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[Updated 2018-09-26 20:30:00 to show the CoC is already in effect. --martyb]
[Ed Note: Given Linus Torvalds' recent decision to step down as head of Linux development for a while, and news of an attempt to install a a new CoC (Code of Conduct) on Linux development, I believe it important to communicate this to our community. It does, however, offer an opportunity for more, ummm, fire, flame, and feelings than the usual stories posted here. Let's try and keep things civil and discuss the merits (or lack of same). To quote Sergeant Joe Friday "All we're interested in is the facts, ma'am."
If you are not interested in this, another story will be along before too long... just ignore this one.
As for the code of conduct itself, take a look at: code of conduct and the kernel commit.]
Eric S. Raymond speaks in regards to the Linux CoC:
From (Eric S. Raymond) Subject On holy wars, and a plea for peace Date Sun, 23 Sep 2018 16:50:52 -0400 (EDT) Most of you know that I have spent more than a quarter century analyzing the folkways of the hacker culture as a historian, ethnographer, and game theorist. That analysis has had large consequences, including a degree of business and mainstream acceptance of the open source way that was difficult to even imagine when I first presented "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" back in 1997.
I'm writing now, from all of that experience and with all that perspective, about the recent flap over the new CoC and the attempt to organize a mass withdrawal of creator permissions from the kernel.
I'm going to try to keep my personal feelings about this dispute off the table, not because I don't have any but because I think I serve us all better by speaking as neutrally as I can.
First, let me confirm that this threat has teeth. I researched the relevant law when I was founding the Open Source Initiative. In the U.S. there is case law confirming that reputational losses relating to conversion of the rights of a contributor to a GPLed project are judicable in law. I do not know the case law outside the U.S., but in countries observing the Berne Convention without the U.S.'s opt-out of the "moral rights" clause, that clause probably gives the objectors an even stronger case.
I urge that we all step back from the edge of this cliff, and I weant[sic] to suggest a basis of principle on which settlement can be negotiated.
Before I go further, let me say that I unequivocally support Linus's decision to step aside and work on cleaning up his part of the process. If for no other reason than that the man has earned a rest.
But this leaves us with a governance crisis on top of a conflict of principles. That is a difficult combination. Fortunately, there is lots of precedent about how to solve such problems in human history. We can look back on both tragic failures and epic successes and take lessons from them that apply here.
To explain those lessons, I'm going to invite everybody to think like a game theorist for a bit.
Every group of humans trying to sustain cooperation develops an ethos, set of norms. It may be written down. More usually it is a web of agreements that one has to learn by observing the behavior of others. The norms may not even be conscious; there's a famous result from experimental psychology that young children can play cooperative games without being able to articulate what their rules are...
Every group of cooperating humans has a telos, a mutually understood purpose towards which they are working (or playing). Again, this purpose may be unwritten and is not necessarily even conscious. But one thing is always true: the ethos derives from the telos, not the other way around. The goal precedes the instrument.
It is normal for the group ethos to evolve. It will get pulled in one direction or another as the goals of individuals and coalitions inside the group shift. In a well-functioning group the ethos tends to evolve to reward behaviors that achieve the telos more efficiently, and punish behaviors that retard progess towards it.
It is not normal for the group's telos - which holds the whole cooperation together and underpins the ethos - to change in a significant way. Attempts to change the telos tend to be profoundly disruptive to the group, often terminally so.
Now I want you to imagine that the group can adopt any of a set of ethoi ranked by normativeness - how much behavior they require and prohibit. If the normativeness slider is set low, the group as a whole will tolerate behavior that some people in it will consider negative and offensive. If the normativeness level is set high, many effects are less visible; contributors who chafe under restriction will defect (usually quietly) and potential contributors will be deterred from joining.
If the normativeness slider starts low and is pushed high, the consequences are much more visible; you can get internal revolt against the change from people who consider the ethos to no longer serve their interests. This is especially likely if, bundled with a change in rules of procedure, there seems to be an attempt to change the telos of the group.
What can we say about where to set the slider? In general, the most successful - most inclusive - cooperations have a minimal ethos. That is, they are just as normative as they must be to achieve the telos, *and no more so*. It's easy to see why this is. Pushing the slider too high risks internal factional strife over value conflicts. This is worse than having it set too low, where consensus is easier to maintain but you get too little control of conflict between *individuals*.
None of this is breaking news. We cooperate best when we live and let live, respecting that others may make different choices and invoking the group against bad behavior only when it disrupts cooperative success. Inclusiveness demands tolerance.
Strict ethoi are typically functional glue only for small groups at the margins of society; minority regious groups are the best-studied case. The larger and more varied your group is, the more penalty there is for trying to be too normative.
What we have now is a situation in which a subgroup within the Linux kernel's subculture threatens destructive revolt because not only do they think the slider been pushed too high in a normative direction, but because they think the CoC is an attempt to change the group's telos.
The first important thing to get is that this revolt is not really about any of the surface issues the CoC was written to address. It would be maximally unhelpful to accuse the anti-CoC people of being pro-sexism, or anti-minority, or whatever. Doing that can only inflame their sense that the group telos is being hijacked. They make it clear; they signed on to participate in a meritocracy with reputation rewards, and they think that is being taken way from them.
