Comment by trueno

Thank you for asking this. It was presented matter of fact and I would not have appreciated that it was something less than settled. The best I can find from googling was rumors and speculation (insert comment in reply with more rumors and speculation). I also don't necessarily think it means someone is a Bad Guy if true. I want people to be able to have anonymous alter egos online if that's what they want and they're not doing any harm.

Isn't Asahi Lina Married to some other japanese Vtubber now? I mean maybe you'd fake all that but I doubt it. Both are more likely real people who are different. The people have totally different eccentricties its really hard to fake that type difference for a long time.

[source] https://x.com/Lina_Hoshino/status/1862840998897861007

There is. You can easily find by googling "hector martin" "asahi lina" and you will soon find a pile of obsessively archived evidence.

My view, now that Hector has resigned from the LKML both as himself and as Lina, is there is no problem any more. If Hector wants to project a persona, or decide his identity is the persona, or maybe multiple personas, that is fine on social media. People do that. So long as he's not sockpuppeting Linux kernel maintenance, it's fine.

Yes. This forum has collated the evidence that Asahi Lina is the VTuber alter ego of Hector Martin:

https://archive.today/dcc3I#-asahi-lina

At this point I suspect anyone who even asks that question of concern trolling. The evidence is overwhelming.

oh no not again.

yes, like 99.(9)%

Yes, that's the entry of the rabbit hole, and reader is advised to dig their own tunnel.

I remember following the tension for a bit. Yes, there are other subjects about how things are done, but after reading it, I remember framing "code quality" as the base issue.

In high-stakes software development environments, egos run high generally, and when people clash and doesn't back up, sparks happen. If this warning is ignored, then something has to give.

If I'm mistaken, I can enjoy a good explanation and be gladly stand corrected.

This is what happened here. This is probably the second or third time I witness this over 20+ years. Most famous one was over CPU schedulers, namely BFS, again IIRC.

Thanks! Let me edit this in, too.

Edit: Nah, I can't, too late.

Some pretext: I'm a Rust skeptic and tired of Rust Evangelism Task Force and Rewrite in Rust movements.

---

Yes. I remember that message.

Also let's not forget what marcan said [0] [1].

In short, a developer didn't want their C codebase littered with Rust code, which I can understand, then the Rust team said that they can maintain that part, not complicating his life further (Kudos to them), and the developer lashing out to them to GTFO of "his" lawn (which I understand again, not condone. I'd have acted differently).

This again boils down to code quality matters. Rust is a small child when compared to the whole codebase, and weariness from old timers is normal. We can discuss behaviors till the eternity, but humans are humans. You can't just standardize everything.

Coming to marcan, how he behaved is a big no in my book, too. Because it's not healthy. Yes, the LKML is not healthy, but this is one of the things which makes you wrong even when you're right.

I'm also following a similar discussion list, which has a similar level of friction in some matters, and the correct thing is to taking some time off and touching grass when feeling tired and being close to burnout. Not running like a lit torch between flammable people.

One needs to try to be the better example esp. when the environment is not in an ideal shape. It's the hardest thing to do, but it's the most correct path at the same time.

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20250205004552mp_/https://lwn.ne...

[1]: https://lkml.org/lkml/2025/2/6/404