Code, conflict, and conduct [LWN.net]

Code, conflict, and conduct

Posted Sep 19, 2018 21:59 UTC (Wed) by johannbg (guest, #65743)
In reply to: Code, conflict, and conduct by knan
Parent article: Code, conflict, and conduct

I'm not seeing any axe to grind here just an valid observation that I for example have observed as well that Jon's written articles in relation to the kernel community and it's communication problems sometime seem to be somewhat biased in the kernel's community favour due to his own personal relation and history with it ( after all he is one of it's members so no surprice here ).

It's just something that we ( we as in the entire human race ) have tendency to inadvertently do with matters we hold dear to us ( as in we have a hard time staying neutral ).

Then he ( as in blackwood ) proposes someone else with less ties to the kernel community should cover those articles which is a perfectly valid point so I fail to see what axes are being grinded in his comment.

to post comments

Bias

Posted Sep 19, 2018 23:20 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (3 responses)

So this is obviously a personal story; I told it in the first person — something I rarely do on LWN — for a reason. That said, I tried to be complete and fair. If you find it biased, could you please help us to round it out by explaining what that bias is and where I failed to tell things properly? I think we would all appreciate that.

Bias

Posted Sep 20, 2018 7:12 UTC (Thu) by yuuyuu (guest, #127230) [Link] (1 responses)

Some feedback here.

https://mobile.twitter.com/danvet/status/1042306430768824321

Bias

Posted Sep 20, 2018 21:34 UTC (Thu) by jonbayer (guest, #36490) [Link]

I'm not really seeing anything of substance, just you moaning on twitter. What *exactly* would you like to see addressed that was not?

Bias

Posted Sep 24, 2018 2:28 UTC (Mon) by tterribe (guest, #66972) [Link]

I have to confess that reading this article also left me vaguely disappointed. Looking back on it perhaps I can make those feelings less vague for both of our benefits. As you may guess from my ✭ supporter ✭ tag, I have been a long-time fan of you and your work at LWN, ever since I first met you at LCA more than a decade ago. I really am trying to help.

Let's start with this paragraph:

> The adoption of a "code of conflict" in 2015 did little to mollify
> those critics, many of whom saw it as, at best, an empty gesture
> that would change little. Judging three years later whether they
> were right is harder than one might think. There is little in the
> way of hard evidence that the code of conflict brought about any
> changes in behavior.

The last sentence here seems to contradict the one immediately before it, making it sound like you just didn't want to admit that the critics were right. It is not until you read much further that you can figure out that what you were actually trying to say is that there may be *indirect* evidence that behaviors have been changing, but by that point the impression has already been made with the reader. The fact that the key word was "hard" was not obvious (especially since it was never explicitly contrasted with an antonym). I think this is mostly an editorial criticism, in that there was nothing wrong what you were trying to say, just that it was hard for me as a reader to figure out what that was.

> On the other hand, the kernel community continues to grow, and most
> of the approximately 4,000 people who contribute each year have a
> fine experience.

These read like almost classical logical fallacies. Yes, the community continues to grow, but is that because of or in spite of its policies and cultural norms? No one has ever argued that Linux is not a successful project. It is also not surprising that the majority of the active contributors would not have issues to complain about, just due to survivor bias. The ones who did not have a fine experience would leave.

But even beyond that point, to people like me who are not actually members of the kernel community and just follow along here on LWN because it is technically interesting, the majority of the discussion one has heard about that community in recent years is from those who were *not* having a fine experience. Now, maybe there is an argument there to be made that this has been sensationalized to generate headlines, but to state that "we're a big, happy, 4,000-person family just having a fine time" with no evidence to back that up makes me think, "Wow, this person has a very different image of that community than I do." A different image is okay (yours may be the right one! you are part of that community after all and I am not), but to leave out any justification for that viewpoint is to suggest that you either don't know what other people are saying about your community or that you don't want to acknowledge what they are saying. Even justifying this by drawing from your own personal experiences would have helped (since this article is told from a personal point of view, as you say). I would summarize this as a case of "telling instead of showing" being unconvincing.

> The web sites that specialize in publicizing inflammatory messages
> found in the mailing lists have had to dig harder than in the past.

I didn't even know such websites existed (though it does not surprise me), but given the opposite impression I have received, that reporting on these issues is more common than ever (outside of LWN), some justification for this claim would have helped, also.

But I think the bigger point, to me, is that regardless of how many incidences of Linus going postal on some poor contributor there actually are, the real issue has always been that he felt *entitled* to behave in that way, and that most of the other people in leadership positions within the Linux community were willing to back him up on that, or at least unwilling to challenge him on it. Nobody is perfect. I've had people call me out when I have acted badly in my own communities on occasion, but the difference is that those people were in positions of authority when they did it, and that I believed that they were right to do so. The "it's not that bad and it's getting better" line sounds like an abdication of the responsibility of those with actual power in the community to protect those who don't have it (as *people*), and that doesn't sit well with me, even if the line itself is true. You make many other excellent points in the article, and it was by no means one-sided. These were just some of the portions that I struggled with.

Ultimately, the announcement that Linus no longer feels so entitled is a hugely positive development even if it results in no immediate changes in how the community works on a day-to-day level. I hope that in the long term the Linux community will find ways to achieve its technical excellence by growing and nurturing its members, and I hope that it will set a positive example for other communities struggling with the same issues. Like it or not, as one of the largest and most successful open source projects, Linux as a whole is also in a position of leadership in the broader community, and that is how leaders should behave.