The Absolute State of Linux

[Citizen_Lurker]

Was there ever a time when people understood decency, without the need to enforce it? I long for a world without bigots and equally without thought policemen telling them they are bigots. Also, I like how this guy calls people that play games and software developers "autistic".

 

[mati]

Even more important then the CoC is in my opinion:

Since the kernel is gpl v2 each contributor's code is owned by them and they can retract it, effectively killing the Linux kernel.

WTF? I never thought that would be possible! What is an open source license worth, if it can be revoked any time?

 

[second exodous]

What does this mean for the Pyra? With it's proprietary drivers, doesn't it HAVE to use Linux kernel?

It could potentially. If the SJWs stick to their guns and start ejecting people like they have in other areas(comics, film, games, opensource project, government, ect. . .) and those developers take their code with them it is a legal issue for everyone that is currently using their code.

I hope this doesn't happen, that people realize they can't just ban people because they don't want the code to go. SJWs don't care about anything though, look what they are doing to Marvel Comics, by the time the films run dry there will be nothing left and no one wants movies based on what the SJWs produce. So, there will be people monitoring the comments and lives of developers and when they screw up they'll make a big stink, it will make the news, and then the kernel developers need to make a decision of Linux looking really bad or ejecting the 40 year old that got drunk in college and fondled a girl that was over the age of 18 at a party and in the process loosing all the code he wrote crippling the Linux kernel.

With SJWs it doesn't matter what you did, how long ago it was, the context, or even the culture at the time. If they don't agree with you then you're a Nazi and need to be banned for wrong think. Like I said, these SJWs probably don't own a PC and use iphones, they just want to further their political agenda.
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Even more important then the CoC is in my opinion:



WTF? I never thought that would be possible! What is an open source license worth, if it can be revoked any time?

When X forked they had to re-write code, no one used X.org when it was released because it was unusable. This will be the case with Linux. I don't think it will fork though, I really think no one working on the kernel wants to be constantly walking on egg-shells and hopefully they'll either re-write the code of conduct or throw it out and just admit they're adults and don't need one. If you don't like the creator of a project yelling at you then don't contribute. Linus will retire sometime and maybe who takes over will be calmer but I don't think they need a code of conduct.

 

[ClockworkCoder]

I must admit that I'm confused by the term "Social Justice Warrior". Is it literally anyone who actively opposes discrimination of any kind? If so, that is a rather broad net for defining a group of individuals; almost everyone is discriminated against for some reason during their lives.

Regardless, politics (/religion) should have no place in open source. But, unfortunately there seems no way around it: SJW or whatever, there will always be those who wants to use a popular medium as a pulpit for their agenda, and no matter what that agenda is.

Why does human nature always seem to drive people in to defining a common "enemy"? Why can't we just "be excellent to each other (and party on dudes)"?

I've always respected Linus. When it comes to code quality, he says what needs to be said.

 

[mati]

SJW in my opinion just stands for people who are overzealous, sometimes even people who only want to make themself seem important without actually caring about the issue... similar to "white knight".

To the "revoke license" topic:
I just read this stackexchange answer which says:

What they can't do is to pull back the code already released under GPL, that would be covered by estoppel (basically: if someone does something based on a promise you made, you can't later withdraw that promise - it's an equitable thing).

now im confused... what is possible and what is not?

 

[second exodous]

SJW in my opinion just stands for people who are overzealous, sometimes even people who only want to make themself seem important without actually caring about the issue... similar to "white knight".

To the "revoke license" topic:
I just read this stackexchange answer which says:
now im confused... what is possible and what is not?

Depends on the license. GPL version 3 and BSD is like that but GPL v2 apparently isn't.

Politics is just tainting everything. I agree with your definition of a SJW but I'd add that they are destructive, would rather see something destroyed than see it portray anything they don't agree with. They also hate free speech, you can't say anything they don't agree with. The problem is no matter what you say someone can find fault with it. Everything can be construed as racist or sexist or whatever.

 

[pmprog]

SJW in my opinion just stands for people who are overzealous

They are warriors for Social Justice, which is based on equality of outcome (as opposed to equality of opportunity). Meaning everyone should be treated equally, even if they don't contribute equally

Regarding revoking code. I don't know. They certainly won't be able to uninstall Linux from every machine running it, and they're not going to come and take your CDs away; so I would assume you'd just be stuck without an upgrade route until the code is replaced. But take that with a pinch of salt...

