[GTALUG] Linux 4.19-rc4 released, an apology, and a maintainership note

[Dhaval Giani]

On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 12:52 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <
talk at gtalug.org> wrote:

> | From: Dhaval Giani via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
>
> | https://lwn.net/Articles/764901/
>
> |
> https://www.jonobacon.com/2018/09/16/linus-his-apology-and-why-we-should-support-him/
>
> Thanks.  I hadn't noticed this.  A possibly big story.
>
> | On a more personal note, I have seen "hostile" behavior on many mailing
> | lists, which has led me from withdrawing from participating on them.
>
> Mailing lists are notoriously bad at communicating emothions.  I guess
> that causes some to just amp things up.  There have been many
> discussions of this phenomenon and I still don't have great insights.
>
> I have not found this mailing list to be a problem.  Have you?
>
>
Troubling patterns, yes. Not to me, not projects I participate in. But I
have noticed them. I debated about bringing it up, and then decided that it
wasn't worth my time or effort for clearly negligible gain.


>         Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept
>         from others.
>
>         Jon Postel
>
> Some things can seem like slights even when there was no such intent.
>
>
I agree. You do however have to account for the fact that most software
development is a negative feedback loop (find bug, debug, fix, rinse,
repeat..). Add doing that in public, almost everything starts coming out
negatively.

A friend of mine had an interesting insight on this a few years back.
Paraphrasing him, written communication is always is read as more negative
than what it is written as. So, you have to write it as 2x postive for it
to be read as 1x positive.

Is it a sustainable goal, I am unsure. But I do think it is a problem.


> Death threats are hard to explain away.  I did not read Linus' comment
> about abortion to be a deat threat.  Just overly colourful swearing.
> I did not think it appropriate.  "Criticize the sin, not the sinner."
>
>
I think different incidents. Lennart (not Linus), had someone call him and
leave him a death threat. (He had shared the recording with me at that time)


> This has low reliability, so take it with a large grain of salt, but
> the only time I met Lennart Poettering (before systemd) he did seem
> arrogant.
>
>
I don't think that though is a reason to belittle him.


> I've not made any contributions to the kernel / netdev.  I've found the
> processs daunting / unwelcoming.  At least one "lieutenant" has been
> much more unpleasant than Linus.  Just fixing Linus isn't enough.
>
> Have a look at this thread, especially how it is left (in my mind)
> unresolved after I did the legwork to refute Miller's assertion.
>
> <https://www.spinics.net/lists/netdev/msg342321.html>
>

I am totally with you on that one. I really do wish the LKML was an easier
community to work with.

Dhaval
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