the center left folks are not criticizing the far left angry "I hate white cis males who are all nazis who deserve to be taxed/punished".
Since the centre left is not criticizing these folks, they are opening the door to some godawful policies being put in place to police our thoughts and words when/if the next time they get voted in.
The internet is the great anonymizer.
There is no way for someone to know that a contributor to the linux kernel is of a certain color, race, gender, or sexual orientation unless they volunteer that information.
And why would they? What does it have to do with Kernel development?
In my experience, this is the battle cry of the incompetent. When they don't get their way, suddenly it's because of your discrimination against their $trait that you couldn't have possibly known about in the first place.
There simply is no other choice. It saddens me to see the Linux kernel community has given up the goal of producing a really good kernel and is apparently satisfied with being mediocre in the future. A pity.
The larger problem is of course people that value form over function, politeness over intent and generally want people to be as fake-friendly and as conformist as possible.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Why do we even have to know the sexual orientation, gender or race of programmers and engineers? Other than language difficulties from non-english as their first language speakers causing misunderstanding, here really shouldn't be any drama. Even stupid jokes should be excluded, its a technical list.
But when a code of conduct lists people to protect, it starts a once side argument. How about don't be an asshole to everyone, why does the CoC have to state a list of people that you shouldn't be an asshole too? This is is nothing but political propaganda and those politics should stay off technical lists.
All this "cis white males" are the enemy being pushed around is no better than someone pushing "color hair LGBTQ+" stereotypes need to be protected.
This "Us vs Them" is what these types code of conducts promote. If you have to list people to protect instead of language, you picked out a group of people as offenders and make the others victims. The Tribal nature of silicon valley that whites straight males are the enemy and then put into code of conduct is wrong, and it's being spread around projects is petty and a way to try to get back at people.
"Be Excellent to each other" shouldn't be written to imply "This means you, white cis males!".
Just because the world is divided in left vs right, worse than ever, we in tech should be above this tribal nature, not going towards it at full speed.
what a bunch of disruptive bunch of bullshit... talk about walking backwards
this is the only COC any project needs... https://github.com/domgetter/NCoC
... of the Categorical Imperative:
Emphasis mine here: acting ethically doesn't mean you have to cripple yourself by focusing solely on other peoples's rights. But they're part of the constraints you actually operate under, so it's best not to ignore them.
This isn't just an ethical prescription, it's practical advice. Treating your coworkers with respect doesn't precluding fighting over technical details. In fact, if you've never tried it you'll be amazed at how much more productive a heated but respectful argument is over one where everyone's objective is to beat the other guy by any means available. That's the difference between the best ideas winning and the loudest dickheads winning.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Linus points out that there are plenty of people on the other side of the political correctness line who are every bit as nasty as some of those who are against it. If your desire is to avoid being associated with the worst sort of people from side A, it seems that you should also want to avoid the same from the other side as well. I think that line of reasoning itself is terrible as you can find plenty of awful people who believe in anything. You can broadly use the same argument for free speech itself (and you often here it used) and why it should be limited. Hopefully most people can see the issue when framed this way. However, that's my own argument, not Linus's and I don't know if he'd agree with me it to begin with.
I think that Linus actually had a pretty good take on all of this years ago:
So as far as I'm concerned, the discussion is about "how to work together DESPITE people being different". Not about trying to make everybody please each other. Because I can pretty much guarantee that I'll continue cursing. To me, the discussion would be about how to work together despite these kinds of cultural differences, not about "how do we make everybody nice and sing songs sound the campfire" . . . Because if you want me to "act professional", I can tell you that I'm not interested. I'm sitting in my home office wearign a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because THAT is what "acting professionally" results in: people resort to all kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their normal urges in unnatural ways.
I think "Don't be a massive dick to anyone else" is probably sufficient as far as code of conduct goes. Yes it's vague, but any precise set of rules to govern behavior is going to be incomplete and subject to all manners of pettiness.
I stopped arguing after my first (and only) coding style war. Life's too short for that kind of nonsense.
Do you care whether the kernel developer working with you who sits a few thousand miles away is male, female something in between or completely different, black, white, brown, green-orange polka dotted, gay, bi, straight, fucking his pet goat...?
And if so, WHY?
