Comment by wyldfire

> It's a failure of leadership to not intervene when discord threatens the group. He should weigh in, or make sure that someone else who has mutual trust weighs in.

Nothing in that particular "drama" threatens Linux kernel maintainers as a group. Multiple solutions were proposed, like just sending the change directly to Linus bypassing Hellwig or copy/pasting the code to each individual driver for now. Marcan having public meltdown in that thread probably makes option 1 no-go though and doesn't improve R4L standing with the skeptical group of maintainers.

> In youth sports, something similar happens when referees fail to call fouls on rough play. Players naturally test the limits and then others recognize the lack of protection and retaliate until it gets really out of hand.

For better or worse the social contract in LKLM is not like what a lot of Rust people used to where you come in with furry avatar and pronouns in your profile, then cry for mommy to enforce CoC on first signs of conflict. Basically, extending your analogy, you don't come to an American football match expecting the referee to enforce basketball no-contact rules.

> In youth sports, something similar happens when referees fail to call fouls on rough play.

This is actually not limited to youth sports, you can even see it happen with professional athletes.

It's a very common human reaction when participants feel like the rules aren't getting enforced. For all ages. Which only reinforces your point.

You can't rely on an authority to step in every time some disagrees. People need to resolve their own conflicts rather than yell until bailed out