The Linux Kernel Adopts A Code of Conduct

[Djhg2000]

Not sure it was mentioned yet (I'm only on page 14, so far) but is anybody surprised it took less than 24 hours after the announcement for the creator of the CoC to set up a GoFundMe page asking for a cool 10k to develop the Proof-of-Concept for "CoC enforcement/management tools"?

"We love FOSS, but only if we're paid for it! We deeply, truly believe in mon ... free software!"

Typical money grab. Wholly foreseeable.

I found the following on the crowdfunding page by Coraline Ehmke:

Over the past several years, code of conduct adoptions by open source projects has become the norm for establishing and communicating community values. However, enforcement of a code of conduct is the real key to creating welcoming and inclusive communities.

Yeah, according to her Wikipedia page and some simple logic she's talking about her own code of conduct here. Actually, let's dig a bit deeper into this one.

Looking at the history of that Wikipedia page, there was an edit by 73.209.47.193 on the 18th of September 2018. That edit was to add Linux to the list of projects which have adopted her code of conduct (and listing a few companies which supposedly adopted it as well). The history of that IP shows edits only on the pages Coraline Ada Ehmke and, of course, Contributor Covenant. This leads me to believe that 73.209.47.193 is none other than Coraline Ada Ehmke herself, or at the very least a fan of hers.

But up to now, only the largest open source projects have had access to the kinds of resources that make enforcement fair and manageable.

Well at least to me, a code of conduct that requires such large resources to enforce is either too strict, too complicated or both. The solution isn't to throw more gas on the fire.

CoC Beacon is a project whose goal is to bring this potential to every open source project, large or small. CoC Beacon will provide project maintainers with a complete set of tools for managing their codes of conduct at all stages: setting up their enforcement teams, documenting their processes, reporting incidents, managing incident reports, forming consensus about enforcement decisions, and communicating clearly with reporters and offenders.

That sounds more like a complete private court system than enforcement of what should be a simple, straight-forward guideline document. I'm actually not sure if such a process would even be legal in some countries.

CoC Beacon will be provided in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model to reduce friction for getting started, so that maintainers can focus on managing their projects and communities with a minimum of setup.

Software as a service? She has gone full Microsoft. Never go full Microsoft.

[euler271]

https://www.newyorker.com/science/el...ux-steps-aside

Good article. Forget all conspiracy theories. It is plain simple.

Yeah, good article. let's take a look, shall we?

Linux’s élite developers, who are overwhelmingly male, tend to share their leader’s aggressive self-confidence.

Apparently to the usual readers of The New Yorker this is bad. And wtf is 'aggressive self-confidence'? a strong self-confidence maybe? who knows...

“Everyone in tech knows about it, but Linus gets a pass,” Megan Squire, a computer-science professor at Elon University, told me, referring to Torvalds’s abusive behavior. “He’s built up this cult of personality, this cult of importance.”

Ok, how is this Megan Squire related at all with the Linux kernel, I'd like to know that. I think they will tell us now why is she relevant in this topic at all.

For a research project, Squire used e-mails from Torvalds to train a computer to recognize insults.

First of all, how is this a good use of your time? is she writing a thesis/paper about the 'white-male programmer toxic environment in tech', probably yes, moving on..

According to Squire’s tabulations, more than a thousand of the twenty-one thousand e-mails Torvalds sent in a four-year period used the word “crap.” “Slut,” “bitch,” and “bastard” were employed much less frequently during that period. Squire told me that she found few examples of gender bias.

Do you see what they did there? The writer is very good, I had to re-read that paragraph to see that period in between 'crap' and the following gender-specific insults. But look, all of those were employed 'much less frequently', how much, the articles does NOT say. I wonder why. Also, I wonder why 'crap' is so common?? It might be because crap can be used along with "[This|your] [code|patch] is *crap*", which Im sure it's used *a lot* by him, because that's basically HIS JOB, and I'm sure putting them all them together was just a coincidence, right??

“He is an equal-opportunity abuser,” she said. Squire added, though, that for non-male programmers the hostility and public humiliation is more isolating. Over time, many women programmers leave the community. “Women throw in the towel first,” she told me. “They say, ‘Why do I need to put up with this?’ ”

Ok, so all this treating equally based on race,gender,etc,etc,etc is basically checked here. he does that already. This 'for non-male programmers the hostility and public humiliation is more isolating' says more about them that it does about Linus' behavior. And that last part is very much true, You dont need to put up with anything if you dont like, that's the whole point of being your own person and being free to choose.

Any women who contribute to Linux point to another open-source project, Python, as a guide for Linux as its faces its #MeToo moment. Guido van Rossum, a white, male programmer from the Netherlands, invented the code for the Python programming language.

Really? 'a white, male programmer'? ok, now that all 'white, male programmers' have a role model in Guido, we can follow his steps, is that it, condescending, random 'journalist'?

In 2015, Sharp advocated for a first-ever code of conduct for Linux developers. At a minimum, they hoped for a code that would ban doxxing—the releasing of personal information online to foment harassment—and threats of violence in the community.

This in particular is funny, because most of us know who are usually the ones who try to dox ppl who disagree with them.

Instead, Torvalds accepted a programming fix provocatively titled “Code of Conflict,” which created a mechanism for filing complaints more generally. In the three years since then, no developers have been disciplined for abusive comments. Sharp, who was employed by Intel at the time, said they carefully avoided Linux kernel work thereafter.