How the fuck is any of this relevant to their work?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In an ideal world, Linus would have written such a code of conduct, one that mentioned no special groups, and it would have become an inspiration to other projects. But, hey, the man gave us Linux and Git, I'm certainly not going to criticize him for falling short!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
What is the most viable fork of Linux for when the Merit-based contributors rescind their copyrights from this now Diversity-based project?
Can I be like Linus when I grow up?
> But to a large degree also because I don't want to be associated with a lot of the people who complain about excessive political correctness.
The same people associating you to Nazis are the same people who will always view you as a Nazi no longer what you do Linus. That you think asking them for forgiveness, and pandering to them, will in any way have them stop hating you is a complete waste of your time. You only end up hurting yourself by giving in to their hatred of you.
Be yourself. Be nice to those who have no bad intentions toward you. Don't ask for forgiveness for not doing anything wrong.
Post-Meritocracy
What succeeds merit? What I mean is; since merit is now obsolete, what replaces it? I'd like to know what to expect.
The problem is the virial CoC being spread around projects. The CoC is already being used as a weapon against people in a "Wrong Think" and making news.
The "For the Children" nanny mentality that a CoC needs to be in place to protect people from a group of people, when its being used as a club against immediately after Linus accepts it, shows the problem with it. The CoC is already a problem and being reported on, this is already way political. We are talking about it because its political.
Less than 24 hours after passing the CoC, a person tried to get a contributor removed.
No cause is so great that it isn't supported by idiots. Unfortunately the idiots seem to have the most time to yell and scream. They also ruin many chances at having a reasonable discussion. I've been having a number of discussions with female programmers and they all have more problems with SJW than I ever have. But that isn't to say there aren't issues they face. Women are different from men. (This may be a shock to some SJW) They do, on average have different goals, priorities and risk tolerances. There are fewer women in crypto currency work than men, not because they can't do it but because that isn't something most women are interested in. And guess what? That's fine.
There are some real issues that women face for example:
Being back stabbed by other non-technical women and having no means to fix it.
Not arguing in a way that ends. When I call someone an idiot for checking in code that breaks the build, I expect an apology, donuts for the team, and then the issue is over. Women don't argue that way with other women though so you get friction when two women are on the team. My ex, who makes Linus seem like a pussy cat, can manage the most dysfunctional men on the planet but can't manage other women without making them cry
Dark offices - given the chance many men will work till 2am in a dark office and then sleep in till noon. The guys that do this are often responsible for some key part of the company's product. Women don't feel safe in a dark office or going home at 2am. Once your key component is developed in this way, you have mostly excluded women from the team.
The last point, dark offices, is something I had never thought of. I don't have a good solution for it and I'm sure there are other things that separate men from women at work that aren't sexist but are personal preferences that differ between sexes.
Basically sensitive snow flakes should be hugged, given a warm cup of tea and told their failure is really just excellence.
It wasn't just that he didn't like white nationalists. His position was empowering the white nationalists. They were using him as political cover. He felt he had to step away from his position to stop inadvertently supporting them.
And it was all predicted and expected in advance as well, but to the average person this COC seems reasonable from a common decency perspective, they just dont have any clue its fully weaponized and was intended that way from the beginning.
"thats no moon!"
>> it isn't that you said "fuck," it is that you said "fuck off."
What if he said, "Bugger off to a convent"? Or "Sod off to a convent"? Or "Take yourself without haste in a most aggressive fashion off to a convent"? Are they any better? If not, then the issue isn't "Foul Words" but "Foul Intent", right? It is what I've always argued. There are no "Foul Words", there is no "Cursing", there is only being decent and cordial and not. The specific words matter little. Many consider it a form of art to insult someone while seeming to be polite. I consider those people to be fucking worthless pieces of shit not worthy of not shitting upon.
Ever committed a patch to the kernel? You have to sign off with your real name and email address.
With that info, you are very far from anonymous.
And there are certainly people that can use that info to cross-reference your goings all across the internet
and learn lots of personal details.
This post-meritocracy BS is a direct response to people *claiming* they run a meritocracy when they really don't. Linus was an exemple of this. Over the years he has made non-technical ad-hominem attacks on very smart people just because they disagreed with him technically. For example, Linus called C++ programmers "insane" and said that C++ code is "utter crap." If he chose not to use C++ that's fine, as there are valid criticisms of it. But to dismiss millions of high IQ people as "insane" and all their code as "utter crap" was not the act of a meritocracy. It rewarded single-mindedness and disenfranchised smart people who could have positively contributed to the project.
