How New, Polite Linus Torvalds Points Out Bad Kernel Code (phoronix.com)

Linus Torvalds "has shown already for the new Linux 4.20~5.0 cycle he isn't relaxing his standards but is communicating better when it comes to bringing up coding," reports Phoronix, adding "So far it looks like Linus' brief retreat is paying off with still addressing code quality issues -- and not blatantly accepting new code into the kernel as some feared -- but in doing so in a professional manner compared to his past manner of exclaiming himself over capitalized sentences and profanity that at time put him at odds with some in the Linux kernel community."

AmiMoJo quotes their report: Last Saturday he took issue with the HID pull request and its introduction of the BigBen game controller driver that was introduced: the developer enabled this new driver by default. Linus Torvalds has always frowned upon random new drivers being enabled by default in the kernel configuration driver. [H]e still voiced his opinion over this driver's default "Y" build configuration, but did so in a more professional manner than he has done in the past:

We do *not* enable new random drivers by default. And we most *definitely* don't do it when they are odd-ball ones that most people have never heard of.

Yet the new "BigBen Interactive" driver that was added this merge window did exactly that.

Just don't do it.

Yes, yes, every developer always thinks that _their_ driver is so special and so magically important that it should be enabled by default. But no. When we have thousands of drivers, we don't randomly pick one new driver to be enabled by default just because some developer thinks it is special. It's not.... Please don't do things like this.
Phoronix also describes another "kernel oops" testing Torvalds' patience, in which Linus responded tactfully that "What makes me *very* unhappy about this is that if I'm right, I think it means that code was literally not tested at all by anybody who didn't have one of the entries in that list."

Comments

Still not right

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a healthy productive community, the correct way to handle repeated violations of policy is to document the policy and direct people to it when its violated.

If instead he said, you have violated our driver enablement policy, documented at link, then everyone one involved in the offending change making it in would have a much more pleasant time correcting their behavior and also have the opportunity to learn about such rules in advance easier.

In the software industry, it is standard practice to take repeat issues like this and document then in your best practices document along with examples and justifications. Its better for everyone involved (less work and stress for people like Linus, less being singled out and less feeling like they are being targeted by the contributors).

Personally I find that the canonical policy documentation is in Linus's head to be a bigger issue than his attitude. There is more to being fostering a positive developer community than not speaking in a rude way: you actually need to be inclusive/transparent when it comes to forming the policies, and in this case having a written best practices document everyone can read and discuss when they have disagreements rather than suffer a personal attack for an authority figure would make this a much better experience for most people.

At least that's my personal take coming from from the big company cooperate software engineering environment. I've dealt with this kind of feedback before, and it always feels like "my arbitrary opinion that you don't have access to says you should stop being wrong". I like it much better when a perceived mistake is instead address with the question of how we can help future people from making the mistake (ex: new documentation) or how I can help myself from making similar mistakes (ex: direct me to existing documentation). Its the difference of attitude between you messed up, vs how can we learn from this to improve the system so less people fall into the same trap you did.

Re:"What makes me *very* unhappy..."

[alvinrod]

They very well could be, at least in the future. Just imagine that anytime someone really wanted to say fuck, they just added some asterisks around the modified text instead. Eventually everyone figures it out to the point where asterisks are just read as someone cursing out you. Maybe it even ends up being a part of the language if it's popular enough over a long enough period of time. If you can't say "fuck" people will just find a new way to convey the same sentiment. Banning words does nothing to change the people or situations that gave rise to them in the first place. Eventually asterisks just become the new way of expressing that someone has fucked up.

I think there's actually a relevant example of this online now where apparently surrounding text in multiple sets of parenthesis is supposed to be an indication that the thing in parenthesis is a Jewish plot or something like that. I've seen it on /. enough times to look up what the fuck (sorry, I'm not really about the asterisks) it was supposed to be about. Maybe that meme dies like so many others probably until it gets censored and replaced with something else. I don't know when this started, but at some point, surrounding text in multiple set of parenthesis became an anti-Semitic remark, when prior to that it would have just been nonsense or a weird choice of formatting.

Re:What is important

[Gavagai80]

Politeness has a bigger impact on the number of quality kernel contributors than the others, because it factors into a lot more messages. A polite response to an ignorant person leaves open a possibility (even if it's say 20% chance) of said person becoming more educated and making a better contribution in the future. Extremely rude responses almost inevitably mean the person never contributes to the project again in their life, even if they made the mistake as a teenager.

Linus' politeness isn't a legal or social justice issue, it's an issue of trying not to lose future valuable contributions. Even a more polite lifetime blacklisting (while unnecessary when a few years would suffice) would increase the chances of the contributor participating in other open source projects.

Re:I can actually hear him gritting his teeth

[Ol Olsoc]

I don't see how that is any more polite than before. Professional way to say the same would have been: - We have thousands of drivers so we can't enable all of them by default. This is especially true for new drivers that have not been properly tested yet and which are not known or used by a large amount of people. Please be careful about this in the future so we don't accidentally cause problems for our users.

The problem is that there are a significant number of people who would take umbrage at what you wrote. Allow me to be the worker you just said that to..... Are you accusing me of incompetence? You're saying I'm careless? You're saying that I'm trying to write bad drivers? Then that evening, social media will hear all about you being a jerk and an asshole, possibly being a "something something" bigot.

I've worked in groups who to our dismay, got one of these wonderful snowflakes on a few occasions. Eventually they have everyone walking on eggshells in order not to offend them, as the focus of the group becomes as much not upsetting the snowflake as it is performing the task at hand.

After figuring out that the snowflake simply won't take telling, I would move anyone showing signs of being too easily insulted away from us quickly, and usually they made enough trouble in most positions that the next downturn cycle they were gone.