On the sickness of our community
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By now, many readers will have seen Lennart Poettering's complaint that the open-source community is "
quite a sick place to be in". Much of what Lennart has to say in that article is well worth reading; there is a lot in our community that could be better. But we cannot fix our problems without facing them squarely, and it's not clear that Lennart's post has done that. Here are a few additional thoughts from your editor on this topic.
Lennart claims to be one of the favorite targets of the "assholes" in our community; there can be no doubt that this is true. For better or for worse, Lennart has become a sort of lightning rod for certain types of criticism — and worse. It is one thing to have one's code criticized; it's another to face death threats, abusive video postings, and more. Anybody who pays attention to what is happening in our communication channels cannot fail to see that Lennart is getting some special treatment.
There are those who will argue that Lennart has brought this experience upon himself, that his ways of dealing with the community have brought forth an ugly response. There is room to criticize how, say, the systemd project operates and how it interacts with the rest of the free software community. But there are limits to how far that criticism should legitimately go before it crosses the line. For the rest, the claim that Lennart has somehow caused the behavior we are seeing is a simple exercise in blaming the victim. Nobody should have to put up with that kind of attack, and we as a community should stand up against those attacks regardless of what we think of the person targeted.
It may be a fundamental mistake, though, to see those attacks as originating from inside our community. The people we develop code with are not the people who are creating that sort of grief. The net does not lack for vile idiots looking to make somebody's life miserable; they can be found far beyond the open-source community. Those are the people who are posting videos, making death threats, and assaulting our mailing lists with unpleasant sock-puppet posts. One should not confuse such people with our community! They hide in the dark corners of the net and invade our space to play their games, but they are not us.
For those wanting to understand just where this kind of harassment can go, an attentive reading of Kathy Sierra's experiences is a disturbing but informative experience.
What we need to do is to build our defenses against such people, rather than paint our whole community as being like them. Insisting on civil behavior within our community's boundaries is certainly a part of that, and a lot of progress has been made in that direction over the years. Yes, we can do better; hopefully the future will see more improvement. Unfortunately, there is little we can do about the larger mob of unpleasant people out there; in a world where free speech is protected, there will always be some unwelcome voices. We can disclaim them and, often, the best thing to do is to ignore them, but we can never suppress them entirely.
Another fundamental mistake, in your editor's view, is to blame this situation on Linus Torvalds. One should not underestimate the effect a leader can have on the tone of a development community — a visit to the OpenBSD lists is a good way to see that dynamic in action. By that measure, Linus should be judged (mostly) positively; the linux-kernel mailing list is far from the wild-west playpen that people would make it out to be. The volume on that list is approaching 1000 messages per day, yet one must look hard to find one that can be deemed abusive or intemperate. Yes, they exist — one will not gather thousands of people in one place without hearing some words occasionally — but the conversation is generally civil and technical. Linus's conversation included — with the occasional exception, granted.
There has been an interesting opportunity to watch the linux-kernel community in action recently, as a (presumably) well-meaning but incapable developer made repeated attempts to submit patches. These patches went to a large range of maintainers, and they were uniformly useless at best and, often, actively wrong. The person involved was wasting significant amounts of kernel developer time while contributing nothing of value.
A common response to such a person would be to flame them to a crisp in the hope that they simply go away. Some years ago, things would have probably gone just that way, but that is not what happened this time. Instead, the person involved was repeatedly told, in a polite manner, what was being done wrong and which steps to take to start learning how to do things right. This tutoring continued long past the point where it was clear that the message was not getting through. If a dozen (at a minimum) senior kernel developers can be nice (or at least civil) to such a person, things cannot be all bad.
Which, again, is not to say that things are perfect; there is a lot of room for improvement. But the kernel community is not the community that is harassing Lennart, and the people who are behaving that way are not taking their cue from Linus Torvalds. Those people have no need for a prominent leader who has a habit of going over the top with his email; they are going to set out to create grief anyway.
Your editor has been a part of the free software community for well over
two decades at this point. The experience has not always been pleasant; it
has included abuse, federal lawsuits, and, recently, threats by a prominent
developer to circulate fabricated quotes in an attempt to destroy
credibility. But overall, despite making a bad habit of being loudly wrong
on the net, your editor has found this community to be a rich and welcoming
place with a
lot to offer. We should not let our glaring problems detract from what we
have built over the years. Despite its many problems, our community is not
a sick place.
(Log in to post comments)
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 1:18 UTC (Thu) by warmcat (guest, #26416) [Link]
When you read the certainty that "LP" is the devil, you also read obviously broken and sometimes not even technical reasoning, blathering appeals to "illegality" "broken social contracts" that do not exist and so on. And nothing balancing about the difficult technical innovations he has delivered and continues to deliver.
That simplifying demonization process (and the opposite, beautification of the undeserving beyond any reproach) is how humans operate: you can recognize someone is no longer having a conversation about something that is in both your realities and leave them be. But it doesn't help if they are threatening some physical manifestation of their mental state on the victim...
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 1:01 UTC (Fri) by roskegg (subscriber, #105) [Link]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8
Go to 52:53 in that video.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 13:23 UTC (Thu) by ssokolow (guest, #94568) [Link]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w
("If he's not an asshole, then I am!" as the video puts it.)
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 20:20 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 21:32 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
I mean we can basically replace like 80% of most of the comment threads here with just this video anytime there's a non-technical discussion concerning notable personalities.
-jef"but I do get a chuckle out of the idea of LP as opensource's Nickelback"spaleta
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 22:04 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 1:23 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
That is fundamentally untrue, and a look at some of the histories of major incidents in the tech and Open Source communities shows plenty of such incidents involving developers.
By all means, let's highlight some of the better parts of our community and how we should treat people, and let's do everything we can to get toxic people *out* of our community. However, let's not make the mistake of thinking that we don't have any to begin with, or that there's some fundamental line of niceness that divides our community from the "outsiders" who heap abuse and harassment on others. There's an ugly spectrum from tolerating verbal and written abuse and tolerating harassment and threats, and the line between the two is not nearly as bright as we might hope.
Making Lennart's complaint entirely about the threats and videos and sockpuppets ignores the pervasive culture of accepting (and cheering or laughing at) casual nastiness from developers and others who *are* unquestionably part of our current community. It's pretty easy to find examples of that; hardly a month goes by without multiple such incidents on LKML alone. Yet we excuse or support that, and reserve our condemnation for people we see as outside our community, despite the well-documented process of escalation from one behavior to the other.
Such escalation is noted in this very article: "threats by a prominent developer to circulate fabricated quotes in an attempt to destroy credibility". But hey, the people who do that kind of thing aren't part of our community.
I would recommend reading Kathy Sierra's article in more detail, before saying things like "best thing to do is to ignore them". In particular, read the sections about escalation.
These are problems we need to *fix*, not dodge. Let's not point to the most visible fires as the only problem, and ignore the gasoline-soaked environment we're all working in. Let's push for a community where *any* abuse stands out like a sore thumb and is not tolerated.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 3:06 UTC (Thu) by ras (subscriber, #33059) [Link]
I read Kathy's article just before coming here.
It was hard to read. Kathy's insistence that everyone be nice to each other was a huge positive for the groups she was part of. It's clear that she cares deeply about what people think of each other, and of her. But the conclusion I came to after reading her blog entry is this very attribute makes the internet a toxic place for people like Kathy. Toxic in the sense that it damages them in a very real way. Toxic because it targets something they can't just turn off - caring. And toxic in a way that can't be fixed - the internet's open nature means excluding people like Weev is impossible.
Lennart Poettering complaint's aren't all that different Kathy's. All the elements are there - abuse, threats, lies. But unlike Kathy, Lennart continues to function well in the environment. I don't want to be unkind to Lennart, but my guess is this is because he doesn't posses the depth of empathy Kathy obviously has.
Similarly I read this from our editor:
> The experience has not always been pleasant; it has included abuse, federal lawsuits, and, recently, threats by a prominent developer to circulate fabricated quotes in an attempt to destroy credibility.
Same thing again, same result as Lennart. Reading it after reading Kathy's blog gave me a sense of déjà vu.
Our editor says he handles this by ignoring it. You imply that can't be true given Kathy's story, where ignoring it failed. But my guess is Kathy's world is the way it is because deep down she is incapable of ignoring it.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 4:10 UTC (Thu) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]
What does it show to future FOSS contributors? The inability to deal with a root cause by ignore it.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 4:20 UTC (Thu) by luto (subscriber, #39314) [Link]
I find your post difficult to understand, so I freely admit that I could be taking your last sentence very much out of context:
> But my guess is Kathy's world is the way it is because deep down she is incapable of ignoring it.
If I'm understanding this sentence right, this sounds like blaming the victim. And is it really at all reasonable to expect Kathy to be able to ignore threats [1] to her family?
[1] No real citation here. @seriouspony is gone from Twitter, Kathy's blog post is somewhat rambling and very hard to follow without context, and most of Wikipedia's citations are either dead links or incoherent. Nonetheless, either there were no serious threats (which I find hard to believe) or there were, and the problem here is the threats, not Kathy's inability to ignore them.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 6:13 UTC (Thu) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link]
I read it so that we should not expect that everybody is able to ignore such "attacks".
Alex
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 13:30 UTC (Thu) by gerv (guest, #3376) [Link]
Gerv
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 12:22 UTC (Thu) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link]
Highlighted quote "_incapable_ of ignoring it".
I think there is a huge difference between _incapable_ and _unwilling_.
I don't think the (relative) low rate of women in tech (or FOSS) is about their incapability of ignoring abuse as much as it is about their unwillingness to put up with it.
This industry is IMO problematic because folks in tech (or FOSS) have not yet -as a whole- agreed that someone should be able work in the industry without having to suffer systematic threats and abuse. Really. How many industries are there where folks still debate whether systematic abuse is something that should be allowed to happen?
(seriously, even here on LWN -a pretty civil site-, check the comments every time there is an article about preventing harassment on software conferences).
PS: I do see a big difference between (i) " abuse, federal lawsuits" or threats of lying about you and (ii) threats of rape and dismemberment.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 20, 2014 15:38 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
In all seriousness, I have to say that this statement is really only true if we add the qualifier "for a FOSS community site".
If you mostly interact with communities within the FOSS ecosystem, then LWN could indeed be considered pretty civil. Compared to other, more general communities, LWN is shockingly bad. *Shockingly*.
The standard of discourse here is appalling; it's impossible for me to go more than a couple of days of reading LWN comments without reading such disgusting personal attacks and outright lunacy that I have a hard time not responding in kind - and sometimes fail to stop myself, though I think I've been getting better at this. Given the way these things tend to spiral here, It's pretty clear I'm not the only one.
I genuinely credit the LWN community with a major dip in my (sadly precarious) mental health a few years ago. Unfortunately, I seem to lack the self-control required to read the articles without reading the comments.
Nobody ever really wants to talk about this, and in most cases I suspect it's because they genuinely don't see it. I mean, if you spend your days reading debian-devel or - god forbid - debian-user, LWN probably seems like a wondrous haven in comparison; if you interact with a variety of online communities that aren't FOSS-associated in any way, it's a very different picture. The problem is so endemic in FOSS circles that you really need to spend a fair bit of time outside to notice just how bad things are here.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 20, 2014 19:09 UTC (Mon) by speedster1 (guest, #8143) [Link]
Mind if I ask for specifics on what sorts of online communities you're thinking of when you say this?
LWN is one of my very favorite sites, and I don't have experience with many other communities, but upon reflection I do admit there have been more insults thrown around here (though I only remember one aimed at me personally) than my other favorite sites, a couple of adventure game forums and GamingOnLinux. I suspect the only reason GamingOnLinux is more civil is that the moderator delete hammer is applied quickly whenever somebody starts resorting to insults and personal attacks.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 21, 2014 0:44 UTC (Tue) by deater (subscriber, #11746) [Link]
> > *Shockingly*.
> Mind if I ask for specifics on what sorts of online communities you're
> thinking of when you say this?
I too wonder a bit about what people are using as a basis of comparison.
I think many of the old timers around here, when making comparisons, are possibly going the whole way back to USENET and BBSes.
Back then the idea of finding another place, where you could discuss technical things with like minded people in a semi-anonymous way, was a great thing. It is true you had to put up with trolls, flame wars, and the endless Amiga/OS2 fanatics, but that was what killfiles were for.
When endless September arrived and the real world started leaking in things just never quite recovered.
It is true that with the corporate takeover of Linux and the ensuing attitude enforcement things will be much nicer for outsiders.
It's just once we get a world where Linus is always cheerful, Al Viro doesn't flame, and David Miller removes all strong language comments from the Sparc-Linux sources, I feel something will be lost. Maybe it is the destiny of everything to leave its wild-west roots. I always used Linux because it was fun; I feel like the push for universal blandness is just making things boring and I've found myself losing interest in Linux development, something I hadn't really thought was possible.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 21, 2014 13:39 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>Mind if I ask for specifics on what sorts of online communities you're thinking of when you say this?
I'm mostly thinking of gaming communities - the ones I interact with (like Civilization) are somewhat skewed more in favour of adult participants versus the more console-oriented areas that have to deal with things like this gamergate nonsense.
Also, other hobbyist communities, principally related to electronics, such as Arduino/wearables/assorted open hardware initiatives, plus recently some more traditional analogue electronics.
One thing most of these have in common is *some* degree of moderation, which is commonly hated by the ultra-libertarian elements of the FOSS community (where this ideology is unusually prevalent), but which appears to be a practical necessity in growing a community past a certain size when none of the participants can ever see each other's faces (seeing each other's faces acts like a natural form of moderation IRL, especially in combination with the impermanence of the spoken word).
There doesn't usually need to be *much* moderation though: the maker community seems to be generally very good, even with very little visible moderation. The gaming communities I suspect could devolve more easily, but in practice even very little light moderation is generally enough so long as it is consistent and has well-defined rules.
Moderation is a lot easier to get right if it's baked in to the system from the start, because then you're not trying to get people to *change*, but to behave in a certain way in the first place. It also only works when it is transparent (eg there is an explicit 'post removed/edited by ...') and the moderators are actually good at it - don't act emotionally, are specific about why they are taking some action, and are polite. The latter is extremely important, and I'm not just talking about using polite *words*, which many people seem to feel is enough, but being *genuinely* polite: just because you insulted somebody without using the word 'fucking', it is no less of an insult. Somebody whose post is being moderated should never be made to feel like they are being victimised because it's counter-productive.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 21, 2014 0:50 UTC (Tue) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
There are other sites I pay attention to which don't constitute "FOSS community sites" and yet are well into the "hive of scum and villainy" category
• 4chan (particularly /b/ but really most channels that have anyone actually writing rather than just dumping images, even /ck/ has plenty of racism and just completely out of place arguments and name calling)
• Reddit (presumably there are sub-reddits that are full of calm polite people and I just don't read any of those)
• Moo Bunny (a freeform pseudonymous forum which has at least two separate individuals posting endless obscenity in an apparent attempt to render it useless)
• Youtube comments for almost anything or anyone popular
• Something Awful (at least some parts of it)
And there are also a whole bunch of sites that, if they aren't clearly _worse_ than LWN are certainly not significantly _better_ such as
• RationalWiki's "saloon bar" forum
• OS News
• The major Amiga web forums (Amigaworld. Amiga.org, etc.) because there's nothing so bitterly fought over as the last crumbs of the cake
• Slashdot (if you still read it you probably have threshold set to +2 and still ignore most of what's written, but try -1 because that's a fairer comparison to unfiltered LWN.net)
• The official (moderated) forums for the MMO World of Warcraft.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 23:40 UTC (Tue) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 13:23 UTC (Thu) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link]
(a) Some abuse IS best ignored. It's from somebody having a 'moment'.
(b) Some abuse can be dealt with. Somebody needs to level up as a human being and try being an adult.
(c) Some abuse is insane. No amount of (a) or (b) is going to fix what requires profession medical help.
(d) Some abuse is systematic. Someone is being diabolical in support of a nefarious goal. You may need to lawyer up.
There may be other categories, but the point is that it's a spectrum. (a) puts you in a 'first, do no harm' mode, which minimizes the fees and apologies later. As a default choice, this is hard to argue against.
The sticky wicket is positioning the abuse along the spectrum at the appropriate time. Overall, I submit this is not a solvable problem. The best you can do is think through your responses to each beforehand, and deal with the abuse in context.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 15:57 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]
+1 for "Turn the other cheek"
Posted Oct 14, 2014 4:04 UTC (Tue) by ThinkRob (guest, #64513) [Link]
[1] I'm not talking Freenode here either, as folks there are generally civilized. I'm thinking more of some of the, uh, less-well-focused parts of DALnet and EFnet.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 23:21 UTC (Tue) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]
(Or for a more personal view, the author of that piece has also written recently about why they have quit participating in tech publically: http://juliepagano.com/blog/2014/10/10/life-and-times-of-...)
There's no way for a single individual to usefully defend themselves against DDOS abuse; the only defense is a distributed effort across the community to define cultural norms saying that these things are not okay and to enforce those norms against the jerks who try to stir things up anyway. If you see someone being attacked, don't just abandon them to deal with it themselves; help them out.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 17:45 UTC (Thu) by Jandar (subscriber, #85683) [Link]
I think the real reason is mentioned in the article of Kathy:
> You’re probably more likely to win the lottery than to get any law enforcement agency in the United States to take action when you are harassed online, no matter how viscously and explicitly.
If the law enforcement agencies can't be bothered to enforce the law, the society breaks down. If the citizens of the USA don't take action to compel the agencies to uphold the law, this will only go worse.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 2:35 UTC (Fri) by jackb (guest, #41909) [Link]
Lennart Poettering complaint's aren't all that different Kathy's. All the elements are there - abuse, threats, lies. But unlike Kathy, Lennart continues to function well in the environment. I don't want to be unkind to Lennart, but my guess is this is because he doesn't posses the depth of empathy Kathy obviously has.
Alternate theory: it's culturally acceptable for men to learn how to become "hard targets" to protect themselves from sociopaths.
Women are more likely to be "soft targets" because any time the subject of learning better mental self-defence techniques is raised it's immediately followed by accusations of "victim blaming."
Those accusations and the self-censorship they provoke, of course, only serve to benefit one group.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 4:30 UTC (Fri) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link]
There is also a debate involving neurochemistry here. Are people who are unable to resist temptations somehow weaker in will power, or is it just that they experience the temptations strongly? Similarly, if a person appears to be courageous in face of danger, is he brave, or just incapable of feeling appropriate level of fear?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 13, 2014 16:58 UTC (Mon) by b3nt0box (subscriber, #98698) [Link]
Social influences are far more impactful on people's responses. The innate differences between the sexes that you mention sound more like rationalizing social norms than some real evolutionary diference.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 10:28 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]
NO NO NO.
My wife has Parkinson's. It upsets her perception of reality. That's basically a shortage of the nerve-signalling chemical dopamine, and it has well-recognised effects.
Testosterone makes people more aggressive, and presumably is very important both in that and in controlling peoples' response to aggression. Put two testosterone-fuelled people in a room and you probably won't get a fight, but the atmosphere will be very aggressive.
I don't know enough about oestrogen to make the equivalent comment but gender differences are very important. I suspect if you did a profiling exercise, you'd actually find are far better match of the passive/aggressive spectrum with testosterone levels than with gender, but then you find a fairly close match with testosterone levels and gender.
