From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2018 00:57:28 -0500 From: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" To: Frank Rowand Message-ID: <20181111055728.GC12818@thunk.org> References: <1541721842.3774.2.camel@HansenPartnership.com> <35402D8E-0294-4E34-BE8B-22BCBC20BF66@fb.com> <0F1E6845-9F6D-46E2-BB52-8B0C2D8103C6@fb.com> <3b861369-0fc0-c746-4b1b-047ce903cc30@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <3b861369-0fc0-c746-4b1b-047ce903cc30@gmail.com> Cc: James Bottomley , "ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org" , Tech Board Discuss Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [Tech-board-discuss] TAB non-nomination List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 07:18:00PM -0800, Frank Rowand wrote: > OK. So the update was done in an opaque closed fashion, which involved > soliciting input from some unknown fraction of the community. Do I > understand that correctly? > > And I think it would be fair to say that the people who created the > update were probably aware of the comments of a much larger group of > people who had participated in the threads on various email lists, > and also I suspect the comments threads on the related lwn articles. > So likely also based on input from a (probably) larger fraction of > the community who had been willing to publicly comment. > > So based on community input, but the document was not reviewed by the > broader community, or accepted by the broader community. "Community" is a very slippery term. I will note that there were *many* people who were participating on the threads, sometimes in very non-constructive or in a downright toxic fashion, who had zero commits in recent years. In some cases, it was zero commits, *ever*. I recall doing the research on one prolific author and found that while he did contribute the kernel, it was 3 or 4 commits... ~5 years ago... to a driver. And then there was one person who admitted that while he was just a user, he insisted he had a right to weigh in the issue. They certainly have the right to have that belief, of course. Whether or not maintainers are obliged to cater to people with those beliefs is a very different question, however. There seems to be an assumption that a open, public discussion will always give you the best review. I don't think that's necessarily true. It can often give you a very biased sample from the poeple who are most stridently on one side of the debate or the other, as well as being biased towards those who believe in the "last post wins" style of debate, since they end up speaking most loudly and posting most frequently and most aggressively. I found it very interesting that by explicitly asking the top ranked developers by git statistics for comments and for their sign-off on the various update patches, we got a much broader read on what people thought, and received some very thoughtful comments --- from people who had *not* engaged on the public threads. At this point, Linus has indicated that he would prefer that we not try to tweak the CoC any further, and let's see how it works out in practice. If new developers continue to report that they feel more welcome, and we get more news reports like this: https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-kinder-gentler-linus-torvalds-and-linux-4-20/ ... and no one is getting kicked out of Linux development for being politically incorrect, and the quality and quantity of kernel code continues to increase, it'll all be good and we can spend most of our time worrying about technical rather than political issues. - Ted