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

Felipe Contreras
2013-07-17T18:46:28Z

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 1:24 PM, Luck, Tony <tony.luck@intel.com> wrote:
>> Those are just stories; things that happened. What you need to provide
>> is *evidence* that if the community changes, things will be better,
>> and unless you have a study of series of collaborative groups like the
>> Linux kernel, that demonstrates that suppressing swearing has a
>> positive effect in the community, I'd say all you have is an
>> *opinion*.
>
> 1) There isn't going to be any hard evidence - this isn't a physics problem,
> or even an engineering problem. It's a social problem. There are no other
> collaborative groups sufficiently similar to the Linux kernel community, so there
> are no studies that would be relevant. Asking for the impossible is just a
> lame delaying tactic.

There is evidence for social problems and their solutions, but anyway,
so in fact Sarah doesn't *know* if changing that behavior would be
beneficial or detrimental to the project.

> 2) Sarah hasn't even asked to cut down on the swearing - so why mention
> it at all? Did you even read the thread?

She didn't ask, she essentially demanded[1]:

> I want everyone (including Linus) to be harsh with code but gentle with people.

Let's call things by their name; Sarah doesn't know if what she wants
will help the project, she merely thinks so. It is merely an
**opinion**, it is not backed by evidence, and it might be shared by
some Linux developers, but it's still just an opinion.

Linus already said he is not going to change, so that's that. Now the
only thing that remains open is the discussion about better ways to
work together, which probably will happen in the kernel summit, but I
think it's pretty clear that an official code of conduct that forbids
insulting either people or code is out of the question.

Cheers.

[1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.stable/58443

--
Felipe Contreras