You can't say "individual differences are more important than gender" when gender provides a massive bias to those individual differences. You're almost certainly right to claim that gender is not a DIRECT influence, but it has a very strong second-level influence.
Which is why Lennart could shrug it all off - he's probably high testosterone. Kathy couldn't - and she could well have had less testosterone than the average female. (Which is why some - high testosterone - women don't have any difficulty coping.)
(And it wouldn't surprise me if many of these assholes are beta or gamma males - they're high-testosterone in the company of an even-higher testosterone individual.)
Cheers,
Wol
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 20, 2014 15:51 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
Nope. Aggression *causes* increased testosterone production, so they are strongly correlated, however testosterone does *not* cause aggression.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 21, 2014 16:02 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 23:39 UTC (Tue) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]
Women get attacked harder then men (because it's easy to find men willing to dogpile on women online), and they're softer targets because the *people around them don't back them up*.
(And anyway, I get why being a stone-cold hardass is a reasonable requirement if you want to be, like, a marine or something, but why is it a reasonable requirement for writing init systems or writing chatty blog posts about learning Java?)
(Oh right, and on your other point: the reason you get accused of "victim blaming" is because you make arguments like this that are based entirely on your vague impressions of how things work and ignoring a bunch of well-documented facts you can't be bothered to read about, and then somehow come to the erroneous conclusion that the *major* problem is something that the victim should have differently, like improve their "mental self-defence". I.e., you're blaming victims for not controlling things that are outside their control. It's a pretty simple and descriptive term really; it only sounds like some Machiavellian ploy because you can't be arsed to learn how uninformed you are. The result isn't "censorship" any more than it's censorship to suggest that people might want to slow down before suggesting on LKML that the kernel would be much more awesome if they rewrote it in JavaScript, or that if you go ahead anyway then you might be disappointed by the response.)
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 1:56 UTC (Thu) by bferrell (subscriber, #624) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 2:48 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 3:05 UTC (Thu) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]
While I could speculate what {something} is or could be... or {somethings} I just wanted to ask... have you been around programmers much? Seriously... (and I say this half jokingly)... they are all "know it alls". Almost no one ever likes anyone else's code. They'd rather scrap it and write their own... so that they can understand it... at least for a year or two. But then again, another trait of programmers (and sysadmins, etc) is that they want to be "lazy" and perhaps accepting someone else's code because it works well enough... and it means they can be lazy and not have to write it themselves... that's sort of a balance where they can accept other's code... even though if they wrote it themselves it would obviously be much better.
One bold thing I like about Lennart, not that what I like matters for anything, is that one of his public stances has been... and I'll paraphrase... "rather than papering over problems, or adding yet another layer-of-fix on top of an underlying problem... he/they will do their best to fix things that are broken rather than allowing them to continue to be broken". Many others just say... "yeah, that's broken but we are used to the brokenness and are even somewhat fond of our workarounds... so fixing it is out of the question." That is just one tiny aspect I enjoy. YMMV.
Ok, ok... there might be a few humble programmers out there... but they are really just aliens disguised as humans... or just programming until "something better" comes along.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 7:13 UTC (Thu) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]
Some days I wish there were more of these kinds of people. At one point I read an article (which I can no longer find) which coined a term "broken API syndrome" or "fixed interface syndrome" or something like that.
Basically, there are situations where you're coding against an API which doesn't quite support one feature you need. And instead of looking behind the API (which you can because it's open source) and making a small fix/change there, you end up writing chunks of horrible fragile code on top of the API just to make it work.
This happens even in projects where both sides of the API are in the same repository. It drives me nuts sometimes.
I have great respect for people who get in there and fix broken APIs, even though they are rendering large chunks of other people's work obsolete. The world in the long run is better off.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 7:29 UTC (Thu) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]
https://lwn.net/Articles/443531/
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 11:50 UTC (Thu) by njd27 (subscriber, #5770) [Link]
The counter argument is that it is the "Cascade of Attention Deficit Teenagers" approach.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 14, 2014 4:10 UTC (Tue) by ThinkRob (guest, #64513) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 19:30 UTC (Thu) by ssmith32 (subscriber, #72404) [Link]
In general, people who a jerks with skill like to rationalize saying "it's just the way you have to be to be good at X". When, really, they're just jerks who are good at X. And we don't notice all the quiet humble people pushing things a long.
I know this because, especially in my younger years, I would say I was the jerk out of the three mentioned in my anecdote above. But I was never the most skilled. Had my moments, but not the most skilled.
Being a jerk vs humble often corresponds to fame and visibility, but not to actual skill.
How many here knew who Brian Fox was before shellshock? I doubt most of the code in GNU has been written by Stallman. Stallman is very useful as a spokesperson for free software - but that doesn't mean you have to be like him to make widely used libre software.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 6:16 UTC (Thu) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link]
http://aseigo.blogspot.de/2014/10/four-paths.html
IMO it's more balanced, and doesn't deny that there are indeed problems.
IME (mostly from KDE and CMake) our (these) communities are not "a sick place", but almost always very nice, sometimes you get tough discussions, but I never experienced anything bad on a personal level.
Alex
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 12:18 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
On the G+ post associated with that very blog post, I noted that there were certain people whose projects I would avoid reporting bugs to and would attempt to avoid using until their leadership changed to people who came off as less unpleasant, and that of course I am not obliged to use their software, nor any software that disrupts my workflow (nor is anyone).
The response? A suggestion from someone with employer listed as RH that I 'get over [myself]' and the statement that 'If I were working for your project I wouldn't hesitate to knock you out before I resigned', which, tbh, I think I am not unjustified in interpreting as a threat of violence, even if a theoretical one: it certainly put me into a threat-response emotional state.
He did, at least, eventually apologise -- which is why I'm not identifying him here or linking the (easily found) G+ post -- but for goodness' sake, if this is what you get for the crime of saying that there are some projects you will not use (when nobody can use all software!) then, well, to me this community does not appear to have particularly healthy interpersonal dynamics. Lots of people, both developers and not, don't seem to realise that publically advocating that one piece of software be used over another is not a crime and not a thing deserving of retribution -- though if you don't say *why* you are advocating it, it's probably also not worth anyone's time listening to it. Neither is saying 'there are changes I will not accept, fork my software if you want to do that'.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 0:40 UTC (Fri) by misc (guest, #73730) [Link]
But I fail to draw the same conclusion regarding employer, mostly because I have access to more data par of my own employment, like a internal directory.
So either the internal RH directory is lying, or the name used on g+ is not the good one, or your conclusion is incorrect. I think that having a background on google plus of a linux distribution is not sufficient to deduce where someone work, but maybe I also misunderstood your reasoning.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 15, 2014 14:41 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Just because someone's being unnecessarily horrible to me doesn't mean he's a liar! It probably means I've done something socially unacceptable without noticing it, yet again. (In this case, I don't think it did, but only because I checked with a bunch of people to make sure that I hadn't said something to offend someone.)
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 15, 2014 14:43 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 21:29 UTC (Thu) by louie (guest, #3285) [Link]
Not that I've been a saint either. But if your reaction is "my community is OK" you should probably look harder (and that goes for Jon as well). Goes doubly if you're a leader in the community (like Jon is)- that means you don't see a lot of what goes on behind the scenes, or don't feel it as acutely as new people.
(Which is also not to say that our communities are all bad; there is a lot of positive, human, humane stuff going on there. But that doesn't give us a free pass on all the other behavior.)
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 16:38 UTC (Fri) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]
My point is that the Linux kernel community is moving away from the bad boyz club, and people are not noticing. Lennart's experience is more of an exception than the rule. But that is due to past behaviors from him and Kay with their lack of willingness to listen to us when we brought up problems with their code.
If you read LKML on a regular basis, it is getting harder to find personal attacks. That's a good thing. Yeah, there's some old timers that still have their grumpy moments and when that's Linus, it makes the news. But those that actually try to join the community today, will have a much better experience than if they were to have when I joined.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 6:48 UTC (Thu) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]
This is simply an unrealistic expectation. Read, say, Seneca. 2000 years ago he described pretty much the trolling and mocking we experience on the net that was carried out in public in Roman Empire with the same disastrous consequences for victims. It implies that even in 2000 years in future this problem most likely will still exist in one form or another.
It is much better to describe practical ways to deal with this on personal level that works and, perhaps even more importantly, what does not work to defend against such attacks, not to pretend that somehow we can build a fence to protect from all the trolls.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 7:19 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]
As is attempting to hire somebody to murder somebody else with bitcoins.
And it's not just vile directed Lennart.
Another example of this behaver is how very recently a great number of people cheered on forcing Mozilla to fire a man who has been deeply involved in open source and developing core web technologies for nearly 20 years because they disagreed with is religious convictions.
This sort of thing is destructive and pointless. And it's not just open source, it's just plain BS behaviour people have picked up from spending wayyy to much time wrapped with huge emotional investment in what really amounts to trivial and mundane news and events on the internet.
I don't know what to do about it.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 8:11 UTC (Thu) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]
Also, Mozilla's case is rather different. There it was the organization that was under the attack and Brendan Eich had to made decisions based on that, not on personal merits. Compare that with Lennart's situation where the attacks are very personalized and in general do not try to go about Red Hat.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 9:33 UTC (Thu) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
I think they rather disagreed with his actions: his attempts to change the law to prevent them from marrying their desired partners.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 14, 2014 4:20 UTC (Tue) by ThinkRob (guest, #64513) [Link]
His stance, voting, or contribution record re: gay marriage simply wasn't relevant to his job functions at Mozilla. It's every bit as relevant as what brand of car he drives or whether he thought Nixon was an asshole; maybe something that would stop you from wanting to buy the dude a beer, but not at all something that would stop him from leading a software firm well.
When you start trying to make people into pariahs just because they voted wrong (or backed those who voted wrong) you are headed down a very toxic, very dangerous path.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 15, 2014 4:00 UTC (Wed) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 20, 2014 16:14 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
Out of interest, do you genuinely believe that, or are you exaggerating to make a point?
>When you start trying to make people into pariahs just because they voted wrong (or backed those who voted wrong) you are headed down a very toxic, very dangerous path.
An interesting, if rather extraordinary, point of view. Can you come up with any way to justify it?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 21, 2014 18:41 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]
> An interesting, if rather extraordinary, point of view. Can you come up with any way to justify it?
Because if you DON'T justify it, you are destroying democracy - you are justifying Hong Kong's leadership in vetting who is allowed to stand, you are justifying the USSR's "our candidates were all elected with an overwhelming mandate (because only one person was allowed to stand and voting was compulsory)".
You may not like it, but if you object to your fellow man's attempt to stand up for what he believes in, you will not be allowed to stand up for what you believe in. That way lies tyranny and slavery ...
Cheers,
Wol
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 21, 2014 22:24 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
You are dangerously oversimplifying things.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 22, 2014 4:36 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 22, 2014 11:49 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 22, 2014 14:58 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
"a person who strongly and unfairly dislikes other people, ideas, etc. : a bigoted person; especially : a person who hates or refuses to accept the members of a particular group (such as a racial or religious group)"
What definition are you using?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 22, 2014 23:22 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
Calling for someone to be fired because of how they voted is only unfair if what they voted for is something you approved of, right? Otherwise they are only getting what they deserve for being such horrible people (never mind how they act in person, how good they are at doing their job, or anything else like that)
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 23, 2014 6:53 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
It's also OK to use it to bar systemd from entering a distribution that you manage or to convince other maintainers to reject it. Nothing wrong with it.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 23, 2014 16:52 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
If you're actively discriminating against the human beings your workers have chosen as life partners, then you can't possibly lead those workers can you? Eich could have clarified his position to be compatible with those of his employees and his company, yet he refused to do so. He made a fine CTO but wasn't a good candidate to be Mozilla's CEO. Alas.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 31, 2014 18:54 UTC (Fri) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]
I honestly see you as a bigot:
> If you're actively discriminating against the human beings your workers have chosen as life partners, then you can't possibly lead those workers can you?
You're unfairly discriminating against people in the workplace because of their personal, political opinions. This makes you a bigot and a hypocrite.
> Eich could have clarified his position to be compatible with those of his employees and his company, yet he refused to do so.
That is a lie. He repeatedly stated that he treated everyone the same in the workplace, and more importantly, his track record demonstrated the truth of that statement. Other Mozillians confirmed it as well.
> He made a fine CTO but wasn't a good candidate to be Mozilla's CEO. Alas.
Yes, too bad for him that he refused to cave on his principles. Silly boy didn't realize that there is no private life in the USSA. If only he had toed the party line, he would have been tolerated. Oh well, at least the rest of us are safe from his dangerous ideologies now that he's been purged. Thank glorious leader for his wisdom in protecting us!
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 31, 2014 20:08 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
CEOs in the US have amazing power to discriminate based on personal or political opinions. For example, it's totally legal for a CEO in most states to walk down the parking lot and fire everybody with an Obama sticker on their car.
So I think it's fair that the same attitude applies to the CEOs themselves.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Nov 1, 2014 18:13 UTC (Sat) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]
But it's no less wrong to do so. It's opportunistic hypocrisy. It demonstrates that you are not guided by any principles of righteousness, justice, or liberty, but will merely do whatever is convenient to further your agenda, even if it means contradicting yourself and violating another person's freedoms.
History has truly shown that such attitudes lead to and are part of oppression, fascism, and mob rule--truly on the wrong side of history. Utterly shameful.
What goes around comes around. However, most narcissists can't see past their own lifetimes, and wouldn't care if they could. So if they drive the bus over a cliff, it's fine, because they'll die of natural causes before the bus hits the ground--because it's a long, long way down. Then it's not their problem anymore.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Nov 1, 2014 22:15 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
For example: "The right to be fired without any reason for political beliefs".
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 31, 2014 18:40 UTC (Fri) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]
Or if you actually advocate totalitarianism, I guess only first-hand experience will change your mind. In that case, I recommend buying an airline ticket to somewhere like China, Venezuela, or Iran. For bonus points, speak publicly against the government while you are there so you can experience some of the ridicule and jail time you wish to impose upon others.
Dangerous are those who think they should decide others' fate. Those are the ones truly "on the wrong side of history."
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 23, 2014 11:16 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>> An interesting, if rather extraordinary, point of view. Can you come up with any way to justify it?
>Because if you DON'T justify it, you are destroying democracy - you are justifying Hong Kong's leadership in vetting who is allowed to stand, you are justifying the USSR's "our candidates were all elected with an overwhelming mandate (because only one person was allowed to stand and voting was compulsory)".
What? You believe that democracy fundamentally requires everyone to allow everyone else to do anything they want, without repercussion, including curbing the civil rights of people they don't like?
>You may not like it, but if you object to your fellow man's attempt to stand up for what he believes in, you will not be allowed to stand up for what you believe in. That way lies tyranny and slavery ...
What if my fellow man believes in tyranny and slavery? Is objecting to that acceptable then? Why are you objecting to my objection of somebody else's tyranny? That sound pretty tyrannical to me.
Your argument makes no sense.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 23, 2014 19:59 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
If the actions that they take are all legal (and voting or contributing to political campaigns is legal), then you can oppose them, but calling for them to be cast out of society in response to a vote or a personal contribution to any political campaign is not just opposing them.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 23, 2014 20:29 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
Why is it that "disrespect" for homosexuals (by opposing Gay Marriage) is something that should get you banned, but "disrespect" for the Catholic Church (a crucifix suspended in urine) is something to be praised?
You need to be able to tolerate other people's beliefs. Their actions are something to respond to, but you need to keep the response appropriate. Scorched Earth tactics against anyone who disagrees with you is not a good thing.
I don't care if someone I work with is a Satan worshipper, as long as their actions at work are no different than anyone else (and yes, this does mean that I dislike the extreme religious types that shove their religion in your face all the time, even if I agree with the religion in question)
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 23, 2014 20:32 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
You can disapprove a crucifix in urine (I hate such kind of art, btw) but I certainly would not want to work with anyone who wants to make such art forbidden and/or mandatory.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 27, 2014 15:51 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
Are you serious? You think these things are comparable?
You think that a serious legal attempt to remove the civil rights of a minority group you dislike is merely "disrespect", on the same level as erecting a piece of artwork in questionable taste?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 0:57 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
When you have priests being threatened with jail for refusing to perform gay marriages (which we now have had happen), things have gone way too far.
to answer your other post as well, prop 8 was not some fringe movement, it gathered roughly half the vote. If you believe that anyone who supported or voted for it deserves to loose their job (and therefor be unemployable, because they would deserve to loose their next job as well with the same logic), you are running a very real risk of serious backlash. This sort of witch hunt has gotten to the point where even long time Gay Rights advocates are saying that this is wrong.
I'm not saying that there aren't cases where someone's beliefs and the way they promote them can cause enough problems to make it worth getting rid of them, but someone donating a few days pay to a campaign that receives almost half the vote and is only discovered by people looking through the legally required list of doners is pretty obviously NOT causing that sort of problem in the workplace.
It's not a question of being "technically legal" or not, it's a matter of accepting the fact that there are people in the world who disagree with you, and not deciding that they are pure evil scum because they disagree.
Going back to the topic of this article, disagreement is healthy, even heated discussion can be healthy. It's when you stop seeing the other side as people are start demonizing them that things become a problem.
And in the systemd debate, we have some people on both sides who are a problem.
One one side you see people who disagree with where systemd is going demonizing LP
On the other side you see people calling anyone who isn't enthusiastic about systemd luddites who just need to die off and be replaced by the new generation.
Neither attitude is healthy for the community. A community requires both sides to be willing to talk (and listen) to each other. A healthy community can have people agree to disagree and coexist. For all the talk about the Vi vs Emacs or linux distro 'wars', each side has been willing to let the others continue to exist, frequently cooperating on some things while competing on others.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 1:00 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
When we have commercial companies claiming to be religious organizations - things have gone way too far.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 1:09 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
Given that you also want to force companies to jump through all sorts of hoops to become 'non-commercial', I don't see how you can reasonably block religious commercial companies.
I am curious as to what companies you think are such offenders here. I'm guessing HobbyLobby but there is a big difference between saying that a company is "a religious company" and allowing the owner of the company freedom of religion in deciding how to spend their money.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 1:13 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
That's your problem, if you wish to discriminate people.
> I am curious as to what companies you think are such offenders here.
The marriage chapel forced to allow gay wedding (note: no priests were required to perform rites). It's a commercial company that technically rents the building for weddings.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 1:40 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Sure. Let's consider their religion and their investments then.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/04/hobby-lobby-r...
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 2:36 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
First off, I don't demand perfection in people, and since organizations are made of many people, I sure don't demand perfection or even perfect consistency in any substantial organization.
The fact that their retirement fund invested in a company that does things you think they should hate could be for a number of reasons, including that the people doing the investing don't run every decision past the people who care more about the details, or the fact that the company they are investing in may be doing enough things they like for them to be willing to put up with the things that they don't like.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 2:45 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
No. I am judging them by their own criteria. They fail to meet it with it with any consistency even after it has been pointed out to them. So that makes me question the sincerity of their claims. This is a question of sheer hypocrisy. Not of perfection.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 7:29 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
And even if they don't, and you do decide to stop investing in that company, it's not something to implement quickly. If you have a large investment and announce that you are not going to do business with them and sell off your interest in them, you will loose your shirt as people pay you less than the stock is worth as you sell rapidly. So the right thing to do for your investors (the retirement account) is to do nothing in the short term, and in the longer term shift your money gradually away.
the world is not black-and-white.
