Re: [Ksummit-2013-discuss] [ATTEND] How to act on LKML

Jeff Liu
2013-07-17T00:32:09Z

On 07/17/2013 07:12 AM, Sarah Sharp wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 06:54:59PM -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
>> On Tue, 2013-07-16 at 15:43 -0700, Sarah Sharp wrote:
>>
>>> Yes, that's true. Some kernel developers are better at moderating their
>>> comments and tone towards individuals who are "sensitive". Others
>>> simply don't give a shit. So we need to figure out how to meet
>>> somewhere in the middle, in order to establish a baseline of civility.
>>
>> I have to ask this because I'm thick, and don't really understand,
>> but ...
>>
>> What problem exactly are we trying to solve here?
>
> Personal attacks are not cool Steve. Some people simply don't care if a
> verbal tirade is directed at them. Others do not want anyone to attack
> them personally, but they're fine with people attacking their code.

+1
I accept someone attaching my code, but it's better if he/she can
point me out why the code is stupid. :)

>
> Bystanders that don't understand the kernel community structure are
> discouraged from contributing because they don't want to be verbally
> abused, and they really don't want to see either personal attacks or
> intense belittling, demeaning comments about code.

I feel the same way.

>
> In order to make our community better, we need to figure out where the
> baseline of "good" behavior is. We need to define what behavior we want
> from both maintainers and patch submitters. E.g. "No regressions" and
> "don't break userspace" and "no personal attacks". That needs to be
> written down somewhere, and it isn't. If it's documented somewhere,
> point me to the file in Documentation. Hint: it's not there.

Another thing might deviated from the main theme, but I'd like to raise it
here because I would like to see what's the proper way for that.

For instance, people A posted a patch set to the mailing list at first,
people B think that there are some issues in A's implementation, and he
happened to play around the same stuff recently, so he submitted another
patch series. Finally, people B made it.
(In that period, people A kept silent, maybe because he/she was unhappy)

This is a actual occurrence I once observed from a subsystem list(my
apologies, I just want to talk this case rather than against somebody),
it seems people A is a new comer(because I can not searched any past
commits of him/her from the git log), people B is definitely a senior guy.

So that's my question, is that a proper collaboration form in kernel
community? Does it better if people B could give some suggestions to
help A to improve the code, especially if those help would help A stepping
into the kernel development -- maybe it's depend largely on one's opinion. :(

Thanks,
-Jeff