[GTALUG] Linux 4.19-rc4 released, an apology, and a maintainership note

Post by Dhaval Giani via talk
https://lwn.net/Articles/764901/
...
To tie this all back to the actual 4.19-rc4 release (no, really, this

...
Jono Bacon's comments on it,
https://www.jonobacon.com/2018/09/16/linus-his-apology-and-why-we-should-support-him/
----
Another interesting article that I read over the past few days was a
Python keynote talk,
https://snarky.ca/setting-expectations-for-open-source-participation/
----
On a more personal note, I have seen "hostile" behavior on many mailing
lists, which has led me from withdrawing from participating on them.
We tend to attack developers without thinking of the impact on them.
This list is an example of attacks on systemd. While Lennart doesn't read
this list personally, I do know of the impact systemd criticism has had on
him. He has shared recordings of death threats because of systemd. I think,
we can all agree that, systemd, or pulseaudio did not make linux worse, at
least enough to justify death threats.
They haven't even made it bad enough to justify the constant attacks on
the software.
Remember, if you have a better idea, you have the _freedom_ to implement
it. You, however, do not have the freedom to expect them to drop what they
want to do, to fix your problems, and when they don't want to, be subject
to attacks from you.
----
I do hope, Linus taking some time off will make things better for him, and
by extension Linux.

The Poettering hit man story is four years old. It didn't stop him from his
own rant, they are after all just words.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/lennart-poetterings-linus-torvalds-rant/

"Open Source community is full of a******s, and I probably more than most
others am one of their most favourite targets. I get hate mail for hacking
on Open Source. People have started multiple 'petitions' on petition web
sites, asking me to stop working (google for it). Recently, people started
collecting Bitcoins to hire a hitman for me (this really happened!). Just
the other day, some idiot posted a 'song' on YouTube, a creepy work, filled
with expletives about me and suggestions of violence. People post websites
about boycotting my projects, containing pretty personal attacks."

Also on a personal note, you contacted me offlist to chastize me about some
trivial comment I made about pulseaudio and at least one other person has
named you pubically on this list for the same type of conduct.

Now you make this post as a maintainership note about why you leave hostile
lists. What exactly do you define as hostile behaviour? I'd define it as
being trolled offlist by someone who harvested my email and decided they
had the right to contact me, just because they could.

Systemd is a thing. Writing publically about a thing, even in criticism,
even if you use words you can't say on TV, is so far removed from your own
private ad hominem remarks offlist that I am raising your poor conduct, to
remind you; just because you post a couple of true facts, that doesn't
authenticate a third postulate you have formulated as some sort of
gratification index.

I'm not exactly sure what it is that you maintain but I think both Lennart
and Linus can look after their own issues without your or anyone else this
lists intervention.

Free speech is a cornerstone of progressive thinking, feel free to ignore
this post.

Dhaval

Post by Dhaval Giani via talk
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Dhaval Giani via talk

2018-09-17 15:36:53 UTC

Post by Dhaval Giani via talk
https://lwn.net/Articles/764901/
...
To tie this all back to the actual 4.19-rc4 release (no, really, this

...
Jono Bacon's comments on it,
https://www.jonobacon.com/2018/09/16/linus-his-apology-and-why-we-should-support-him/
----
Another interesting article that I read over the past few days was a
Python keynote talk,
https://snarky.ca/setting-expectations-for-open-source-participation/
----
On a more personal note, I have seen "hostile" behavior on many mailing
lists, which has led me from withdrawing from participating on them.
We tend to attack developers without thinking of the impact on them.
This list is an example of attacks on systemd. While Lennart doesn't read
this list personally, I do know of the impact systemd criticism has had on
him. He has shared recordings of death threats because of systemd. I think,
we can all agree that, systemd, or pulseaudio did not make linux worse, at
least enough to justify death threats.
They haven't even made it bad enough to justify the constant attacks on
the software.
Remember, if you have a better idea, you have the _freedom_ to implement
it. You, however, do not have the freedom to expect them to drop what they
want to do, to fix your problems, and when they don't want to, be subject
to attacks from you.
----
I do hope, Linus taking some time off will make things better for him,
and by extension Linux.

The Poettering hit man story is four years old. It didn't stop him from
his own rant, they are after all just words.