One way to process this complaint is to assert that the CoC's new concerns are so important that the anti-CoC faction can be and should be fought to the point where they withdraw or surrender. The trouble with this way of responding is that it *is* in fact a hijacking of the group's telos - an assertion that we ought to have new terminal values replacing old ones that the objectors think they're defending.
So a really major question here is: what is the telos of this subculture? Does the new CoC express it? Have the objectors expressed it?
The question *not* to get hung up on is what any individual's choice in this matter says about their attitude towards, say, historically underepresented minorities. It is perfectly consistent to be pro-tolerance and pro-inclusion while believing *this* subculture ought to be all about producing good code without regard to who is offended by the process. Not every kind of good work has to be done everywhere. Nobody demands that social-justice causes demonstrate their ability to write C.
That last paragraph may sound like I have strayed from neutrality into making a value claim, but not really. It's just another way of saying that different groups have different teloi, and different ethoi proceeding from them. Generally speaking (that is, unless it commits actual crimes) you can only judge a group by how it fulfills its own telos, not those of others.
So we come back to two questions:
- What is our telos?
- Given our telos, do we have the most inclusive (least normative) ethos possible to achieve it?
When you have an answer to that question, you will know what we need to do about the CoC and the "killswitch" revolt.
--
Eric S. RaymondThe spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, 1787
LKML URL: http://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/23/212
Possibly in reference to: http://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/20/444
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 26 2018, @01:42PM (74 children)
It's not that hard. Any group that has things to do, has more important stuff than worrying about people's widdle feelings. When the group begins to worry excessively about those widdle feelings, then the group falls apart. If it doesn't fall apart entirely, then the remaining group's mission in life has changed.
The Linux developers are in danger of becoming obsoleted by the bleeding heart liberals SJW's whose mission in life is to punish success.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @01:48PM (37 children)
Its just too convenient that the forced windows 10 "upgrade" finally started pushing non-tech people in the direction of linux, and now these internal attacks are coming out. I doubt most SJWs as you call them are doing more than following some thought leaders, so who are they?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 26 2018, @02:21PM
For starters, Soros, Turner, Hearst, Jane Fonda, that "Professor" Ayers. MSM beats the drum, look for any of the owners, and movers and shakers in MSM. The leaders are the people with the money, who pay other people to get on the news, or on the screen, or on the radio to push these agendas. To a lesser extent, some of the leaders occupy silly positions in universities. One of the colleges in California was mentioned on my talk show last week. That one college has more than 400 positions related to diversity. It takes money to employ all of those people, whose job it is to ensure that everyone EXCEPT Whitey is advanced. Whoever supplies the money is the leader.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by urza9814 on Wednesday September 26 2018, @02:22PM (35 children)
Let's not negate all of the hard work by so many talented coders by giving all credit to Microsoft. Linux was a rising star long before Windows 10; surely Win10 helped, but what really did it was *building a decent operating system*.
However, I do think there may be a bit of truth to your statement -- it's gotten too popular among people who simply don't understand how it works. They're treating open source projects like a typical corporation. They don't actually understand the fundamental concepts of open source development. They ought to go read ESR's CatB actually...that would probably be quite informative. We have a long history of projects working on the same code with different ethos/telos. That's why PaleMoon forked from Firefox...or even IceWeasel before that. That's why we have so many different distros all packaging damn near the same products. If you don't like what some existing group is doing, you take the code and you build your own group and let people choose which project they want to support. What you don't do is try to destroy the existing group out of spite. There's absolutely no reason for that.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by exaeta on Wednesday September 26 2018, @02:29PM (33 children)
That's perfectly reasonable.
If you don't like the way Linux is being run, FORK! There's no reason to try to fight the Linux development team, even if you disagree with the way they are handling it. That's what the GPLv2 is for.
Anyone who tries to withdraw their copyright in violation of the GPLv2 needs to be put on a wall of shame, and blacklisted from participation in the Open Source ecosystem. The system can't survive if people withdraw their supposedly irrevocable licenses.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 3, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday September 26 2018, @02:41PM (15 children)
And those who don't like how Linux is being run now aren't considering forking. They're threatening to pull their code from the project, thus gutting it. That's about as far from an open source ethos as one gets IMVHO.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Informative) by exaeta on Wednesday September 26 2018, @02:45PM (14 children)
Yeah. I understand why they are mad. I actually agree with them that what the Linux team is doing is wrong. But I also think the GPLv2 gives you the right to fork for exactly this type of ideological disagreement. We can have separate projects with different ethical rules that are based on the same code, thanks to the GPLv2.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday September 26 2018, @03:51PM (13 children)
Yes, but if I get this correctly -- and I might *not* and I invite correction if I'm misunderstanding -- but the threat here isn't that separate projects based on the same code will happen. Instead you have contributors asserting that they will *pull* "their" code from the kernel and not allow it to be used anymore for the Linux kernel. They effectively gut the kernel this way. GNU says you "shouldn't" do this (in relation to a program being used *only* under the latest GNU license / being able to revoke earlier terms under which software is released) but it does not say it "cannot" be done.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:31PM (1 child)
The code is already distributed with license agreements, your comment does not make sense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @06:46PM
I think it makes perfect sense but perhaps I didn't explain myself.
