Re: [ATTEND] How to act on LKML

Felipe Contreras
2013-07-17T15:12:15Z

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 9:40 AM, Sarah Sharp
<sarah.a.sharp@linux.intel.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 09:01:02AM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>> I know you think "being nice" is better, but do you actually have any
>> evidence for this, or is it just wishful thinking? If you don't have
>> hard evidence, then I'd say you have to admit it's simply your
>> opinion, and I don't think the most successful software project in
>> history should change one if it's core principles simply because *you*
>> think it should.
>
> I haven't shared any "hard evidence" that civility works better in open
> source projects, because to do so would be to bring gender politics into
> the equation. I don't want to make this into a gendered issue, but
> since you want hard numbers, I will.
>
> Go look at Dreamwidth, the open source Livejournal fork. It has a good
> code of conduct, so developers are civil to each other. They encourage
> all patch submissions, and take the time to work with people who don't
> understand their community rules.
>
> The result: 75% of their developers are women. If you give a flying
> fuck about diversity, and want to attract women to your open source
> project, your developers need to be civil, and not verbally abuse each
> other.

First of all, correlation doesn't imply causation. Second, that's
*one* data-point, it can hardly be considered hard evidence.

Anyway, through the discussion it has been established that swearing
is rare, most of often directed to the code, and on exceptional
occasions directed to people, when they *deserve* it. And you seem to
be implying that women can't tolerate that, so a change needs to be
made in order to attract more women to the project. Is that correct?

Personally I don't believe that. Essentially every other open source
project out there, except the Linux kernel, has some kind code of
conduct, whether it's implicit or explicit, and yet they don't have
many developer women either. But fine, let's suppose what you say it's
true.

As Linus already pointed out, not everybody has to work with
everybody. You don't like Linus' style, you don't *need* to work with
Linus. If, as you say, women don't have such a thick skin, a claim
that I reject (until I can see the hard evidence), and they need a
civil environment, then they can stick with the maintainers that are
softer, and I know there are many of them. Can they not?

Personally I think they can handle criticism like any of the men in
this mailing list do. Unless you royally screw up like Mauro did, you
would be fine.

--
Felipe Contreras