Re: [GIT PULL] bcachefs changes for 6.17

Theodore Ts'o
2025-08-10T06:00:44Z

On Sat, Aug 09, 2025 at 09:26:16PM -0700, Gerald B. Cox wrote:
> And really, this whole thread feels beneath what the kernel community
> should be. If there’s a serious question about bcachefs’s future, it
> ought to be a quiet, direct conversation between Kent and Linus—not a
> public spectacle.

There has been private conversations with Kent. I will note that it
was *Kent* who started this most recent round of e-mails[1]. In his
e-mail, He slammed the Linux Kernel's "engineering standards", and
btrfs in particular. I won't quote any of it here, because it really
is quite toxic, but please note that it was Kent who started the
discussion about btrfs. This kind of attack is Just Not Helpful, and
this kind of behavior is, unfortunately, quite common coming from
Kent.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/3ik3h6hfm4v2y3rtpjshk5y4wlm5n366overw2lp72qk5izizw@k6vxp22uwnwa/

And no, I don't agree that Kent's behavior is due to him being
"piled-on". His behaviour has been going on for months, if not a year
or more. Some of us have tried pointing this out to Kent before,
privately, but about a month ago, I gave up out of frustration.
Getting him to understand is clearly beyond my abilities.

If Kent hadn't spoken up, I would have remained quiet and waited for
Linus to do what he was going to do --- but no, he decided to take
this public, and started slamming Linux's engineering standards. I
will point out that a good engineer has to have good people skills[2].
In fact, there are many who have claimed that engineers' soft skills
are just as important, if not more important than their technical
abilities.

[2] https://www.ijee.ie/articles/Vol13-5/ijee996.pdf

Kent has been claiming the role of victim, but [1] is a really good
example of how this is not the case. Similar e-mails over the past
year questioning other developers' professionalism, engineering
competence, etc. is why there hasn't been any Linux developers
speaking up trying to defend Kent on various private e-mail threads in
the past month.

Kent, it's not about promising to not criticize btrfs. It's
about assuming good faith, and other maintainers' technical
competence, and listening to their concerns, and genunely believing
that perhaps their concerns are as important as yours. If you really
believe that we are all clowns, and that Linux's engineering standards
are cr*p, I cordially invite you to create your own OS which upholds
your high technical standards. Maybe you will be happier, and maybe
you *will* create something which is better for all of your users.

Cheers,

- Ted