RTFA, the "possibly in response to" post and also figure out what ESR means by a "killswitch revolt".
I believe the notion is that the individual contributors of code have the right to unlicense *their contributions* to the codebase.
It's not just the codebase that is licensed but the individual contributions that went into it is the theory are each individually licensed by the code writer(s), I think. (Which may not be correct nor legal but I think this is the theory being feared). The question is: Is there a license by the contributor to the codebase and can that license be revoked? That seems to be an open-ended question that nobody knows the answer to IMO. GPL 3 explicitly states the term of license agreement is the length of Copyright of the work, thus giving a definitive sunset in time to the license. GPL 2 makes no such assurance other than a vague intent to give an explicit copyright to the licenser. But without a term it opens the license legal challenge - a potential argument is that the term is perpetual.... which in the UK may not be "forever". [theregister.co.uk] And in the U.S., IANAL and IMVVHO, one might argue that a perpetual license is not legal either - perpetuity is generally not allowed in estate law, for instance. It may be seen as generally unconscionable to give an eternal license to something - it's not reasonable. Which would then open up the other terms to artificial sunset the was the British decision did ("perpetual" meaning "as long as both sides keep agreeing.")
This might not be legal nor correct. Personally I think it is understood one is offering one's contribution in a project one knows to be distributed under GPL means one relinquishes one's own copyright of what has been written to the project. But again, that's an unchallenged interpretation. (IS there a "by submitting this code to us you agree...." clause when one offers up a patch?) But apparently ESR thinks there is a potential that this can in fact happen and might be legal.
Or I might be wrong. But now you can disagree with what I've written.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 26 2018, @05:21PM (10 children)
I believe that "pulling" their code is beyond their rights under GPL2. They can pull their support, but nothing stops the project from effectively telling them to "fork off" and use their existing code in its current state, and continue to develop it as long as they remain compliant with the GPL2 terms. Continued developers also gain author/owner rights in the derivative work, they just don't have the right to violate GPL2 on the parts they incorporated.
ffmpeg and libav managed to fork and continue down both paths (for a while, at least) and from what I saw of the junior wannabe lawyering in the ffmpeg camp, if there were a way to "pull their code" or anything else hurtful they could come up with, it would have been done.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @06:24PM
FFMPEG is arguably an illegal product anyhow the only reason it's tolerated is because so many MPEG group members find the project to be incredibly useful.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday September 26 2018, @08:17PM (7 children)
Maybe, but by agreeing to contribute the code to a GPL2 project is the contributor therefore licensing "their" code - the exact code they typed - under GPL2? That may seem obvious but unless the project has a disclaimer to the effect of "If you give this to us to use you're doing so under GPL2 [or other license or a public domain waiver]" upon submission the author of that snippet may maintain that they hold copyright to what they contributed, and fully have the right to revoke use to it.
I don't know that I buy that. Would the law apply common sense that if it's a GPL2 project and you know it you're obviously ceding your rights to it? The author hasn't been paid by the maintainer so "work for hire" copyrighting may or may not apply AFAICT. But I think that's the theory being argued, and I do think it could become a matter for a court to determine if it were pushed that far. Here's someplace else summarizing it the same way [lulz.com] as far as my understanding of the theory.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 26 2018, @11:13PM (6 children)
"Common sense" aka common law, was developed centuries ago by the aristocracy to justify protection of their property. Those aspects of common law and GPL are almost orthogonal.
If you want to extrapolate intent - publishing your work for all to see, use, copy and extend, for years, under a license like GPL2, would to me, establish intent to share, not intent to spring a novel submarine trap costing the world at large potentially billions while giving you little beyond personal satisfaction when somebody calls you out for being a misogynist pig.
If GPL2 explicitly included language such as "right to retract" then I could see it, but inferring the right to retract from common law and the presence of explicit exclusion of right to retract under GPL3 does not seem like a reasonable conclusion. If the contributors specifically selected GPL2 when GPL3 was offered, perhaps, but mostly the GPL2 works were licensed GPL2 before GPL3 was even an option. Again, if the contributors had previously published an explicit reason for sticking with GPL2 including their desire to retain the right to retract, that could be reasonable. Attempting to basically retroactively apply it after they were banned from the project just furthers justification for banning them in the first place.
As for that, I think the ban hammer is ridiculously heavy handed for managing this type of group, but lack of any kind of cultural oversight these many decades is also negligent. It's true: some people mature and learn that being an egotistical jackass really isn't all that satisfying in the end, some don't, but most can be swayed by a little social nudging. Meritocracy sounds great, until merit is being judged by the jackasses.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday September 27 2018, @01:49AM (1 child)
I agree that those aspects of common law property rights (as extended to intellectual property) and GPL are orthagonal. And I can also agree that a person knowingly contributing to a GPL project should be aware that they are contributing to a project where the final work is shared and modifiable - preserving some rights but intentionally modifying the right of copy. Those aspects (and others) speak against that theory that one can retract GPL 2 licensed code contributions as others have asserted.
