- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- linux
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- linux
Hellwig is the maintainer of the DMA subsystem. Hellwig previously blocked rust bindings for DMA code, which in part resulted in Hector Martin from stepping down as a kernel maintainer and eventually Asahi Linux as a whole.
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You know Linus has gotten a ton of shit over the years for being a temperamental asshole, but at this point I kinda feel for him.
Starting in 2014, the dude has made a genuine attempt to be better. However the open source world is full of petty drama that makes it hard to keep your cool.
Why no link?
And no, I am not looking for yes-men, and I like it when you call me out on my bullshit. I say some stupid things at times, there needs to be people who just stand up to me and tell me I’m full of shit.
But now I’m calling you out on YOURS.
Don’t know about anyone else, but I’m very pleased to see Linus talking like this. I wish more of my relationships both professional and personal could operate with this level of straightforwardness.
Have… Had you not heard any Linus rant before this? This is pretty tame.
Precisely my point.
If anyone spoke to me like that at work, I would quit. Which is exactly what has happened.
Nobody in that thread quit because of the way Linus talked. If was because of the way they were talking to each other.
They quit because other people spoke to them that way under Linus’ absent leadership.
Fair
If you were being an asshole, and someone called you out on it, and you quit over that, I can’t imagine you’d be missed.
You don’t think anyone will miss one of the top Linux maintainers over the last 10 years? You don’t think anyone will miss the founder and primary developer of the only Linux distribution intended to work on silicon Macs? You don’t think anyone would miss the founder and primary maintainer of the Linux kernel?
Really? I feel the opposite. I thought Linus was very clear in calling out this maintainer’s bs, and I’d think it’s fair if I’m in the receiving end. I did something unprofessional: essentially tried sabotaging others while hiding behind a lie, that I “don’t care” about something while actually hating it.
Getting called out is not the end of a work relationship. We’re all flawed, and we might not notice our own problems and think we’re doing fine, and such callouts are good for our own development, both as a person and professionally.
But if you’re thin-skinned and think you’re better than others and so you won’t take criticisms from others, welp, can’t help ya there. I’d suggest therapy though.
Yes. A hostile work environment is its own prison, even if the hostility seems warranted by you. You are asking people to choose their own emotional/mental well-being or their livelihood. That is not a choice anyone should have to make.
Also bear in mind that “thin skin“ isn’t some objective metric. Some people probably would think you are thin skinned and wouldn’t make it in their “honest” workplace.
I feel like you’re building the argument in a way that’s convenient for yourself there.
A non-hostile work environment doesn’t mean you won’t get reprimanded, especially when you go out of your way to sabotage somebody. Someone has to step in to stop the madness, and if all they do is to say stop (which I heard Linus did earlier), that’s not actually going to stop the conflict because nobody understands or acknowledges where the root of the conflict comes from.
And Linus is not even hostile here imo. There’s a lot of “you” language, but none of it was personal, and he’s not doing his old thing where he tells others to go end themselves. He seemed analytical and dissected the root of the issue so that people understand where things are actually coming from.
And no, I am by no means asking people to make that choice. I am simply suggesting that if all you do is surround yourselves with people who will never get mad at you for doing the wrong things, and that you will never accept anyone reprimanding you, then you’ve made a bad choice in life.
And yeah, “thin skinned” is subjective, and I’m not saying that it’s wrong to be thin-skinned. Some people have less capacity to take criticisms for various reasons, and that’s fine. If your colleagues don’t know how to mince their words (and let’s assume the intentions are good here), and you don’t have the right mental capacity to slice through those words yourself, then you can’t work effectively together. If the people you have to work closely with are all such clumsy people (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just unrefined), then there’s a problem, and it’s probably best that you don’t work with them or there at all, cause it’d only lead to chaos. If this is where you think I’m asking people to make the choice between livelihood and mental well-being, first off, I think this is an exaggeration because there’s almost always someplace else you can work at, and if you can’t, then there’s a bigger problem, and two, well, I think you’re idealizing the workplace a little too much. Sure, in an ideal world where people can immediately assume a professional and cordial personality at work, then you shouldn’t have to make the choice between livelihood and mental well-being. But people are imperfect. There are hostile work environments. There are non-hostile work environments with some hostile people. You can enforce policies that dictate how people should conduct themselves, but you can’t stop it from happening, and you can’t stop them fast enough.
So people do have to make that choice, even if they don’t want to, and even if we think it shouldn’t be a choice and that people should just have both.
I feel like you’re building the argument in a way that’s convenient for yourself there.
I could say the same thing. Several of the following quotes are complete strawmen/misrepresentations of my argument. In fact I’m struggling to figure out how you possibly extrapolated all of what I’m about to quote from what I wrote.
A non-hostile work environment doesn’t mean you won’t get reprimanded
Never said that.
especially when you go out of your way to sabotage somebody.
