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
I'm more concerned with what this kind of discussion is doing to the community though. That is certainly real.
So, no one ever thought that being the "leader" he should be a bit more polite or is politeness a vice these days? Why is it that "leaders" can't be better people, or does "doing your job" is the only thing we look for, in them? Looking at the theme in this thread, it sounds like discrimination in the (real) world isn't a thing or Linux (community) isn't a part of the world.
Lastly, as some have pointed out, this "article" is very biased given the click bait headline & speculative content. While arguments can be made for "both sides" being an a** should never be tolerated just because you get the job done!
I've leave this here, applies perfectly to the world we live in ~
You're arguing as if being assholes to each other is a requirement for making good code, as you seem to see it as an impossibility for this to continue if people are no longer given leave to be assholes. Given how far out there a claim like that is, the burden of proof is on you here, not the people who want a respectful work environment.That is simply not true. Treating people with respect and empathizing with their situation can very much lead to changing reality, as you might recognize things as problematic which you previously hadn't thought were, and thus work to change them. Or, in a smaller scale, it might lead to you treating people with more respect, which might change their reality.I'm sorry if you read that as a personal attack, it really wasn't meant as such. It is how you come off from your posts, yes. You claim that people suffering discrimination should "suck it up", that what they're experiencing isn't real, and that they're out to ruin the things they want to improve upon. You keep using the term "SJW" as a slur; you call people "snowflakes", you make it very clear that you look down on people with experiences that differ from yours, and you refuse to budge whatsoever in your stance that if someone experiences mistreatment, they ought to just shut up about it. I'd say what I said was a pretty concise analysis of that.That post was about as subtle as opening your front door with a sledgehammer instead of a key. If it was an attempt at metaphorical transfer, it was both poorly executed and poorly thought out, as it took things far too literally for that to work, and entirely failed to account for the differences in the fields in question. As a metaphor, it didn't work, and as a non-metaphoric statement, it was blatantly anti-scientific.Again: not wanting to be discriminated against apparently makes you entitled. Or, you know, just maybe they're actually being treated unfairly? Again: you actively refuse to accept that people with bad experiences actually should have the right to make their environment better. And if you see "be nice to people" as discriminatory, then you need to take a good look at what it is you value in interacting with other people. Being in an environment with other people requires you to (to a certain degree) adhere to its norms and social conventions. From what you're saying, it sounds like you see it as discriminatory if people aren't allowed to discriminate against others, which is a logical fallacy of the finest sort.There are some clear inconsistencies in your analysis here. First off: there's no evidence in what you've presented here that these people find being a good person more important than being good at coding; all they're saying is that it's also important. This, frankly, is indisputable in any environment that includes multiple people.
Secondly: there's no evidence that interpersonal conflict is good for project development. I've worked a bit with group psychology in professional settings, and conflict is generally found to be the antithesis to productivity. Critique is entirely possible without being an ass; if you have to be an ass to critique someone, it's better to rethink what you want to say.That might very well be (though I'd say it's likely you're attributing too much of its quality to a single aspect of the culture), but does that mean that making it a "polite society" precludes further productivity?
I'd propose a more moderate reading: that the culture of Linux development has grown from a tiny insular group to a global professional environment, and while a semi-combative "criticism whatever the cost" policy might have worked in the initial phase (when most or all of those involved accepted this) the expansion of the field has necessitated a change to more universally applicable social norms as the breadth of experience of the people involved has expanded, and the dynamics of the first system has been shown to include noticeable bias.
To flip your argument around a bit: shouldn't a contributor's output be judged by their ability to produce good code, and not their ability to produce good code while being pelted with expletives?
The world simply isn't nice. On a small scale and in select groups yes, we can behave. Outside of it, and when it doesn't directly harm us, we are much more likely not to behave. Ironically we've built a society that actually promotes not behaving and not being nice in many ways, just as well as it promotes being nice. We (can) benefit directly from damaging another and I doubt that will ever change.
Evolution explains our behaviour in society and groups of people as a survival instinct and that is exactly what it is. To survive in certain professional environments, you can only benefit from collaboration and keeping things positive, which is why we do it. In other (work) environments, being nice will get you screwed over so we toughen up instead. I'm not saying I'd not rather see things work differently, but it is what it is.Yeah or perhaps just stick with what they had because that was as apolitical and pure as it gets, and should be.
