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Going my own way
Reaction to Sarah's post about leaving the kernel community was a mixture of terrible and touching, but it's still one of those things that almost certainly won't end up making any kind of significant difference. Linus has made it pretty clear that he's fine with the way he behaves, and nobody's going to depose him. That's unfortunate, because earlier today I was sitting in a presentation at Linuxcon and remembering how much I love the technical side of kernel development. "Remembering" is a deliberate choice of word - it's been increasingly difficult to remember that, because instead I remember having to deal with interminable arguments over the naming of an interface because Linus has an undying hatred of BSD securelevel, or having my name forever associated with the deepthroating of Microsoft because Linus couldn't be bothered asking questions about the reasoning behind a design before trashing it.
In the end it's a mixture of just being tired of dealing with the crap associated with Linux development and realising that by continuing to put up with it I'm tacitly encouraging its continuation, but I can't be bothered any more. And, thanks to the magic of free software, it turns out that I can avoid putting up with the bullshit in the kernel community and get to work on the things I'm interested in doing. So here's a kernel tree with patches that implement a BSD-style securelevel interface. Over time it'll pick up some of the power management code I'm still working on, and we'll see where it goes from there. But, until there's a significant shift in community norms on LKML, I'll only be there when I'm being paid to be there. And that's improved my mood immeasurably.
(Edited to add a context link for the "deepthroating of Microsoft" reference)
In the end it's a mixture of just being tired of dealing with the crap associated with Linux development and realising that by continuing to put up with it I'm tacitly encouraging its continuation, but I can't be bothered any more. And, thanks to the magic of free software, it turns out that I can avoid putting up with the bullshit in the kernel community and get to work on the things I'm interested in doing. So here's a kernel tree with patches that implement a BSD-style securelevel interface. Over time it'll pick up some of the power management code I'm still working on, and we'll see where it goes from there. But, until there's a significant shift in community norms on LKML, I'll only be there when I'm being paid to be there. And that's improved my mood immeasurably.
(Edited to add a context link for the "deepthroating of Microsoft" reference)
Tag me on that one too!
(Anonymous) 2017-01-02 05:14 am (UTC)(link)You'll note how I write GNU/Linux and not just Linux. Linus didn't invent an OS, he built a kernel with a shitload of help and without GNU there would be no Ubuntu, Mint, RedHat, Arch... etc. as we know them.
But Linus is happy to take all the credit and has become something of a dictator of the worst kind. In fact, I'd use BSD on my non-work laptop but I can't get some of the hardware to work (WiFi/BT stack) so that's me buggered.
The INSTANT I can get away from that wankfest and back to the true meaning of *nix as a desktop OS (KISS princpipal) I'm there.
It amazes me that more developers haven't followed suit - and this is, I expect, precisely the reason why Linus has become such an asshole over the years.