Monday, September 24th 2018
Linux Community Hit by the Blight of Social Justice Warfare, A Great Purge is Coming
Through the 1990s, Microsoft had become a super-corporation threatening to monopolize all of computing. A band of talented developers got together with lawyers that could fish out loopholes in proprietary licenses, and with some generosity from big software, Linux grew from a scrappy Unix-like OS kernel to the preeminent operating system for enterprises at first, and handheld consumer electronics later. Today it's most popular operating system on the planet. Like every big organization, the Linux Foundation is hit by employee-activism.
Employee-activism is the new unionism. Whereas trade-unions of the old fought for tangible bread-and-butter issues affecting blue-collar folk of the early Industrial era, today's employee-activist is an intellectual predator seeking to maximize their organizational footprint on the backs of other people echoing their political ideas, often through blatant insubordination and disregard for the chain of command. Survival of the fittest has changed to "survival of the loudest." From forcing Linus Torvalds to apologize for speaking his mind in public, to coming up with a new Code of Conduct document, social-justice activism within the Linux Foundation threatens to devolve the culture of meritocracy to a toxic "safe space" prioritizing inclusion of identity rather than skill, as HardOCP comments. A major blow-back from the meritocrats is taking shape.
In a major revision to the license, software developers contributing to the Linux kernel source-code will soon be able to withdraw their contribution, if they are ever cornered by the rest of the community over perceived code-of-conduct violation (i.e. not pandering to identity politics or speaking their minds like Torvalds does). This is big, as many of the older generations of contributors who have made critical contributions without with Linux cannot function, now have a legal recourse, and could reduce the amount of political activism within the community.
Since 2015, identity politicians have been trying to force the Linux Foundation to join the Contributor Covenant, a special Code-of-Conduct agreement that seeks to change the "the predominantly white, straight, and male face of programming." On September 16, the Foundation agreed to implement CC Code of Conduct. Shortly following that, groups of pro-CC developers went on a character-assassination spree of top Linux developers by amplifying and often distorting, their political views (which are irrelevant to the task of programming).
Sources:
Lulz, HardOCP
Employee-activism is the new unionism. Whereas trade-unions of the old fought for tangible bread-and-butter issues affecting blue-collar folk of the early Industrial era, today's employee-activist is an intellectual predator seeking to maximize their organizational footprint on the backs of other people echoing their political ideas, often through blatant insubordination and disregard for the chain of command. Survival of the fittest has changed to "survival of the loudest." From forcing Linus Torvalds to apologize for speaking his mind in public, to coming up with a new Code of Conduct document, social-justice activism within the Linux Foundation threatens to devolve the culture of meritocracy to a toxic "safe space" prioritizing inclusion of identity rather than skill, as HardOCP comments. A major blow-back from the meritocrats is taking shape.
In a major revision to the license, software developers contributing to the Linux kernel source-code will soon be able to withdraw their contribution, if they are ever cornered by the rest of the community over perceived code-of-conduct violation (i.e. not pandering to identity politics or speaking their minds like Torvalds does). This is big, as many of the older generations of contributors who have made critical contributions without with Linux cannot function, now have a legal recourse, and could reduce the amount of political activism within the community.
Since 2015, identity politicians have been trying to force the Linux Foundation to join the Contributor Covenant, a special Code-of-Conduct agreement that seeks to change the "the predominantly white, straight, and male face of programming." On September 16, the Foundation agreed to implement CC Code of Conduct. Shortly following that, groups of pro-CC developers went on a character-assassination spree of top Linux developers by amplifying and often distorting, their political views (which are irrelevant to the task of programming).
653 Comments on Linux Community Hit by the Blight of Social Justice Warfare, A Great Purge is Coming
And it's not all of humanity. This is people who sign on.
This thread is about code. Code doesn't give a damn about politics.
No anyone that wants to contribute to Linux has to bow at the alter of social justice before entry is granted. Linux is done for.
I do find it ironic that this of all things has made more people passionate about Linux than ever before.
I'd like two codes of conduct. The first can be social justice, and the second by somebody writing code 9-5 (or much longer realistically) freelance. The later is based upon people driven idealistically, the former by those who understand practical reality. Where the two overlap you keep it. Where they diverge you poll the top 20% of contributors to see how they land and implement the majority vote.