All that being said, I haven't followed the details of this case, so I don't know much about it. But then again, nobody outside of that company really knows what their criteria is either. You may very well be misunderstanding their criteria when you declare that they are being hypcritical. Their lawsuit wasn't to have them stop paying for all forms of birth control, only about 4 out of 50.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 10:59 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 3:20 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 7:23 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 8:07 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 8:51 UTC (Tue) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]
Fixing something that is imperfect isn't a bad thing. As a software developer you should know that :)
Just saying.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 11:58 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 12:39 UTC (Tue) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 11:33 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 11:50 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
I will point out that California had "Civil Unions" on the books with equal rights and that wasn't considered good enough, so that wasn't the solution.
Trying to get back on topic here. The issue isn't that people disagree, the issue is if they can disagree one some points without calling for the other person to be suppressed or thrown out.
Punishing people for holding the 'wrong' opinions, even if they aren't taking actions on those opinions, was wrong when it was McCarthy doing it on the right, and it's equally wrong when it's the various groups on the left doing it.
Everyone needs to accept the idea that people who disagree with them aren't evil or insane, they can have reasons to disagree with you. If you can discuss the issue and the reasons one of you can convince the other they are wrong, or you can agree to disagree and still work together. But when it gets to the point of "I think that you think X, so you should be ignored forever" no further progress can be made.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 13:05 UTC (Tue) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
Most states do, but the rights are not always the same. So just because California may have had it right, if you move to, say, Montana, they wouldn't recognize you because you're not "married". Since Californians have ~zero say in Montana directly, they can change it from California's side at least.
Back on track(ish):
I do agree with you that *punishing* people for their opinions and beliefs is bad, but if the employees are not happy with their CEO, then their CEO should probably concede something (in this specific case, maybe he should have been allowed to continue but as soon as any actions pertaining to the company occurred which went along those lines, fired on the spot, but that's not how it worked out).
My view is that you can say whatever you want, but I still have the right to publicly shame you for what you're saying. Your argument(s) seems to be closer to "say what you want" without recognizing that there may be social consequences to those words. "With great power, comes great responsibility." If you're put into a position of power, it is your responsibility to keep your personal beliefs separate from your job. Maybe Eich could have done it, maybe not, but given the examples we have crawling around in DC and other political fora, I can at least understand a knee-jerk reaction (if not why it doesn't seem to apply so strongly to them).
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 21:25 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 29, 2014 5:55 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 29, 2014 17:39 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
It's easier to feel sorry for a minimum wage employee fired for public relations reasons than a senior executive but the direct outcome is the same, someone lost their job because enough people, or loud enough people demanded it.
"They did a thing I don't like, so I want nasty things to happen to them" is revenge. Revenge is not a healthy or productive instinct, but then, that's the topic of this whole thread, so it shouldn't be a surprise.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 29, 2014 17:44 UTC (Wed) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link]
"I don't trust that person to supervise people they are known to be biased against" is a very different thing than "I want nasty things to happen to that person".
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 29, 2014 18:29 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
I care about outcomes, that's what I do. So revenge doesn't work for me. You nailed the guy to a cross? That's great, did it actually help? No? Well that's a bunch of time you wasted and one more corpse.
We used to do that a lot in safety critical jobs. Train crash? Find out if the driver lived and if so fire him. Tell everybody he's incompetent and may have been drunk. Now the papers are distracted by a simple easy to understand bad guy story (also his children will probably starve). Meanwhile, we'll continue to run railways the same as before. Huh, another train crash. Well, you know the drill, fire the driver.
But it turns out you can investigate the actual causes, work out how to prevent them and solve the problem instead. Newspapers don't like this approach, because instead of an instant bad guy to demonise they have to wait a year to digest a sixty page report that says basically "A lot of things went wrong" and then painstakingly lists them. That's not a good story! But it is a good way to improve, and it saved a huge number of lives over the last century or so.
If you _really_ thought the problem here was that an executive might be supervising people they were biased against there were lots of sensible options for what to do about that. Options with a real lasting benefit to Mozilla employees (or if mandated more widely, all employees). But that is not what the people who forced that resignation wanted. They wanted revenge, and they got it.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 30, 2014 16:27 UTC (Thu) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]
This has all been explained many times, of course, so if you want to keep claiming that everyone who disagreed with you was acting out of pure malice then I guess it probably won't stop you...
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 30, 2014 18:11 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
Firstly let's briefly tackle a purely technical mistake. Brendan was CEO of Mozilla Corporation, not Mozilla Foundation. The corporation is a for-profit, and only its owner the foundation is a non-profit. The corporation hires most of Mozilla's employees and always has undertaken activities that don't contribute to "principles of openness" and of course most of their income is from Google, in exchange for ensuring that the 99% of users who never change their defaults will visit Google's search engine and other properties.
Anyway, so you claim the problem was that Brendan couldn't handle this "PR mess" and this (even though it looks exactly like the others) is not an excuse but instead a /real/ reason why he just had to go.
That seems fine, right? Except, if you fail one component for its inability to pass a new test you made up, it's weird if you then subsequently just never use that test on any other components. That makes it pretty obvious that your real motivation was the failure of that component, not setting a higher standard. So, this new excuse doesn't fly because there was no effort to create a "PR mess" for Chris Beard and see how he'd fare nor for the equally important Mitchell Baker.
In fact Chris and Mitchell can keep their jobs because there isn't a powerful and organised political group trying to get them fired. They probably feel a little bit less secure knowing (from Brendan's experience) that if they piss off the wrong people they're history but for now they are safe.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 29, 2014 17:51 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
And there's zero difference in how easily these people a) are in need of a job for financial stability and b) can find a new job? Sure, the *direct* outcome is the same, but the collateral damage is *far* worse in the first case.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 29, 2014 16:24 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
It was only when he was made CEO that people couldn't accept it. Now gay people will be working FOR him, not just WITH him. It's a big difference. If you put yourself in their positions, can you understand the problem?
As an aside, why do you continue to say he got fired? Mozilla statements, newspaper articles, Eich himself, nobody else is saying that.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 8:56 UTC (Tue) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]
*who* in this discussion (other than you) has said anything about "anyone who supported or voted for it deserves to loose[sic] their job"?
As far as the systemd vs non-systemd discussion goes, the difference between the two cases you state, is that the attacks on LP are personal (including death threats).
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 10:40 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
I can't believe you would be so brazen as to actually come out and say that. It's *appalling* that that kind of statement would be allowed on LWN. Anywhere else, that would be seen as obviously crossing the line, but here of course low subscriber numbers are sacrosanct.
This post makes it pretty clear: you are a great symptom of the sickness in our community.
You want to silence people from speaking out against those who are oppressing them, because you believe that the *actions* of a bigot are more important to protect than the *words* of an oppressed minority.
You are desperately scrambling to come up with some ideology to support your bigotry, but unable to come up with anything consistent because fundamentally your goal is to restrict people's freedom, and you're not willing to come out and admit that.
A community that supports toxic elements like you - even tacitly - is one that can never be healed.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 28, 2014 11:55 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
Freedom of speech requires that people be willing to say things that others disagree with. If it wasn't for that very freedom, the Civil Rights movement would have failed miserably.
In this case you are not even condemning me for a view I hold, but for a view that I point out some people do hold.
In any case, this tangent has gone on too long already, and Goodwin has been triggered a while ago. So I am going to try and let this tangent die off.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Nov 1, 2014 3:53 UTC (Sat) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]
I just wish you could recognize your own hypocrisy. You call him toxic for his reasonable comments, being the epitome of the very toxicity you decry. Demonization is your modus operandi, which you irrationally employ in lieu of calm, reasonable arguments. It's like you have been brainwashed by the radical left.
You're calling good evil and evil good. Your hatred and bigotry are blinding you to the truth. I pray that your heart and mind will be opened, that you will diligently seek the truth above all else.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 29, 2014 4:57 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]
Such a common myth about gay marriage in the above statement.
"Marriage" has nothing to do with civil rights.
The legal form of marriage, which is completely separate from the religious meanings, provides a default basket of legalities such as hospital visitation, tax writeoffs, powers of attorney, asset sharing, etc.
But refusing to grant legal marriage is not a civil rights violation.
If it was, then marriage would automatically be allowed between close family members and multiple people. Which I have heard people are working on, not that I think they'll succeed. And really if single people aren't allowed to marry themselves and be granted the same rights as married people then their civil rights would be violated too. If it was a civil rights issue.
Its a word definition problem.
So basically opposing Gay Marriage is about equal to opposing changes in the legal definition of "doctor patient confidentiality" or the definition of "search."
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 29, 2014 5:28 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 29, 2014 16:39 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
You don't think these are important to people who may have been together for decades but then are not allowed to sit by their partner's deathbed or make decisions on their behalf in such an instance because they're not "married"? Like I said earlier, the first problem was conflating the term "marriage" with these things, but since no one is going to get legislatures to amend everything on the books to say "civil union", expanding "marriage" is the simpler path.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 29, 2014 19:52 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]
Sure it is important. But come on, write that you agree with me that if it is a civil rights violation to deny marriage for LGBT so they can get these things, then it is equally a violation to deny it to someone else because he can't marry his mother.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 29, 2014 20:31 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
Anyways, I don't see any obvious reason to deny it out-of-hand from a legal viewpoint.
However, this does make me think of an interesting scenario. Since corporations are legal people now and are basically treated easier when they break laws (in relative terms, not absolute), how long until someone tries to marry their business? Does this mean that corporate takeovers are slavery? I wonder if any pioneering lawyer would be willing to try such an argument.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 30, 2014 18:57 UTC (Thu) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]
If you are referring to the Citizens United US Supreme Court decision, this is another myth. You should actually read the decision. It isn't horribly long and is very interesting.
The way that *I* read it, the *people* in charge of corporations cannot have their legal rights restricted merely because they are using corporate assets to exercise those rights. This includes freedom of speech.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 30, 2014 20:53 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
How is that materially different from: "Corporations are legal people now"?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 29, 2014 21:15 UTC (Wed) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]
So no, the situations are by no means comparable (I'm at least glad you didn't bring up the good old slippery slope strawman "next people will wanna marry their pets!").
While prohibiting incestuous marriage has legal reasons, LGBT relationships are none such. In some countries being outside the heteronorm is illegal, but luckily that is not the case here. Hence blocking LGBT couples from equal legal protection and benefits *IS* discrimination.
I leave it up to you to decide whether discriminating against people solely based on their sexual orientation is a violation of their civil rights. Personally I think it is, just like I think discriminating against people based on their gender, colour of skin, etc.
PS: Just in case you intend to drag up the polygamy strawman -- I'm not opposed to that either on a conceptual level, though I do believe that it is fraught with legal complexities that would take a lot of thinking to solve.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 29, 2014 22:05 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
> Not being able to marry parents or siblings is closely tied to the fact that incest is illegal, mainly due to the incestuous relationships resulting in offspring posing high risks of birth defects, etc., but also because of the parent-child power imbalance.
And this gets to the real reasons for government imposed Marriage laws.
They are intended to protect Women and Children and encourage the formation of a healthy next generation.
Now, the argument I've heard made that childless couples shouldn't get Government Marriage benefits has a little truth to it, but since it's really hard to make a legal distinction between a couple trying to have children and one that isn't (or can't), it seems a very reasonable thing to let this minor distortion to the system slip through (and a substantial number of couples that "aren't intending" to have kids end up doing so anyway)
Marriage can't just be devolved to a contract between willing adults because the children that come along don't have a chance to agree or influence the contract.
Please explain how Gay Marriage helps produce a next generation and so deserves to be added to the subset of legal groupings.
As others have noted, it's not enough to be deeply committed to someone for years in the case of Incest and Polygamy, what makes Gay Marriage so much better? Especially, why does this get elevated to the status of a "Civil Right" for these people, but not for other combinations?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 30, 2014 16:03 UTC (Thu) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]
This is a simplified fantasy you made up to make a convenient argument; reality is more complicated. If this were really the sole and only purpose of legal marriage, then why is it that marriage e.g. gives spouses special rights to decide on medical care for each other? Marriage has a lot of complicated cultural, social, and legal aspects; child-care is just one piece of it.
Even accepting this for the sake of argument though, it doesn't help your position at all because:
> Please explain how Gay Marriage helps produce a next generation and so deserves to be added to the subset of legal groupings.
Same-sex couples have kids all the time. It's totally normal; it happens every day. And those kids do totally fine, but better if their parents can be legally considered their parents, and get the various advantages that are granted to married mixed-sex couples.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 30, 2014 17:14 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
They adopt or they they are commuting adultery, biologically same sex couples are not going to have children of their own.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 30, 2014 17:22 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Heterosexual couples adopt etc all the time too. I don't see how the method of conception is relevant to the health or well being of a children. What is more important is how they are treated after they are born.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 30, 2014 17:35 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 30, 2014 17:49 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
> Linux on the desktop is statistically irrelevant when it comes to modern computing.
What point are you trying to prove?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 30, 2014 17:50 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 31, 2014 0:21 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 31, 2014 1:10 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 31, 2014 10:01 UTC (Fri) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]
I know heterosexual married couples that just don't *WANT* to have children.
I know heterosexual couples who have no common children, just children from a previous marriage.
I actually don't know any heterosexual couples that have children through insemination, but there are plenty.
I know heterosexual couples who have adoptive children.
All of these are apply equally to your "not any more relevant to creating the next generation than singles are", yet they are all entitled to get married.
How about bisexuals, btw? A heterosexual person having a child before getting married to another person than the other parent and then no more children after is no different than a bisexual person having a child before getting married and then getting married to another person after.
No matter how you put it, unless you explicitly tie marriage to childbearing (say through not allowing marriage until birth, or having mandatory divorces after a certain time limit without a child) -- which would be a horrible thing indeed -- then you *ARE* discriminating against non-heterosexuals.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 31, 2014 11:09 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
Yes, childless couples are 'cheating the system', but in this case perfection is very definitely the enemy of good enough. And many of the couples that intend to be childless end up having children.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 31, 2014 11:51 UTC (Fri) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]
"The commonest family type in Finland is still a married couple without children, making up 36 per cent of all families in 2011."
Of course that includes couples that have not *YET* had children (but will some time in the future), but it's still far from just a statistical blip.
Still if you accept childless heterosexual couples (something that according to you is a statistical blip), why don't you accept the statistical blip that is childless non-heterosexual couples?
Let's put it succinctly: *WHAT* are the negative consequences do you think equal marriage rights will cause and *WHY* do you consider them so important that discrimination would be justified?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 31, 2014 12:12 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]
I hate to say it, but...this discussion has wandered pretty far afield. Could it maybe be about time to wind it down or to find a more appropriate forum for it? Thanks.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 31, 2014 20:06 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 31, 2014 20:15 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 30, 2014 17:26 UTC (Thu) by joncbender (guest, #82805) [Link]
the method doesn't matter, unless you are trying to argue that both the child and parents are less deserving of legal rights and protections.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 30, 2014 18:23 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 30, 2014 19:00 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=D...
I think this was the best judicial decision I read in October (it was written in September but didn't come to my attention until earlier this month). It's a sharp contrast to Windsor (I know gay marriage advocates were happy to take Windsor as a "win" but it's _terrible_ law). Let's hope that people citing judicial decisions on this topic in fifty years are quoting Posner and not Kennedy (I think we can safely assume they won't cite Scalia).
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 31, 2014 0:33 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
Not all legal cases come out the way they should, even the Supreme Court makes some disastrously bad decisions at times (The Dread Scott decision is a good example), and the bad decisions are usually nto clear immediately (if they were very clear, the Judges wouldn't make them)
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 31, 2014 8:40 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Nov 1, 2014 2:12 UTC (Sat) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
The nice thing that many people miss about judicial decisions is that the judge is expected not just to say "Bloggs wins" but how and why. So it's not really enough to just insist Posner was wrong, you'd have to tease out why exactly and I appreciate that LWN is really no place to do that.
I do invite you to attempt this somewhere else though.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 31, 2014 0:27 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
Purely pragmatic reasons, it's much easier to incorporate this into an existing structure than to require that all couples take additional legal actions. Remember that the law (at least in many places) recognizes Common Law Marriages, which basically boil down to "if you act like you are married, you will get treated as if you are married"
And this sort of visitation/medical care access has never been something that opponents of Gay Marriage have been opposed to.
> Marriage has a lot of complicated cultural, social, and legal aspects; child-care is just one piece of it.
I will agree with this statement. However I think that the child-care and child-creation aspects are what drive the rest of it.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 31, 2014 0:59 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 27, 2014 15:46 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
Okay, this is beyond a joke now. Your position is *insane*. Your circular arguments make no sense.
1) Calling for them to be cast out of society: this has never happened.
2) What is your definition of "opposed"? I can't find any possible meaning that would exclude public condemnation, without being so narrow that it is essentially vacuous ("opposing" something only inside your own mind is not opposition).
3) Let's take your straw man and run with it: if somebody calls for another to be "cast out of society", they are doing nothing illegal. Your argument amounts to "anything that's not actually illegal should not be publicly condemned", so you have already broken your own position by claiming that it is wrong for people to be allowed to speak out against tyranny.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 23, 2014 12:09 UTC (Thu) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]
What if, instead of supporting a proposal that discriminates homosexuals, he would've supported a proposal to reinstate racial or gender discrimination (there is, after all, biblical support for both of these)? Would you still have thought it to be destroying democracy to object to him?
Let's say he would've been a proponent for rescinding women's suffrage. what then?
Saying that "Hey, we don't want someone who supports discrimination to be the leader of our community" isn't destroying democracy. It's merely taking a different political stand.
Anything you do or say has consequences. Speaking is legal, yet lying risks getting you sued for slander. Shit-talking your employer will probably get you fired, as will (hopefully) sexual harassment.
If he'd been a known supporter of discrimination against women or non-whites, no one would've raised an eyebrow if he had been questioned on those grounds, no matter if he would've claimed it to be for religious reasons (just imagine the outrage if this would've been a Muslim who would've supported a proposal that would discriminate women; though I guess what with the Islamophobia in the US there would probably have been an outrage about the Muslim bit alone).
Why should supporting discrimination against homosexuals be somehow different?
Because despite your claim that it's about religious convictions that's all it really boils down to; the religious thing is just an excuse for the prejudice.
If it truly were a matter of following the bible, why isn't he (and the rest of those who claim to oppose equal rights for homosexuals) standing up for laws that condone stoning of children who speak up against their parents, bans against multi-fabric cloth, seafood, tattoos, etc? Why don't they stand up for returning to biblical marriages (where you'd buy your wife, have several wifes, where widows should marry their brother in law to ensure proper inheritance, etc.)
If the people who oppose the rights of homosexuals would at least have the guts to stand up and say "I oppose equal rights for homosexuals because I think it's icky" then I would at least respect them for being honest (though still question their poor judgement). As long as they hide behind a selective interpretation of their religion, however, I just find it cowardly.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 23, 2014 20:08 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
Redefining a vote or a contribution to a political campaign (especially one that had such a large amount of support) to be harassment is a problem.
> though I guess what with the Islamophobia in the US there would probably have been an outrage about the Muslim bit alone
So why is it that Muslim countries that stone homosexuals and girls who bring disgrace on their families for the sin of being raped get a pass, but voting to keep the definition of the word "Marriage" what it's traditionally been throughout history is grounds for effective lynching?