The resulting backlash has swung the pendulum to the complete opposite extreme. They now say there is no such thing as merit. And if there is no objective measure of success, then clearly all this is important is that we be inclusive. Success and quality are now irrelevant. I fear this path, and I will fight it, but we have to acknowledge how we got here or we will fall into it again and again.
If you don't want your project to become like this, treat people with respect and keep the discussions technical not personal. Apply real merit, not merit based on who you like and don't like.
You make it sound almost as if you don't know that most linux kernel work happens by people who are... at work.
And that even if they're not at work, they might want to gain professional benefit in the future from having done it, so they would need to tell people who they are.
Any post that is anti-[some race] is racist, duh.
Duh.
They are clearly on the autism spectrum and don't understand nuances or how they can be off putting to the general public. Their world is absolute. I've met some of these people in real life and they are frightening.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
In 2001 he gave an interview where they asked him where he saw linux in 10 years, and he said he hoped he wasn't even using it in 10 years and people had moved on to whatever the next step forwards was.
I definitely see him as falling short of his predictions.
Git exists because SVN refused to take offline commits seriously until a few months after Linus released Git and everybody started switching. I'm somewhat grateful for that because I need the feature and the work-around was mildly annoying, but it didn't exactly replace sliced bread.
Why do we even have to know the sexual orientation, gender or race of programmers and engineers?
It can be hard to avoid knowing it unless you mandate blindfolds at all Linux events, and ban anyone submitting patches who also happens to have photos or social media online. Contributors will have to be careful to avoid letting information leak, e.g. when they can't work on something this weekend because it's their brother's bar mitzvah.
Oh and of course anyone using a language that has gendered pronouns, e.g. Spanish, is banned unless they agree to always speak English at all times. And of course English speakers should be careful to use "they/them" at all times too.
Anyone with a work address in the format firstname.lastname@ had better sign up for an anonymous hotmail account with gender, race and age neutral username. Ideally just numbers, 6847631@hotmail.com won't reveal any potentially problematic info about you. Just remember not to sign your mails off "Regards, Linus" or something stupid like that.
Maybe you could write all this up into a Code of Conduct.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
They are clearly on the autism spectrum and don't understand nuances... I've met some of these people in real life and they are frightening.
So we better ban them wholesale, so we can build more inclusive space, right?
It's a brave new world where everyone's a nazi if they maintain any adherence to traditional values or facts above feelings... Sad times. Your code doesn't suck because you're a woman or because you're gay or transgendered or white or black, it sucked because you wrote shit code and hiding behind your gender or some other facet of modern identity politics to escape criticism is a cop out. I, for one, miss the good old days where you could tell someone who didn't know what they were talking about that they didn't know what the fuck they were talking about, you could discuss it, and then go grab a beer and have a good time. Now, anyone telling someone else they're wrong or full of shit turns into an identity issue and a virtue signalling standoff.
SVN made it hard to get merges right before Git came out. Their official stance was against "hand holding" on merges.: if you didn't write down the branch number when you made a branch (or have a 3rd-party tool for that), that was hardly their problem. SVN also wasn't distributed, and sucked for cross-WAN traffic if you had remote teams.
There's a reason everyone switched.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Why not just sanitise the inputs by assigning a random number to code contributions? That way Linus cant be sexist or racist, etc..... as he doesnt know who wrote the code.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
If you go by the academic and sociological definition of racism yes.
But by the definition of that book that is used by the SJWs, you can't be racist against a white, because racism is privilege plus power, so they do a shitton of low brow racism against whites on most media platforms without punishment.
Mainstream Leftwing Tweet: Stupid cis white cracker!....... Mainstream Leftwing Tweet: Die heteronormative scum!...... Mainstream Leftwing Tweet: U suk whyte males!...... Linus: Oh thats not nice...... Random Altright Tweet: Stupid n word!....... Linus: OH NO WHAT HAVE I DONE??? HERE PROGRESSIVES TAKE EVERYTHING YOU WANT I WAS WRONG YOU WERE RIGHT TAKE THE KEYS TO THE CASTLE DO WHATEVER YOU WANT!
