Too many lords, not enough stewards
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 1, 2018 18:36 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)In reply to: Too many lords, not enough stewards by ncultra
Parent article: Too many lords, not enough stewards
You refer to public shaming and say that people should just deal with it. There are around a hundred million capable East and South Asian software developers, most of whom can read and write English well enough to effectively work with international colleagues, but very few are involved in high profile FLOSS projects (or if they do contribute, they are shielded by large companies and let a few colleagues interface with project leaders). A log of the reason is that many of them come from shame cultures.
I used to be on the GCC steering committee, and for me, being personally and publicly flamed by Linus Torvalds (more than once) was a badge of honor. But to many people, because of their culture and upbringing, such an episode would be the absolute end of their participation, they might even consider changing careers. I've seen the term "snowflake" used in this discussion: some of you think such people are snowflakes and they should buck up, let the nasty words roll off of them, and soldier on. But can we really afford to throw away the talents of a hundred million people?
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Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 1, 2018 19:15 UTC (Thu) by msnitzer (guest, #57232) [Link]
(Ab)using "snowflake" like I did was just a quick way of explaining the problematic types in the community. But it isn't descriptive enough to accurately capture my intent. I was lazy and it obviously resulted in hitting nerves.
That said, the people who establish themselves as actively hostile and dogmatic that get feedback they disagree with and then keep digging in to become so fully entrenched in their position: those people set themselves up for a serious fall. And when that fall happens, if they aren't humble and they decide to lash out by saying that they were personally attacked and fell threatened, etc. They are just posturing and trying to "reverse the heat", to flip reality. They invited challenge and couldn't handle it. Those people melt into a puddle like snowflakes when heat is applied.
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 1, 2018 19:41 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
It's fine to reject a patch. It's fine to tell someone there's a problem with the code they wrote. It's fine to tell them that the architectural approach they've taken won't work and they need to go back and rethink it. It's even fine to tell them that they're *systematically* having a recurring issue in their patches and you need them to address it more systematically. None of that is inherently a problem.
You can do all of those things respectfully, without personal attacks, without flames, and without all the other forms of toxicity that occur regularly in the kernel community. You can make people feel welcome, rather than sounding like "how dare you waste my valuable time with your idiocy".
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 1, 2018 20:08 UTC (Thu) by msnitzer (guest, #57232) [Link]
Everyone has an opinion on how best to handle things. Yet they cannot all be "the chosen". All this bickering about kernel community (dys)function has run its course for me. (Now if I could only figure out how to shutoff the N lwn.net email notifications I've committed to while replying N times).
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 1, 2018 20:09 UTC (Thu) by msnitzer (guest, #57232) [Link]
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 1, 2018 20:15 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
You said:
> That said, the people who establish themselves as actively hostile and dogmatic that get feedback they disagree with and then keep digging in to become so fully entrenched in their position: those people set themselves up for a serious fall. And when that fall happens, if they aren't humble and they decide to lash out by saying that they were personally attacked and fell threatened, etc. They are just posturing and trying to "reverse the heat", to flip reality. They invited challenge and couldn't handle it. Those people melt into a puddle like snowflakes when heat is applied.
You're reframing a discussion about the hostility of the kernel community to try to claim that people claiming that are just people who "get feedback they disagree with" and just can't take the heat. There's a standard derailing that happens in almost every discussion of this problem, where people start imagining a dichotomy where you can't stop the flames and attacks without stopping the feedback and degrading the quality of the kernel. That's a false dichotomy. You can, in fact, do both, and communities *other* than the Linux kernel have managed to do so.
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 1, 2018 21:56 UTC (Thu) by msnitzer (guest, #57232) [Link]
I'm using my Linux kernel maintainer experience to attempt to illustrate the kind of dynamic I've witnessed. People who cry foul when one hasn't occurred are "special". And a lot of this talk, thread and topic isn't rooted in anything real. Just a lot of people with hurt feelings talking in the abstract.
Framing the Linux kernel community as a caustic rat's nest of evil is one way to spin it. It just isn't reality.
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 1, 2018 23:51 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 2, 2018 0:40 UTC (Fri) by msnitzer (guest, #57232) [Link]
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 2, 2018 3:14 UTC (Fri) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]
I have, in fact. They paint quite a clear picture.
> But if you can identify with Daniel's talk then you're probably perfectly fine with false narratives.
Hey, look, yet another example of exactly what I referred to in the comment you're replying to and attempting to deny.
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 2, 2018 0:34 UTC (Fri) by nivedita76 (guest, #121790) [Link]
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 2, 2018 1:22 UTC (Fri) by airlied (subscriber, #9104) [Link]
Like we have plenty of public evidence of bad behaviour on the parts of maintainers (myself included I'm sure), but I'm interested in knowing how large the problem of developers crying fowl and escalating things on rejection using codes of conduct.
I've never experienced this in any of the project I've worked in as a maintainer, or as the top-level maintainer for the second largest subsystem in the kernel, so I'm surprised that it happens as frequently as you state.
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 2, 2018 1:48 UTC (Fri) by msnitzer (guest, #57232) [Link]
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 1, 2018 21:34 UTC (Thu) by ncultra (subscriber, #121511) [Link]
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 11, 2018 11:46 UTC (Sun) by elvis_ (guest, #63935) [Link]
Too many lords, not enough stewards
Posted Feb 12, 2018 8:28 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]
Even if it is 1 in 450 (or 1 in 4500) that is still a whole lot of possible contributors whom we would be stupid to scare off unnecessarily.