Who is 'they'? They mentioned Intel at the beginning of the article as well, so I can only imagine 'they' is Intel. Let's see, https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...ber-2018-Stats , apparently things change drastically in the last couple of years, because Intel now contributes *a lot*, and I'm 100% sure they did that then as well, so 'carefully avoided Linux kernel work thereafter' is false, because I don't see who else can 'they' be referring to, if not Intel, at least following how that paragraph was written.

Complaints will be heard by the foundation’s technical-advisory board, which has ten members, all men.

Nice touch at the end. kudos, Noam Cohen.

[chags]

Who is 'they'?

From the same Article, "Sharp, who is nonbinary and uses “they/them” pronouns, confronted Torvalds..."


Your confusion is the proof for why this "I use the pronouns X/Y" is pure nonsense. How the fuck (BUZZZZ- your message was sent to the CoC enforcement comitee for sexual language), er, how the beeptybopty will someone understand what "they" refers to?

[Weasel]

If you tell me to make a CRUD website with an admin page in an hr. I'm using rails, at least that's my excuse.

I don't care what you are using especially if it's personal project? People can mock others for whatever they please. If you bring a shit tier language into the Linux kernel, don't demand that others don't mock you for it. That's retarded. Free expression and all.

If you don't take this literally, it makes sense to actually have some ethics around software development.

No it doesn't, because ethics are subjective. They are not quantifiable. Most people don't share the same ethics and it results in pointless flame wars.

If you ban someone for wrong ethics that you disagree with, they have to argue with you about it and escalate into flame wars because it's just a matter of opinion, literally. And that's the problem.

[audir8]

I don't care what you are using especially if it's personal project? People can mock others for whatever they please. If you bring a shit tier language into the Linux kernel, don't demand that others don't mock you for it. That's retarded. Free expression and all.

You did say this, though the manifesto is general, and not about the kernel. It hasn't been adopted by the kernel devs in any way, so I don't think shit tier languages are going to make it into the kernel anytime soon. Especially when I see adding C++ modules be an April fools joke on the LKML.

No it doesn't, because ethics are subjective. They are not quantifiable. Most people don't share the same ethics and it results in pointless flame wars.

If you ban someone for wrong ethics that you disagree with, they have to argue with you about it and escalate into flame wars because it's just a matter of opinion, literally. And that's the problem.

I'm not sure if I've ever agreed 100% with any manifesto, it's not a CoC, it's not guidelines, or law, it's meant to make to you think, and persuade you enough that you might support it. You can take what you want from the subjectivity of "negatively impact the well-being of other people", or just say don't be evil like Google used to. Again, it's a manifesto, you're meant to agree or disagree with it.

jacob I don't really want to respond to anything you've said, other than to say I might have found the new Godwin's law in the post-trump era: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Orwell approaches 1.

[jacob]

Not sure it was mentioned yet (I'm only on page 14, so far) but is anybody surprised it took less than 24 hours after the announcement for the creator of the CoC to set up a GoFundMe page asking for a cool 10k to develop the Proof-of-Concept for "CoC enforcement/management tools"?

"We love FOSS, but only if we're paid for it! We deeply, truly believe in mon ... free software!"

Typical money grab. Wholly foreseeable.

Rubbish. Stallman's catchphrase about free beer vs free speech may sound like a tired cliche but apparently he hasn't repeated it enough yet. No one has ever said embracing free(dom) software must automatically mean doing it "for free" in your spare time. You *can*, if you want to. You can also run a business based on it.

[phoronix_anon]

And the heads begin to to roll: https://mobile.twitter.com/_sageshar...69399596437504

[xiando]

I mean, if you go far back in my Facebook timeline you will find stuff that's not so good, views that I don't hold anymore, and doing that like I still hold them would be just dishonest and evil.

https://twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/1042769399596437504

>The new Code of Conduct explicitly says discrimination and harassment on the basis of sex or gender is not allowed. One Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board member who did not sign off on the patch is Ted Tso, who is a rape apologist:

Was it hard to see this coming? No, it wasn't. "Diversity consultants" don't have a real job so they spend their time digging through people's histories looking for something they can use to bully people. Here we have one of those worthless people bullying someone for something they supposedly wrote in 2011 - demanding that someone who's contributed huge amounts of quality code goes away now that Linux adopted a CoC in 2018 - seven years later.

This is what you get by adopting a "code of conduct".

[Djhg2000]

And the heads begin to to roll: https://mobile.twitter.com/_sageshar...69399596437504

The replies to those tweets are just fantastic, I guess he/she/it/they/them/qwerty/fizz/buzz/glip/glop/whatever didn't expect the code of conduct to be used both ways by the Linux community. Here's just one of them:

Lonnie @Lonnie_chadson · 8h



Replying to @_sagesharp_
Per the new Linux Code of Conduct, "unacceptable behavior" includes "insulting/derogatory comments" and "personal or political attacks". It seems to me as though calling another contributor a "rape apologist" fits both criteria. Do you have anything to say for yourself?

There's also a whole heap of users claiming to now be blocked by @_sagesharp_ . If we can keep turning the code of conduct against them like this then I guess it might not be so bad after all.

[unixfan2001]

Rubbish. Stallman's catchphrase about free beer vs free speech may sound like a tired cliche but apparently he hasn't repeated it enough yet. No one has ever said embracing free(dom) software must automatically mean doing it "for free" in your spare time. You *can*, if you want to. You can also run a business based on it.

I didn't say you couldn't make a business out of it. However, GoFundMe isn't how you set up a sustainable business and it's highly suspect all of this happened within 24 hours.