The moment you start specifying protected groups as opposed to unacceptable behavior (that will be unacceptable no matter the people involved) you start embedding prejudices and bigotry into the rules.
This is a major reason to go with a CoC whose tl;dr is "Be civil to everybody, no exceptions; demands for more specificity will be treated as an admission you are incapable of doing this."
The problem with introducing a Code of Conduct to appease the fringe social justice crowed is that, if you give them an inch they'll take a mile. The abuse of the Code of Conduct began almost immediately with Sage Sharp accusing Theo Ts’o (member of the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board and Google employee) of being a rape apologist:
https://twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/1042769399596437504
The Twitter rant goes on to demand further concessions on the part of the Linux community to push the social justice agenda. Sage Sharp's Twitter Profile says:
Diversity & inclusion consultant at @ottertechllc. @outreachy organizer. Explorer of the kyriarchy. Hufflepuff. Non-binary (agender trans masculine). They/them.
Clearly they have no interest in Linux and are instead intent on hijacking the project to push their political agenda. Introducing a Code of Conduct empowered this small fringe of social justice harassers, and they immediately started to use this power to derail the Linux project. Linux contributors just want to focus on their work, but now they have to deal with aggressive harassment by vile social justice bullies. The toxic environment that the Code of Conduct has brought about will cause contributors to leave the community to avoid harassment, thus Linux will go into decline.
When it comes to aggressive social justice bullies, you simply can't give them anything. If you apologise, if you bend to their will, if you even respond to them, then you've lost. With the introduction of the Code of Conduct things will likely proceed downhill and I now fear future of Linux, as it's quite likely it has no future.
Well done Linus, you've destroyed your own work.
Linus fell prey to "everyone I don't agree with is a Nazi" ruse. It goes like this: SJWs exaggerate the numbers and influence of "nazis" in the anti-PC movement, and make everyone else in it "guilty" by association. That's a fallacy, and one someone smart like Linus should have seen right through.
I'm afraid Linux is fucked now. I'm in favor of weighing people's opinions by the amount of work they contribute to the effort. SJWs very rarely contribute anything: they spend most of their time "resisting" and "fighting the oppression", there's simply no time left for any productive endeavors. Seen it at least half a dozen times in my time in the industry. When real grievances (if any) are addressed, they will come up with even more esoteric ones, or demand preferential treatment for "minorities" or some other self-defeating bullshit. And by then it'll be too late to pull back, because you don't want to be a cis white male patriarchal Nazi transphobe bigot, do you, Linus?
> "I absolutely do not want to be seen as being in the same camp as the low-life scum on the internet that think it's OK to be a white nationalist Nazi, and have some truly nasty misogynistic, homophobic or transphobic behaviour. And those people were complaining about too much political correctness too, and in the process just making my public stance look bad"
The question is Linus, which you've missed, sadly. Is what percentage of these people are ACTUALLY white nationalists, Nazi, sexist etc?
You need only question these people, try and discuss something with them. Any dissent = YOU being labelled Nazi. It's been demonstrated over and over and over now. (and over)
Take an issue with a workplace opening a role ONLY for women? Sexist.
Got a problem with "no whites" for a job? Or famous blue tick people on Twitter saying "euthanize white people!" You must be a white nationalist! Nazi!, Nazi!
Linus, you will come to regret this, you will see.
This has the potential to outright destroy Linux.
Sometimes, people need to be told, bluntly, why their code is crap.
And the proper response to that is NOT "You're a NAZI!" or "You hurt my fee fees!"
And, if this crap is allowed to go forward, and developers have their projects essentially STOLEN from them because of this, you're GOING to see GPL copyright killswitchhes DEVASTATE the Linux platform.
If people want to see more women/minorities inclusion in the Linux developer community, STEP UP AND WRITE CODE!
Don't like the rampantly meritocratic community?
TOUGH SHIT!
Most of the people agitating for this crap are people who simply see the Linux developer community as a source of POWER.
Therefore, they MUST co-opt it. They don't give a shit about Linux, or code or any of that. They simply want control, and don't care what they destroy or whose careers they have to fuck up or which bodies they need to climb over to get it.