The logic is as such:
1) Items universally defined are agreed to by polar opposites, and don't need discussion.
2) Items in question are community driven.
3) Contribution means having a voice. Merit overcomes mob mentality, and those who wish a stronger voice need only demonstrate they deserve a hand in shaping the future.
It's representative democracy at its finest. The current plan is more akin to authoritarian regimes, and as others stated will likely see another fork. I would like to see the social justice forking though. It would demonstrate quite clearly whether inclusion or merit are the objectively better systems...and I'd like to warm my popcorn for the insane mess that follows. No matter who wins, we collectively lose in the race to demonstrate the better angels of our natures.
Edit:
Redefined realistic experience. It was..a poor choice of example.
lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1809.2/06864.html
TL;DR:"Threat" being judge ordering author's code being removed from the project because the reward of reputation is gone.
Realistically, the SJW Linux can be rendered inoperable by court order, even if they do fork.
So is the ridiculous belief that programming is apolitical when the entire open source movement is in and of itself a political answer to massive corporations and the control they exert on software and the hardware that it runs on. It's as political as it gets; from the very beginning it was political and it remains so today. Things like the Whisper Protocol and TOR exist for political reasons to accomplish political goals.
That would be the rub and the chief point you'd have to establish, I'd think.
Nevermind the fact that if there is a huge legal fight because of the Code of Conduct and death of the meritocracy, there will only be scraps left over.
Like it or not, this whole thing came about because the current "meritocracy" was not working properly. Maybe there's a better answer, but ground zero sure ain't it.
And maybe - just maybe - Torvalds was actually the smarter man saying 'oh yes I've been bad, I'll go sit in my mancave now bai' and in the meantime he's the one avoiding all this nonsense.
Sadly, if there is one thing I have learned over the past year, it is that ignoring hate speech, ignornace, and general stirring of the pot fixes nothing.
I wish it were as simple as ignoring threads like this. But I do feel that is doing nothing, and allowing metaphorical evil to prosper (not speaking of opposing views mind you, I mean, just that lack of civic engagement in general is a BAD thing in my view).
@lexluthermiester @FordGT90Concept Both of you seem to take as the basis of your argument that this was already a perfect meritocracy with no inherent bias whatsoever. That is quite a claim, really, given that this is a social system created by humans. We carry our biases wherever we go, and it's been clearly demonstrated that our (conscious, subconscious or unconscious) biases are carried over and embedded into the systems we create - including "non-social" products like code. Given that the core of this is the established system was criticized for being biased, the reasonable approach would be to say "okay, how can we bring this closer to being an actual meritocracy", and work towards that. Instead, people are up in arms about this somehow being a coup and that every single person who has ever written Linux code and been rude to someone is going to get booted out, rendering Linux inoperable. This is a defensive, knee-jerk reaction signifying either a lack of perspective, reflection and understanding, or simply a sign of not wanting the current system to change, no matter its flaws. If the former is true, the people involved need to work on themselves, and if the latter is true, they need to stop being hypocrites and claiming this to be a meritocracy.
Anyone claiming to be a part of a meritocratic system should be very invested in ensuring that the system is actually meritocratic. This includes checking your own privilege, investigating the power structures established, and acting both personally and outwardly to counter any imbalances. And last, but not least, this involves looking into the foundations of what we define as merit, and the social power dynamics that lie behind this. A clear-cut, easy to understand example is how (on average) aggressive, loud, overly competitive men are generally successful, lauded for their behaviour, while women behaving in exactly the same way are seen as "bossy", "domineering" or "bitchy". The same goes for work product and employment history - there have been several scientific inquiries looking into how resumes or ideas presented in the workplace are both judged very differently if the name attached to it comes off as male or female. This even carries over to anonymous platforms, especially ones where people have fixed user names, as those are themselves read as gendered if possible. The point: for a meritocracy to be even remotely possible, it requires continuous critical investigations of its foundations to ever actually reach that status.
And that divorce thing is a bad thing, and it sounds like you had a massive falling out with everyone in your life. That is a failure on many levels.
And yes, people are obviously poor only because they have cable and phones. I know this is not what you meant, but you didn't develop it further than that so it's all I have to go on. Yes, people can to a degree change their "fates" or whatever, but ... there are innumerable variables to take into account, and you know it.