However, much of law does not judge based on what reasonable intent is but rather what has been explicitly agreed to. And if you haven't explicitly agreed to signing away your copyright (by work for hire law which I think requires consideration or some other contractual agreement - I don't know that even willful public domain committing has ever been tested in law), these days copyright fully attaches and is vested in the writer. This is combined with cases in estate law which may or may not be parallel saying you cannot establish an irrevocable agreement in perpetuity. It is parallel to contract law that an eternal term is unconscionable. Since V2 doesn't seem to have a time limit (and I might be wrong there - others have said things which seems like I might be) the entirety of the license might be found invalid at its root. This line comes back to if the right to copy has not been explicitly granted it cannot be implicitly taken away... and again - what did the contributor expressly agree to when submitting the code?
That dichotomy between paragraph 1 and paragraph 2 is what I think has not been tested. It's my take on what I see each side saying and what a court might well find points of law to be argued in a case.
But before a ban hammer is judged as ridiculously heavy handed I want to see who it is truly being swung at first. I get the impression that there's a lot of fear about who's in charge. It would be interesting to see where that fear is really coming from. There is a difference between social maladeptness / being an egotistical jackass and engaging in the behaviors that are described in the code of conduct, for example.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:56AM
There's an awesome thought: Linux kernel contributor passes away, their rights pass to their heirs, heirs decide to fsck up the world and pull the rights to the code. I don't see a reasonable judge setting any kind of precedent that would support this scenario.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday September 27 2018, @04:02AM (3 children)
Actually, reading elsewhere in the comments (about the position of Copyleft on GPL retractions) I picked up a little different modification that I wasn't getting betfore. GPL2 contributions are themselves subject to the GPL2 as the patcher is modifying the software and thus subject to accepting the license terms in order to submit their modification in the first place. (As opposed to thinking that the wrriting of the patched code itself carries its own copyright.) Still dunno, still think it could be tried in court, but the Copyleft interpretation takes away the right to revoke from a patch submitter IMVHO.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:59AM (2 children)
Anything can be tried in court.
Tangentially: I think it would be very difficult to find any significant piece of kernel code that's 51% "controlled" by people wanting to pull the rights. Besides, how do you determine % contribution to code? Blame line count is an insanely crappy metric: whitespace changes, etc. Even if you remove all whitespace editing, how do you rate importance of a style change vs a conceptual innovation? Particularly when many conceptual innovations actually have negative value.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday September 27 2018, @02:34PM (1 child)
True, anything can be tried, but a solid enough theory can get a summary dismissal after initial response assuming one provides both a better interpretation of law which is uncontestable and no matter of facts to determine in that assessment. You're still putting out lawyer money but not nearly as much.
On the tangent, though, yeah that 51% idea also assumes that a project still has all contributors. (Don't you need to find 51% of all parties who still have any submissions in the base? Or can withdrawn developers be excluded?) I'd think it would be 51% of the parties who've contributed - write one line that gets incorporated and you're officially a contributor with an interest under that twisted notion. Is there case law behind making that determination or would the first (next) court considering the issue get to write precedent for the determination? But if 51% of active contributors decide to make a change (allow a withdrawl) in advance then maybe it's thought that is insurance against it ever being actionable in a court. (Or maybe the whole theory got lifted from cryptocurrency transaction reversals and not actual coding at all???)
Another tangent: Revoking contributions depends entirely on the person(s) with the button to commit changes, and what that person(s) both will do and what a court might order that person(s) to do (and what weapons a court has to make its will stick). If the committer won't push the button and a court won't make that person push the button (either in trial or because the theory is either tested or will not be tested) and one still has no problem.
Something about the unconditionedwitness post reminds me of tax protesters.... "Here's a bunch of steps [with no case law behind the conglomeration] to achieve [a whole bunch of legal theories squashed together that sound good but don't necessarily mesh] and achieve your result [which sounds good until you actually think about how much common sense it violates. Which isn't necessarily a legal impediment but can't just be ignored without due legal consideration either.]" More I think about it, the more it reads like a quasi-legal framework that real lawyers may demolish easily.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:23PM
As did the GPL at first, but I think it's slowly gaining legitimacy... until crap like this comes up.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday September 26 2018, @11:27PM
And as long as they use the "old" code in the kernel the kernel must remain GPL2 - which means that, while the new project developers may have choice in who gets to contribute, they can't change the rules covering its final use.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by urza9814 on Wednesday September 26 2018, @02:43PM (15 children)
Frankly, I think you've got that backwards. If there's this much disagreement over the CoC, then the people pushing it should be the ones forking rather than ripping apart the existing community just because they don't like how that community operates. If you've got a better governance idea, prove that it's better in a fair competition.
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Wednesday September 26 2018, @02:50PM (12 children)
Ultimately I think Linus should decide. Interesting that he stepped down at this time. It creates a problem.
I also agree that the CoC side should be the ones forking, not the other way around. But lets say that they don't, it doesn't give the anti-CoC group the right to violate GPLv2.
Personally, I am considering suing anyone who threatens to withdraw their GPLv2 permissions for declaratory judgement in U.S. Court. Since that would affect my license as well, I have ample grounds to do so.
Shall we test if the GPLv2 is indeed rescindable under U.S. law?