So, when someone starts bitching about CoC, tell them to go eat a bag of dicks.
Unless you're one of those deviants who's TRYING to push this CoC, intersectional social justice crap on a bunch of people who just want to be left alone to develop their projects and not have to put up with stupid people.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Under most democracies where most developers come from, there are laws. If a behavior is infringing any law, go to the police, talk to a lawyer.
Codes of conduct are a parallel set of rules that have no legal basis and are there to be enforced by bullies on twitter, just like any other set of parallel laws enforced by some crazy militia. They should be illegal.
An angry mob never has and never will be synonym for justice.
If you don't like the law, vote for a different candidate next time. If you don't like democracy, then maybe you are the fascist.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
The current CoC doesn't mention any "special groups". Why do the detractors feel the need to lie about this thing?
Quoth the CoC:
age, body size, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
15 special groups right there. "Level of experience" seems inappropriate - if you're new to kernel coding, that is certainly relevant.
And we all know that while good coders disassociate their egos from code reviews, bad coders don't, and will view commentary on their horrible code as a personal attack.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I guess the question for me is, what if the shoe was on the other foot? I'm a dude, and it would feel really really weird if everyone referred to me as "She" and "Her".
Put another way, imagine if you showed up to work everyday in pants and a polo shirt and everyone looked at you funny because you weren't wearing a dress. Now imagine if you bowed to pressure and started wearing dresses to work everyday. How would that feel?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Well, yes. Doesn't everybody want the world to cater to their disability? Isn't that the whole point of identity politics in the first place?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
and they start to develop a kind of cult like following, often not because they're shouting something useful but because charisma has a powerful effect on people. Me, I'm more than a little autistic so charisma just falls flat with me. But it's like porn, I know it when I see it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
fictional things are often funny.
Outside of hacks like Al Sharpton (which the left isn't exactly too keen on) who, exactly, on the left attacks the person not the argument. Be specific.
If you'd like to point to somebody like Nancy Pelosi, I'll refer you to her very, very right wing voting record. If you'd like to see somebody with an actual left wing voting record I'll refer you to Bernie Sanders & Liz Warren and ask you to show me them attacking the person, not the argument.
Finally, if your only example are a few bitchy chicks from your local community college's woman's studies program... well. If the best you have is the left wing equivalent to the pastor of a run down church in Alabama you're just gonna have to do better my friend.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
destroying Linux? Did it ever occur to you that for every person who quits kernel development because he can't belittle the other developers they'll gain another (or two) who join because they don't have to put up with what can best be described as high school level bullshit?
Ever notice that company's have had code of conducts as far back as the 40s? Could it be that a civil workplace is an asset, and not a liability. The the sort of person who can consistently produce useful work is rarely the sort of person that would spout off at somebody. Yeah, Linus got by with it for a long, long time. But I'll say this, Linus is probably more clever than just about everybody on this forum, and he pretty clearly has just one goal: Write good software. He's come to the conclusion that this is the best way to do it. And I find it difficult to fault him.
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I'd be willing to bet dollars-to-donuts that Patricia had a huge rule in convincing her father to do a 180 but I think we need more facts to determine that though. Speaking of facts, there are few that rather stand out to me after reading Tiago's perspective. Paraphrasing:
Interestingly enough Linus' daughter, Patricia Torvalds, activist of "Guerilla Feminism, supports the Post-Meritocracy Manifesto which was created by Stupid Juvenile Whiner Coraline Ada Ehmke, the latter who also created the Code of Conduct.
I don't care who Patricia Torvalds is.
Systemd is already bad enough.
Linux cannot, and MUST NEVER be tainted by political freaks.
I'll consult a "Psychologist" for guidance on what is an what is not appropriate, intellectually interesting, and worthy. NOT! That is the problem with psychology, religion, etc., it wants to set itself up as the judge of what is and what is not right without providing any evidence for its conclusions beyond a constant self-flagellating, circle-jerk of circular logic. No, psychology is not something to be held up. It is garbage.
Hard to avoid recognizing the gender.
These days it's the opposite. I've lost count of how many genders people claim there actually are, and that doesn't include the attack helicopters.
Hell, most people would look at how I act, talk and look and assume I'm male. I'm nice, so I don't complain when they do this, but it's not the gender I'll be putting on my next job application.
