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

Steven Rostedt
2013-07-17T13:03:35Z

On Wed, 2013-07-17 at 13:30 +0100, Ricardo Ferreira wrote:
> Slashdot is just a cesspool of trolls, not a good comparison.

Point taken.

I posted this privately, and I think I'll repost it here. I need to
modify it a bit as it wasn't meant to be public.

When I started sending patches to LKML it was not the cursing I was
afraid of, it was the possibility of top notch developers pointing out
my flaws. Linux is intimidating not because it can be harsh, but because
its the big league. You are posting code not only to the world but also
to some of the best programmers on the planet, and frankly, that's
really scary. And I think that's the real reason people who are shy tend
not to want to participate. They use the harshness of LKML as an excuse,
but I think it's really that they may be insecure about their own work
and how it will compare with the best of the best.

Both my wife and I have done karate for decades. My wife has even won a
national tournament. She can do demos without a problem, but when she
has to get up in front of other top black belts, she's a nervous wreck.
She's her biggest critic, but she tends to know that when performing in
front of people as good as she is, or better, they can see her flaws as
much as she can. That is intimidating.

The point I'm making is that we need to find out what is preventing good
developers from joining the Linux community. Is it really the harshness
of the project, or is it because we expect you to have the best code,
and you will not be accepted if you are not that good. And I do not want
people joining that are not good programmers.

The answer is not to bash Linus into being a nice guy (which seems to be
what Sarah's trying to do), but we can get mentors or even "scouts" to
look for people of talent and help them get into the community. What
those people need is not a nicer LKML that will let mediocre developers
in, but someone that recognizes their talent and encourages them to
join, by reinforcing to them how good of a developer they are. I've
helped people this way. Talented programmers that were unsure of
themselves, and they have done extremely well in our community.

-- Steve