They are just words for you. But you ignore a phone call from an unknown
number. And then you listen to voicemail, and it a voicemail threatening to
kill you because of systemd, at that point in time, it has stopped being
mere words. Yes, 4 yrs old. Has it stopped having impact? No.

Post by Russell Reiter via talk
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/lennart-poetterings-linus-torvalds-rant/
"Open Source community is full of a******s, and I probably more than most
others am one of their most favourite targets. I get hate mail for hacking
on Open Source. People have started multiple 'petitions' on petition web
sites, asking me to stop working (google for it). Recently, people started
collecting Bitcoins to hire a hitman for me (this really happened!). Just
the other day, some idiot posted a 'song' on YouTube, a creepy work, filled
with expletives about me and suggestions of violence. People post websites
about boycotting my projects, containing pretty personal attacks."
Also on a personal note, you contacted me offlist to chastize me about
some trivial comment I made about pulseaudio and at least one other person
has named you pubically on this list for the same type of conduct.

I apologize for that.

Post by Russell Reiter via talk
Now you make this post as a maintainership note about why you leave
hostile lists. What exactly do you define as hostile behaviour? I'd define
it as being trolled offlist by someone who harvested my email and decided
they had the right to contact me, just because they could.
Systemd is a thing. Writing publically about a thing, even in criticism,
even if you use words you can't say on TV, is so far removed from your own
private ad hominem remarks offlist that I am raising your poor conduct, to
remind you; just because you post a couple of true facts, that doesn't
authenticate a third postulate you have formulated as some sort of
gratification index.

I am just going to ignore the last bit. I bring up systemd, because it is
quite a bit my baby as well. I take every attack on it personally (rightly
or wrongly, and that is my problem, not _yours, as you have quite pointed
out later on in your email). Which quite brings to my point, you have folks
who are directly impacted by your words. Am I right in defending my baby?
Am I right in getting defensive about it? Am I right in not being able to
separate out the project from the person? These are all personal questions.

All that matters is, everything people say, has an impact, and a result.
You might call it illogical (in your opinion), but it has happened. There
have been times where I felt I could participate in discussions and talk
about it.

Spectre/Meltdown was one such. I talked about the importance of it, and it
was immediately shot down as corporate conspiracy. Of course, we are still
dealing with the fallout. What is my relation with this? For the last many
months, I have been part of the response force for my employer to deal with
the intel flaws. But feeling (note the word) attacked, doesn't make me feel
inclined to share. Certainly not my loss.

I'm not exactly sure what it is that you maintain

I don't actively maintain anything right now. I took time off for mental
health reasons. Part of it is physiological, but a lot of was exacerbated
by working in open source. That is a different story, and not the topic of
this email. If you want, ping me offlist, and I will send you a more
detailed email.

Post by Russell Reiter via talk
but I think both Lennart and Linus can look after their own issues without
your or anyone else this lists intervention.

Of course they can. And once again, it is not a question of your, or my
intervention. It is a question of communication. Do your (trivial) words
have an impact? Are they going to have a positive impact? Are they going to
benefit the community?

If there is something I am starting to believe this week, it is this. Open
source is a great model for development. It is a horrible model for humans
though. We have this project which is developed for free (in the monetary
sense), in the open, (ideally) in collaboration with the world. But all you
are getting is negative feedback in return. I cannot think of a single
model, where that is a success story.

Post by Russell Reiter via talk
Free speech is a cornerstone of progressive thinking, feel free to ignore
this post.

It is the greatest power out there, and always remember the spiderman law
when this is the case. With great power comes great responsibility. Use
your free speech responsibly.

Dhaval

Russell Reiter via talk

2018-09-17 16:34:18 UTC

Post by Dhaval Giani via talk
https://lwn.net/Articles/764901/
...
To tie this all back to the actual 4.19-rc4 release (no, really, this

...
Jono Bacon's comments on it,
https://www.jonobacon.com/2018/09/16/linus-his-apology-and-why-we-should-support-him/
----
Another interesting article that I read over the past few days was a
Python keynote talk,
https://snarky.ca/setting-expectations-for-open-source-participation/
----
On a more personal note, I have seen "hostile" behavior on many mailing
lists, which has led me from withdrawing from participating on them.
We tend to attack developers without thinking of the impact on them.
This list is an example of attacks on systemd. While Lennart doesn't
read this list personally, I do know of the impact systemd criticism has
had on him. He has shared recordings of death threats because of systemd. I
think, we can all agree that, systemd, or pulseaudio did not make linux
worse, at least enough to justify death threats.
They haven't even made it bad enough to justify the constant attacks on
the software.
Remember, if you have a better idea, you have the _freedom_ to implement
it. You, however, do not have the freedom to expect them to drop what they
want to do, to fix your problems, and when they don't want to, be subject
to attacks from you.
----
I do hope, Linus taking some time off will make things better for him,
and by extension Linux.