 

[WizardStan]

https://softwareengineering.stackex...de-be-close-sourced-later-by-the-author/98775
While GPLv3 explicitly says it, GPLv2 had it implied and apparently, if you're willing to fight for it (which I'm certain the EFF would), some part of contract law (estoppel) prevents you from going back on your word, so once it's GPL'd that particular bit of code can't be un-GPL'd (not a lawyer, probably not using the right terminology, that's just what I understood from the discussion and wiki page)

 

[Klumpen]

 

[emcee]

I just read the CoC. Seems like entirely reasonable expectations for how adults should behave.

 

[levi]

When the term 'SJW' was coined in the midst of the gamergate palaver, it seemed to me to stand for 'not a dick'. If you publically said anything that wasn't dickish, that was what the gamergate dicks called you. Maybe there is a problem with modern SJWs thoguh, although personally I prefer to get my news from someone who doesn't say 'some of my best friends are nazis'.

 

[JDTAY]

I just read the CoC. Seems like entirely reasonable expectations for how adults should behave.

That's not the problem I have with codes of conduct though.

Lemme ask you this. If two different CoCs for two different projects you want to work on ask you to behave in opposite ways, what do you do?

 

[elvissteinjr]

I just read the CoC. Seems like entirely reasonable expectations for how adults should behave.

That's what they want you to think. It is however littered with vague catch-all language among other things.

Here's some stuff (emphasis is mine):

Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants include:

* The use of sexualized language or imagery and unwelcome sexual attention or
advances
* Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
* Public or private harassment
* Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or electronic
address, without explicit permission
* Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a
professional setting

Stuff happening in private counts here, despite the scope of the CoC not reaching there, what?

Maintainers have the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject
comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are
not aligned to this Code of Conduct, or to ban temporarily or permanently any
contributor for other behaviors that they deem inappropriate, threatening,
offensive, or harmful.

Maintainers who do not follow or enforce the Code of Conduct in good faith may
face temporary or permanent repercussions as determined by other members of the
project’s leadership.

The main issue at hand here is how watered down the definition of harassment has become over time, especially over the internet. Everything can be offensive as well.
This isn't bad, but it's abusable.


And to be honest, race, religion, sexuality, whatever else... there's zero need bringing those any near the kernel code. It does not matter, so there's no need to bring it up in the first place.

 

[second exodous]

I just read the CoC. Seems like entirely reasonable expectations for how adults should behave.

Well, one of the maintainers is already getting banned for being a 'rape apologists' so yeah, not being used to an end at all, perfectly reasonable.

When the term 'SJW' was coined in the midst of the gamergate palaver, it seemed to me to stand for 'not a dick'. If you publically said anything that wasn't dickish, that was what the gamergate dicks called you. Maybe there is a problem with modern SJWs thoguh, although personally I prefer to get my news from someone who doesn't say 'some of my best friends are nazis'.

Nah, SJWs was a derogatory term before gamersgate. The ones that are over zealous about championing social justice to the point of giving people a free pass because of their genitals tried to take on that badge to try to win it back since everyone was calling them SJWs anyway. I don't think anyone called themselves SJWs until after people were poking fun of them for being so politically correct to a fault.

 

[ible]

the code of conduct:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linu.../?id=8a104f8b5867c682d994ffa7a74093c54469c11f

not sure what people are taking issue with. in large-scale projects, you meet all sorts of people (law of large numbers), and so sometimes you have to say it's bad to dox people, talk with explicit language, etc. if Linus wants to improve how he relates to people, all the power to him. and if he wants to sign off on a new code of conduct, he is literally the guy without whom we wouldn't have an awesome open-source operating system. it'd be one thing if it was unreasonable ("all contributors must sacrifice two birds every fortnite to the gods of open source"), but this is just a way of codifying how people should conduct themselves. hopefully they don't need the reminders, but some do.