> if the people who oppose the rights of homosexuals would at least have the guts to stand up and say "I oppose equal rights for homosexuals because I think it's icky" then I would at least respect them for being honest
but you somehow cannot respect them for being honest when they state that their opposition is not because it's 'icky' but because they see it as redefining what marriage is.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 23, 2014 20:42 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
It is NOT the same in all muslim countries. Even otherwise, just because some places in the world are worse doesn't mean that countries which have moved past the religion based government model should go back to it.
>but you somehow cannot respect them for being honest when they state that their opposition is not because it's 'icky' but because they see it as redefining what marriage is.
Marriage has been redefined many many times where originally it was about treating women as property to most recently to allow interracial marriages in U.S. Pretending as if had the same definition and purpose throughout history is counter factual.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 24, 2014 9:46 UTC (Fri) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]
The level of support for a discriminatory cause does not make it less discriminatory. It just shows that people are afraid of change, probably because they belong to the majority that isn't discriminated against.
Even so, we're not talking about any average person here. We're talking about a person that has a leading position in a community and thus is representative for said community.
Admittedly I would feel uneasy with such co-workers, but of course I wouldn't call for their resignation. It's a wholly different thing when it's someone high up in the hierarchy however. With great power comes great responsibility. People higher in the hierarchy of power should be held to higher standards.
BTW, who said anything about giving Muslim countries that stone homosexuals or rape victims a free pass? Well, the US foreign policies towards some of them seem to be very forgiving (for some reason anything Saudi Arabia does seem to be acceptable, anything else is heavily criticised), but there seem to be no less criticism of Muslim conutries than others.
Though since the US treat several of the Muslim countries as altogether evil and assume every single Muslim to be a terrorist, it might seem as though they don't get criticized for individual things, but that's only because they're already under a blanket condemnation. Sort of like with Cuba, where singular missteps on behalf of Cuba don't get criticized much, because Cuba for some inscrutable reason is considered so utterly evil that US citizens are not even permitted to travel there (even though they're free to travel to far, far worse countries in terms of human rights).
But you know, if you cannot clean up garbage on your neighbour's yard, then at least clean up your own. Be a good example.
But now for your main argument -- that about the traditional meaning of marriage throughout history:
Various past traditional marriages:
* Arranged marriages
* Polygamy
* The groom paying the father of the bride for the right to marry her
* The father of the bride paying the groom to get rid of his daughter
| obviously these two did not apply at the same time :)
* Rape victims being "avenged" by having their rapists marry them
* Levirate marriage (widows being forced to marry their brother in law)
* Children being wedded to grown-ups
You seem to suffer from the widespread, but false, notion that traditional means good and that it should also mean immutable.
Other traditions of the past: stoning, cutting off the hands off of criminals, flogging, spanking children, human sacrifice, etc.
Comparing a community calling for their leader to be someone who do not call for discrimination people just because of their sexual orientation with lynching is a slight bit of hyperbole, don't you agree?
Instead of defending the one male + one female "as God intended" variant of marriage based on tradition, how about you justify the discrimination of homosexuals based on reason?
Marriage serves the following purposes in modern society:
1.) Providing a simplified legal framework for inheritance
| homosexual couples need this just as much as straight couples
2.) Simplifies the process of deciding whom should be the legal guardian of children (adoptive; children from previous relationships -- some people in homosexual relationships are bisexual, others came out late, etc.; insemination; surrogate mothers, etc.)
| homosexual couples need this just as much as heterosexual couples
3.) Joint taxation
| homosexual couples would want this just as much as straight couples
4.) Joint benefits
| If a heterosexual spouse should get benefits through their company
| just for being married to one of its employees, so should
| a homosexual spouse
and the good old "traditional"
5.) Affirmation of love
| Homosexual couples love each other just as much as
| heterosexual couples do
If a church chooses not to give its blessing to a married couple just because they are homosexual, then that should be their prerogative. They should, however, not be able to have a say in whether said couple should be able to get married in the first place.
Marriage is a matter between the state and the couple and the state is (well, in the case of the US and a few other civilized countries at least) secular.
Holy matrimony is a matter between the church and the couple.
If you want to be a member of a church that wants to keep holy matrimony reserved strictly to its heterosexual members, then so be it.
If Jesus really existed (as a divine being that is, rather than just a carpenter who preached about a lot of nice things), I suspect he'd be more offended by people trying to discriminate based on whom they love. But I leave that for the churches and their congregations.
Please explain to me how, apart from a redefinition of your view of what a marriage "should" be, equal marriage rights would somehow threaten your marriage or your possibility to get married? How would it affect your daily life?
I can think of of a few things: some homosexuals around you will become happier and feel less discriminated against. Some homosexuals around you will have to worry less about their future.
Sure, there are a few minor, minor things that will influence you in a negative way: due to joint taxation there'll be slightly less tax dollars flowing to your state. But somehow I don't think this is a financial issue.
PS: Traditionally divorce was a non-existing concept, later becoming something very restricted. Nowadays there are marriages that only last a few weeks or even just a day or two.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 24, 2014 13:54 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
So people are only allowed to have 'approved' viewpoints if they are in some jobs, no matter how well they do those jobs or how they treat their employees and co-workers.
I despise the concept of "thought crimes" that punish people for things they think as opposed to actions that they take. (and the way someone votes, or a contribution to a political party or group should not have employment consequences)
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 24, 2014 16:36 UTC (Fri) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]
But let's use a bit of hyperbole, shall we, just to poke a hole in your reasoning: let's say a Jew suddenly gets a new boss who donates money to the National Socialist Party of America (I have no idea if there's such a thing, this is all hypothetical after all). No matter how well said boss does his job, no matter how well he treats his employees I think it's pretty reasonable to accept that the Jew feels uneasy and would rather see the boss replaced by someone else.
Sometimes you have to choose whom you want to welcome -- a minority or persons make that minority feel unwelcome. Take misogynist free software developers vs female free software developers. In terms of contributions it might well be that the misogynists have/would contribute more (this is of course a case by case thing), but if I have a say in it the important thing is to make the females feel welcome, not to bend over for the misogynists, even if telling them to shut up & apologise or go away make them feel unwelcome.
Why? Because being a female isn't something wrong. Being a misogynist is. In a similar vein being a homosexual and wanting equal rights isn't something wrong. Supporting discrimination against homosexuals is.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 24, 2014 20:36 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
well, if the only way the Jew learns about the donation is from someone investigating the list of doners, then I would disagree.
i also disagree with the idea that it's a natural right (or whatever term you want to use) to not have someone make you feel "uncomfortable".
Yes, there are actions that are unreasonable and would deserve to have that hypothetical boss fired, but just donating and voting the "wrong" cause should not be among them
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 7:24 UTC (Thu) by maniax (subscriber, #4509) [Link]
So maybe he is the problem in this case?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 10:52 UTC (Thu) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link]
You mean Lennart never stopped correcting him.
Correction is what happens to people when they come horribly underprepared for their talk, full of misguidance how things actually work or why those things exist there in the software to begin with, while defending their world view ( in Datenwolf's case in his world people with disabilities did not exists ) how that software is supposed to be written.
You do realize those talks more often than not are being record and that record later get's shared with the world right?
So you know that it's better to correct them then and there rather than after their talk because if you dont those correction would never make it to the recording.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 11:36 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
Datenwolf's talks was basically a long rant about many pieces of software he obviously did not understand and of which many Lennart was involved with.
Datenwolf told people to ask questions during the talk.
He confirmed that again when the organizers asked him about Lennart and told them "let him speak".
Datenwolf went even further and repeatedly _asked_ Lennart about his opinion during the talk.
However, whenever he did not like Lennart's answer, Datenwolf interrupted Lennart and just talked over him.
But surely, Lennart is "THE asshole" while wasting people's time with an extremely badly prepared talk full of _wrong_ advice is somehow ok.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 7:57 UTC (Thu) by simosx (guest, #24338) [Link]
Last year, Mark Shuttleworth wrote a long blog post to announce the codename for the subsequent version of Ubuntu (trusty tahr), and in it he vented his frustration about the attacks that Ubuntu has been receiving from some other open-source projects regarding Mir/Unity:
> Mir is really important work. When lots of competitors attack a project on purely political grounds, you have to wonder what THEIR agenda is. At least we know now who belongs to the Open Source Tea Party ;) And to put all the hue and cry into context: Mir is relevant for approximately 1% of all developers, just those who think about shell development.
Source: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1295
Then, Lennart Poettering was one of the people to pick on this, and went on taunting:
> So if we are the Tea Party of Open Source now, then I want to be our Sarah Palin! Who wants to be our Ted Cruz?
Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/571469/
He did not stop there, he even printed a t-shirt, and wore it at a conference (linux.conf.au 2014):
http://www.heise.de/open/artikel/Kdbus-Neue-Interprozessk...
That t-shirt also went into a slide (someone else, Redhat Summit):
https://dwalsh.fedorapeople.org/SELinux/Presentations/RHE...
The purpose of taunting is to get someone have a bad time by making a lasting attack. Lennart Poettering has been doing it and now he is on the receiving end.
Is the community sick? When friendly banter becomes taunting, it escalates to all sort of nasty things.
Just stop the taunting.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 11:43 UTC (Thu) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]
Mocking other people's opinions about the importance of their project or their politics or whatever may not always be warranted, but it's not in the same category at all as harrassing somebody because of their gender / skin color / etc., or trying to get them fired, let alone death threats.
Taunting...
Posted Oct 9, 2014 16:41 UTC (Thu) by simosx (guest, #24338) [Link]
Yet, you see it happen rather often in the open-source communities.
By letting it pass, taunting can progress and escalate into death threats and what not.
This outcome is hardly surprising.
Individual communities may have a Code of Conduct, but the whole of the FLOSS community does not abide to a Code of Conduct.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 19:38 UTC (Thu) by ssmith32 (subscriber, #72404) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 20:07 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
While there it too much acceptance of bullying instead of civil behavior in our community I don't think we should allow our fight against it to destroy our sense of humor.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 9:50 UTC (Fri) by airlied (subscriber, #9104) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 15:01 UTC (Fri) by wookey (guest, #5501) [Link]
Taunting gone wrong
Posted Oct 11, 2014 9:55 UTC (Sat) by simosx (guest, #24338) [Link]
I think that describes the whole misconception. Just like some people who claim freedom of speech for their personal attacks.
Being _funny_ at the expense of others is not nice. If someone has a real sense of humor, they can safely work on any self-deprecating funny material.
Apparently, the _death threat_ against Lennart Poettering was a comment on IRC about _hiring a hitman_ because that person was annoyed about something. It is quite possible that that person was "being funny".
Just like it is _funny_ when some people shout "I'll kill you" when they are being cut off on the road while driving. Obviously, then do not really mean to kill anyone. However, it's up to interpretation whether those were just venting their frustration or it was an actual death threat.
With some social intelligence, it's possible to feel when someone is overstepping the lines. For those who have trouble realizing those boundaries, they can check-in at a main airport while singing "bomb bomb bomb" over a tune of their choice.
Taunting gone wrong
Posted Oct 11, 2014 12:58 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
As others have pointed out before there was a kickstarter style campaign as well that got taken down later.
Taunting gone wrong
Posted Oct 11, 2014 15:50 UTC (Sat) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
The last refuge of an argument that has totally failed, that it's not technically illegal to say ... 8-)
> Being _funny_ at the expense of others is not nice
That depends on the context, among friends insult-humor is common, the difference with our communities is that this kind of in-group commentary often happens on public mailing lists and not in private as it would in-person. That is some of the heart of this issue, at least where Linus is concerned, the mailing lists are both a public work space for employees at many companies, who prefer civil business-like communication, and the personal living room of the old-timers who act like vikings on occasion.
> With some social intelligence, it's possible to feel when someone is overstepping the lines. For those who have trouble realizing those boundaries, they can check-in at a main airport while singing "bomb bomb bomb" over a tune of their choice.
LOL
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 14, 2014 4:13 UTC (Tue) by liam (subscriber, #84133) [Link]
Mocking other people's opinions about the importance of their project or their politics or whatever may not always be warranted, but it's not in the same category at all as harrassing somebody because of their gender / skin color / etc.,
You're right, such harassment is far more personal.
Let the community off-the-hook
Posted Oct 9, 2014 9:54 UTC (Thu) by alex (subscriber, #1355) [Link]
I was debating this with Steven Rostedt on his G+ posting and I do take his point that lkml has improved on what it was like in the early years. However I think it still has a reputation of being a place where you need to be wearing your asbestos underwear and ready to give back as good as you get in fiery language. And that frankly is a little sad.
Let the community off-the-hook
Posted Oct 9, 2014 13:10 UTC (Thu) by duffy (guest, #31787) [Link]
Let the community off-the-hook
Posted Oct 13, 2014 23:21 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]
Yes, +2. The situation reminds me of Warden's Why nerd culture must die:I’d always hoped we were more virtuous than the mainstream, but it turns out we just didn’t have enough power to cause much harm. Our ingrained sense of victimization has become a perverse justification for bullying. That’s why I’m calling time on nerd culture. It’s done wonderful things, but these days it’s like a crawling horror of a legacy codebase so riddled with problems the only rational decision is to deprecate it and build something better.Bullying indeed.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 10:31 UTC (Thu) by timtas (guest, #2815) [Link]
Otoh, Lennard does invite all the personal attacks himself, as he is constantly attacking other people personally. People that don't like systemd are called dinosaurs and haters exactly by him, just the two most obvious examples.
His complete lack of acknowledgment that his way of communication is often very personally insulting just goes to show what a liar he is and how strongly he suffers from a serious narcistic personality disorder.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 11:55 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
It's funny how people like to claim that Lennart behaves so badly but when asked about concrete examples, one usually finds mostly technical explanations about why some software has to be the way it is or why a proposed change would not work.
But let's assume that there is objectionable behaviour and Lennart calls people who criticize systemd "haters" or "dinosaurs". Well, most people really are. I lost count of how often some systemd flame was based on some experience with Pulseaudio which has nothing whatsoever to do with systemd. How often I've read about ridiculous Red Hat conspiracy theories or about how Lennart personally forces someone to use his software.
Can one really blame Lennart for not correctly identifying the few who honestly try to criticize systemd in a flood of...well haters? "People that don't like systemd" is a good point. "I don't like it" is not valid criticism that one can reason about. It's just plain emotional refusal. There's nothing constructive about that.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 12:20 UTC (Thu) by timtas (guest, #2815) [Link]
But regarding personal attacks in general, he's not the victim, he's the one that started the personal attacks and now he's playing cry-baby.
It's typical of the systemd developer community (e.g. Kay and Lennart) to always blame the other side (need a list of downright sneaky and insulting bug report responses?) and never admit to any own failures and shortcomings, and that's why so many people so strongly oppose to them.
It's the we-are-always-right-and-everybody-else-is-an-idiot attitude of Lennart which gets people so angry. There are very valid concerns about how systemd is developed, about its ever-expanding nature, about it's lock-in agenda to which Lennart even admits to, that will never be appreciated by the opensource community. And there is almost universal agreement that his way of responding to criticism is deeply irritating,
Hence my diagnosis of Narcissistic personality disorder.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 12:30 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
By blaming the victim, you are not only defending the perpetrators, you are supporting their cause and their personal attacks. You are giving them credibility and social support.
You become part of the problem. Do you really want that? Do you wish to be part of a conglomerate of sociopathic individuals? If you really do, then please continue. But I'm convinced that most people really don't and just don't realize what they're doing. I hope that's true for you, too.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 12:42 UTC (Thu) by timtas (guest, #2815) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 12:53 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
No digression whatsoever on his part can justify death threats, calls for cutting his arms off, petitions to get him fired or even the loads of verbal abuse he or Kathy or Jonathan Corbet have to withstand. That would be an eye-for-an-eye reaction and surely we are above that by now?
If Lennart crosses lines, than he may be criticised and I will be the first to join in. But there's a big difference between criticism and abuse and the latter can never ever be regarded as the first. Because using one person's perceived misconduct to justify abuse will always be just that: blaming the victim.
So unless you stop bringing Lennart's behavior into a discussion about the abusive behavior of his haters, I will always call what you do by its name: blaming the victim.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 13:07 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]
Blaming the victim means that you claim that the bad things that happened to the victim are specifically the fault of the victim.
If someone gets beat up at a bar after work, and I said "Why was he such an idiot to go drinking at that bar, it's his fault!" then I'm blaming the victim.
If someone gets beat up at a bar after work and I say "He always was an asshole." Then I'm not blaming the victim, I'm just insulting him at a gauche time.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 13:11 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 13:40 UTC (Thu) by timtas (guest, #2815) [Link]
I THINK THAT DEATH-THREATS AND SUCH ARE TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!!!!!
Got it?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 13:45 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
Just because you mentioned the one tiny bit, doesn't make the rest go away.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 13:55 UTC (Thu) by timtas (guest, #2815) [Link]
DEATH-THREATS AND _SUCH_
Any forms of threateanig physical violence are totally unacceptable because Lennart is only a major, insulting arsehole, but never threatened physical violence on anyone, as far as I know. So I agree with you, totally unacceptable.
Petitions for him to lose his job are also stupid, I'd never sign anything like that. Let him keep his job.
Regarding verbal abuse, that's a difficult subject, it depends how far these verbal abuses go. In my opinion, a lot of what he writes qualifies as personal, verbal abuse as well, so I think he deserves some of that. Just because he packs his insults in decent language doesn't mean it's not deeply insulting.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 14:02 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
Am I reading you correctly? Threats of violence against Lennart are unacceptable _because_ he did not threaten anyone himself? But verbal abuse may be ok, because of insults?
So what if Lennart did threaten someone? Would it then be ok to threaten him? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth? Is this the kind of community you are propagating?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 14:07 UTC (Thu) by timtas (guest, #2815) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 2:13 UTC (Fri) by misc (guest, #73730) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 8:00 UTC (Fri) by edeloget (subscriber, #88392) [Link]
To be even fairer, a large part of Lennart defense - either by him or by some (why do they even exist) fanboy is a simple argument: "you do not criticize <INSERT PRODUCT NAME> because it's technically bad, you criticize it because you dislike Lennart". Which is as abusive as criticizing Lennart in the first place (this is and the too classical "you don't understand <INSERT PRODUCT NAME>, so shut up" or the "You're just a user, you don't have any word to say. Only coders do" which is also kind of wicked (software tend to be used by... well, users I think)).
Some people in the community need to learn how to communicate with other people in a constructive way. Some people need to learn how to listen other people. That's how we're supposed to build both a community and the software this community uses.
Regarding Lennart, and while I don't want to play the victim blaming game, I believe he needs to both learn how to communicate and how to listen others. Part of the bashing he receives (and I agree that it goes far beyond what is acceptable) has roots in his own attitude ; he made himself a very polarizing person - so a good way to help correcting this is also to work on his own behavior if it's not too late.
(I really hope I wrote this correctly ; it's a fine line I'm walking, and I have to say that I don't want to be neither inflamatory nor disrecpectful.)
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 14:42 UTC (Fri) by misc (guest, #73730) [Link]
Because I see him listen to people as much as he can ( unless we suppose that the TODO list of systemd filled itself ), he went to speak and listen to several free software events, and he say in g+ that he did read lots of thread everywhere.
So the whole idea of "he doesn't listen to people" is more a variation of "he didn't do what I suggested at some random place or he disagreed with my vision".
