So let me be very clear: if you as a maintainer feel that you control who or what can use your code, YOU ARE WRONG.
I wish it happened before this all blew over but I agree with the sentiment
I too put my feet down. Daily.
Some people pay for that you know, make sure to cash in!
Good on Linus, that’s a very fair answer.
Yeah… I kinda wish he had provided it before all those devs quit, though.
Of course, he might have kept silent as a test to see if the project can remain healthy without his active stewardship, which makes sense for such a large and important project. I’m sure he’s unimpressed by the result.
Yeah, maybe just a good steward quality-testing the Bus Factors?
The issue I see is that Greg did spoke in a way that would not undermind Linux leadership. If Linux was out, I’m sure Greg would have said stuff publicly much earlier.
That makes sense too. I guess it’s a very difficult balance to hit, for all concerned. I think a lot of the famous outbursts that happen on LKML are probably an inevitable side-effect of that balancing-act, and of maintainers being stretched in multiple directions.
Too little, too late. As usual.
Well, would you look at that, after all forcing things to be discussed and bringing them to the news and social is actually a good thing to get more clear things when there’s problems.
I don’t see how that follows. Linus wanted to see how the discussion went on the mailing list. I doubt he wanted nor appreciated the negative media and social media attention.
I’m not really familiar with any of this, but if they want to keep this stuff private why bother to publish it on public mailing lists?
It is not about it being public. He just wants it on the mailing list.
The people subscribed to the mailing list are all people involved in or specifically interested in kernel development. The hope is that the conversations there will be less technical and less political. What he does not want is a bunch of social or political pressure from drive by opinion holders on social media (like us).
It is fine for us to be discussing there discussion here. But he wants the discussion to be had “there”.
The main place to have technical discussions, big and small, is on a public mailing list. So everyone in the world with proper qualifications can join any time. It’s a way to ensure the best ideas with, instead of the loudest voice, or the person with the best networking.
There’s no other place to have these discussions.
Exactly. Airing-out Hellwig’s successful attempt to sabotage Rust efforts (and it was successful, given that at least two important maintainers have already resigned) was good, actually.
Unfortunately, it seems that Linus doesn’t have the maturity to recognize that, and this cycle is likely to continue, barring something good and unforeseen happening.
so the social media publicity was required to resolve this issue?
do you realise the rust contributor quit after making everything public?
this was a technical issue that took Linus more than a week to check before making a clear decision
what you said is speculative nonsense
so the social media publicity was required to resolve this issue?
Certainly seems that way unfortunately.
you really think Linus would have ignored that email forever?
If the Rust guy hadn’t made a fuss? Absolutely.
Nothing speculative about it. The substance of the problem (obstinate, crotchety baby that was blocking useful code) was ignored and Linus instead chose to wrongly focus on Marcan calling out the problem. There’s nothing wrong with people calling out toxic bullshit, and it seemed that social media was necessary for that in this case, yeah.
it was ignored for 5 days, hardly forever. does Linus’ SLA need to be quicker?
making things public loads the issue with political and social pressure making more damage to the project and everyone involved inevitable. it was made more toxic
the code would have made it in either way
You are really trying hard to contort things into things I didn’t say.
The people problem is being ignored, and it wasn’t until Linus was made aware of a technical justification for slapping Hellwig down that Linus focused his disapproval away from Marcan, who was rightly calling this out, to the person creating the problem.
And we lost at least three solid R4L devs, of which, Marcan was one, and there’s zero acknowledgement from Linus that fixating on Marcan rightly calling this shit out was wrong.
The people problem of letting obstinate babies block valid code for any non-technical reason still has not been addressed, and this will keep happening until that changes.
so now you say nothing has been resolved after all?
social media or not, we still have the:
people problem of letting obstinate babies block valid code for any non-technical reason
so when you said
Airing-out Hellwig’s successful attempt to sabotage Rust efforts was good, actually.
what you meant was, it didn’t do a damn thing
That’s not what any of that means. Your reading comprehension could use some work.
I think it’s a positive cycle. There’s unfortunately a lot of emotion in kernel maintenance, and this attacks a huge part of it. Subsystem maintainers are maintainers, they don’t own the project, they just make sure the code stays in a good state. In other words, they serve the users.
Good reply
Holy moly that is a
manpage of a roast. Linus has gotten extremely good at making himself clear while maintaining his temper just enough.His argument is applicable to much of FLOSS: your code and contributions you have say over, but you can’t complain about how people used your FLOSS code endpoints downstream. In exchange, any changes you make are the accessors’ responsibility to keep up with.
Exactly. I loved his irate rants before, but this is much more respectful but just as effective. Keep it up Linus.
Not a follower of kernel development, but I agree with Linus. The latest drama is just full of unprofessional toxicity (from both sides).
Linus had said for years that he wants to see Rust in some form in the kernel. You might not like it, but sometimes you just have to disagree and commit.