 

[WizardStan]

When the term 'SJW' was coined in the midst of the gamergate palaver

SJW was used at least as far back as the 80s (and possibly much earlier) and referred to someone who fought for social justice on behalf of those that didn't ask for it and arguably didn't need it. The feeling was that they were going too far, tearing down everyone in some crusade to prove that they were the most socially advanced people. These people were quintessential dicks, like the militant vegan but for social issues.
Modern day I have yet to find many examples of this; there's a few, but that's true of any group: take any thought and there's going to be at least one person who drives it to a ludicrous conclusion. What I do see these days is a lot of people actually recognizing that there are genuine social issues that need to be addressed and people automatically (and incorrectly) lumping these people into the old SJW framework. Remember how anyone who argued for gender equality in anything more than a whisper was labeled a "feminazi"? Even when what they were saying was basically true, they were just saying it loudly because they were getting tired of not being listened to otherwise. It was a label used to disparage and push the regular people away. Notice how that's not a thing anymore? Instead you get people calling anyone who is even remotely vocal about social issues a "Social Justice Warrior" and trying to apply the old definition to get people to ignore them as crazies.
I am 100% certain that this is intentional, that someone consciously started calling someone who disagreed with them a SJW as an insult and made it stick. And when people like second exodus repeat the phrase it gives more power to the word, more power to the right to silence the left.

 

[JDTAY]

And when people like second exodus repeat the phrase it gives more power to the word, more power to the right to silence the left.

"Silent" isn't exactly how I would describe the left...
[doublepost=1537980898,1537980043][/doublepost]To follow up more on that, if people think you're an SJW, that just means they're disagreeing with you. How is that being silenced?

 

[levi]

the code of conduct:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linu.../?id=8a104f8b5867c682d994ffa7a74093c54469c11f

not sure what people are taking issue with. in large-scale projects, you meet all sorts of people (law of large numbers), and so sometimes you have to say it's bad to dox people, talk with explicit language, etc. if Linus wants to improve how he relates to people, all the power to him. and if he wants to sign off on a new code of conduct, he is literally the guy without whom we wouldn't have an awesome open-source operating system. it'd be one thing if it was unreasonable ("all contributors must sacrifice two birds every fortnite to the gods of open source"), but this is just a way of codifying how people should conduct themselves. hopefully they don't need the reminders, but some do.

The problem is my mind boils down to this series of deductions:

This code is bad -> you have written bad code -> you have wasted my time by submitting bad code -> (-> you are a bad person who writes bad code and wastes my time)

I'm not quite sure where this crosses the line (clearly the fourth step which introduces the concept of a 'bad person' does, but it's easy to fire off the third step into feeling aggrieved and trying to get your own back via a snappy response which might go a little personal).

But it probably doesn't hurt to have the rules codified like this so that you can compare them more literally when you're reviewing what you wrote and deciding whether to hit send.

Also: https://xkcd.com/2051/

 

[Bennehh]

Wow, this board is more anti-justice than I thought.

I feel almost like I should steelman social justice at this point, but I'm not smart enough to steelman things.

Justice requires no qualifier like "social", especially when we see it from an individual's perspective as opposed to a collective.

I must admit that I'm confused by the term "Social Justice Warrior". Is it literally anyone who actively opposes discrimination of any kind? If so, that is a rather broad net for defining a group of individuals; almost everyone is discriminated against for some reason during their lives.

That's how many would describe themselves, but countless hordes of them support discrimination which is retributive, based on skin color or sex to correct for past wrongdoings from people who match those characteristics.

The term is usually used to describe self-entitled bigots who attack, smear and censor others based on things they find offensive. I think the term "regressive" is a far more apt descriptor personally, especially considering how vile these sorts of people can get. Talking specifically about fighting against equality legislation, smearing countless people, dogpiling en masse, committing acts of violence, you name it.

Well, one of the maintainers is already getting banned for being a 'rape apologists' so yeah, not being used to an end at all, perfectly reasonable.
Nah, SJWs was a derogatory term before gamersgate.

To back this up, there's an entry on Urban Dictionary from back in 2011 (number 5). It's a fairly old internet term by my understanding, though it's probably older: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Social Justice Warrior

 

[levi]

Not that it matters much to anyone, but wikipedia has a decent summary of the history of the term. Was originally a positive term, first documented as negative in 2011 on Twitter, massively popularised as a negative term during gamergate. It's perhaps not surprising that I as someone who doesn't talk much politics on the internet, first came across it then, though you could argue I was incautious to say it was coined then.
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Apparently Kernel devs can repeal their code. If that's true, a simple fork wouldn't be that simple

An update to the Copyleft Guide addressed this issue, and I've not read it yet but LWN's coverage of it suggests it's not going to happen.