Going my own way

[mjg59]

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)

Comments

Whatever

[(Anonymous)]

Go ahead and good luck as a project manager at fortune 50 company in Philadelphia protecting the code base of your core product is horrible and difficult, dealing with people egos is even worse. Being the one everyone looks at when the product fails because you allowed a shit commit in, it changes you. That's why I can empathize with Linus.

Re: Whatever

[(Anonymous)]

How does that justify being abusive and making personal attacks? That doesn't produce better code.

Re: Whatever

[(Anonymous)]

Having empathy for someone is not the same as justifying their actions.

Re: Whatever

[(Anonymous)]

But it will stop them from submitting crappy code over and over, thereby (maybe inadvertently) mounting a DoS attack against you.

Re: Whatever

[(Anonymous)]

... and it will also stop any further contributions from those people. Because sure, just because someone made a mistake once it means they'll be as reckless next time around and the time after that.

Re: Whatever

[(Anonymous)]

There unfortunately exists a counter-example to that, someone who posted, annoyed people and wasted their time, got rebuked and pointed to proper behavior /repeatedly/, and still (at least some time ago) continued to lurk on kernelnewbies (after having been explicitly blocked from posting on lkml). This was looking as-if someone explicitly set on a mission to test the 'code of conflict'. Except, has there been any complaint arisen from that, to be handled through these procedures ? I won't quote their name or email; if you've been around lkml you might know. And from what I read, the blocking really was a last resort and most responses to that person were civil.

Re: Whatever

[(Anonymous)]

Using graphic language, such as "deep-throating Microsoft", is not being abusive; it's telling it like it is. Quit being such a pussy!

Re: Whatever

[(Anonymous)]

I think they should go back to having a development version of the kernel and a stable version of the kernel. This way they can iron out the problems before committing the changes to the stable version.