The Poettering hit man story is four years old. It didn't stop him from
his own rant, they are after all just words.

I apologize for that.

Apology accepted and my own is offered up to you in return, for my own
insensitivities in posting. Sometimes I forget the first rule of digial
comment sensibility, wait and think before you hit send.

I am just going to ignore the last bit. I bring up systemd, because it is
quite a bit my baby as well. I take every attack on it personally (rightly
or wrongly, and that is my problem, not _yours, as you have quite pointed
out later on in your email). Which quite brings to my point, you have folks
who are directly impacted by your words. Am I right in defending my baby?
Am I right in getting defensive about it? Am I right in not being able to
separate out the project from the person? These are all personal questions.
All that matters is, everything people say, has an impact, and a result.
You might call it illogical (in your opinion), but it has happened. There
have been times where I felt I could participate in discussions and talk
about it.
Spectre/Meltdown was one such. I talked about the importance of it, and it
was immediately shot down as corporate conspiracy. Of course, we are still
dealing with the fallout. What is my relation with this? For the last many
months, I have been part of the response force for my employer to deal with
the intel flaws. But feeling (note the word) attacked, doesn't make me feel
inclined to share. Certainly not my loss.
I'm not exactly sure what it is that you maintain
I don't actively maintain anything right now. I took time off for mental
health reasons. Part of it is physiological, but a lot of was exacerbated
by working in open source. That is a different story, and not the topic of
this email. If you want, ping me offlist, and I will send you a more
detailed email.

Stress is one of the most enduring problems in the modern corporste world.
Sorry if I have added to your own at this time. I do appreciate the fact
that it takes a particular kind of fortitude to continue to participate
under such adverse conditions and I hope you understand my regret is
sincere.

Post by Russell Reiter via talk
but I think both Lennart and Linus can look after their own issues
without your or anyone else this lists intervention.

Of course they can. And once again, it is not a question of your, or my
intervention. It is a question of communication. Do your (trivial) words
have an impact? Are they going to have a positive impact? Are they going to
benefit the community?
If there is something I am starting to believe this week, it is this. Open
source is a great model for development. It is a horrible model for humans
though. We have this project which is developed for free (in the monetary
sense), in the open, (ideally) in collaboration with the world. But all you
are getting is negative feedback in return. I cannot think of a single
model, where that is a success story.

We all learn from our own and each others mistakes.

Post by Russell Reiter via talk
Free speech is a cornerstone of progressive thinking, feel free to ignore
this post.

It is the greatest power out there, and always remember the spiderman law
when this is the case. With great power comes great responsibility. Use
your free speech responsibly.

Not really a big reader of comics myself, but think I get what you are
saying.

Post by Dhaval Giani via talk
Dhaval

Dhaval Giani via talk

2018-09-17 19:02:02 UTC

Post by Russell Reiter via talk
Also on a personal note, you contacted me offlist to chastize me about
some trivial comment I made about pulseaudio and at least one other person
has named you pubically on this list for the same type of conduct.

I apologize for that.

Apology accepted and my own is offered up to you in return, for my own
insensitivities in posting. Sometimes I forget the first rule of digial
comment sensibility, wait and think before you hit send.

Thank you. I think we can all do be reminded of that from time to time!