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Wednesday September 26 2018, @03:15PM (2 children)
The GPL v2 explicitly states that you must receive express permission from every author in order to change the terms of distribution for any contributed code:
The CoC is attempting to add additional restrictions on what code can be distributed:
Therefore, the new CoC violates the GPL unless every existing contributor consents to the change. And clearly they do not...
(Score: 5, Informative) by termigator on Wednesday September 26 2018, @03:59PM
You are confusing distribution with modification. The CoC does not violate the GPL.
The “change” is not a change in licensing, which would require agreement of all contributors. Change in the code is allowed as long as changes follow the GPL when distributed.
For example, if I contribute code to a GPL-based project, my contribution is covered under the GPL. Someone else can the change my contributed code for whatever reason within the project and the release under the GPL. Otherwise, no one could ever fix bugs on code that was not directly contributed by them. Another way to look at it is the CoC adds to the list of reasons why code in project can be altered beyond the reasons of bug fixing and functional improvements.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mr_mischief on Wednesday September 26 2018, @08:32PM
You're free to pull from master, make changes, and redistribute those under the GPLv2 whether or not you follow the CoC. That's redistribution.
You're not free to harass one of the maintainers and have your code merge upstream. You were never free to demand your code was accepted upstream in the first place. All that's changed with the CoC regarding the code is they can feel free to tell you they won't accept technically solid code from you upstream for non-technical reasons, and they can point to a codified list of reasons why.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 26 2018, @03:41PM (5 children)
What's most interesting to me is that the mail in which he announced his withdrawal contained a matching pair of smart double-quotes, and a single smart apostrophe. Linus almost entirely sticks to ASCII, in particular on LKML. Which implies to me one of two things:
- he's hanging a flag upside down, or sticking up a middle digit - this is duress;
- he didn't actually write parts of his mail, somebody wrote them for him.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:34PM (4 children)
Where is the evidence for this?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @07:26PM
Look for it yourself: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1809.2/00117.html?print=anz [iu.edu]
Great catch, FatPhil. Glad the "Funny" mod has been replaced by "Insightful" now. That is an indication that Linus could have been handed a declaration to submit under duress. We should try to identify what the last commit to the Linux tree was, in which Linus was still free to act.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 26 2018, @08:15PM (2 children)
wait for it ...
in his mail.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @09:43PM (1 child)
Sorry, all the quotes and apostrophes look the same to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @10:56PM
The link doesn't display the text properly. This one [lkml.org] properly decodes the non-ASCII, and is probably a safer source anyway.
For instance:
On the original link, it appears in my browser as:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:50PM (2 children)
They will wait until they are ready to initiate legal proceedings, then rescind, and then sue anyone who ignores the rescission.
Would you like to be on the hook for 300,000 in statutory damages per violation, per copyright owner?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @05:19PM (1 child)
> on the hook for 300,000
Sure. First we interpret the "," as decimal separator (Euro standard) so this = "300". Then we choose the currency, I'll pick "Yen" so this becomes ~ USD $3
Your move?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @07:51AM
Yea... you don't get to decide that.
The court, interpreting the statute does.
Haven't you ever read the copyright act?
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday September 26 2018, @11:31PM
I agree. Unfortunately, I can't afford the dollars needed to buy a voice on the Linux Foundation.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @06:48PM
Agree.
I don't personally have a problem with a CoC, but I might at some time in the future. I don't see why this has to be a normative project-level policy.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @02:02PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday September 26 2018, @02:34PM
Corporations, at least traditional ones, don't understand open source. (There are exceptions. I would say Google understands it.)
You don't own or control open source.
Open source is like a beehive and the corporation is like a bee keeper.
The bees are free to leave at any time.
If you make the bee hive attractive, well maintained, with a good workflow, and Microsoft free, then the bees will say and produce profitable honey for you.
If you start screwing the bees, or spraying Microsoft around the place, the bees can and will leave.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @02:00PM (5 children)
I was a minor Linux kernel hacker back in the day. I submitted patches starting in 1995, about 23 years ago. I stayed involved for a decade.
Now I do cyberwar for a government contractor. There are SJW-inspired laws we have to pretend to follow, but mostly it's a patriotic hacker meritocracy.
If I were still involved in Linux... I'd be in complete panic now. As it is, I feel awful knowing that Linux is starting to circle the drain.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 26 2018, @02:15PM (1 child)
I lack your credentials, but I share your anxiety. The new masters may decide that Linux security must be sacrificed for the benefit of . . . . whatever the hell. I can almost hear them chanting, "If you haven't done anything wrong, then you have nothing to hide!" There won't be any backdoors installed, instead all of the doors will be removed for the sake of transparency. When that starts happening, Linux will definitely need to fork, or everyone who takes security seriously will have to bail to BSD.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday September 26 2018, @02:51PM
Kernel-level, admittedly an enormous task, but a sw developer (or group) could search / scan the Linux source, verify no backdoors exist, and make that source available. At some point absolute security is impossible, as we've seen hard disk boot code, BIOS, and now CPU bugs. You could run a 486 and older code-scanned Linux kernel and probably be okay, but again there are so many attack vectors...
Beyond that, your distribution would need to be secure, and how could you ever be sure unless you scan all source-code.
And of course we've seen firewall / gateway / router attacks...