We have bugs rotting in all bug trackers, and no one get called for that, no one say "I am being ignored" despites the fact this happen to everybody on every projects. Or PR, for that matter. yet, when a bug take 8 months to be fixed, people use it as a evidence to confirm their existing bias, applying double standards.
Anyone who think about free software realize that the ratio of people who code on a project vs people who use the project is most of the time very low. So of course, you cannot answer to everybody in a satisfying way for everybody. Yet, people seems to expect that for some reason for systemd.
Since that cannot happen until we start to recruit lots of people doing bug triaging and "customer" services handling, they then just use this fallacy to justify complains about Lennart as if this was different from any others projects. And people who do not want to take side start to think "yeah, maybe there is a middle ground", and just give more force to accusations.
Maybe that's a more general symptom of users/developers communication deficiency in free software, maybe that's just people jumping on the band wagon and not spending time to think about how free software is produced.
But in all case, just saying "he should listen more to users" while there is evidence he does is just propagating vicious memes leading to victim blaming. Sure, you do not want to do that, but that's the beauty of it, it is not sufficient to say "I do not want to do that" for it to not happen, ideas evolves outside of your control once your propagate it.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 16:59 UTC (Thu) by flussence (subscriber, #85566) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 9:05 UTC (Fri) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 11:38 UTC (Fri) by timtas (guest, #2815) [Link]
"Revenge-based society", come on.
I just detest people hitting out at other people and when they're hit back, start crying like little babies: he hit me, he hit me!
I know that you're now going to bring back that I'm in favour of death threats and will ask again for a list of references where Lennart has been personally insulting, but it's useless: You Lennart fanboys are like Apple fanboys or fundamentalistic teligious believers: you've found the right way and no mountain of evidence to the contrary will bring you off your path to the golden future. Walk on!
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 12:30 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
… and no mountain of evidence to the contrary will bring you off your path to the golden future.
“Mountain of evidence”? Come on. “Mountain of unsubstantiated claims” would be more to the point.
As far as the “golden future” is concerned: Systemd is doing fine so far and very likely to be part of all major Linux distributions in due course. There will probably be some problems (there always are) and they will probably be resolved one way or another. There is no need for insults and threats on either side of the debate. Three years from now nobody will remember what all the flap was about.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 18:18 UTC (Thu) by Funcan (subscriber, #44209) [Link]
Looking at a guy with a broken jaw and saying 'he only got punched because he punched the bouncer' is *not* victim blaming to my mind.
Death threats are rarely acceptable.
Petitions for somebody to loose their job are very context sensitive morally (e.g. I've personally called for and actively campaigned for certain politicians to loose their job, and feel I was absolutely morally right to do so), and I'm not aware enough of the context of the calls for Lennart's sacking, so I'll assume they were probably unreasonable until I learn otherwise.
Calls to hack off somebody's hands? That, depending on context is an obvious joke or entirely unreasonable.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 13, 2014 10:57 UTC (Mon) by OdyX (guest, #58768) [Link]
Petitioning to a corporation (which most petitioners are not even clients of) to get someone fired is a totally different thing, to which the only answer I'd expect from said corporation is /dev/null.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Nov 1, 2014 18:32 UTC (Sat) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]
$ find . -mtime -365 -iname "*eich*"
./Brendan Eich "steps down" from Mozilla.html
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 13:55 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 1:21 UTC (Fri) by misc (guest, #73730) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 4:29 UTC (Fri) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]
However the answer to the question, if it was to me, is no.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 2:11 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]
If you want to call him a narcissist, call him a narcissist and expose yourself to the charge of name-calling. Don't dress it up in cod psychology to make yourself look more authoritative.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 13:10 UTC (Thu) by ksandstr (guest, #60862) [Link]
We don't call victim-blaming when someone jumps in front of a speeding car and is then said to have been in a position to prevent himself from being run over, and therefore partially responsible. Even if that someone jumped onto a zebra crossing, and was therefore formally in the right. Cars don't stop on a dime just as there's no way to anger broad swathes of the Linux community without getting flamed to a crisp again and again.
It's the same thing with systemd as it was with Pulseaudio. Lennart uses every shenanigan in the book to push his software through dependency creep, disregarding any technical critique (e.g. the brittleness of the binary logging mechanism, the monolithic IPC architecture and its tendency for becoming wedged, etc.) and especially not giving two fucks that said creep breaks everything it touches outside of the Brave New systemd World. There are good arguments being made that systemd is Red Hat's hostile takeover of the Linux user-space and they are going systematically unreported.
Those who read Lennart's G+ post will have noticed certain other tropes, such as complaining about the "boycott systemd" campaign as though he were entitled to a total absence of criticism. Further there's the populist reference to "white men in their 30s and 40s" in the pejorative sense -- racism and sexism if I ever saw it -- and a pre-emptive refusal of further discussion in the very same article, like a seagull making its mark on a beach. Needless to say, this is not a recipe for a healthy bipartisan discussion; and from the content of this LWN article, Mr. Corbet isn't interested in having one either.
This kind of unquestioning pro-Lennart publicity will only fan the flames further. Mark my words: the Linux community does not take well to having technology dictated to it.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 16:01 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
Cars don't stop on a dime just as there's no way to anger broad swathes of the Linux community without getting flamed to a crisp again and again.
s/broad swathes of/a tiny but vocal minority within/
There. Fixed it for you.
There are good arguments being made that systemd is Red Hat's hostile takeover of the Linux user-space and they are going systematically unreported.
Consider Debian. Debian is not particularly known for adopting sub-standard solutions and, in the absence of any form of leverage, is certainly not susceptible to a “hostile takeover” from Red Hat. Yet still the distribution has decided to go with systemd as their default low-level plumbing on Linux. The technical discussion that led to that decision is publically available for anyone to look at, and while there are still flame wars on some Debian mailing lists, so far there don't seem to be enough Debian developers who are sufficiently unhappy with the pro-systemd decision to start a GR to try and overturn it.
It is worth reiterating that by now the systemd development community includes people from a variety of distributions beside Red Hat, and there is no evidence that systemd and its future directions are especially dominated by Red Hat. If you make claims to the contrary then feel free to produce the allegedly “systematically unreported“ support for them.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 16:25 UTC (Thu) by ksandstr (guest, #60862) [Link]
Secondly, there's no need for leverage over Debian when leverage exists with regard to the upstream packages which Debian distributes and on which all Linux distributions depend. These are components such as udev, udisks, upower, dbus, xorg, policykit, consolekit, the list goes on. As Theodore Y. Ts'o said, ``we have commit privs and you don't''. You'll note that versions of each that bring with them dependencies on Lennartware have been uploaded into unstable, and a reduction of support for systems that don't run either systemd proper in its most recent version, or systemd-shim (which is perpetually behind the curve).
For example the testing package of xfce4-power-manager has been unable to suspend or hibernate systems since June 2014; and cryptsetup's boot script has had significant trouble with boot-time password entry due to systemd influence in console input handling. These things worked before systemd came along, and now they do not. How much more damning could it get?
Moreover, systemd got into Debian during a time when it was marketed as ``just an init system''. You'll agree that it has expanded into taking over the roles of syslog, dhcpcd, pm-utils, network-manager, and that many other functions are still in the pipeline. This is not what Debian voted for in their GR.
Furthermore, the parties whose views are going systematically unreported are of course those that're outside systemd development. (sheesh.) Why would an opponent lend credence to a project s/he opposes, thus furthering its goals of having systemd in every Linux installation and VM instance everywhere? (As evidenced by Lennart's juvenile decrying of Gentoo as ``haters''.)
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 16:45 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
If that's the best you have, that's hardly "damning".
So you've identified two bugs/regressions in the *testing* packages; assuming they have been reported, I'd presume that would get fixed as part of Debian's standard release freeze cycle. Debian has blocked releases for much less.
Meanwhile, if you're unhappy with the quality or quantity of other people's work, you're free to contribute.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 17:14 UTC (Thu) by ksandstr (guest, #60862) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 17:41 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
If there are really so many people who don't like systemd (to avoid more loaded terms), then how is it that all the major Linux distributions have managed to adopt systemd without there being either a massive exodus to distributions like Slackware or else an obvious and popular initiative to produce systemd-free forks of Fedora, openSUSE, or Debian? All of these distributions are freely available, and the “we have commit privs and you don't“ argument doesn't count when everyone is free to make a forked repository where they have commit privileges.
This suggests that people are quick to bitch and moan but not so quick when the time comes to act. If not having systemd on one's system is not important enough to one to actually do the legwork (which is really straightforward compared to many other free-software projects since the required bits and pieces already exist; it's not as if one would have to write sysvinit and a zillion init scripts from scratch) that puts into perspective their complaints of how they're getting screwed over by those people who are in fact prepared to spend their time working on stuff.
There are issues with systemd but there are also people within the systemd community and the various distributions who are committed to getting these issues fixed. In the long run, systemd can only get better at delivering what most Linux users will find useful. It is up to you whether you want to avail yourself of this or whether you prefer to pursue another approach, but please stop complaining that it is all a huge plot to prevent you from having other people work on your behalf, for free, in order to produce the Linux that you want.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 21:46 UTC (Thu) by flussence (subscriber, #85566) [Link]
Where's your facts and figures to support that assertion? I see new recruits on the Gentoo forums every week who straight up cite systemd as their reason for switching. comp.sysutils.supervision.general is quite alive as of late too.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 23:05 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
Well, there are no visible projects aiming for systemd-free versions of the mainstream distributions. For example, for all the heated debate going on around systemd in Debian, no Debian developers have so far resigned in disgust after the decision for systemd. Similarly, it seems to be business as usual with all the other mainstream distributions.
Maybe some people are looking at Gentoo more closely now. If so, more power to them. However the idea that “large swathes” of the Linux community are really opposed to systemd to a point where they seriously consider switching distributions just to avoid it is probably wishful thinking on the part of those who don't like systemd.
FWIW, I teach Linux system administration for a living and thus get to meet rather a lot of Linux sysadmins of various backgrounds in my professional life. I have yet to run into one who didn't think systemd was a good idea and a considerable improvement on the status quo. For many people it comes as a bit of a shock at first but then it grows on them, and the more they find out about it the more they like it.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 20:18 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
Works flawlessly for me in Fedora, so it's not impossible. Maybe there's a bug with Debian or the script?
> Moreover, systemd got into Debian during a time when it was marketed as ``just an init system''. You'll agree that it has expanded into taking over the roles of syslog, dhcpcd, pm-utils, network-manager, and that many other functions are still in the pipeline.
Of those you list, only dhcp (just the client side though IIRC, not dhcp*d*) and networking weren't in systemd already and they had (AFAIR) been announced by that time. My understanding is that for *simple* network solutions, systemd will suffice. If you need bridging, VPN, or anything complicated, use NetworkManager (or the old ifcfg scripts…which still work because I still use them).
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 20, 2014 16:40 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
Debian's version has some extra functionality (keyscripts) that's not supported. It could be reasonably argued that the way it's currently implemented is pretty ugly, although the flipside is that it could be considered simple and not over-engineered.
Last I checked (several weeks ago), it looked like it was going to be hard to find consensus on how to handle it, with discussions on it having petered out. Possibly it's just a case of the discussion having become less visible though.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 20:43 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
[citation needed]
From what I've seen, Lennart does not attack other _people_.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 22:27 UTC (Thu) by dag- (guest, #30207) [Link]
Even worse, Lennart developed Open Source software that Linux distributions started to use. With the result that these people were *forced* into using his pieces of software ! Next to death-wishes some even threatened to switch back to Windows !
Oh, the horror...
PS I support Lennart Poetering, not just because of the surrealism above, but also because he generally is a nice guy. Although I don't agree with the characterization of Linus (also generally a nice guy BTW ;-))
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 23:59 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
Lennart Poettering is one of those rare people who aren't afraid to tackle difficult problems that most folks are way too scared to touch. It is safe to say that the traditional setup (System-V init and friends), after 30 years or so, is no longer adequate – a situation that is usually addressed with the equivalent of band aid and baling wire, and that has been waiting for a long time for somebody to do a radical rethink (incidentally something that most other Unix versions, to various degrees, have done ages ago).
The problem with paradigm shifts of this sort is that there are usually lots of people who are heavily invested in the status quo and hence unwilling to consider alternatives even if they are technically superior. The problems start when (a) most major distributions notice that something like systemd is a good idea and start incorporating it in their setups, and (b) the inventors of the new paradigm are convinced they're doing the Right Thing and don't want to bother with people who disagree, especially when they disagree without proposing compromise solutions (preferably with code). (a) means that people will feel “forced” into using the new software simply by virtue of the fact that their favourite distribution made a (hopefully well-considered) decision to adopt it. They could move over to a different distribution but that would mean work. (b) means that, together with people who bitch and moan as a matter of principle, people with legitimate concerns who did take the trouble to see what the new software would do (or not do) for them can be left out in the cold.
It is generally reasonable advice for people in charge of a free-software project to have meaningful discussions with users who do have legitimate concerns. (There can be little meaningful discussion with people whose main contribution is “This software sucks because I don't like it – even though I never looked at it in detail –, and its developers should go jump in a lake”.) This does not mean that one must bend over backwards to accommodate everybody and their pet problem, but that people on both sides of such a discourse should come away from it with an awareness of each other's point of view and the reasons for it, and a reasonable picture of how to proceed (or a rationale why not to proceed, as the case may be). We have lots of open-source software projects where that sort of approach seems to generally work, and in the long run this will accomplish a lot more than people calling one another “assholes” or collecting money to have somebody killed.
Personally I'm convinced that something like systemd is a wonderful idea in principle. It has great potential to standardise various aspects of Linux that have long been neglected and today are notoriously disparate between distributions. With a software project of systemd's scope, there are bound to be dark corners and places where the initial solutions aren't quite right, and that can prompt people to reject the idea as a whole, which is shortsighted because such issues can be identified and fixed. It would be best if all the name-calling could stop and we could all work together to make systemd into something that the Linux community can stand behind for the next 30 years or so.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 17:44 UTC (Fri) by Jandar (subscriber, #85683) [Link]
Systems's scope is the main problem for many people criticizing it. If systemd's developer would constrain it to an excellent init and service {starter,monitor} most complaints would go away. Why does it have to have a so large scope that in this bundle of solutions (to problems many don't have) there are dark corners and places where the initial solutions aren't quite right?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 12, 2014 6:10 UTC (Sun) by agrover (subscriber, #55381) [Link]
So many things we hold as foundational about Linux/Unix are actually accidents, or bugs-that-became-features. (see /usr -> /home transition, and dotfiles not showing up in ls). The reason that distros keep adopting it is even as new and possibly-buggy-in-corners, it does more, in less code and complexity overall than what it replaces, and if a problem is found it's going to be fixed.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 14, 2014 4:29 UTC (Tue) by ThinkRob (guest, #64513) [Link]
Where I do have a problem is with systemd as a project, particularly with some of the leaders' behavior. The "debug" flag drama was an example of the sort of behavior that I find rather stupid, but more bothersome was the fact that many people from the systemd community (cabal? ;) I'm not sure what the right word is here... camp, maybe?) seemed to see absolutely nothing wrong, and were seemingly confused why Linus would react the way he did. That worries me, as it's indicative of either a rather pervasive arrogance or a rather poor display of leadership from people who should be in a position to ensure that the project "plays nice with others". Neither one seems particularly healthy from a project that the community is supposed to base, well, basically everything on.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 14, 2014 7:55 UTC (Tue) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link]
Not a single time did Kay ever step out of bounds in response ( nor anyone other from the systemd community including Lennart ) in that bug report but the same cannot be said about the kernel developers Borislav Petkov and Steven Rostedt followed by him posting that to lkml with Linus responding way out of line followed by a media storm and his fans shitting all over that bug report as an result of that.
( Kay wanted to move this to the mailinglists for further discussion as he clearly stated in that report)
And to this day I have yet to see the kernel community have an architectural discussion about those *generic* namespace kernel parameters which are open to misinterpretation which is the underlying problem that caused this to begin with and change the name of *their* parameters and fix *their* workflow accordingly since misinterpretation like this was bound to happen eventually and bound to happen again. ( If it had not been systemd it would have been something else)
Apparently it's much easier for the kernel community to play territorial pissing matches, break stuff by hiding it, shit over people in bug reports and mailinglists then there is to have civil discussion and simple add "kernel." in front of those *generic* namespace kernel parameters and adjust their workflow accordingly, thus eliminate the underlying problem *for good* and the shortcomings in their own design and at the same time follow what they preach about fixing problems where they belong.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 14, 2014 8:07 UTC (Tue) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 14, 2014 8:52 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
It can. It just takes preparation and time. ”debug” on the command line isn't one of the most widely used-by-other-software parts of the kernel UI (not ABI as there's nothing “binary” about it) to begin with. It's probably more feasible to change the behaviour of “debug” than it is to change the behaviour of open(2).
Having said that, the original issue was a misunderstanding about what “debug” on the kernel command line actually means. Some people insist that it applies to the kernel only while others claim it applies to other basic system components like plymouth or systemd, too. Since it had never been documented properly it is difficult to figure out who is right and who is wrong here; it does make some sense to be able to tell early-boot software to log debug messages, and possibly to do so using one convenient command line parameter rather than half a dozen. The actual problem at hand started because systemd contained a faulty assertion that caused it to write loads of stuff to the “dmesg” buffer. That assertion was promptly fixed.
Anyway, one interesting observation is that in the bug report we find
Kay, Please go die in a fire along with Lennart. Your type is the cancer that is killing any semblence of usability Linux once had.and
Kay and Lennart: please just go away, disappear from the FOSS community, we don't need you and your crap.and
Hopefully the FOSS community will wake up and eject these fucktards.with nothing remotely similar being said by systemd developers, who remain commendably calm and try to get the discussion back on a technical track. If that is supposed to be an example of how systemd developers are rude and pushy while kernel developers are polite, sensitive and deferential, then there seems to be a bit of cognitive dissonance going on here.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 14, 2014 9:33 UTC (Tue) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]
The kernel command line is absolutely an ABI; it is used not only by humans, but by other programs (bootloaders write it, and userspace programs running on top of the kernel read it). That one of the defined properties of the kernel command line is that it looks like text does not make it cease to be an ABI, any more than the defined inputs or outputs for various nodes in /proc being formatted text makes those not an ABI.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 14, 2014 10:22 UTC (Tue) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link]
Cleaning this up ( yes it's mess not just the generic part ) takes preparation, time and adoption period ( an time where both the new and the old parameters syntax are valid )
Once the kernel community has established clear and well defined kernel command line naming policy and clean things up accordingly it could well decide to declared it as an "ABI" but now it is an complete utter mess.
As things currently stand you cannot see a difference between an kernel command line parameter that is bios related,kernel related, pci related etc. Things are being separate by an underscore, an dot. an minus. o_O
The old ( none existing ) naming scheme might have worked back in the day when there were just 5 kernel parameters and everybody kept a local copy of the kernel man pages in their back pocket for what these meant and what they where supposed to do and where they belong but this is the 21 century and things have considerably grown since then so an clear policy like bios.<foo>, kernel.<foo> pci.<foo> etc is much needed to clearly define which parameter belongs where and to avoid anykind of misinterpretation of those parameters.
If the kernel community does not want to clean this up it should not insult and complain when stuff breaks as an result of that.