I am just going to ignore the last bit. I bring up systemd, because it is
quite a bit my baby as well. I take every attack on it personally (rightly
or wrongly, and that is my problem, not _yours, as you have quite pointed
out later on in your email). Which quite brings to my point, you have folks
who are directly impacted by your words. Am I right in defending my baby?
Am I right in getting defensive about it? Am I right in not being able to
separate out the project from the person? These are all personal questions.
All that matters is, everything people say, has an impact, and a result.
You might call it illogical (in your opinion), but it has happened. There
have been times where I felt I could participate in discussions and talk
about it.
Spectre/Meltdown was one such. I talked about the importance of it, and
it was immediately shot down as corporate conspiracy. Of course, we are
still dealing with the fallout. What is my relation with this? For the last
many months, I have been part of the response force for my employer to deal
with the intel flaws. But feeling (note the word) attacked, doesn't make me
feel inclined to share. Certainly not my loss.
I'm not exactly sure what it is that you maintain
I don't actively maintain anything right now. I took time off for mental
health reasons. Part of it is physiological, but a lot of was exacerbated
by working in open source. That is a different story, and not the topic of
this email. If you want, ping me offlist, and I will send you a more
detailed email.

One of the things I would like to do some day is write down my thoughts on
this topic. (Probably not for sharing though). These days I manage a team
of open source developers, and a lot of my time is spent trying to look at
it from their point of view. "How this affect my career?" "How did my
working with person X affect my career?" (positively/negatively). There are
times they are unable to make progress, because we are all humans, and
communication is the hardest skill to learn, they view it as affecting
their career negatively. It is quite different from, just the black and
white of the technicalities.

I am pretty sure these problems have been already been solved elsewhere. I
am curious to see how and to what extent.

Dhaval

Christopher Browne via talk

2018-09-17 16:39:51 UTC

The Poettering hit man story is four years old. It didn't stop him from his own rant, they are after all just words.

They are just words for you. But you ignore a phone call from an unknown number. And then you listen to voicemail, and it a voicemail threatening to kill you because of systemd, at that point in time, it has stopped being mere words. Yes, 4 yrs old. Has it stopped having impact? No.

It bothers me that it occurs to people to do this sort of thing.

Free software has this; SF fandom has this; I'm sure it exists in
plenty of places.

With regards to systemd, I'm not quite sure what to think.

I keep hearing troublesome things about scope creep and about
Poettering; what I can't tell is whether the troubling things are
being made up by the sorts of people whose edge cases include calling
in death threats, or just what.

Personally, I think I'm more or less with Torvalds; there certainly
seem to be some good things about systemd; the "good old init scripts"
needed to become something better.

I step back to the analysis process that Debian did when they took the
(rather controversial step) of adopting systemd; I was reasonably
satisfied by the analysis at the time, that they made the best
decision available. (Here's a pointer into the debate material:
https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem)

I'm not sure how open the project is; it's always difficult to tell
from outside. For sure, given that they've got evil monkeys outside
flinging poo, they can't just accept anything offered, as someone's
sure to fling in commits intended to cause trouble.

My own evidences...

- I have written a few service files; it has mostly not been terribly painful.

- I found it remarkable how long it took for service files to get
integrated into debian for ISC DHCPD, so apparently some things can be
problematic.

- I found it a pain when I wanted to force BIND9 to use IPv4, and
managing the configuration for that seemed to involve some fight
between BIND maintainers and systemd maintainers.

I have to call my own situations a bit of a mixed bag. Nothing
indicating systemd as being a full on disaster, but it's not without
some pains in the neck.

All that matters is, everything people say, has an impact, and a result. You might call it illogical (in your opinion), but it has happened. There have been times where I felt I could participate in discussions and talk about it.
Spectre/Meltdown was one such. I talked about the importance of it, and it was immediately shot down as corporate conspiracy. Of course, we are still dealing with the fallout. What is my relation with this? For the last many months, I have been part of the response force for my employer to deal with the intel flaws. But feeling (note the word) attacked, doesn't make me feel inclined to share. Certainly not my loss.

That one's sufficiently hard to get a grasp on that I'm not surprised
that some would head straight down conspiracy road; it's way easier to
rant than to understand a difficult problem.

And of course, that means you're getting insults flung at you, which
is understandably no fun.

--
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
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Michael Hill via talk

2018-09-17 11:23:06 UTC

Post by Dhaval Giani via talk
This list is an example of attacks on systemd. While Lennart doesn't read
this list personally, I do know of the impact systemd criticism has had on
him. He has shared recordings of death threats because of systemd. I think,
we can all agree that, systemd, or pulseaudio did not make linux worse, at
least enough to justify death threats.

Thanks, Dhaval. Good reading.

