Re: [MAINTAINERS/KERNEL SUMMIT] Trust and maintenance of file systems

James Bottomley
2023-09-16T21:50:53Z

On Sat, 2023-09-16 at 08:48 +1000, Dave Chinner wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 13, 2023 at 10:03:55AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
[...]
> >  - "they use the buffer cache".
> >
> > Waah, waah, waah.
>
> .... you dismiss those concerns in the same way a 6 year old school
> yard bully taunts his suffering victims.
>
> Regardless of the merits of the observation you've made, the tone
> and content of this response is *completely unacceptable*.  Please
> keep to technical arguments, Linus, because this sort of response
> has no merit what-so-ever. All it does is shut down the technical
> discussion because no-one wants to be the target of this sort of
> ugly abuse just for participating in a technical discussion.
>
> Given the number of top level maintainers that signed off on the CoC
> that are present in this forum, I had an expectation that this is a
> forum where bad behaviour is not tolerated at all.  So I've waited a
> couple of days to see if anyone in a project leadership position is
> going to say something about this comment.....
>
> <silence>
>
> The deafening silence of tacit acceptance is far more damning than
> the high pitched squeal of Linus's childish taunts.

Well, let's face it: it's a pretty low level taunt and it wasn't aimed
at you (or indeed anyone on the thread that I could find) and it was
backed by technical argument in the next sentence. We all have a
tendency to let off steam about stuff in general not at people in
particular as you did here:

https://lore.kernel.org/ksummit/ZP+vcgAOyfqWPcXT@dread.disaster.area/

But I didn't take it as anything more than a rant about AI in general
and syzbot in particular and certainly I didn't assume it was aimed at
me or anyone else.

If everyone reached for the code of conduct when someone had a non-
specific rant using colourful phraseology, we'd be knee deep in
complaints, which is why we tend to be more circumspect when it
happens.

James