(Score: 5, Funny) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday September 26 2018, @02:24PM
Would you say you would be in a complete kernel panic?
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:53PM
Want to pull your code? You are still the owner of it. A gratuitous license not supported by an interest is revocable at any time by the grantor.
They didn't pay you a dime for the right to use your code, you simply allowed them to.
You can rescind that permission.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @03:36AM
Send this link to your government. [8ch.net] The money trails behind this lead to Middle Eastern funders of terrorism.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zocalo on Wednesday September 26 2018, @02:29PM (29 children)
That's absolutely no way to run a project of any kind, let alone develop software.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday September 26 2018, @03:44PM (2 children)
You've hit on the biggest problem, the taking of offense where none was offered. There is literally nothing that one may say or do (including saying and doing nothing) that cannot be construed as an offense to another. A typical modern code of conduct fails to acknowledge that. The "offender" is presumed to have offended because someone has taken offense. All that remains is the punishment. Somehow, taking offense where none was offered is never considered as a possibility and so never carries a punishment or correction.
As time goes on, the group is filled by people whose primary talent is being offended while all others are expelled one by one based on imaginary offenses.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday September 26 2018, @11:34PM
This post deserves a +10 mod imo.
(Score: 3, Touché) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday September 26 2018, @11:38PM
So militant SJWs have learned from the DMCA?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @03:47PM (3 children)
So basically what you are saying is "only white male anglo-saxon persons should have the keys to write code". Is that right?
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:11PM
> So basically what you are saying is "only...
It looks like that is what you are hearing -- time to have your ears checked.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday September 26 2018, @05:03PM
Case in point
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @06:43PM
You're a russian troll. Right now there are multiple government agencies and blackhat groups independently working to uncover your identities.
Given that reality winner was willing to go to prison to leak information about you guys to the press, it's perfectly reasonable to expect people will be leaking intelligence on you guys to blackhat groups.
You will all be hunted to the ends of the earth.
Tell me how much did they pay you per post?
Hope it was worth it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:03PM (18 children)
You do realise that the CoC being thrust in Linus' and Linux's face was written by a very-far-from-sane person? One who definitely does not have the best intentions of any code-base, or project viewed in terms of the programs it contains, at heart? She even came up with this doozie: "We acknowledge the value of non-technical contributors as equal to the value of technical contributors." in her SCUM Manife^W^WPost-Meritocracy Manifesto: https://postmeritocracy.org/ (search for 'Patricia' on that page, if you want some insight into one of the rusty nailfiles being held to Linus' throat currently). Meritocracy is now wrong and bad - did you not get the memo?
She does claim to be a capable programmer, but given this unverified tweet: https://kiwifarms.net/attachments/upload_2017-5-21_15-43-3-png.223283/ , I reckon she doesn't have as much merit in the field as she thinks she does. Some of the commits commits commits here:
https://github.com/CoralineAda/alice/commits/master?after=b18025ba5152cccdaa8c07f948dd39ce89981fa9+34 imply that (a) she's not a very competent coder at all; and (b) either (i) she doesn't know how to use version control, as she's publishing her dirty laundry that nobody should have any interest in; or (ii) she's deliberately bumping her contribution count in order to pretend to be more productive. None of which reflects well on her. Unless competence really is as unimportant as she claims it is, in which case she's just doing great.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:35PM (15 children)
You do realise you're arguing ad hominem?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @08:24PM (8 children)
It's not a personal attack, it's context that questions motivations. A meritocracy discriminates only against incompetence. If you've been in the workforce some time you've already seen the incompetent and malicious play the discrimination card. You must never let these shits control the frame.
None of this has anything to do with code or engineering decisions, right of the bat it's grievance mongering bullshit.
What I consider inappropriate in a professional setting is identity politics. These rules are inappropriate, they are infantilising and seek to undermine the personal agency of contributors.
How very Kafkaesque! Using the pretense of inclusion to exclude people based on mere allegations is outright sociopathic. Do not let the shits control the frame!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @11:03PM (7 children)
The parent post is not discussing meritocracy. It's not discussing the CoC. It's discussing the person the parent believes is pushing the agenda. Sorry. Ad hominem. = "To the person". And this is textbook.
What such rules suggest is that the personal agency of the contributor is undermined. And it should be. When that person uses their agency to engage in unprofessional behavior such as sexualized language, trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, personal attacks, harassment, and doxxing. Things a Foundation can be sued for and put out of business if it doesn't make it clear that such behaviors are unacceptable. Unless you personally have the multithousands of dollars and want to pay the legal costs of such a lawsuit yourself. Which would likely kill Linux much faster than any other method. More than anything else that could have been a convincer to Linus that he needed to mend his ways.
But aside from that, the behaviors that the CoC outlines are in fact unacceptable in a professional setting. Period. And that likely is threatening to those who engage or condone such behaviors.
Me, I hope instead Linus sees that his behavior was wrong. For decades. And now he's willing to change and see Linux change as well instead of fighting it when he's already ceded that he has behaved in hostile fashion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @11:26PM (6 children)
That is the context, you're removing the context. You are being intellectually dishonest. You are playing games!
The people stuffing their CoC down contributors proverbial throats object to sexualized language do they?
Bullshit!
Adults are responsible for their own behavior, this isn't a school yard.