Of course, an argument could then be made that enforcing "being nice to people" might be seen as enforcing worse working conditions for some. That's where dialogue, compromise and understanding comes in in creating a workable solution. However, there is something to be said about a fundamental lack of understanding of social dynamics in claiming that you need to be allowed to be an asshole to be productive or write good code. I'm not saying that you're making this argument, but it sure sounds like some people are. In which case they really ought to start looking into where their own personal freedom intersects with other people's.If the argument for Linux's value lies in its use in servers around the world (as quite a few people here have stated), it is intrinsically and inseparably bound to business and organizational life (whether that be corporations, governments, or idealist organizations). The only fork that would make sense then is one only licensed for individual/personal use, which I would guess would relegate it to obsolescence rather quickly.But the basic conditions of producing good code include a healthy community - isn't that the entire point of open-source software, to foster sharing and cooperation, and build on each others' work? No code is created in a vacuum, and particularly not open-source code. If the community has bias or discrimination issues, they undermine the possibility of producing good code within certain portions of it, and as such, the community lacks even the most basic foundation for having a functioning/actual meritocracy. Otherwise you're just presenting an unreasonable definition of merit, where it for some reason includes the ability to tolerate abuse - which, as far as I know, has bears no relation to coding.
Looking to outspoken members of groups that have experienced discrimination is the only real option for fighting discrimination, as they are the only ones with the relevant experience to document and describe its forms and ways of working. There is no "neutral" or "objective" way of understanding discrimination, as it is wholly dependent on the experience of the person subjected to it (which is why it is entirely possible to act in a discriminatory way without intending to do so - which is also why accepting apologies and giving people the opportunity to improve is a fundamental requirement in cases involving this, though that also depends on the severity of the discrimination). Policy based on experience is of course only a start, and going this route can some times lead to going too far, but institutional power resisting change is more than sufficient of a check to this for it not to be a real concern, no matter how fond people are of showing off the few cases where it does go wrong. It works out well far more often than not.Evolution is a very poor method of explaining the extreme complexities of human behaviour (no matter how fond fans of evolutionary psychology are of saying that it does that job well). Social behaviour is (largely) determined by our brains (though also our bodies and the senses they provide for us to interface with the world), and our brains are almost entirely shaped by external stimuli. Of course genetics creates a base (our brains don't grow new parts due to stimuli, but the size and importance of the parts in processing information changes dramatically), and genetic differences create variations in that base, but socialization and upbringing can account for the vast majority of our behaviour far better than evolution can. In particular, the best theories drawn from evolution can do is provide broad, generalized explanations for behaviour, while theories based on socialization go far deeper, and provide a far clearer and more accurate picture.
The problem with communicating this is that our brains are wired (hah) to make us perceive the world as stable, which makes us see the status quo and the prevailing culture as "natural" and "neutral" (and often "objective") when this is demonstrably untrue. Culture is constantly in flux everywhere, and is always evolving. The changes are just often too subtle to see from an individual point of view over a short span of time. Our current Western culture is far more individualist than previously (even as little as 20-30 years back), which might reasonably be said to foster competitiveness, a lack of empathy, and even outright hostility. Capitalist society (the values of which have also gained significant traction even in the Western wold in recent decades) also reinforces the idea that competition (and by extension a rather extreme version of hierarchical society) is a "natural" and unavoidable state, which non-capitalist societies throughout history have shown isn't necessarily true.
While it's rather Utopian to think of a world where no competition, hierarchy or hostility exists, it is entirely possible to work towards creating a society where this is less apparent, where competition isn't promoted as an ideal state, where individualism is balanced with communal responsibility, where social hierarchies are of lower importance, and where people's default approach to others is to treat them with respect regardless of their origin or status. And, given the transmissibility of ideas and state of culture as always in flux, any significant work towards this will necessarily also move culture in this direction (barring active resistance from reactionary groups, of course). This isn't impossible at all - it's just slow, and complex, and too large a task to meaningfully approach for any individual or organization. But that doesn't mean that trying is meaningless or ineffective. An easy example: Western societies are far less violent today than historically, even comparing with recent decades. We have gradually moved towards fighting less, being less violent, and generally viewing violence as an unacceptable solution to personal differences, in a way that is far too subtle for people in general to be aware of (heck, thanks to commercialized news most people believe their world to be more violent, despite the opposite being true). The point being: the cultural status quo isn't "natural". It's cultural. And thus entirely changeable.There's no such thing as apolitical. "Leaving politics out" is nothing more than saying "we accept the current politics as they stand and have no interest in identifying them or investigating if they're ideal for what we're doing". This is a blatantly counterproductive attitude.
