Comment by cogman10

10 months ago

Yup, I think it went too far.

The fact is, you need buy in from other devs and if a dev won't buy in you need to work out a way to avoid them or avoid conflict. It sucks, it slows things down, but frankly making it a "them vs us" is a sure fire way to make them oppose any change you want to make.

Public shaming even more disastrous as there's no better way to entrench someone in a position.

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cogman10

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__float  10 months ago

I'm not entirely convinced they meant to truly make a public hall of shame.

It sounded to me like a list of "friends who want to get more involved, I'll let you know who to avoid". Then, I read the interactions that sparked that post, and I could totally understand the frustration from OP's part.

Linus being unwilling to take a real stand on maintainers blocking Rust just because doesn't really help.

LinXitoW  10 months ago

But the point is that the Rust developers have tried literally everything else.

If the C developers make it a "Them vs Us" thing, there IS NO ALTERNATIVE for the Rust developers.

Linus' reaction is quite literally the equivalent of a parent only punishing the loudest child, not the child that's been silently bullying that kid for months.

  • cogman10  10 months ago

    Don't know what to tell you. The C developers have the keys of the kingdom. It's up to the rust devs to appease them. When you are a new-comer to an old project a big part of that is working with the current gatekeepers to get your changes through in a way they'll accept. That can sometimes mean doing things sub optimally in your view.

    In particular, the DMA maintainer didn't want rust code in their DMA subsystem. That sucks, but it means you need to relocate your dma bridge code out of their subsystem. It does mean your driver will be a second-class citizen in the kernel tree (which was always going to be the case for rust).

    Linus' reaction was to someone who started a public campaign against another kernel developer and tried to use that following to pressure the maintainers of the kernel to bend to the will of the newcommer. I'm sorry, but I'd also have a pretty negative reaction to that.

    The workplace equivalent is you publishing a whistle blowing article against a team in your company because they'd not accept a pull request you worked very hard on. You don't do that. You handle things internally and privately and sometimes you tell the boss "sorry, I can't get this done because another team is blocking the change and they are unwilling to work with me".

    And do not mistake my post. I'm not siding with the C dev just because I'm critiquing the rust dev. Guy sounds like he's too stuck in his way. The problem is you don't get a big well working and long running project like the kernel without having these sorts of long-term maintainers that make the calls and shots on what to reject.

    • dralley  10 months ago

      >In particular, the DMA maintainer didn't want rust code in their DMA subsystem. That sucks, but it means you need to relocate your dma bridge code out of their subsystem

      The code was never in the DMA subsystem. At no point was there ever any Rust code in the DMA subsystem.

      CH didn't even look at the patch before throwing the wall up. When it was pointed out that the patch already was the way he claimed he wanted it, he came up with a 2nd excuse, and then when that avenue was shut down he said he would do anything to stop Rust being put in the kernel, period, he wouldn't work with any Rust developers and he wouldn't accept adding a second maintainer for his subsystem that would do that engagement either.

      From that point it's pretty clear that all previous engagement was just in bad faith.

    • reshlo  10 months ago

      > The workplace equivalent is you publishing a whistle blowing article against a team in your company because they'd not accept a pull request you worked very hard on.

      The workplace equivalent is your CEO making a public statement that your work is to be supported, then not firing people who openly gloat about their intent to sabotage your work.

      2 replies →

  • bigstrat2003  10 months ago

    > If the C developers make it a "Them vs Us" thing, there IS NO ALTERNATIVE for the Rust developers.

    There is always an alternative. Exit the project quietly and gracefully if Linus won't show proper leadership. Don't engage in poor behavior back at the C developers, that is just as wrong.

  • busterarm  10 months ago

    Why should there be an alternative for Rust developers? Are they entitled to having their code merged?

gjsman-1000  10 months ago

It's deeply ironic that he's complaining about kernel maintainers supposedly forming secret cliques.

However... this is the same man who made a sock puppet V-Tuber account, and acts in every way like they are two people; even though they've accidentally on-stream shared the system username, shared they have exactly the same kernel version, same KDE configuration, same login, same time zone, even (if I recall correctly) accidentally making GitHub commits as the other person once in a while. He also did this on the Linux kernel mailing lists, where he still maintains the charade.

Point out that's weird, or that it's weird for a maintainer to have a fake persona as a walking female stereotype; and you're the one he shreds and mocks - while simultaneously not denying it. For me, I caught on immediately when I saw the supposed "hijacking" of his stream on April Fool's day, which was her first appearance; and stopped donating. I don't pay people to support stereotypes about women in STEM.

  • danw1979  10 months ago

    How does having an alter-ego make it deeply ironic that he complains about secret cliques? I don’t get it.

    I’ve been supporting Hector since week 1 of the Asahi project and I think it’s a shame he’s thrown in the towel but I can understand why.

    I don’t know enough about kernel development to have an opinion about about the Kernel policy of “no aliases” for contributions.

    I certainly don’t care that some people think it’s weird for a man to have a female alter ego.

    Maybe those things matter to you.

    • asksomeoneelse  10 months ago

      Having an alter-ego is one thing, but I strongly suspect that he had at least one sock puppet here during the drama with HN [0]

      * a brand new account suddenly appears, defending Marcan's behavior (the only comment/post ever of this account) with a very similar writing style

      * Marcan immediately "notices" the new comment while doing "random search" (how ? he claims he doesn't browse HN, and even posted a screenshot of news.ycombinator.com being routed to 0.0.0.0 to block his own access to it the day before)

      * Marcan highlights the comment in question on his media account [1], praising them "at least [this commenter] gets it"

      Only circumstantial stuff, but sure smells very fishy to me.

      [0] https://archive.ph/zdVbA

  • thw8419  10 months ago

    Even if he did that, which I'm not in a position to judge:

    That is an entirely different situation from facing inner circles in an open source project while contributing to a major port.

    Sock puppets aren't taken seriously while the word of the inner circle is taken as gospel.

    • gjsman-1000  10 months ago

      Reminder that he did this on the Linux kernel mailing lists. If I was a Linux maintainer who found out that two of the people I'm talking to, are actually with high likelihood the same person secretly maintaining a charade, I wouldn't be far from banning both.

      I also certainly wouldn't take any of his complaints about cliques or brigading with any seriousness or self-reflection afterwards.