No, they're not unacceptable in a professional setting. They're unacceptable in "polite" settings where walking on eggshells around anti-social behavior is expected. Only those who feel threatened by frank, open discussion seek to close it down.
Calling out bad code, stupid ideas and shitty behavior is wrong is it?
Hostile towards bad code, stupid ideas, breakage and general fuckwittery! The proof of the pudding is in the eating, explain how Linux was failing under this style of leadership.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @02:47AM (5 children)
My oh my... Struck a nerve, did I? Let's see....
1) Sexualized language being prohibited is in the CoC. You're welcome to go look it up. So yep.
2) On a nonprofit being able to be sued for a volunteer for Title VII harassment... All the following is IANAL. It's not settled yet seems in the winds. Have fun reading. [nonprofitissues.com] That case settled and parts were overturned, but cracked open the notion that volunteers may open Title VII claims even if they are not paid. If you want more reading [pbpatl.org] on how nonprofit organizations may be liable for the acts of their volunteers. But let's just note that if you don't think a project Foundation can get hit by a lawsuit for the actions of a benevolent dictator for life.... well... I'm sure you'll see sooner or later.
3) If you meant instead that such behaviors as those I outlined are socially acceptable... yeah. Good luck with that.
4) No, adults are not solely responsible for their own behavior when a larger organization condones that behavior by not intervening. See ANY number of lawsuits which don't go after the individual harassing but the organization which blatantly allows such harassments to occur without intervention after complaining. Have fun reading part II [eeoc.gov].
5) Find me a professional setting where a court has said such behaviors - as a matter of routine business and not isolated slights or incidents - is an acceptable procedure. I await with baited breath but I won't hold it.
6) Telling people that a situation isn't a dick-sucking contest, or advising them to shut the fuck up, or suggesting "please just kill yourself now," however hyperbolic or tongue-in-cheek, is NOT acceptable behavior. No. And I suspect you well know that and are intentionally being obtuse. And no - calling out bad ideas and code does not make up for that... that only requires logic. Which is easy.
7) No. You first explain how such behaviors are EVER acceptable. You tell me how abusing someone is justified. Then maybe I'll think about answering your concerns. Because if you can't see abuse when it is in front of your nose you won't understand the answers anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @11:53AM (4 children)
So you agree those behind the CoC are using "sexualized language" in the form of sexual innuendo and have effectively volunteered themselves for sanction under the very rules they seek to impose on others?
Why would a foundation be hit with a lawsuit because the guy who started the project calls someone out on their bullshit? 1A expressly prohibits congress from enacting any such law and if you're implying any other behavior, that is not opinion but misrepresentation and legally actionable defamation. At the very least it is a personal attack which would see you metaphorically sodomized by the CoC you so clearly love. See how it works yet?
If you're making the case it's not socially acceptable to call a CoC a CoC (which you've done) then you've already fallen afoul of your own rules. See how it works yet?
Nonsense, non-intervention in interpersonal politics does not and cannot imply condoning the behavior of parties involved.
Why would a court be ruling on non-actionable social behavior?
Absolutely is acceptable professional behavior when someone is trying it on. Don't like it, don't submit shitty code or waste peoples time with your nonsense.
No you! [wiktionary.org] You tell me how doing a Kay Sievers, refusing to fix your breakage and attempting to project blame elsewhere doesn't deserve a strongly worded reprimand. I want you to explain why being impolite or insulting when reprimanding an individual behaving like that is not "professional" but the bad behavior itself somehow is.
Effective people are disagreeable and don't put up with bullshit, deal with it because nobody sane gives a fuck if you or anybody else is offended!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @01:22PM (3 children)
Good luck, bud. You're a liability waiting to happen.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @03:13PM (2 children)
Personal attack, great to see you living up to the standards you would impose on others.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @05:14PM (1 child)
No, but explaining why isn't worthwhile. Like I said, good luck.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @05:49PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 26 2018, @09:23PM (5 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @11:05PM (4 children)
So you aren't talking about the CoC itself, or about the policies, but about her. Thanks for the confirmation.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @11:39PM
The comment occurred in the context of discussion about the CoC and was speculation on motivation. If you don't like the messenger or the critique of the identity politics pushed by those behind these CoC's, here's a transgender psychopath spelling out the same thing. [psychogendered.com]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday September 27 2018, @12:53AM (2 children)
Is being as stupid as you are painful?
No, that's not ad hominem either, it's just an insult.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @03:17AM (1 child)
I'm sorry I made you desperate enough that you had to stoop to insult. And yep, it is ad hominem since now you're trying to conlude on a point about my intelligence instead of what I actually said. You are arguing the arguer and not the argument. Fail.
And my point is that this entire subthread from the grandparent "sane meritocracy proponent" to your explicitness is discussing the merits of people. Not of the arguments involved. Discussing the "relevant attributes of the relevant person" is already off track even if you didn't initiate it.