You believe that the nonsense that the psychological "profession" advocates actually has some merit because you specifically made a judgement of my character calling it "psychological damage". Damage with respect to what? Not respecting and honoring your nonsense? More circular logic. You fail again.
More circular logic. Psychology says ... so, you are wrong...., so psychology is right.
Here's the thing. It is obvious that you are a fearful coward who has a need to feel intellectually superior by creating a sandbox of your own design and playing in it and declaring it to be the one true playing in the dirt hobby. You are wrong. Your persistent need to feel that you are intellectually superior, based on your own declarations (unlike your unfounded speculation about my background) proves you are a cowardly, weak, person who fears life and other human beings and you are desperate to controls other's thoughts about you and your so-called "profession". Have a little back-bone man. Don't be so fearful of disagreement. Everything can't be the way you have fantasized it to be.
He doesn't want to be lumped in with extremists. Sounds fair. Who would?
Far as code is concerned, the extremists are those opposed to contributors based on who they are and not what they wrote. The extremists are not interested in free as in freedom, they despise the likes of Richard Stallman for being of the "wrong politics" (as if that made any difference to the code) and they reject scientists, academics and mathematicians the world over because of their chromosomes or base melatonin levels.
Real coders care about the code. They do not live in a post-meritocratic society, they just don't ignore the merit of others because of the language, culture, religion or philosophy they come from. Why should a meritocratic society give a damn which way you part your hair or whether you have a Star Trek fetish? Does it affect the results? Yes/no? If no, then that should be your answer to giving a damn.
There is absolutely bugger all in the CoC that says anything different. If you're reading something different, that's your issue, nobody else's.
The difference between boys and girls in STEM subjects is absolutely zero. Except in schools where they're told one or the other is inferior at something. Then you see a difference.
Since women haven't had the same opportunities, there will be some imbalance. So you shouldn't expect equal contributions just yet. That should, however, be possible. Nothing stops equal numbers of patches of equal quality. Neither gender is impaired.
In practice, women have left Linux and they have complained that patches have been rejected on the basis of what is between their legs. Far as I know, neither gender uses anything there to type code. (I won't say design, very few Linux coders design.)
The rabid extremists can froth all they like, but the fact is that they're killing Linux and the Free Software movement in their bid for Ultimate Power.
Free As In Freedom is not limited to any group. It belongs to everyone. That is what makes it free.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
SVN absolutely tracks when a branch was made. It also tracks merges and history. Granted, the way it does it is very simplistic which leads to some additional steps and overhead and having to do things like recording a merge (when no actual merge took place) in order to fool its system. The only upside is that the way it does things is simple which makes it easy to understand what's going on under the hood, and once you have that understanding then it's obvious why you have to do some things even if it seems a bit silly.
The biggest problem I had when using SVN with others is they wouldn't use the built in tools, and instead would do things like checkout the code then check in a copy in order to "branch", and do their merges using some outside tool. Which lead to having to do things like recording the branch number because SVN had no idea what they were up to.
In comparison, git almost seems like magic sometimes since it just seems to "know" what you're trying to and is built to make branching and merging easy. Until of course it gets it wrong or does something non-obvious and you have no idea why it just did that. And while it gives you the tools to fix it (in theory), in practice using those tools often feels like playing with a loaded gun.
So here's what I think is actually going on:
Microsoft are seeing they are making far more money off of Linux than Windows 10 (Android licensing, corporate no-sue deals, and the recent announcement about how even Azure is running far more Linux than Windows Server instances, and the ratio is still increasing).
So I'm thinking Microsoft are actually the force behind this Linux CoC nonsense (via many secretly paid SJW shills for Microsoft such as Sage Sharp). Why? as a viable strategy to fragment Linux at its core Now that Linus has stepped down even temporarily, control will degrade quickly, so Kernel branches will inevitably start to appear soon.
Microsoft will simply ensure they become new owners of the most popular Linux kernel branch, both through sheer force of spending giant amounts of money on it, and because they also already have the hearts and minds of many clueless IT managers. Once they have secured a foothold they will dominate and predate on any/all other popular kernel branches, until each competing branch fades away into relative obscurity of only being used by a tiny group of fanbois,
At that point Microsoft completely control Linux.