Some argue that now that Linus realized how his communication is received sometimes, he will suddenly not be able anymore to tell people when shitty code is shitty. There are a billion ways to tell somebody their code is shitty with out attacking the person themselves, some of which might even make them realize that you are right. And Linus certainly didn't sound like he doesn't care about the kernel anymore.
IMO the Code of Conduct has nothing irrational or outrageous in it:
* don't be sexist (you can critique someones code without making it about their gender or gender identity)
* don't be racist (you can critique someones code without making it about their race or origin)
* don't be shitty to people who know less (you can critique someones code without making them about them beeing a noob, and help them getting better)
etc.
I don't see how having more harassment would aid code quality.
My objection to this code might be something in the line of "scope creep," or that it's "distracted," even though those aren't really the right words and might carry connotations I don't mean to imply. It feels like it's more about getting across a list of the ways it's possible to be Wrong On The Internet than it's about inspiring and instilling healthy and productive communication among adults.
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Here's an example: I'm a member of a 500-person volunteer force that collaborates online, and we only get together in person to do our thing ~7 days a year. A huge flamewar will break out in our online communication 3 or 4 times a year. The prevailing opinion is one I agree with, but I still find the people I agree with argue the points in a way that are toxic to the overall org. But I have yet to see a code of conduct that would stop or heal the damage they're doing.
My department is absent from those threads with a regularity that hasn't gone unnoticed. We didn't plan it nor do we have an internal explanation for how it came to be. But our department head has gotten positive remarks on it from other heads and it would be naive to say it doesn't help maintain our reputation and working relationships outside our team. We cultivate it now, but I'm trying to figure out what caused it in the first place so I can spread that elsewhere.
> He's stated that he'd tone down his language (no more calls to "retroactively abort" people and such. This is all good, and I support it. One of my greatest fears is having my patch/contrition to a FOSS project be publicly dissected and ridiculed.
But his bullet point objections either contradict the above (transphobia should be acceptable), or are basically contentless (objecting to a part of the CoC that the author says doesn't apply to kernel dev).
Abbreviated summary of the bullet points on why the CoC is bad:
1. The CoC's author objected to transphobia within the Opal compiler project
2. The new CoC means Linus will need to tone down his language (which we seemed to be ok with in the opener).
3. The new CoC doesn't allow discrimination. Discrimination has never been a problem in kernel dev (if you really believe that, then the CoC shouldn't change anything)
4. The new CoC requires all maintainers to be of the same technical ability? (not sure where this idea came from, it doesn't require this)
The mentioned transphobia was never in the Opal project, it was a comment made outside the project, by a member, which would be outside the scope of a such CoC.
For point 4, I think the problem for the author, was that a maintainer won't have the possibility to say a patch is bad to avoid discriminating on 'technical ability'
That post uses "SJW" as a slur for activists.
No, it's fitting, "SJW" are slacktivists, not activists. When James Kyles throws a tantrum and insults people working for Palantir or Microsoft on Github issue pages, he might win a few internet points and likes on twitter, but he is not making a difference in the real world.
I am against thought police, but Linux is about code. It is not hard to keep your thoughts about people to yourself and instead try to critique code in a fair fashion. It doesn't matter if a man, a woman, a dog in a costume or a billion monkeys on typewriters wrote the code. Bad code is bad, good code is good.
Anything that stops people from making it about people rather than code is also good IMO.
An email to a mailing list would have been more appropriate on a few fronts. If not for the new CoC, I might express that differently. </sarcasm>