But I'll bow out now as my point has been made, whether you can comprehend that or not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @12:44AM
Conclusion of idiocy confirmed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by zocalo on Wednesday September 26 2018, @05:19PM
The second group are those that take those tools and use them as the equivalent of a torch or pitchfork to go on a crusade to further an agenda at the expense of whatever it is they are involved in, and it's something goes far beyond the CoC and LGBT+ issues - you see a similar mindset from religious extremists too, hence my use of "fanatics". Ultimately, this is group cares more about their agenda than the project, which is fair enough, but the disruption that they invariably cause is absolutely not fair enough. What's needed is a set of guidelines encourages the inclusiveness *within* the meritocracy of OSS projects and allows the fanatics to be excised like the cancer they are. The Linux CoC is not that set of guidelines and its adoption - or at least it's application - needs to be re-thought, fast.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 26 2018, @08:44PM
You're suggesting CoralineAda is bumping commits to look good on a side project they're the only meaningful contributor to?
https://github.com/CoralineAda/alice/graphs/contributors [github.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by gringer on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:27AM (1 child)
I'll start with my own suggestion for a code of conduct:
That's it; a simple statement of general principles, open for interpretation, with a generally positive expectation of the community. I have grave concerns for the code of conduct that has been presented here for the Linux kernel.
It also looked good for me... up until about this point:
If you are presenting mere examples, don't complicate them by making more general statements. It got worse pretty quickly from that point on:
The maintainers have a particular skill: maintaining code. They may also have other skills, but this is not guaranteed, and forcing them to do something they're not good at is a recipe for disaster. Maintainers who are aware of this would probably keep silent in the face of a code of conduct like this, to avoid speaking out their concerns, for fear of being shot down. But that's precisely where this code of conduct drives the final nail in the coffin, in the last sentence:
This is not a good faith code of conduct. It assumes that the community is generally hostile, and the only reason for silence or inaction is support of that hostility.
In the interest of providing some more constructive criticism about my concerns, here are a few more general points:
Communities don't need to put up with undesirable behaviour, but it's a community problem, and should be dealt with by the community itself. Someone helicoptering in and spitting out their dislike for the conduct of the community is about as helpful as an old, established community member that attacks the opinions of everyone that disagrees with them. Ideally, all community members should try to be responsible for immunising the community against harmful behaviour, so that the ones who can't do that (for whatever reason: social, time, or otherwise) are still protected. Discussion about undesirable behaviour should be open, and carried out within the community. Management of repercussions should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, and should not be the sole charge of a single person or the same old group of people. Change must come from within. Anyone who wants to change a community should either encourage an existing community member (in a non-coercive fashion) to translate for them, or learn the culture of the community first before they try to change it.
If a person's behaviour is unacceptable, they might not know that themselves, or may assume that it's okay because no one is saying anything. Others might not mention anything, because the person carrying out the unacceptable behaviour is a genius (or similar), and there's an impression that they'd lash out and leave the community, taking their expertise with them and throwing away the key. I don't think this needs to be a concern for two reasons:
Finally, I think that silence is okay. It's useful to understand what that silence means (in particular, that most people will interpret silence as agreement or approval), but sometimes silence can be the only manageable defence against an attack. It's okay to be silent, and punishing people for their silence will only serve to drive away the quiet people that are waiting patiently for their turn to speak.
If anyone's interested in improving the Neutral Code of Conduct that I started this comment with, feel free to visit my GitLab repository on it:
https://gitlab.com/gringer/NCoC/ [gitlab.com]
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by evilcam on Friday September 28 2018, @02:13AM
This seems like a really weird argument for the FOSS world to get involved in.
On the one hand there is clearly a problem where contributes to Open Source projects are acting like jerks, and because cis-het-white-men are the majority of contributors this is manifesting with certain language. But having read the CoC and several of the review comments, I really think this is a storm in a teacup.
Keep committing your code.
Keep providing feedback on other people's commits.
Just don't be a dick about it; there are ways to provide feedback without saying "This code fucking sucks" and hurting people's feelings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @02:14PM
I'm was a bit surprised by how much controversy a CoC sparked. Then someone pointed me to a discussion in a different project about a gender field in a profile page where the question was what to add beside male and female. There were people who suggested to drop the entire gender field, because gender shouldn't matter in a software project, and someone who identified neither as male or female was offended by the suggestion because they needed the reassurance of knowing they were accepted and that apparently wasn't obvious enough without the gender field.
Ok, I get what people get upset about, that is ridiculous.
But I'm still surprised at the apparent inability to write a CoC that adresses this. Why not state that the project is not about religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, culture, political preference and so on, is neutral on those issues, and the project is not a platform for discussing those issues. It's strictly about the code being developed. Anything expressed in code, comments, commits, on mailing lists and whatever else the project uses to communicate should respect that neutrality. Take discussions about those subjects elsewhere. If there are complaints about people's conduct that will exclusively be judged on how they behave within the project. Use derogatory language about a category of people that has nothing to do with the project and you're out of bounds; complain about such behaviour done outside the project and you're out of bounds too. Stay on topic, in other words.
I'm sure this doesn't address everything. What's polite in one culture may be extremely rude in another, and what's polite in the other culture might be so indirect and unclear in the first that it is perceived as a lack of honesty. One shouldn't have to walk on eggs while communicating out of fear that someone might be offended though, don't start with assuming the worst when you don't like something. So a CoC should not be enforced too strictly, it's a reference point for when a situation is getting out of hand. That should be stated as part of the CoC.