This whole "debug drama" would not have taken place if these things had been thoroughly thought through from the beginning but I guess people had better things to do at that time and now it's being indicated that they cannot fix it as an result of that. <sigh>
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 14, 2014 11:18 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
Last time I checked there was no stability promises with regards to the kernel commandline
I don't think there are formal stability promises for anything in the kernel. It's just that the kernel people have a good track record of not changing things without cause, and they're trying to keep things that way.
The kernel command line is an example of what happens if people get to add stuff in an ad-hoc manner and with little regard to present consistency or compatibility down the road. No wonder nobody knows exactly what the “debug” option is supposed to mean when it was probably added at 2am in the morning someday in 1993 to solve some immediate issue and never actually thought through. As far as kernel commandline parameters go, we're now basically stuck with them in the same way that we're stuck with “cut -d“, “awk -F”, and “sort -t”.
Could the “debug drama” have been handled better by everyone concerned? Sure. But piling all the blame on Kay Sievers doesn't do it for me.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 20:32 UTC (Thu) by flussence (subscriber, #85566) [Link]
Without that context, I interpret the second half of that post as a textbook example of strawman fallacy.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 14, 2014 15:48 UTC (Tue) by ThinkRob (guest, #64513) [Link]
> And to this day I have yet to see the kernel community have an architectural discussion about those *generic* namespace kernel parameters which are open to misinterpretation which is the underlying problem that caused this to begin with and change the name of *their* parameters and fix *their* workflow accordingly since misinterpretation like this was bound to happen eventually and bound to happen again. ( If it had not been systemd it would have been something else)
Ok, so you want better naming. Fair enough. (Which, BTW, is what ended up happening, with systemd using a more specific name...)
But like with any API that's been there for a while, there is now an established base of code that depends on certain parameters working in a certain way.
This is where the split in ideology happens.
One side says "we should just start doing things 'the right way' and screw whatever breaks, 'cause it was broken anyways". It seems to me that you're clearly of this mindset, as are many in the systemd community. I understand the appeal, and I too used to be of this mindset.
The other side takes the approach of "here is how people expect it to work, and even if it's not ideal we shouldn't just wholesale break all of their expectations just because we had a better idea". This is where Linus seems to fall. I tend to agree with this more nowadays, having been on the receiving end of one too many "your stuff is now broken 'cause you were doing it 'wrong'" changes, particularly ones where "wrong" meant "not the way I want to do it."
The problem with the first is that very few people can agree on what "the right way" is, so that too ends up in a pissing match. Usually the best politician or the strongest ego wins, and continual battling coupled with CADT means that it becomes very hard to have a system that remains "stable" (in the development/administration sense, not the uptime sense) for more than a couple years.
The problem with the second is that if left unchecked, you wind up with Win32.
Both sides need to be aware of the dangers of their default stance. I've seen awareness of that in the Linux kernel dev. community throughout the years (as evidenced by the many long discussions surrounding various large-scale changes, many of which have been covered here on LWN), but as of yet I've seen precious little awareness of the dangers of the first approach in the systemd community. And *that* is what concerns me.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 14, 2014 17:26 UTC (Tue) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link]
Yes I am of the opinion that things that are broken are supposed to be fixed where they are broken not workaround so if that happens to be systemd then it should be fixed in systemd or if it happens to be the kernel it should be fixed in the kernel.
"The problem with the first is that very few people can agree on what "the right way" is, so that too ends up in a pissing match. Usually the best politician or the strongest ego wins, and continual battling coupled with CADT means that it becomes very hard to have a system that remains "stable" (in the development/administration sense, not the uptime sense) for more than a couple years."
I would argue there are only few areas of stability that actually existing in open source software since the governing mentality is "throw it over the wall and see what sticks" Look at Gnome for example I would argue that it has been in beta state since it got introduced in RHL.
With regards to what concerns you I did not manage to follow what you where referring to as first approach and second half hence I could not put into context so you kinda need to spell it out what actually concerns you.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 14, 2014 20:36 UTC (Tue) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link]
Do you really want that? BTW, I'm absolutely sure that glibc people also can provide a not so little list of misfeatures that won't be missed (and screw those who would miss them)...
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 14, 2014 21:07 UTC (Tue) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link]
If it's broken in the kernel you fix it in the kernel or where else would you have the kernel-to-userland interfaces fixed and the rest you listed there and or wanted to get rid of?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 15, 2014 6:14 UTC (Wed) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]
That said, it's Linus's kernel, and if he decides not to namespace the debug option, then I think that's his prerogative.
PS: It would be kind of nice to have a consistent set of "non-legacy" kernel interfaces (such as you allude to) and an option to disable all the legacy stuff. I wonder how much cleaner & safer software written against such an interface would be.
PPS: Yes, glibc would certainly benefit from removing quite a bit of brainfuck and in cases like gets(3) -- which is not deprecated by LSB, obsoleted by POSIX and removed from C11 -- everyone who do use them should indeed be screwed. But again, wholesale crapectomy would of course be infeasible, unless aiming for a "non-legacy" OS.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 0:56 UTC (Fri) by misc (guest, #73730) [Link]
In the light of this post ( http://seriouspony.com/trouble-at-the-koolaid-point ), it could be seen as just someone trying to rewrite history, like what Andrew Auernheimer did.
Of course, that's maybe not your goal, maybe Lennart did said that and I am just unable to find it, maybe you are just repeating something that you believed to be genuinely true because it came from a credible source or whatever. It is hard to judge on 1 single post.
But yet, saying he suffer from a personality disorder kinda make me think that you are more likely on the trolling and harassment side that a regular person would be.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 0:59 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 3:55 UTC (Fri) by misc (guest, #73730) [Link]
But taking your hint in account, I tried "mezcalero dinosaur -site:lwn.net" and it didn't yield lots of result ( ie, 2 ), and the 2 of them being false positives.
So maybe I did really miss something, but maybe this the same exact problem of having Lennart Poettering being a symbol, like the video of Phil Fish linked around this page ? IE, people made Lennart "internet famous", and some people love to hate him up to the point of repeating facts that cannot be verified ?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 11, 2014 12:26 UTC (Sat) by ms_43 (subscriber, #99293) [Link]
There are of course also pro-systemd trolls posting inflammatory comments and calling people "dinosaurs", but the systemd developers themselves aren't doing that or encouraging it.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 10:44 UTC (Thu) by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375) [Link]
I think that spending more time unpacking the conclusions that Kathi Sierra arrived at in her seriouspony.com/trouble-at-the-koolaid-poing blog post would help too, and to describe a roadmap for not working with individuals who divide communities, for forking without acrimony and to extend the institutional memory so that the situation where a 'weev'-like sociopathic character can't destroy someone and then become feted and rehabilitated and able to return to harm the community that has been home to the prior victim.
I think also that we might consider reading the public components of Lennart Poettering's and Steven Rostedt's interactions over the kernel command-line parameters causing logging filestorms which locked up machines at boot-time -- as this has coloured both of the people involved over what was a technical decision. The two strong characters, plus Linus, are recorded in the bugzilla entries and mailing list posts as failing to find common ground -- are there any lessons to be learned? And can these lessons be discerned without excessive criticism?
Over and above that, it's certainly worth highlighting the goals of working together -- and that the core community gets together for that common purpose. Any discussion of working with people whose unusual skills and lone personal drive inspires them to interact remotely with others of their mindset and calibre should be balanced with a warning that not everyone is like you; any discussion about the skills of software developers will also need to balance the drive to get stuff done -- which has to be strong to risk failing in public -- with the need to act humbly when in the company of other experts. The willingness to write off the time and effort of 'my solution' to pick up and work with someone else's requires a strength of character above mere stubbornness and creative effort, but it's stubbornness that brings the contributor back to her community to keep plugging away with creative effort with the goal of building something great.
It's this latter see-saw balance which can easily fall the wrong way and that, among the multi-faceted gem of the collaborative free and/or open source world, there are many voices adding code changes, many voices adding opinions about the bike-shed colour but, problematically, few setting the tone for how to act humbly while also meeting that strong personal need to contribute.
K3n.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 12:12 UTC (Thu) by samth (guest, #1290) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 12:24 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]
I am sorry that people are disappointed. Let's just say it would have been a lot easier to just let this go by and not say anything.But look: over the years we have built a community that lets many thousands of people from an incredible range of backgrounds work together to build a common resource. It is cooperation and collaboration on an unprecedented scale. In my mind, to paint the whole thing as "quite sick" is simply wrong.
I guess I don't know how many times I could say "yes we need to do better" in the article without burying everything else.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 12:43 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
Calling it "a sick place to be in" is obviously going to far. But that was just a headline. While reading some parts of Lennart's or Kathy's posts, the words seem appropriate though. I understand that you wish to remind of the good parts of the community at the same time. Using those to set standards for _all_ parts of the community would still recognize the accomplishment while making absolutely clear that there are still issues to address.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 14:01 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 16:59 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
I can't say I agree with that.
Maybe now is not the time but I hope at some point you'll give more coverage to the more negative side of the LKML discussion. Rather than acknowledging that we could do better (obvious and always true), it would be nice to hear patterns of what's wrong, and what could be done to make them better.
We're not all saints here.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 18:14 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 18:36 UTC (Thu) by daney (guest, #24551) [Link]
Certainly most of your articles are of a technical nature, and as such are not open to criticism of the type seen here. But when you include what is essentially an editorial comment, I don't think it is unreasonable to expect heated discussions and disagreements with what you are saying.
The people that are mostly in agreement with what you said, probably weren't irked enough to post any responses.
As somewhat of a side note: It seems that some treat victimhood as a binary state. You are either a victim, or you are not. Thus, Blaiming The Victim becomes a black and white issue. In the real world there is sometimes a grey area, and this may produce differences of opinion.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 23:59 UTC (Thu) by samth (guest, #1290) [Link]
More generally, I think the attitude embodied in: "A common response to such a person would be to flame them to a crisp in the hope that they simply go away." is a serious issue. The idea that "flam[ing] to a crisp" is an acceptable and normal way to treat people is the root of the problem here. I realize that this is very much a part of the heritage that the free-software community comes from. But that doesn't make it not a problem, and one that we need to fix. And it's a problem that can't be addressed as long as people like Linus (or many others) continue to behave the way they do.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 3:56 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
This may just be a cultural and generational shift as the younger generation have different social norms than the older one, norms which don't include flaming people on mailing lists.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 4:20 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 4:32 UTC (Fri) by samth (guest, #1290) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 8:51 UTC (Fri) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]
Whenever I see something I find really stupid, I write a long rant about it, then proof-read it, then finally discard my reply.
After that I write (or not, depending on whether I have any input that actually hasn't been repeated 100x already) my real reply and submit that instead.
Works surprisingly well.
Imagine how much calmer mailing list discussion and online forums would be if there was a "Please wait 5 minutes, re-read your post (and the post you reply to), wait 5 minutes more to have the send button activate" policy...
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 18:30 UTC (Fri) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 11, 2014 5:26 UTC (Sat) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link]
And I always wonder whether the editors can see posts that were previewed but not posted..
pretty nice babies, and awful, vile bathwater
Posted Oct 10, 2014 6:17 UTC (Fri) by louie (guest, #3285) [Link]
So, Jon, I hear what you're trying to say, and as I said in a comment above, there is an almost miraculous amount of good in what we, as a community, have done. It can be, I think, positive to talk about what we get right even as we engage in self-criticism about what we get wrong. So you're right to say "hey, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater" - the baby is pretty great! But you have to do the self-criticism. Or to put it another way, the piece seems to be in denial about the state of the bathwater. Let's be clear-the bathwater is very, very dirty, to the point it risks killing the baby. Your comment here doesn't help. As I said above, it is great that we have a community of thousands of people which is often very helpful and constructive, but there is no plausible way you can say those people are "from an incredible range of backgrounds". The vast, vast majority of us are from a very narrow range of backgrounds, hitting most or all of the privileges listed in this article- grew up with computers, great fluency with language, schools with nerdy friends, etc., etc. Not coincidentally, we're also overwhelmingly white and male. This is partially related to various "pipeline" problems, but given how much worse it is in open source than programming at large, it is also almost certainly related to the problems identified by Lennart and others of late. So, I hear you about celebrating what we have done; I do think many (probably including Lennart) have gone too far in implying that there is no value in it. But please, step back and take a more serious, thoughtful look at the shortcomings. The first step towards solving these problems is for leaders like you to be honest with themselves and with others about what the problems are. They run much deeper than this article seems to admit. :/
Sick indeed
Posted Oct 14, 2014 8:15 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]
This is very hard to articulate for me and I hope it comes across. The problem is that our esteemed editor, a well-mannered, educated, white person finds no problems in the LKML community while engaging in uncontroversial projects, and 99% of the time there are no problems. But what drives people away is the 1% of jerky reactions, and they are more visible if they come from the top (i.e. Linus). I've seen healthy dev communities and this is not one of them.It is not surprising that the cadre of LKML regulars (or Linus lieutenants) don't find issue in the community, but I think they are not looking hard enough. Until they have the guts to tell Linus: "Hey boss, this is not a nice way of dealing with people", or do the same with any other devs that are not polite to people, it will continue to be a community of bros with a dominant male and a cadre of lieutenants (which I fear is what they want it to be). There, I said it.
Sick indeed
Posted Oct 14, 2014 9:26 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
It is the leaders of a community who very often set the tone for the rest. If a community leader comes across as an arrogant asshole, this tells other people in the community that (a) it is OK to be an arrogant asshole in that community and (b) this is what the leader does so if you want to be more like him or her then try to emulate that. Conversely, if the leaders emphatically aren't arrogant assholes then that gives the community the required leverage to tell any other arrogant assholes to cut it out.
The problem is that, especially in free-software projects, if the project leaders foster a culture of arrogant assholery it is very difficult for others in the community to tell them to tone it down, since (a) they're usually the ones who first came up with the project and do most of the work, and (b) since they're arrogant assholes they generally don't like to be told how to behave, especially by incompetent wimps who are too stupid to see how the leaders walk on water, and ought to get out of the kitchen if they can't stand the heat. Often the community contains a crowd of sub-assholes who, simply to show off their own prowess at being arrogant assholes, will gang up on and incinerate anyone putting forward the concept that perhaps it might be bad to be an arrogant asshole. This drives away the more reasonable people and thus makes the problem self-reinforcing.
Sick indeed
Posted Oct 14, 2014 10:09 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]
Yes, I suppose that it could be said as simply as "leaders lead", but your analysis is much more interesting.Also, people with status in a community tend to like it that way. In turn this means that they don't see any glaring problems (at least glaring to the rest of the world), even people who emphatically are _not_ assholes, such as our esteemed editor. They tend to rationalize abuse, sometimes as in this case as being something uncommon and due to extraordinary circumstances. But again, this behavior should _not_ be acceptable, even once a month.
Sick indeed
Posted Oct 14, 2014 21:33 UTC (Tue) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]
Quite a number of people have said that to him in a variety of ways. He appears to be impervious.
Just don't invite him to conferences and don't send your patches to him.
Sick indeed
Posted Oct 17, 2014 0:20 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]
1) He's dealing with one of his own lieutenants, who he knows well.
2) His lieutenant is being somewhat of an idiot.
If they aren't true, then he's dealing with someone who has a massively puffed up sense of his own importance. It was put quite well somewhere - if you are a manager in a company, you will have about 10 direct reports. Any more and you're overloaded. Linus has THOUSANDS (okay I exaggerate a little :-) of people who would *like* to be direct reports. And I believe he is on record as saying that he has found in the past it is often useless to ask these people politely to p*** o**. Blunt, cruel language is often his tool of choice because it's the only tool that works. The alternative is the kill-file. And if the guy is a good guy naively trying to short-circuit channels, then the kill-file is the wrong choice ...
Cheers,
Wol
Sick indeed
Posted Oct 17, 2014 4:02 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
Sick indeed
Posted Oct 17, 2014 23:53 UTC (Fri) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]
>
> 1) He's dealing with one of his own lieutenants, who he knows well.
> 2) His lieutenant is being somewhat of an idiot.
Can you provide a single example when this is the case?
Also "being ... an idiot" is a somewhat pejorative term and quite unlikely for so-called "lieutenants". "Mistaken", "Misinformed", "Careless" are all quite likely. Whether such behaviour deserves such treatment is, I guess, a matter of opinion.
The most recent example cringe-worthy behaviour from Linus that I have seen was his first line in
https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/9/29/824
That is certainly not a aggressive as some, but it made be cringe, was not aimed at a "Lieutenant" (as I would use the word) and was not a case of idiocy on the developer's part.
Sick indeed
Posted Oct 18, 2014 0:18 UTC (Sat) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
That is certainly not a aggressive as some, but it made be cringe, was not aimed at a "Lieutenant" (as I would use the word) and was not a case of idiocy on the developer's part.
It's also an example of the “I'm right, you're wrong, go away“ attitude so often ascribed to Lennart Poettering.
Sick indeed
Posted Nov 2, 2014 1:52 UTC (Sun) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]
What in the world does his skin color have to do with anything? Why is it in vogue to make everything an issue of skin color? Skin color was less of an issue 20 years ago than it is today! Racism won't die because people won't let it!
Sick indeed
Posted Nov 2, 2014 12:16 UTC (Sun) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
Sick indeed
Posted Nov 3, 2014 23:23 UTC (Mon) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 12:25 UTC (Thu) by timtas (guest, #2815) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 2:08 UTC (Fri) by misc (guest, #73730) [Link]
Are you trying to just convince people there is a problem with Lennart just by repeating baseless accusations, hoping that since everybody say it, it must be true ?
As that's one of the method discussed on the quoted article of Kathy Sierra, that would be a bit unfortunate to not realize that maybe you are playing the game that a potential sociopath want you to play. If you pride yourself to be technical, maybe you could then give facts rather than just repeating rumors, because this make you feel good.
For example, showing someone having a bad effect on community by pointing how that person is mimicing Lennart behavior, since that's the whole point of his post, and you think he should take responsibility for that. Also, pointing where he do that, and since everybody repeat it, it shouldn't be hard to find at least 5 or 6 occurrences, as you are for sure not basing your perception on this one bad day where someone was tired and said something a bit more harsh than usual.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 13, 2014 12:24 UTC (Mon) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
Now Lennart is the archetypal example of coder prima dona who does not bother to be polite and will ruthlessly trample over other people feelings if he thinks he is technically right. That is why he generates such feelings even in "normal" people, nothing more, nothing less.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 13, 2014 13:43 UTC (Mon) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link]
Now Lennart is the archetypal example of coder prima dona who does not bother to be polite and will ruthlessly trample over other people feelings if he thinks he is technically right.Please provide links to back this, it's an empty accusation.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 13, 2014 16:12 UTC (Mon) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
But, you already knew all that, and I have better ways to spend my time than arguing with a fan club. misc wrote a reasonable message, I answered it, that's enough as far as I am concerned.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 13, 2014 17:48 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 13, 2014 18:00 UTC (Mon) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 13, 2014 18:56 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 13, 2014 19:01 UTC (Mon) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]
There's a difference between thinking that their choices were right and being unwilling to consider that they may be wrong.
good programmers, and especially good project leaders need to be open to the possibility that they may be wrong and listen to feedback.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 13, 2014 19:05 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Sure and systemd has changed a lot based on external input. Abstract conversations OTOH don't accomplish much.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 13, 2014 19:52 UTC (Mon) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link]
As far as I know it was not a sole decision made Lennart so it would be good if you could actually reference that discussion when he declares that.
