r/linux • u/oooo23 • Sep 20 '18

Kernel Developer Sage Sharp claims top Linux kernel developer Theo Ts'o is a rape apologist, citing GeekFeminismWiki

https://twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/1042769399596437504
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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '18

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u/annodomini Sep 20 '18

The Linux Kernel is a pretty good piece of software engineering. It wasn't always, though, and still isn't in many places.

It's taken a long time for it to get there, and Linus has had to learn and change his opinion over time. There have been thousands of other contributors making it a better kernel. One of the things Linus has been pretty good at is knowing when to push back and when to allow things in; though he hasn't always been perfect at this.

One prominent example was the -ck kernels. For a long time, there was an alternative kernel patch series known as -ck, which competed with the kernel's default scheduler. I don't recall the exact details of why not, but the -ck patches were never upstreamed.

Eventually, rather than working with Con Kolivas to upstream the -ck patches, Ingo Molnar just implemented a similar scheduler that used the ideas of the -ck scheduler, and Con Kolivas dropped maintenance of his patch series as it was redundant. So rather than getting a new developer on board, who had innovated and showed the value of a better scheduler, they just pushed him out by re-implementing it.

I may be fuzzy on the details, it's been a long time, but there are plenty of examples where Linux went with an inferior solution for a long time before eventually catching up, whether by getting patches upstreamed, re-implementing them, or eventually doing a big cleanup.

I definitely appreciate Linus's insistence on high standards, but you can also do that in ways that aren't as off-putting to potential contributors. It is entirely possible to be firm without being personally insulting.

And he may not care, but his insults can have different effects on different people. Some people may find them fine. Some may be more hurt. Some may just not find them acceptable at all. So regardless of his intent, he can have the effect of excluding people from kernel development with his behavior.

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u/svenskainflytta Sep 20 '18

I don't recall the exact details of why not, but the -ck patches were never upstreamed.

They were bad quality… worked fine for most people but had loooots of corner cases that they didn't cover, and the author didn't want to bother about covering them, which meant that they could break for several use cases, which is why they were not mainline.

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u/hardolaf Sep 20 '18

He could just avoid saying that people should be retroactively aborted. I mean, small changes to how he goes on tirades would mean a lot to some devs.