Never advocated for that or talked about it in any way.
that’s not actually going to stop the conflict because nobody understands or acknowledges where the root of the conflict comes from.
I agree. Solve conflict at the root. Where did I say otherwise?
And Linus is not even hostile here imo.
Ehhh that’s pretty unprofessional and heated. I agree with him, but it is.
I am simply suggesting that if all you do is surround yourselves with people who will never get mad at you for doing the wrong things, and that you will never accept anyone reprimanding you, then you’ve made a bad choice in life.
No one, including me, said that.
And yeah, “thin skinned” is subjective, and I’m not saying that it’s wrong to be thin-skinned. Some people have less capacity to take criticisms for various reasons, and that’s fine. If your colleagues don’t know how to mince their words (and let’s assume the intentions are good here), and you don’t have the right mental capacity to slice through those words yourself, then you can’t work effectively together.
Then what are we discussing here? That is exactly what I am saying.
But if you’re thin-skinned and think you’re better than others
If being “thin-skinned” means not allowing people to disrespect you unnecessarily based on a misunderstanding, then sure.
can someone fill me in with a tldr of what’s going on lately? I know there’s some contention in the Linux community about rust, I’ve seen it mentioned here and there, but what’s the actual story with all this.
Not everyone wants Rust in the kernel. Some don’t want it because mixing programming languages increases complexity, while other simply don’t like Rust. Hellwig says he’s the former.
As the DMA maintainer, he said he would block Rust for that reason. So the effort of upstreaming Rust for Linux stalled. There was uproar in the Rust community, and notably, Asahi Linux leader Hector Martin stepped in, complained about the maintainer on social media, calling for him to be removed.
Linus did not like Hector Martin doing this, so he yelled at him on the mailing list. Hector Martin decided to step down from upstreaming work to the kernel because of this. And later he stepped away from Asahi Linux as a whole for various other reasons.
Now Linus is making it clear that he will merge Rust for Linux work whether other Linux maintainers like it or not.
Thanks for the thorough explanation!
I’m ambivalent about Rust, I see it mentioned a lot but I’ve never really dug into it to see why it’s so lauded. Is there any particular reason why the pro-rust community don’t simply fork the Linux kernel to have a “Rust-Nix” ?
It would be a bummer if there was a second Linux project that diverged. We all profit from safer implementations, it’s much better to keep them upstream.
Forking is not an easy thing to do. It’s difficult to keep up with the pace of upstream with a project as large as Linux. When Linux makes a breaking change, then the downstream kernel will need to fix things.
Forks do exist. Asahi Linux ships a fork that includes lots of Rust stuff that hasn’t been upstreamed. It would be a significantly worse experience if you didn’t run their kernel fork, if it would even run at all. Notably, Google also uses Rust in the Android kernel. They sponsor the Rust for Linux project.
And in truth, most forks do not matter. Hard forking would certainly allow them to get Rust stuff in faster, but how much does that matter if no one is using the fork and the fork slowly becomes more and more incompatible with upstream Linux?
At some point, projects just become too big to fork. But it’s still talked about as the be all, end all of dealing with open source disputes. Rather than people actually just having reasonable and meaningful discussions.
Finally!!! Hope this stops this nonsensical drama. Damn.
It’s almost as if Linus previously spoke without knowing jack shit about what had actually happened. No wonder people are losing faith in these idiots.
Linux is going to implode because they have zero level-headed people involved.
They don’t have to be level-headed, they just need to be able to work through issues. Which is happening.
It’s better for people who work together to say what’s on their mind while having respect for each other, than smiling nicely and thinking badly of each other.
They don’t have to be level-headed, they just need to be able to work through issues. Which is happening.
You think the founder of the project abandoning everything he’s built is “working through the issues”?
It’s better for people who work together to say what’s on their mind while having respect for each other, than smiling nicely and thinking badly of each other.
You can say what’s on your mind without being disrespectful.
I’m not sure what you think “disrespectful” means. Morning Linus wrote is “disrespectful”, in fact, he mentioned that he respected the maintainers technical abilities. Voicing your opinion and calling out someone when they are wrong isn’t disrespectful.
God I’d hate to work with you if you see nothing wrong with this behavior…
You’re entitled to think that, but most people speak well of me everywhere I’ve worked. Probably the negative thing is that I joke too much. But that’s probably awful for you to deal with.
Edit: I’ve actually brought down the fire on someone who was verbally abusing others, but even then I took the diplomatic approach because I know that person was severely sleep deprived from having a newborn. What I actually did is advocate for them to have a paid week off of work. They were a completely different person afterwards.
Edit: somehow the word “newborn” posted as just “n”
Things are better when people are able to speak openly about issues and get shit done.
The meetings I hate the most are with people who’ll spin everything with hollow platitudes.
There exists a middleground. You can speak openly without platitudes and without being disrespectful.
From what I have read, just a decade or so back the LKML was far more toxic (though now the times have also changed).
