On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 3:11 AM Russell Reiter <rreiter91@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Sep 16, 2018, 11:52 PM Dhaval Giani via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

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

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To tie this all back to the actual 4.19-rc4 release (no, really, this

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_is_ related!) I actually think that 4.19 is looking fairly good, things have gotten to the "calm" period of the release cycle, and I've talked to Greg to ask him if he'd mind finishing up 4.19 for me, so that I can take a break, and try to at least fix my own behavior.

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Jono Bacon's comments on it,

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

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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/

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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.

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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.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/lennart-poetter...

"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.

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.

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.

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

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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!

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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.

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.

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

On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 12:52 PM D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk < talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

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

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

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

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.

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.

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)

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.

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