![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Actions have consequences (or: why I'm not fixing Intel's bugs any more)
Edit: About two months after this was written, Intel committed to a large scale diversity initiative. Actions speak louder than words, and this was an effective repudiation of the behaviour described below. I've happily worked on Intel-related issues since then.
A lot of the kernel work I've ended up doing has involved dealing with bugs on Intel-based systems - figuring out interactions between their hardware and firmware, reverse engineering features that they refuse to document, improving their power management support, handling platform integration stuff for their GPUs and so on. Some of this I've been paid for, but a bunch has been unpaid work in my spare time[1].
Recently, as part of the anti-women #GamerGate campaign[2], a set of awful humans convinced Intel to terminate an advertising campaign because the site hosting the campaign had dared to suggest that the sexism present throughout the gaming industry might be a problem. Despite being awful humans, it is absolutely their right to request that a company choose to spend its money in a different way. And despite it being a dreadful decision, Intel is obviously entitled to spend their money as they wish. But I'm also free to spend my unpaid spare time as I wish, and I no longer wish to spend it doing unpaid work to enable an abhorrently-behaving company to sell more hardware. I won't be working on any Intel-specific bugs. I won't be reverse engineering any Intel-based features[3]. If the backlight on your laptop with an Intel GPU doesn't work, the number of fucks I'll be giving will fail to register on even the most sensitive measuring device.
On the plus side, this is probably going to significantly reduce my gin consumption.
[1] In the spirit of full disclosure: in some cases this has resulted in me being sent laptops in order to figure stuff out, and I was not always asked to return those laptops. My current laptop was purchased by me.
[2] I appreciate that there are some people involved in this campaign who earnestly believe that they are working to improve the state of professional ethics in games media. That is a worthy goal! But you're allying yourself to a cause that disproportionately attacks women while ignoring almost every other conflict of interest in the industry. If this is what you care about, find a new way to do it - and perhaps deal with the rather more obvious cases involving giant corporations, rather than obsessing over indie developers.
For avoidance of doubt, any comments arguing this point will be replaced with the phrase "Fart fart fart".
[3] Except for the purposes of finding entertaining security bugs
A lot of the kernel work I've ended up doing has involved dealing with bugs on Intel-based systems - figuring out interactions between their hardware and firmware, reverse engineering features that they refuse to document, improving their power management support, handling platform integration stuff for their GPUs and so on. Some of this I've been paid for, but a bunch has been unpaid work in my spare time[1].
Recently, as part of the anti-women #GamerGate campaign[2], a set of awful humans convinced Intel to terminate an advertising campaign because the site hosting the campaign had dared to suggest that the sexism present throughout the gaming industry might be a problem. Despite being awful humans, it is absolutely their right to request that a company choose to spend its money in a different way. And despite it being a dreadful decision, Intel is obviously entitled to spend their money as they wish. But I'm also free to spend my unpaid spare time as I wish, and I no longer wish to spend it doing unpaid work to enable an abhorrently-behaving company to sell more hardware. I won't be working on any Intel-specific bugs. I won't be reverse engineering any Intel-based features[3]. If the backlight on your laptop with an Intel GPU doesn't work, the number of fucks I'll be giving will fail to register on even the most sensitive measuring device.
On the plus side, this is probably going to significantly reduce my gin consumption.
[1] In the spirit of full disclosure: in some cases this has resulted in me being sent laptops in order to figure stuff out, and I was not always asked to return those laptops. My current laptop was purchased by me.
[2] I appreciate that there are some people involved in this campaign who earnestly believe that they are working to improve the state of professional ethics in games media. That is a worthy goal! But you're allying yourself to a cause that disproportionately attacks women while ignoring almost every other conflict of interest in the industry. If this is what you care about, find a new way to do it - and perhaps deal with the rather more obvious cases involving giant corporations, rather than obsessing over indie developers.
For avoidance of doubt, any comments arguing this point will be replaced with the phrase "Fart fart fart".
[3] Except for the purposes of finding entertaining security bugs
Re: So, what,
(Anonymous) 2014-10-02 09:55 pm (UTC)(link)Re: So, what,
(Anonymous) 2014-10-02 10:37 pm (UTC)(link)There's this Emma Watson thing. There's a site, saying they're going to release private nude images. It's attributed to 4chan. then it's attributed to a marketing firm. And then there are no pictures, it was a stunt. Then even the marketing firm is someone's sick, for-profit joke.
GamerGate began as a series of internet detectives swarming around they alleged personal life of someone who they'd never heard of. I've heard it started on 4chan. I've heard it's a joke by 4chan. I have no idea. You have no idea. But the OP says: I believe that, even if you don't think it's not someone's disgusting prank, there's no reason to associate with it, much less defend it.
I mentioned something about politeness in response to another comment. The same applies here. People who leap to do exactly what the OP has said he's not interested in is being disrespectful, has an agenda or didn't read the bloody post.
You can turn away door to door salesmen, you can take flyers off your car and you can absolutely not listen to people from the internet who won't listen to you. It's a free country. Or internet. Whatever.