You need to be a bit more spesific what you mean by "json is gone in systemd without any apology"
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 14, 2014 12:53 UTC (Tue) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 14, 2014 13:33 UTC (Tue) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 20:11 UTC (Thu) by flussence (subscriber, #85566) [Link]
There's evidently been no attempt to fix the underlying bad attitude in the few years that've passed. What surprises me is that it's taken this long for a major backlash to happen.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 20:16 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 17, 2014 17:06 UTC (Fri) by flussence (subscriber, #85566) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 17, 2014 18:16 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
I require that you also affirm that you will defend "LP and his lackeys" as you call them in the future if you see anyone making a similar unsubstantiated claim of abuse and actively deflate the meme that "LP and his lackeys" are extraordinarily abusive. If you can't affirm to do that in the future and if you choose to stand silently by while the meme continues to spread you are still complicit in helping spread it with your mistake here. It's like lighting a fire and saying you're sorry, admitting you set the fire but still standing there watching it burn a house down. Time for you to pick up a bucket of water and do help put the fire out.
Oh and stop calling other developers lackeys. That'd be pretty good too.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 13, 2014 13:48 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
Now Lennart is the archetypal example of coder prima dona who does not bother to be polite and will ruthlessly trample over other people feelings if he thinks he is technically right. That is why he generates such feelings even in "normal" people, nothing more, nothing less.
I don't think that this is actually the case. People don't seem to mind being treated the same way by Linus Torvalds and other icons of the community who are just as unwilling to suffer fools gladly. It also seems to be difficult to actually come up with concrete examples where Lennart Poettering was really rude (ruder than, e.g., someone like Linus would be) to somebody on a systemd mailing list. Which does not detract from the fact that it is a convenient meme to circle the wagons around even if there is no actual proof, and so it gets trotted out over and over again. Now as a matter of principle it would be great if on the whole there was more politeness around but if you think Lennart Poettering is rude then I would recommend you stay very far away from the likes of DJB or Theo de Raadt. In addition, there are people in systemd development who are way less abrasive, and while Lennart P is getting his attitude adjusted (or not) it might make sense to talk to them instead.
The main problem many people seem to have with Lennart Poettering is that he had the chutzpah to write PulseAudio and then not to bend over backward in order to clean up or work around other people's shit (such as bugs in other people's ALSA drivers). This attitude together with the fact that some distributions shipped PulseAudio while it was quite new and the bugs in the ALSA drivers in question had not yet been fixed gave him a bad reputation that was, if anything, only partially deserved, but is still good enough for “Lennart broke our systems with PulseAudio and is now going to break them again with systemd”.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 13, 2014 14:41 UTC (Mon) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link]
One thing that those cyberbully's need to start understanding is that Lennart is and never has been acting alone but I guess it's easier for them to single out and attack one individual from within group of developers or a community regardless if he had any saying or doing or involvement in whatever they are trying to blame/frame him for, than the entire group or the community itself.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 18:04 UTC (Fri) by Tet (subscriber, #5433) [Link]
a true friend has to be willing to admit when there's a serious problemAgreed. But in this instance, I think Jonathan's got it right. There isn't a serious problem. A minor one? Maybe. But there really isn't anything major here.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 18:10 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
https://lwn.net/Articles/417952/
If you look further, you can find a lot of examples.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 12:40 UTC (Thu) by fb (guest, #53265) [Link]
The fact that there are relatively less women working as software engineers in FOSS jobs than 'proprietary software' jobs seems to corroborate the conclusions of my anecdotal experience.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 12:47 UTC (Thu) by timtas (guest, #2815) [Link]
It's so bleeding obvious why Lennart now comes out in a direct attack on Linus Torvalds: Back in April, Kay Sieverts was harshly told off at the kernel mailing list for refusing to fix a bug in systemd regarding the handling of the debug parameter that is used by the kernel. Since then, there seem to have been no further attempts to include kdbus into the kernel, so this must have really got on their backs.
And i an interview a few weeks ago, when questioned about systemd, Linus actually defended it, but claimed that the problem with systemd is mainly Kay's and Lennart's attitude towards criticism and bug reports.
So now, Lennart's hitting back. Very cheap and dull.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 13:57 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 15:50 UTC (Thu) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]
Please watch this video... starting around 14:37:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PmHRSeA2c8
I can tell you I wasn't happy with Linus' answer and quite a few people within the Debian community weren't (I'm in Fedora land just for clarification). Of course Jon gave a lot more background (that unfortunately Linus didn't go into in his response) so I understand better. Linus wasn't wrong in his goal for telling the guy off... but the way he did it left a bit to be desired and it is certainly worthy of criticism. At the very least Lennart isn't the only person bringing this up and in no way making it up... just because you can't seem to find it in a search.
Regarding Lennart's approach to disagreeing with people... I think the vast majority of his comments are technical in nature... and it is just a human flaw that he throws in a snarky comment every once in a while. I myself have a sense of humor that is often misunderstood... I say something trying to make a joke and lighten something up... and sometimes it works but sometimes it comes off completely the opposite way. I think that is sometimes what Lennart is doing when he is snarky. Unfortunately language barriers sometimes add to the miscommunication.
I don't excuse bad behavior and I think there has been quite a bit of that on all sides. The main point here is that if you disagree with the argument methodology (name calling, being disrespectful, whatever) you don't use the same methodology in response.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 15:52 UTC (Thu) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]
You don't fight fire-with-fire and expect good results. You fight fire with a fire extinguisher... and like... put out the fire. Those who think an eye for an eye or whatever are just going to increase the size of the fail.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 16:11 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
I highly doubt these events listed are related in any way.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 20:22 UTC (Thu) by mrshiny (subscriber, #4266) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 13:26 UTC (Thu) by gb (subscriber, #58328) [Link]
If community is such an awful place - why not leave it and find some 'good' community, there everyone is polite, friendly, sun shines all day round, and no need to deal with 'assholes' and all this 'shit'?
This Poettering even more dangerous for the Linux. First he targeted key Linux components and replaced them with something completely new and certainly non-UNIX way things. Now he targets the community and leaders of the community in attempt to prove that key persons are assholes. Guys, community should work on technical issues and don't focus on personal relations. Focus on personal relations very dangerous and can destroy whole system.
Assholes or ideal or not, but system were made by great involvement of this people and it happened _only_ because of their involvement.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 13:31 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 13:54 UTC (Thu) by gb (subscriber, #58328) [Link]
1. change you to fit;
2. change place to fit you;
3. find other place.
He is not going to do (1), and actively attempting to do (2). The consequences of (2) are actually undefined. Yes, may be community will become better place. But also it may be that it will become hollow empty place, so it is very dangerous.
(3) is not bad at all - you just join new place there people are thinking in the same way as you. And stop wasting the time in discussion of the 'obvious' things. Everyone happy - you, new place, old place.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 13:59 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
Except for the next victim. Or do you think that if the abusers win and Lennart leaves the community that they will quietly go back to whatever else they like to do? That they will not feel confirmed in the behavior and look for a new target to vent their anger at?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 14:12 UTC (Thu) by gb (subscriber, #58328) [Link]
And I could see it that victim is actually Linus and community in this case.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 14:20 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
And what do you call people who's funniest idea for a "joke" is suggesting to pool bitcoins to hire a hitman or to quote "cut his hands, so he will not be able to write any new line of code". Mind you that there was not a single smiley, grin, "but seriously" or any other indication that this was spoken in jest. It's just an interpretation that this was a joke. But regardless of that, I'd go forward to call such people "assholes". They clearly fit the definition.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 18:26 UTC (Thu) by gb (subscriber, #58328) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 1:02 UTC (Fri) by misc (guest, #73730) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 14:39 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
Now he targets the community and leaders of the community in attempt to prove that key persons are assholes. Guys, community should work on technical issues and don't focus on personal relations.
This comes after literally years of people trying to convince us over and over again that Lennart Poettering is an asshole. What an insight.
I'm not really happy with Lennart's post either. It is clear that there is a serious problem but I don't think that Linus or the LKML crowd are directly to blame for the situation with systemd, Lennart Poettering's death threats etc. As such it is a bit of a cheap shot, especially since Lennart himself can be pretty abrasive if he wants to. Nobody in that discussion should be too eager to cast the first stone.
The sad thing is that something like systemd is urgently needed and there is nothing remotely similar around that has a more congenial developer community. The situation is not unlike the one before Postfix came out, when qmail was the go-to MTA but its developer community was a tornado compared to systemd's gentle summer breeze. The facts that Postfix was a lot less “my way or the highway” and Wietse Venema's crowd was a lot easier to get along with (not to mention the obvious difference between Wietse and DJB in the arrogance department) probably played a large role in Postfix's subsequent rise and qmail's descent into near-obscurity.
As long as nobody of Wietse Venema calibre steps up and delights us with a Postfix to systemd's qmail (and note that Postfix does what qmail does and then some, so simply forking systemd and leaving unwanted stuff out probably won't cut it) we seem to be stuck with systemd and its community. In the meantime it would probably be a lot better for everybody concerned if the general atmosphere around systemd could improve. That would include stopping the gratuitous “systemd sucks because it's not Unix and I don't like it” prayer mills as well as actively looking for reasonable cooperation and compromise on both sides in areas where systemd could be more accommodating without sacrificing technical excellence (the journald vs. rsyslog issue comes to mind).
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 12, 2014 6:26 UTC (Sun) by agrover (subscriber, #55381) [Link]
It'll be lot easier for an alternative to arise now that an initial implementation has defined what the requirements really are. Indeed, having at least two alternatives for every software niche in the FOSS world seems very common. I'm sure we all could think of many examples.
I wouldn't be surprised if in 3-5 years there was a credible alternative. Either because of a disagreement with development philosophy, or license, or personality clash, or implementation language, or just because somebody got bored.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 1:14 UTC (Fri) by misc (guest, #73730) [Link]
The same "why is this person still working for $employer/$industry_field" ( which is mostly a attempt to use anchoring effect )
The same "but this single person by his action is destroying completely a multi million dollar industry" ( because yes, free software and linux can be considered as such given how many people are paid to work on it, etc ), which is a bit hyperbolic, and if 1 person could destroy a industry this big, we would have enough example.
The same "if you do not like, leave it" argument.
The only innovation is the appeal to dogma ( the old "non unix way"trick ), and the tentative of ignoring that a community is about people, not code. Sure, it may make you uncomfortable to confront the fact that there is more than technical discussions, but that's not by burying the head in the sand that you will make problems go away.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 13:27 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
To all involved in this discussion, please take the 19 minutes to watch it.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 14:29 UTC (Thu) by alex (subscriber, #1355) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 4:12 UTC (Fri) by misc (guest, #73730) [Link]
Phil Fish is being called arrogant, like Lennart is.
The whole fact that people complain about pulseaudio bugs and the fact that systemd is held to a higher standard than all others software ( like "not enough documentation", or "moving too fast and not having stable internals", or "not respecting some unix dogma", stuff we never criticized on lots of others stuff )which parallel the complains about tigsource and unfinished games.
The meme that Lennart should not be able to decide, despites the fact that distribution did adopt systemd, kinda like they speak of Nickelback and the fact that people do listen to the band.
The whole part about press too, since there is part of the press that blow stuff out of proportion ( and also for Linus, or any others topics ). I guess I do not need to direct people to Phoronix who push 1 article per week ( which is in itself likely what people want to read since they comment a lot ).
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 15, 2014 15:45 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
glibc gets this right. I'm not so sure about systemd, though it seems to be calming down a bit.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 14:53 UTC (Thu) by mirabilos (subscriber, #84359) [Link]
“You know, a good friend is someone who you can be silent with, while being happy together. One whom you can insult, be it in jest or in anger, and still stay friends.”
Debian is a bit like a school class, in which one is bullied. Funnily enough, today’s making me aware of Poettering’s post makes me think he’s behind Debian’s CoC, which clearly is a weapon of a majority too.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 14:54 UTC (Thu) by diederich (subscriber, #26007) [Link]
Mr. Poettering mentioning Linus in his post is, I think, very relevant. In many ways, Linus is an archetype. I think he's pretty awesome, but there's room for improvement, and when one is in such a position as Linus, the faults get greatly magnified.
In short, in my opinion, Linus should hold himself to a rigorous standard simply because he is, whether he wants it or not, one of the most central leaders in our community.
I'll also note that his use of abusive language has definitely waned over the years, and that's very good.
Finally, before I get to my main point, I absolutely don't expect anyone to be perfect. Ideally, people who do make mistakes should try to fix them.
"Of course, I'd also suggest that whoever was the genius who thought it was a good idea to read things ONE FCKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte should be retroactively aborted. Who the fck does idiotic things like that? How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?
Linus"
This is verbal abuse. Full stop.
In our community, verbal abuse is never a required or necessary tactic.
In our community, verbal abuse should always to be avoided.
When verbal abuse happens for whatever reason, the person who did it should retract it.
Verbal abuse harms our community more than it helps.
I defended many of these points in my Hacker News comments, but I have neither the time nor energy to do that again here.
These are my opinions; I am open to being wrong about them.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 16:18 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 17:47 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 16:43 UTC (Thu) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]
Meh, I read it as just a rant about a very stupid design decision... If he had named a particular person and was really calling directly for them to be "retroactively aborted", then it would be different... But, as it is, he's just attacking an unidentified and unknown straw-author, which is really just a way of attacking the design decision itself... Literally every programmer I've ever known, including myself, has gone off on a rant just like that about some stupid design horror or another... You don't know who is really responsible for it, but you hyperbolically wish them to suffer unspeakable punishment in retaliation for their anonymous stupidity... It's not meant seriously, nor is it really aimed at any real person, just the stupid design itself... It's completely different when you know who is responsible, and you call them out by name and say such things directly aimed at them! Then, it's very likely verbal abuse... But, here, I can't really see it as anything other than attacking an anthropomorphism of a stupid design...
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 5:04 UTC (Fri) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link]
Linus seems to have said that he believes his use of language is justified and correct, and any problems are at audience's end. This is a point that one can debate. I can not see any general solution to problems of miscommunication -- sometimes the speaker was unclear, sometimes the receiver imposed meaning that was not correct.
This society seems to favor the idea that speaker must always be very careful and if words are misunderstood, it is the speaker's responsibility. It is probably appropriate in mass media situation where there is one speaker and millions of receivers, and such messages must be crafted with care. On the other hand, human social behavior in a mailing list -- while technically viewable to public -- is hardly the sort of public broadcast where utmost care is required.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 5:07 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 11:12 UTC (Fri) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]
But, of whom? An anonymous person? I still maintain it's just abuse of a personification of bad code... The target of the attack isn't a real person, but the stupid coding design... I'm not sure I'm worried about code being verbally abused... Lord knows I've cursed out my fair share over the decades!
I see what he said there to be roughly the same as saying, "Who was the moron who thought gets() was a great function to include in the standard library?? I hope whoever they are, they get eaten by wolves!"... It's not really attacking any real person; it's inventing an imaginary person which personifies the bad code in question and attacking that, and doing so in an obviously hyperbolic and non-serious manner...
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 13:35 UTC (Thu) by ksandstr (guest, #60862) [Link]
Sheesh. Would a spot of medium-awareness inflame your haemorrhoids?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 16:26 UTC (Fri) by tbird20d (subscriber, #1901) [Link]
This is verbal abuse. Full stop.This begs the question of whether there can be abuse without an actual person being the target of the words conveyed. Linus' 2012 rant was about some anonymous person. It was not directed at Kay. Kay understood this and participated in the humor - see https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/7/80. In context, this doesn't look like abuse at all, just colorful language relating to bad code.
I think you're going to have a hard time finding anyone who this was actually e-mailed to who took any offense to it.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 15:55 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]
That said, I cannot think of another major developer in the Linux milieu whose design and implementations I like less, and I am not especially subdued about it when the topic comes up.
*That* said, the idea of *threatening* him has never even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind; I'm simply disappointed that so many release designers have drunk his Flavor-Aid that his (IMNSHO) poorly designed replacements for perfectly serviceable working code are now effectively impossible to avoid, unless you have the labor to build your own distro from scratch *and manage an entire package repo*.
But that's a technical judgement. No part of it is a threat.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 16:46 UTC (Thu) by jackb (guest, #41909) [Link]
The Kathy Sierra post was surprisingly insightful in that she identified the actual culprits (sociopaths) and how they are skilled at mobilizing well-intentioned mobs for their own purposes.
This is the entire history of human society, basically.
A good starting point toward to a better community is to recognize that the problem starts and ends with sociopaths, and that sociopaths come in all races and genders, and resist the temptation to get deflected into pointless conversations about those subjects which only draws attention away from where it should be.
It's not an easy problem to solve, however. Historically, standing up to sociopaths was not a successful strategy for passing on genes so natural selection has given us a deep aversion to doing so.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 5:41 UTC (Fri) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]
However, those people typically are not that careful at protecting their anonymity and quick search by IP or email reveals a lot. So some activists have found that by spending little efforts they can find the haters real names etc. Then they just publishing all they found. In most cases this alone is enough to silence the attacks. It also helps to state that all collected information can be used, say, for police investigation of threats.
If one consistently do that with any attacks early on, it will stop the future hatred.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 9:21 UTC (Fri) by palmer_eldritch (guest, #95160) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 9:38 UTC (Fri) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 13:53 UTC (Thu) by ksandstr (guest, #60862) [Link]
A problem with Kathy Sierra's post is that it persists with scapegoating Andrew "weev" Auernheimer without providing any primary evidence whatsoever. Indeed along the same narrative we have quite a few articles (e.g. in the New York Times) calling him basically anything and everything on account of the media zeitgeist having been on his back since the non-hack that made a public fool out of Apple and AT&T.
To contrast we have this <URL:https://weev.livejournal.com/409913.html> straight from the horse's mouth. Yet no-one seems to care that the whipping-boy du jour has anything to say for himself, like a medieval witch trial where the accused's complaint is regarded only as further evidence against them. Instead there are claims of sociopathy to seemingly pre-empt anything he might have to say: "he's clearly just manipulating you! you're an useful fool, a willing sockpuppet!"; and appeals to grave subjective terror for which no criminal investigation has occurred, no arrests have been made, no charges pressed, and certainly no convictions passed. Certainly if the police were systematically incapable and/or in cahoots with "trolls"... but this outcome also results when there's no crime at all, such as when it is merely an obsession by a prominent blogger.
This certainly seems like an instance of the bizarre American victim-venerating culture which, perversely enough, genuinely victimizes those whom the prominent victim-roles wish to destroy. These are hit-pieces and nothing more.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 14:13 UTC (Thu) by jackb (guest, #41909) [Link]
I don't know whether weev is or is not a sociopath, or even if Kathy Sierra is or is not a sociopath.
I'm encouraged by the fact that the public discussion is moving in a more productive direction.