It requires taking a big step back from the world you live in to see the similarities. Yes things change, but every new reality is still based upon those same human traits that have existed since we discovered fire. We are still fár away from real change, and real change in our approach to each other requires a new, bigger purpose for humanity. Such as avoiding mass extinction, or the idea of expanding beyond Earth. Those are milestones big enough to create a different drive than what we are doing now: endlessly dividing and rearranging the same plots of land and ideas of society.
Also: empathy is just as fundamental a trait in humans as competition. The current focus on competition as somehow the "natural order of things" is an ideological construct with some quite heavy blinders attached to it, which grossly oversimplifies society and social interaction.
Put bluntly, SJWs (or anyone that isn't actually contributing code) in programming is like a bull in a China shop. Nothing good can come from it.
Also: please stop using silly straw man arguments. The whole point here is the nuances, and nobody is arguing for the abolition of "discrimination" in the overly broad form you're using it in. What is being promoted is the idea that concepts such as "merit" aren't as simple as they might seem (or you make them out to be), and that many different kinds of context are entirely invaluable in understanding and judging merit.
Another thing you'd do well to avoid in the future: false equivalencies. Living with racism is not the same as being bullied in school, which is not the same as living as a woman, which is not the same as being laughed at as a kid for having ears that stick out. Of course, everyone reacts differently to this (due to an unaccountable myriad of factors), but on average, one can quite clearly tell apart the severity of various kinds and degrees of discrimination and mistreatment.
Then, of course, there's your denial of systemic discrimination. You keep talking about this as if it a series of isolated incidents. Culture isn't a series of isolated incidents, but all interconnected, and our bodies and minds form a large part of these connections. If a person has, say, been bullied while growing up, and is thus more sensitive than someone who wasn't to overtly aggressive behaviour in the workplace, should they then simply accept being passed over and given fewer opportunities than their aggressive, assertive colleagues? Is that fair? No. If people acting in a certain way have beaten you up regularly when growing up, your body and mind will both remember this, and react accordingly when encountering similar behaviour. Another, very different example: if someone (a woman, a person of color, whatever) is being pelted with various comments referencing their gender/ethnicity/other attributes not at all relevant to their job every day by various coworkers, is it not reasonable for this to affect them? Is it not reasonable for them to be sad or angry about this? It's not like they can reasonably control or change the attributes in question, after all. Doesn't the fault then lie with the people making these comments, no matter how innocent their intent? So, should they then just accept that it's their lot in life to be put upon by their peers, accept that they're worth less, and shut up? Or would it be reasonable for them to say "Hey, maybe stop making boob jokes every single time I'm in the room?". I'd say the latter. And, if people are unable to comply with a simple request like this, yes, repercussions should be expected.
As for you stating that ""Feelings" (...) are not appropriate in the professional environment.", well ... wow. Really? Are you actually arguing that it's at all possible for people to interact without feelings being a part of the picture? I suppose this might apply to sociopaths, but for anyone else, that is entirely impossible. And thus, as professional environments are also social environments (as are all environments, really), of course feelings and the discussion of them is entirely appropriate here, just as they are anywhere.
Regarding your statements that you can't change people's character: don't be daft. People change constantly. Our values, ideas, norms, and personality traits evolve every single day. Of course, changing fundamental personality traits is difficult, and with some of them so difficult as to be impossible in all practical terms, but our brains are immensely plastic and adaptive. It is entirely possible for someone to stop being rude, sexist, racist, or anything else.