Mike
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D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk

2018-09-17 19:52:07 UTC

| From: Dhaval Giani via talk <***@gtalug.org>

| https://lwn.net/Articles/764901/

| https://www.jonobacon.com/2018/09/16/linus-his-apology-and-why-we-should-support-him/

Thanks. I hadn't noticed this. A possibly big story.

| On a more personal note, I have seen "hostile" behavior on many mailing
| lists, which has led me from withdrawing from participating on them.

Mailing lists are notoriously bad at communicating emothions. I guess
that causes some to just amp things up. There have been many
discussions of this phenomenon and I still don't have great insights.

I have not found this mailing list to be a problem. Have you?

Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept
from others.

Jon Postel

Some things can seem like slights even when there was no such intent.

Death threats are hard to explain away. I did not read Linus' comment
about abortion to be a deat threat. Just overly colourful swearing.
I did not think it appropriate. "Criticize the sin, not the sinner."

This has low reliability, so take it with a large grain of salt, but
the only time I met Lennart Poettering (before systemd) he did seem
arrogant.

I've not made any contributions to the kernel / netdev. I've found the
processs daunting / unwelcoming. At least one "lieutenant" has been
much more unpleasant than Linus. Just fixing Linus isn't enough.

Have a look at this thread, especially how it is left (in my mind)
unresolved after I did the legwork to refute Miller's assertion.

<https://www.spinics.net/lists/netdev/msg342321.html>
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Dhaval Giani via talk

2018-09-17 20:16:27 UTC

On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 12:52 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <

Post by D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk
| https://lwn.net/Articles/764901/
|
https://www.jonobacon.com/2018/09/16/linus-his-apology-and-why-we-should-support-him/
Thanks. I hadn't noticed this. A possibly big story.
| On a more personal note, I have seen "hostile" behavior on many mailing
| lists, which has led me from withdrawing from participating on them.
Mailing lists are notoriously bad at communicating emothions. I guess
that causes some to just amp things up. There have been many
discussions of this phenomenon and I still don't have great insights.
I have not found this mailing list to be a problem. Have you?

Troubling patterns, yes. Not to me, not projects I participate in. But I
have noticed them. I debated about bringing it up, and then decided that it
wasn't worth my time or effort for clearly negligible gain.

Post by D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk
Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept
from others.
Jon Postel
Some things can seem like slights even when there was no such intent.

I agree. You do however have to account for the fact that most software
development is a negative feedback loop (find bug, debug, fix, rinse,
repeat..). Add doing that in public, almost everything starts coming out
negatively.

A friend of mine had an interesting insight on this a few years back.
Paraphrasing him, written communication is always is read as more negative
than what it is written as. So, you have to write it as 2x postive for it
to be read as 1x positive.

Is it a sustainable goal, I am unsure. But I do think it is a problem.

Post by D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk
Death threats are hard to explain away. I did not read Linus' comment
about abortion to be a deat threat. Just overly colourful swearing.
I did not think it appropriate. "Criticize the sin, not the sinner."

I think different incidents. Lennart (not Linus), had someone call him and
leave him a death threat. (He had shared the recording with me at that time)

Post by D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk
This has low reliability, so take it with a large grain of salt, but
the only time I met Lennart Poettering (before systemd) he did seem
arrogant.

I don't think that though is a reason to belittle him.

Post by D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk
I've not made any contributions to the kernel / netdev. I've found the
processs daunting / unwelcoming. At least one "lieutenant" has been
much more unpleasant than Linus. Just fixing Linus isn't enough.
Have a look at this thread, especially how it is left (in my mind)
unresolved after I did the legwork to refute Miller's assertion.
<https://www.spinics.net/lists/netdev/msg342321.html>

I am totally with you on that one. I really do wish the LKML was an easier
community to work with.

Dhaval

Michael Hill via talk

2018-09-17 20:44:08 UTC

On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 3:52 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk

Post by D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk
This has low reliability, so take it with a large grain of salt, but
the only time I met Lennart Poettering (before systemd) he did seem
arrogant.

Depends on the context, I guess. I've been to a number of Lennart's
talks, but I've also seen him at social events surrounding the
conferences (Devconf, FOSDEM, Desktop Summit, this year's GUADEC).
He's the personal friend of some of the GNOME docs people I know, and
they know him as a regular guy.

Mike
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Dave Doyle via talk

2018-09-17 20:10:49 UTC