| Title | More on Linus Torvalds Taking a Break From Linux Kernel Maintainership | |
| Date | Thursday September 20 2018, @03:00PM | |
| Author | chromas | |
| Topic | ||
| 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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printed from SoylentNews, More on Linus Torvalds Taking a Break From Linux Kernel Maintainership on 2024-04-27 06:30:56