Re: [ATTEND] How to act on LKML (was: [ 00/19] 3.10.1-stable review)

Willy Tarreau
2013-07-16T22:18:21Z

On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 02:12:35PM -0700, Sarah Sharp wrote:
> I *hate* both direct personal insults and indirect personal insults.
> Neither should be acceptable in our community.
>
> As I stated in an email to Rusty, what I'm objecting to here is not
> kernel developers criticizing code. I'm objecting to personal attacks,
> and developers directing personal verbal abuse towards each other. This
> include all developers, not just Linus.

Well, there are people like me who don't mind getting personally
insulted but who are really pained when their work is criticized.

You'd rather tell me I'm a fucking moron than all what I carefully
designed, wrote and tested is pure crap. Probably that part of the
reason is that I'm as I am and I'm not really responsible for this,
so I don't care. Call me ugly if you want, why should I bother ? But
if you tell me I did some crap, it's entirely my fault and that hurts
a lot more.

So you want criticism to change focus for good, but it will not
necessarily achieve the result you're expecting. Maybe we can lose
more talented people by telling them their work is pure crap because
we did not understand it than telling them they're stupid and let
them argument their choices. At least I don't claim to know which
one is better, all I can say is that what we have right now works
well enough in my opinion.

Best regards,
Willy