Linus Leaves Linux, A New Code Of Conduct and Community In Conflict

Major news the last couple of days. Linus Torvalds has announced that he is taking a break from his work on the kernel. Plus, there is a new Code of Conduct for kernel developers. These two stories have caused a lot of bickering inside the open source community.

REFERENCED:

WANT TO SUPPORT THE CHANNEL?

Please like, share and subscribe. For those that wish to donate to the channel, you can do so through Patreon, Liberapay or PayPal:

BUY SHIRTS AND MUGS:

Help support this channel by purchasing these fine t-shirts, hoodies and mugs.

JOIN ME ON DIASPORA: AND MASTODON

Your support is very much appreciated. Thanks, guys!

[sanderd]

I actually like the communication style of Linus. It's very direct, and IMO very time effective. It's a lot better than telling a dev his work is "great", have a dev working for months on it, and then deciding not to include it. Or even worse, include bad code out of pity.

[SlideRSB]

Linus Torvalds is the Gordon Ramsey of open source and I'm kinda cool with that.

[firstnamelastname]

Linus Torvalds was one of the last people with a spine in the FOSS community but the constant whining eventually got to him.

[michaelkpate]

"Project 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."

I am sure that we all agree on what inappropriate means.

[RockawayCCW]

You only need 3 rules in a code of conduct - don't belittle others, don't be a jerk when giving criticism and don't get butthurt when receiving critcism.

[UTUBMRBUZZ]

Linux is not a corporation. Its community driven. So Linus can behave however he likes. If someone don't like the system. Fork it but make sure to follow the GPL license.

[er]

Good Code > Feelings
not mutually exclusive though.

[RobertMurphySeattle]

You are so wrong about this. I have watched this play out before in field after field (I'm and IT Consultant and teacher) and it always leads to mediocrity and appearance of something good when it is always about power being given to the clueless. Tough, but fair leaders, lead to excellence. Expect many of us to be looking elsewhere for the future because this has disaster written all over it. R.I.P. Linux, it was good to know ya.

This is what happens when you sell out your board seats to the highest bidder.

[sablesanctum]

We need more people like Linus. People who say exactly what they think. That way you know precisely how things are, and what to do.

[pcfred]

It is time to fork the code of conduct.

[mattking]

Sounds like Linux is dead. Hopefully we will get a kernel fork soon. And the only mistake Linus made was saying "sorry".

[AndrewErwin]

What you have to understand about Emke's COC is that things like "inclusive" and "empathy" and "respect" are relative terms. In that world, offense is not taken, but given. In other words, if someone finds something you say offensive (whether you meant it to be or not) you are in violation of the COC. It has happened at Google, it has happened at Apple, it has happened at Microsoft. And it will happen within Linux development.

Maybe it's time to go over to BSD.

[unicatte]

Why did this cancer have to infect Linux too...

[RuslanArtur]

Yes, an honest person who can say f to Nvidia is the hero we need.

[jerodburnett]

This "harmless" code of conduct, is a political document, from the very words of its creator, it is a political document. As you said in the video "Politics has no business in our communities."

[drg]

I have a feeling Linux started booming mainstream in 2018 so corporates stepped in to take over or destroy Linux.

[anthonyrye]

Just wanted to say about nvidia comment Linus made toward the company, I think that might have been justified. Companies that are proprietary seem to go out of their way to make it extremely difficult if not impossible to support their hardware, their behavior has been hostel to say the least. So I think he just said what a lot of costumer feels when you spend 800 to 900 on hardware or even 100 on hardware we should have the freedom to use our hardware as we see fit. Then have a company subjugate it costumers to how they want their products used.

[lextr]

the problem with this code of conduct is that it's free for interpretation and interpretation will spawn on the far left.. like all the rest

[luperteverett]

2:59 - 3:14 ==> So just because Richard Stallman has "not-so-mainstream" views, we should silence him? You mean "silence the guy who is the reason of we being here in the first place"? This is utterly ridiculous. Like it or not, Richard Stallman's thoughts on (absolutely proprietary) software is why we can actually use an operating system that we can trust today.