When it comes to @mtcn77 's post, you're right that I don't understand the specifics of it (I haven't touched the natural sciences since high school, thankfully), but that's not at all required to understand the complete failure of logic that post presents. You can't just transfer the laws of thermodynamics or principles of what "enables work" in a chemical system into an organization and expect that to function as a workable metaphor for an organization existing under an entirely different set of rules (culture, not physics). (As an aside: he even attributes Intel's current woes to Anita Sarkeesian!?! What? Did she make their 10nm process fail? Am I missing something here? This is, quite simply, an entirely misplaced and unworkable metaphor or analogy. It doesn't fit. Period.) In chemistry, you work with known substances of which you have a rather comprehensive understanding of their traits. They're also rather homogeneous (all atoms of the same element are structured similarly, and so on). People, on the other hand, are fundamentally heterogeneous (even within demographic groups, unless you specify them down to such a small level that they become meaningless), we don't have even close to a complete understanding of each others' traits, and last but not least: outside of a scant few possible changes, molecules and chemicals are far less complex than humans in that they don't have lives. They don't change or evolve over time, they aren't shaped by what happens to them (outside of a limited set of reactions, mostly making/fusing them into something else or gaining/losing electrons), and they don't work differently based on those experiences. An iron atom is an iron atom no matter the cycles of change it's "experienced". It's not going to act as an argon atom because of its experiences. People don't work that way, and hence, organizations made out of people don't work that way. The laws of thermodynamics apply to systems where thermodynamics are relevant to their functioning. The only way that applies to people is that we couldn't exist as we currently do without these laws; other than that, they don't matter.
Also, it's kind of funny how you claim to champion this supposedly "objective" definition of merit (seriously, there is no such thing outside of pure abstraction, which isn't really useful unless you're a philosopher), and call yourself out as being a hypocrite for not wanting to work with people you don't like. A far superior solution there would be to admit that merit isn't such a static entity as you claim it to be, and that interpersonal relations (such as the ability to work together productively, or stand to be in the same room as each other) also factor into what constitutes merit. In any type of cooperative setting, the ability to cooperate is in and of itself a part of what constitutes merit. If you're coding alone, from scratch, that's (largely) a situation where "merit" would be only the quality of the code you produce. However, if you're working on a code project with someone else - even someone anonymous, who you never see, hear, or even communicate directly with - the definition of merit changes due to the simple fact that the work being done has become more complex. Now it's not coding alone, it's coding together. Those are fundamentally different things, and need to be treated as such. If you refuse to accept this, you're not doing anything but willfully blinding yourself to the inescapable realities of living and acting in a complex, interconnected world.I research games for a living. Please don't talk to me as if I don't know or care about crunch time. Caring about one thing does not negate the possibility of caring about other things. Solving crunch time requires unionization of the programming workforce, which is thankfully starting to happen, but it's slow as all hell. Thankfully things are improving, at the very least, even if the current situation is entirely unacceptable.Being intrinsically linked to corporate life and corporate culture doesn't have to mean adopting corporate culture in its entirety (such as, as you point out, the risk-aversion and bureaucracy of large corporations), but that doesn't negate the need to adapt to your own development. Linux isn't a tiny, "rebel" OS any longer, and it needs to stop acting like it is. That ship has sailed.So no programmer ever studied existing code to learn how to write their own? Programming projects don't have style guides? Yeah, sorry, I don't buy that. Even if seasoned programmers rarely read other people's code (unless they're working on the same part of the same project, I suppose), they've formed their "language" by studying the work of others and adapting it to their own desires. Also, isn't having "identified a problem and (...) looking for a solution" cooperation when another person made the thing with the problem? Particularly when the changes have to be accepted by the original developer? Yes it is. This is, however spaced out and nodal, a community. People are interacting, making things together, communicating. This is a community.Conservativism doesn't generally lead to good things either. Over the last centuries, conservatives have fought to preserve slavery, fought against democracy, fought against the right of everyone to own property, against the implementation of laws to prevent the wealthy abusing the poor, against women's rights, civil rights, and LBGTQI rights. Thankfully, they've (mostly) lost these fights. In the meantime, the world has progressed immensely in every single metric (outside of environmental damage; we've yet to fix that, sadly). Your statement is ahistorical in the long term, and pessimistic in the short term. Who is to say that this won't lead to an influx of capable developers who have previously avoided involvement in this community because of its toxicity? That is just as likely as what you're proposing.
It wasn’t low quality, it merely spoke the truth that was uncomfortable to whoever did it. I mean has anyone sat down to objectively read this thread? This thread is dividing the community.
We are not the ones going to solve this, so dividing the community on purpose is beyond reproach.
If I get caught up in what everyone else is doing then I am not focused on what I am doing. If I am not focused on what I am doing then I am jeopardizing my life and I know full well that somebody anyone will drop me like its hot as soon as the opportunity arises.
Perhaps, I am unemotional in this because I don't see race or differentiating factors. I don't have time.