Once we generally realize that to solve solve societal problems we need tools to detect and avoid sociopaths, that mere realization is a significant improvement.
some people just need to move on
Posted Oct 9, 2014 16:51 UTC (Thu) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]
it would be hugely beneficial for linus and lennart to both take some time off from linux work. i don't believe no one else is qualified. let someone else drive for a while. shaking up the roster would dislodge the notion that kernel development is a cabal of touchy, cranky old boys
in my mind the freebsd model is much better here - a governing board that has a set term limit. new blood comes in to the system and breaks down entrenched barriers.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 9, 2014 19:16 UTC (Thu) by pierotimo (subscriber, #84525) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 7:30 UTC (Fri) by speedster1 (guest, #8143) [Link]
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/trolls-will-always-win/
On technological change
Posted Oct 10, 2014 9:18 UTC (Fri) by Seegras (guest, #20463) [Link]
In the beginning, I hadn't those new-fangled SysV initscripts. Everything went into my rc-script and all was good. But then came SysV, with all these scripts and even worse, that not-really-unix-but-Sun-way of calling scripts that call scripts that source other scripts. Of course there's a reason for it, and that is the package system. You want every package to be able to provide its own startup script. And you don't want every one of those to copy general methods, hence the calling and sourcing of other scripts. In the end I learned to cope with it. The system was clearly better suited for running systems that sport a package-management than the original BSD init.
Then there came some other init systems, either used complementary, such a supervisor, or on different systems, such as upstart on Ubuntu or launchd on MacOS X. Also clearly, they addressed shortcomings of the SysV init, like the unparalleled (sic!) slowness of the startup, or the fact that it was unclear to the system whether a process was really running and so on. I even tried initng and runit. It was clear, SysV needed to be replaced, at least on workstations and especially portable computers of all kind (for servers, it only became clear later (to me), when they also started to get hot-plug hardware and such).
Then came systemd. I mostly ignored it, wasn't really interested in it (just another upstart ;)), until Debian started looking into it. Well, they decided on it. And the point is, I trust Debian very much to make the right decision. For me, they've proven it time and again. From the package management to the DFSG, they just usually do the right thing.
Now I've got three of my four systems running with systemd, and they've each posed its own set of challenges. One needed a serial console. The other had initially no cgroups in the kernel (yes, systemd does not take that lightly, at least all mounts of encrypted filesystems will fail). And another still starts all kinds of garbage at startup, which I want on my system but no usually started. But I've now written my first .service file, and I'm starting to comprehend how systemd works. It has its kinks, but I think it _can_ be better than most of the other systems; it has room to the top, where most of the others already hit the ceiling.
Anyway. The point I actually want to make is that when some die-hard old unix nut can cope with changes from BSD init to systemd, I can only surmise that people grown up with upstart now crying against systemd haven't somehow learned that the world (including the unix or the open source world) constantly changes, and we have to adapt to it. And if you really don't like what your software is doing or where it's going, either get involved (and that means coding and participation, not ranting on forums and mailinglists), or there's boots.
My boots are made for walking.
I've walked away from Windows (3.11, good riddance, and to all the other crap Microsoft made later on), and I've walked away from closed source Unix, DLD, and Slackware, and SuSE and RPM-based distros, and sendmail, and qmail, and NCSA-httpd, and fvwm, and Gnome and hundreds of applications thet were useful at one point in time. I don't hate them (well, except maybe these abominations from Microsoft), and I don't need to go on spewing vitriol against them. Usually they just don't concern me. If you really don't like the "non-unix" way of systemd (why do you even accept SysV then?), why don't you try a different linux distro? Or *BSD?
On technological change
Posted Oct 16, 2014 13:58 UTC (Thu) by ksandstr (guest, #60862) [Link]
The "sysvinit is teh sl0wz" argument hasn't held water since the time when it started being made.
On technological change
Posted Oct 16, 2014 16:09 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
System-V init can indeed be made quite fast but that doesn't detract from the fact that it sucks rocks through a thin straw in a variety of other respects, many of which are solved by systemd.
systemd's unique benefits (if any)
Posted Oct 16, 2014 17:01 UTC (Thu) by ksandstr (guest, #60862) [Link]
The article you link doesn't seem to highlight any other issue besides perceived slowness which is addressed therein by read-ahead optimizations and "doing significant damage to X", and delays experienced while loading kernel modules through a script. Could you explain which of these problems is soluble in systemd's model in such a way that cannot be achieved with a dependency-ordered sysvinit script, please? I'd also appreciate a pointer to what direction the experimentation with regard to X ended up taking, as it's been six years since that article was researched and written.
systemd's unique benefits (if any)
Posted Oct 16, 2014 17:27 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
Could you explain which of these problems is soluble in systemd's model in such a way that cannot be achieved with a dependency-ordered sysvinit script, please?
The important issues with sysvinit that systemd addresses don't really have a lot to do with speed; that systemd allows many systems to boot faster than before is a side benefit.
For example, there is that thing where sysvinit is unable to keep track of whether a service actually keeps running once it has been launched. The init script may return without an error but you still can't be sure that the service was in fact started successfully. Then there is that thing where systemd manages to figure out many if not most dependencies between services by itself, where sysvinit relies completely on error-prone explicit dependencies that a distribution maintainer needs to put in by hand. And so on. These are the issues that systemd is really about, not the speed of the boot process.
systemd's unique benefits (if any)
Posted Oct 16, 2014 18:44 UTC (Thu) by ksandstr (guest, #60862) [Link]
>The init script may return without an error but you still can't be sure that the service was in fact started successfully.
Not from any indication of the script itself, no. However a quick `pidof` and a check of the PID file dropped by start-stop-daemon (or the service process itself) should reveal whether the process is up or not, which is all that systemd's "hey I'm up" library call does. (As implementation goes, meta-data to provide for such a function could easily be carried in init.d scripts, just as dependency information is.)
That's to say, the guarantee of service up-ness provided by a process' continued presence is a slim one given failure cases besides the ones that cause a process to disappear outright. For example in a network server that spawns child processes to handle client connections there may be a systemic failure that prevents client interactions altogether but not startup of the parent. Failures in this spectrum will not be thoroughly revealed by any mechanism short of per-application querying to the full breadth of its functionality.
So I'm not counting this as unique to systemd's architecture, nor as a (r/)evolutionarily useful feature.
>Then there is that thing where systemd manages to figure out many if not most dependencies between services by itself, where sysvinit relies completely on error-prone explicit dependencies that a distribution maintainer needs to put in by hand.
This only exchanges one category of failure (insufficient maintainer diligence) for another (software-induced lossage). I'd tend to prefer the former since the correctness of the latter should ideally be proven for all possible sets of dependencies whereas the former need only be correct for one initscript at a time.
Furthermore I'm suspicious that systemd's mechanism won't cover all possible dependencies between initscripts, leading to a situation where there's a (potentially crusty, brittle, and/or legacy-saddled) magic algorithm, a set of hand-crafted dependencies, and a policy for combining the two into something that the startup function can actually execute. If nothing else this conflicts with the ideal of parsimony in design; especially since the dependency list could be generated ahead of time (e.g. by the package maintainer) with a tool that's equivalent to systemd's magic, and then stored in place of existing metadata.
Compared to the lossage that systemd's growth of accessory dependencies and their expansion is causing, it's still my opinion that Debian's switch to systemd and packages depending on it is a grand mistake.
systemd's unique benefits (if any)
Posted Oct 16, 2014 19:15 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]
History has shown that "could easily" doesn't quite work out so well, and pidfiles are not something that can be relied on.
And systemd's "hey, I'm up" library call uses linux's cgroups to definitively state whether or not a process and anything it's forked are still running. It's a completely reliable mechanism that doesn't require knowledge of process names and a gajillion scripts and daemons and whatnot to get things perfectly correct each and every time. (Hate to state the obvious, but they don't)
> This only exchanges one category of failure (insufficient maintainer diligence) for another (software-induced lossage). I'd tend to prefer the former since the correctness of the latter should ideally be proven for all possible sets of dependencies whereas the former need only be correct for one initscript at a time.
Wait, you say you prefer the former, because... the latter is superior?
Experience has also shown that the former tends to crop up far more often than the latter, unless you're counting "insufficient maintainer diligence" to be a "software-induced lossage" too.
Incidentally, the latter is precisely what systemd and its unit files provide: provably correct dependencies, performed in one place rather than needing to be re-implemented in shell by every single script.
> Furthermore I'm suspicious that systemd's mechanism won't cover all possible dependencies between initscripts, leading to a situation where there's a (potentially crusty, brittle, and/or legacy-saddled) magic algorithm, a set of hand-crafted dependencies, and a policy for combining the two into something that the startup function can actually execute.
Any problem that could throw off systemd would also throw off any other system that uses static dependency trees, yes, including sysvinit. Barring that, if there's some real-world thing that systemd's dependency mechanisms can't handle, I don't think I'm going out on a limb by saying that the systemd folks would love to hear about it. (When you consider that you can generate unit files on the fly to create dynamic dependency trees, systemd is *much* more capable of dealing with those crusty, magic, phase-of-the-moon sequencing tasks)
> If nothing else this conflicts with the ideal of parsimony in design; especially since the dependency list could be generated ahead of time (e.g. by the package maintainer) with a tool that's equivalent to systemd's magic, and then stored in place of existing metadata.
That's such a good idea that someone already did it -- it's called a systemd unit file. Seriously, you're arguing for a design that systemd already implements, and quite well at that.
systemd's unique benefits (if any)
Posted Oct 16, 2014 20:16 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
However a quick `pidof` and a check of the PID file dropped by start-stop-daemon (or the service process itself) should reveal whether the process is up or not, which is all that systemd's "hey I'm up" library call does.
pidof and PID files can have nasty race conditions, and in particular you can't really trust a PID file from start-stop-daemon (this is documented as a last-resort type of approach for services which don't write their own PID files, and even if they do it's a haphazard thing because you can't rely on the PID file to go away when the service does etc. etc.)
On the other hand, the mechanisms systemd uses to find out that a service process has terminated are a lot more robust. Note that the usual method to start a service in the background with sysvinit is for the service process to be launched from an init script, and to double-fork so that it is adopted by PID 1, at which point PID 1 has no idea what the process is or where it came from. With systemd, PID 1 can start a service process directly within its own cgroup, which affords a lot more control. (It also makes the service processes that much more easier to implement since you don't need to go through the double-fork-etc. song and dance that sysvinit requires.)
For example in a network server that spawns child processes to handle client connections there may be a systemic failure that prevents client interactions altogether but not startup of the parent.
Which is too bad in your sysvinit setup – the init script returns success, and then the next init script is started, which if it depends on the other service will also fail etc. With systemd, there is a chance that systemd's activation methods can stand in for a service that doesn't come up (e.g., by queuing up connection requests from other services), at least to a point where the system is in a state that allows debugging.
This only exchanges one category of failure (insufficient maintainer diligence) for another (software-induced lossage). I'd tend to prefer the former since the correctness of the latter should ideally be proven for all possible sets of dependencies whereas the former need only be correct for one initscript at a time.
Whatever floats your boat. I personally would rather depend on a general piece of software that has been implemented once and thoroughly debugged than on distribution maintainers who need to be relied upon to do the Right Thing over and over again. The way sysvinit requires maintainers to come up with yet another (usually subtly different) init script for every new service has nothing to do with “parsimony of design“; I'm all in favour of 10-line declarative unit files for systemd over 200-line procedural init scripts for sysvinit.
This becomes especially true once we need to change one line in the configuration of how a service is started from the distribution default – with systemd this means a two-line file under /etc/systemd for a change that will automatically remain in force across package updates, while with sysvinit this means changing the actual init script and somehow making sure that an update of the underlying package doesn't blow the change to kingdom come.
Compared to the lossage that systemd's growth of accessory dependencies and their expansion is causing, it's still my opinion that Debian's switch to systemd and packages depending on it is a grand mistake.
You're perfectly entitled to your opinion. We'll see where we stand five years from now.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 11:53 UTC (Fri) by bokr (subscriber, #58369) [Link]
I just hope it is not someone's paid job to provoke it.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 15:12 UTC (Fri) by atal (subscriber, #98720) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 10, 2014 15:19 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 11, 2014 5:41 UTC (Sat) by speedster1 (guest, #8143) [Link]
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/32778.html?thread=1255434#cmt...
P.S. Randall Munroe also doesn't seem to understand the concept of Free Speech -- but luckily he keeps his hands off our kernel
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 12, 2014 3:15 UTC (Sun) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 12, 2014 5:12 UTC (Sun) by speedster1 (guest, #8143) [Link]
Clearly, Matthew must be as inept at suppressing dissension as he is at working around obscure platform bugs ;)
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 14:02 UTC (Thu) by ksandstr (guest, #60862) [Link]
How would you know, given that the supposed rehashing has been removed and replaced with "fart fart fart"?
I should warn you at this point that credulity-- such as what you express above-- is what invites deception in itself.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 16:13 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Because it's what I said I did, and there's no reason to suspect that I'm lying?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 16:33 UTC (Thu) by ksandstr (guest, #60862) [Link]
The reason to suspect that you're lying is that there's no practical need for you to speak the truth. That need is obviated by "fart fart fart fart"; to wit, you wouldn't be caught lying if you had. This puts you in a position to lie at your convenience, and so you will; much as authority figures in countries where e.g. the police are considered trusted a priori.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 17:04 UTC (Thu) by karath (subscriber, #19025) [Link]
The sickness of our community indeed.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 17:24 UTC (Thu) by ksandstr (guest, #60862) [Link]
(In the spirit of turnaround, do you realise that you have just publicly called me a sickness?)
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 17:33 UTC (Thu) by karath (subscriber, #19025) [Link]
"This puts you in a position to lie at your convenience, and so you will; much as authority figures in countries where e.g. the police are considered trusted a priori."
Very well. Handbags at dawn.
Posted Oct 16, 2014 17:54 UTC (Thu) by ksandstr (guest, #60862) [Link]
Furthermore if there is such a day when the veil of that blog's comment-chain is cracked wide open and my assertion disproven by all of the 322 comments in the ``actions have consequences'' post as they were submitted by their posters, I'll absolutely admit to having been mistaken. Until then, and whichever breach of decorum my viewpoint may be perceived to entail, good day to you.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 22:20 UTC (Thu) by flussence (subscriber, #85566) [Link]
I have a few suggestions in mind, but LWN is hardly an appropriate place for that kind of language.
And as for no evidence, there's an open confession from the man himself above. Isn't that good enough for you?
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 23:09 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
If "lying" isn't correct, what (in your opinion) should we call the act of mass-deleting replies to a blog post and following up to each and every one with a multi-paragraph copy-paste reply claiming they all consisted of the string "fart fart fart" and were removed for "irrelevance"?
Keeping one's personal blog clear of misogynistic drivel?
(It's not as if Matthew hadn't announced beforehand what was going to happen. If people can't read they probably shouldn't comment, either.)
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 17, 2014 17:26 UTC (Fri) by flussence (subscriber, #85566) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 21, 2014 13:06 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
Moderating (including removing) posts is often useful, and sometimes necessary.
Replacing them all with "fart fart fart" is being an asshole; there's a difference.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 21, 2014 13:09 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 21, 2014 13:23 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 21, 2014 13:25 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 21, 2014 17:46 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/32778.html?thread=1206538#cmt...
but many like
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/32778.html?thread=1314314#cmt...
> Original comment read:
> "Fart fart fart fart"
> and as such has been screened for irrelevance.
Is it your contention that each of these original comments _actually_ said fart, maybe that is true, I presumed that they said something bilious and nasty and mjg59 just replaced them with fart to keep the discussion from being derailed and to highlight the irrelevancy of the hateful comments. Which I think is his right, it's his site and his hosting.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 21, 2014 18:02 UTC (Tue) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 21, 2014 13:45 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
No, that's not what happened.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 16, 2014 17:35 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
The general topic of transparency
Posted Oct 16, 2014 17:43 UTC (Thu) by ksandstr (guest, #60862) [Link]
Trusted describes a position where betrayal is possible. You've put yourself in one by virtue of "fart fart fart", and the certitude of your deception follows from the practical consequences of comment moderation.
The Big Leagues
Posted Oct 17, 2014 3:12 UTC (Fri) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link]
I haven't commented here in some time, because unfortunately I agree than the sphere LP inhabits is indeed a 'sick place'. But at the same time, something amazing built by many, that ought to be cherished, as I think Corbet was suggesting. I think it is very important not to lose sight of the yin and yang of both sides of the equation, as well as their relation to, and balance with one another. I wouldn't have bothered to comment, but I just skimmed pretty thoroughly 208 comments here, and my 'tinfoil hat' thoughts on this seem not represented. Thusly- my thesis today- "some of our open source communities are indeed a sick place, however I believe the genesis of the issue lies in their widening value to society". I.e. I believe it is only because of how much more important Torvalds, and Poettering's work are to the world at large here in 2014 (jesus years), versus what they were perceived as 10 or 20 years ago. 10 or 20 years ago, I think it would be reasonable to speak of Torvalds or Poettering's work and leadership abilities in the way the tone of this article and the 208 prior comments have. But I believe in the post-Snowden world, we have to realize that the roles Torvalds and Poettering are playing in is pretty serious and hard-core. When I hear a story about a half-joke or not campaign to assemble a bit-coin assassination attempt on Poettering, I don't think the right thing to talk about is why the mean person/people ought not to have done that. Rather I think the right thing to think about is- what is our community (FOSS and/or regional governments) able to do to ensure that these valued contributors can go on contributing, sleeping relatively peacefully at night, knowing that even if an organized crime syndicate with 100-1000x the monetary resources of this public probably-a-bad-joke campaign wanted to do the same thing, couldn't. It's like when I read the story of Miley Cyrus's house being robbed recently. I don't think it's useful to talk about the wrong choice the robbers made, I think it's more useful to talk about how her security was that lax. Is that blaming the victim? Or rational security consideration?
In a post-Snowden world, I'm glad the public is finally getting a whiff of the big stakes of cyber-security, and the people who are to varying degrees in that sphere. Torvalds and Poettering are pretty much in the center of that sphere. Which is why I would differingly agree with Corbet's conclusion that stories relating to them, are not really good evidence to discredit the general situation. Even outside T and P, I hope someday to be even further vindicated in my belief that fairly large swaths of software developers are already living in a universe that has factors that are extremely difficult to superficially analyze. Take the recent Snowden story, now barely a blip if that in the mainstream news, of NSA infiltrators in foreign (and domestic?) companies. On one hand, I can't say I'd be entirely up in arms if I personally knew some NSA agent who claimed to be doing that with the sole mission of making sure that any better funded assassination (or more likely, less obvious persuasion) campaigns against Poettering succeeded. Of course, I don't believe any such saintly motivation could be true on its own.
Bottom Line: this is a long way from a community of curious tinkerers. This is the big leagues.
The Big Leagues
Posted Oct 17, 2014 5:08 UTC (Fri) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link]
The Big Leagues
Posted Oct 17, 2014 6:00 UTC (Fri) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link]
Kids (and adults, but this is mostly a message to the young)- if you want to have a future with a statistically low number of death threats against you personally, *do not under any circumstances* try to be an FOSS developer developing software with the kinds of security requirements that Torvalds and Poettering are. Really. Stay the hell away from places like the tor/tails development communities, and to a lesser, but not much extent, mainstream initsystem and kernel development. If you get good at it, and refuse to bend to pressure from special interest groups, you will be targeted. And if you aren't what the FBI considers a "team player", I wouldn't count on them to defend you from harm. Ditto for the NSA, CIA, Google, Facebook, and Blackwater.
The Big Leagues
Posted Oct 17, 2014 12:04 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 18, 2014 3:04 UTC (Sat) by toyotabedzrock (guest, #88005) [Link]
2. Stop deflecting blame for trolls. No one is invading your mailing list except people already in the community. "Yo man I trolled the kernel mailing list" is a brag no troll ever made.
On the sickness of our community
Posted Oct 21, 2014 18:05 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]