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posted by chromas on Thursday September 20 2018, @03:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the Code-of-Conduct+Kindness dept.

The New Yorker has its own story about Linus Torvalds temporarily stepping down from his post as maintainer of the Linux kernel:

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (archive)

Torvalds's decision to step aside came after The New Yorker asked him a series of questions about his conduct for a story on complaints about his abusive behavior discouraging women from working as Linux-kernel programmers. In a response to The New Yorker, Torvalds said, "I am very proud of the Linux code that I invented and the impact it has had on the world. I am not, however, always proud of my inability to communicate well with others—this is a lifelong struggle for me. To anyone whose feelings I have hurt, I am deeply sorry."

[...] Linux's élite developers, who are overwhelmingly male, tend to share their leader's aggressive self-confidence. There are very few women among the most prolific contributors, though the foundation and researchers estimate that roughly ten per cent of all Linux coders are women. "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."

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

[...] Many women who contribute to Linux point to another open-source project, Python, as a guide for Linux as its faces its #MeToo moment.

Two Linux kernel developers turned diversity consultants are quoted in the story: Sage Sharp and Valerie Aurora. The New Yorker points out that the Linux Foundation's ten-member Technical Advisory Board will hear behavioral complaints, and all of the members are male.

Meanwhile, many people in the Linux community are upset about the move to adopt a Code of Conduct (CoC). Some of that discussion is taking place on the GitHub commit page for the CoC.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday September 20 2018, @06:37PM (4 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday September 20 2018, @06:37PM (#737649) Journal

    The study could be seen as a vindication rather than a takedown of Torvalds, although Megan Squire still concludes that Torvalds "gets a pass" and has a "cult of personality".

    The real "revelation" here is that the open source world often has looser standards than a professional setting, because you are often your own boss. Now people want to shame these communities into "shaping up".

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by choose another one on Thursday September 20 2018, @08:19PM (3 children)

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 20 2018, @08:19PM (#737714)

    The study could be seen as a vindication rather than a takedown of Torvalds, although Megan Squire still concludes that Torvalds "gets a pass" and has a "cult of personality".

    The real "revelation" here is that the open source world often has looser standards than a professional setting, because you are often your own boss.

    And cults of personality are bad results in tech because... Oracle, Apple, Amazon, SpaceX, Microsoft (well maybe) ??

    The real revelation is that successful technical people in the open source world are just like those in the professional one - Jobs, Gates, Bezos, Ellison, Musk, Schmidt, Whitman, and many others, all famous for being at-work major a-holes. Heck, Gates was replaced by Ballmer who famously threw chairs at people in meetings so it isn't just a one-off in each organisation, it's endemic, and maybe hereditary.

    Linux is about the single most successful _and_ one of the largest (by cloc) open source projects in history, and it turns out its managed by a guy who has a "cult of personality" and is sometimes a bit of an a-hole. Well f*** me, who'd a thought it?

    No, actually the real revelation is that there are still morons out there rediscovering the old news that successful technical or engineering leaders tend to be, at best "strong personalities" and at worst more than a little unhinged. I'd still rather work for an a-hole with a clear vision for a decent product and the willpower and capability to deliver it, than work for a committee of suits who totally professionally deliver stuff you are ashamed of ever working on.

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 20 2018, @11:31PM (2 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday September 20 2018, @11:31PM (#737853) Journal

      I've heard this referred to as "the race to mediocrity". Every mediocre numbskull desires to be as important, and as persuasive as a Linus Torvalds. And, it's just not FAIR that Linus is recognized, while the numbskull has to reintroduce himself to his own dog from time to time.

      • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday September 21 2018, @10:09AM (1 child)

        by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 21 2018, @10:09AM (#738033)

        I think "race to mediocrity" is only the start, the end game is a vicious circle winding up in the supremacy of stupid.

        The tipping point will be when stupidity becomes a protected characteristic (after all, why shouldn't it be, it's just a mental disability isn't it?). After that you cannot discriminate against stupid, Darwin is legislated out of existence, and you have mandatory stupid quotas everywhere and the intelligent having to pretend to be stupid in order to get a university place or a job or a house... Then average IQ scores go down so the threshold for stupidity gets lowered so folks have to pretend to be even stupider, lather rinse repeat.

        I used to think this was a long long way off and that I wouldn't live to see it, because it requires stupid in power to kick it off, these days I am not so sure.

        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday September 21 2018, @10:23AM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 21 2018, @10:23AM (#738035) Journal

          Pretend to be stupid? We already see this in the workplace. Maybe not all of us, but when your boss is a mental midget, but he wants all the glory, you see people coaxing him into having the most obvious of ideas. I'm not even talking about myself here. Women are especially good at this, though some men pull it off. The boss is working hard to come up with the *IDEA* necessary to perform some task. A lady named Dawn does it as well as anyone I've ever met. Dawn is a bright lady, but probably not exceptionally so. From a third party perspective, it almost looks like she's doing word association, slowly feeding the boss the idea. Sometimes it takes forever, but FINALLY she uses a word that makes everything so very obvious, that only a complete moron could avoid tripping over the idea.

          At the same time, it's funny as hell, and heartbreaking. The boss keeps his job because he's such an excellent ass kisser.

          Personally, the closest I can come to playing this game, is to just keep my mouth shut while the idiots work their way around to the obvious.