karolherbst 🐧 🦀 (@[email protected])
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Following R4L debacle "you are cancer, you are the problem, we are the thin blue line"(against what? Innovation ?), another kernel maintainer steps down from the Linux Kernel
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L [email protected] shared this topic
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it's a shame it has come to this. there needs to be some tough conversations on how the Linux kernel wants to be run over the next 5 years
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Full message from Karol Herbst on LKMLl:
I was pondering with myself for a while if I should just make it official that I'm not really involved in the kernel community anymore, neither as a reviewer, nor as a maintainer.
Most of the time I simply excused myself with "if something urgent comes up, I can chime in and help out". Lyude and Danilo are doing a wonderful job and I've put all my trust into them.
However, there is one thing I can't stand and it's hurting me the most.
I'm convinced, no, my core believe is, that inclusivity and respect, working with others as equals, no power plays involved, is how we should work together within the Free and Open Source community.I can understand maintainers needing to learn, being concerned on technical points. Everybody deserves the time to understand and learn. It is my true belief that most people are capable of change eventually. I truly believe this community can change from within, however this doesn't mean it's going to be a smooth process.
The moment I made up my mind about this was reading the following words
written by a maintainer within the kernel community:"we are the thin blue line"This isn't okay. This isn't creating an inclusive environment. This isn't okay with the current political situation especially in the US. A
maintainer speaking those words can't be kept. No matter how important or critical or relevant they are. They need to be removed until they learn. Learn what those words mean for a lot of marginalized people. Learn about what horrors it evokes in their minds.I can't in good faith remain to be part of a project and its community where those words are tolerated. Those words are not technical, they are a political statement. Even if unintentionally, such words carry power, they carry meanings one needs to be aware of. They do cause an immense amount of harm.
I wish the best of luck for everybody to continue to try to work from within. You got my full support and I won't hold it against anybody trying to improve the community, it's a thankless job, it's a lot of work. People
will continue to burn out.I got burned out enough by myself caring about the bits I maintained, but eventually I had to realize my limits. The obligation I felt was eating me from inside. It stopped being fun at some point and I reached a point where I simply couldn't continue the work I was so motivated doing as I've did in the early days.
Please respect my wishes and put this statement as is into the tree.
Leaving anything out destroys its entire meaning.Respectfully
Karol
Signed-off-by: Karol Herbst [email protected]
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For people who didnt understand the phrase like myself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_blue_line?wprov=sfla1
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I hope the rust kernel devs join hands with redox or asterinas project. which ultimately means more options for users.
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Yeah, I'd obviously want all these devs in Linux but BSD and Redox and many others will thoroughly appreciate their talents in the meantime.
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Yup. But based on Linus' response to marcan's concerns, it sounds like Linus just wants to ignore the problems.
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Thanks for the context!
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Yeah, this looks like trying to avoid conflict by shutting down a person pushing back against bad behavior, instead of trying to mediate the situation to come to a just resolution. It's shallow and gross and not sustainable.
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I think that Linus' concerns about posting on social media is completely valid, but I was pretty disappointed that he didn't address Hellwig going full retard.
Marcan dealt with this like a spoiled child in the end, but he was 100% right.If you want to make Linux impossible to maintain due to a cross-language codebase, do that in your driver so that you have to do it instead of spreading this cancer to core subsystems. (where this cancer explicitly is a cross-language codebase and not Rust itself, just to escape the flameware brigade).
This should be worth a Linus rant in my honest opinion.
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Hellwig specifically says "where this cancer is a cross-language codebase". He's not wrong. I don't know how you transition languages, but my god, if you want to lose maintainers, make it impossible to maintain because of language incompatibilties. A few people from a side project like Asahi or an almost defunct driver like Nouveau would be the least of your worries if you were Linus.
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I disagree. Hellwig was not contributing with the discussion. The point is that Rust is being integrated into the kernel, whether Hellwig likes it or not. It passed the point of discussing if it should happen or not. Besides that, R4L is responsible for maintaining the Rust code even if something is broken from the C side of things.
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Neither of those sides exist in a vacuum; it's great there's a R4L team, but you still have to eliminate the possibility the problem exists at your end before you throw it in their lap and say "deal with it". And I'll bet half the time it gets tossed back with "your problem" and then the arguments ensue, not to mention the various discussions about how to make them talk to get rid of the bug. It's not anywhere near as simple as the idea that there is a team for that.
Sure Hellwig's probably being an asshole here, but you can be an asshole and still be right. Linus did it for 20 years and built the most successful OS in history.
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Yeah, I agree with you that, realistically speaking, Rust people would probably complain when C code brakes their code, but I still think that this was not what Hellwig was talking about.
In my opinion, he was just being unreasonable when he told people that he would be doing everything he can to prevent anything else that's not C code from being merged into the kernel.
I mean, I understand his concerns of not wanting to deal with Rust code, but what he said is not contributing AT ALL with the discussion.btw, I'm not the one downvoting your comments. I disagree with you but I think you are making some valid points.
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Fair enough, I guess I would agree with you on the value it had to that discussion. I've just dealt with partial codebase transitions and it's a horror to fix anything.
And I couldn't give a shit about downvotes, or I'd just dogpile along with the groupthink in every thread like the rest of the Lemmings. I appreciate the discussion.
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"the process works" Is I think how he phrased it.
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Maybe he's not American? Isn't that just an American thing?
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A few people from a downstream project like Asahi or an almost defunct driver like Nouveau
I'm not sure why you think Asahi is a minor player in the linux community when they're responsible in the entirety for porting Linux to the Arm-based Mac M1+ series, or why you think Nouveau is defunct.
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If a single percent of regular Linux users use either of those on a daily basis, I'll eat a bug. And desktop Linux isn't even a significant amount of Linux use in general. So why would the kernel developers give the slightest shit about either of them?
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Linus is definitely not American. That is no excuse he way he just ignored the dma maintainer's behavior and that is no excuse for why nobody in leadership did or said anything even after the connotation of the phrase was explained by another in the thread. The only thing that brought enough attention for any comment was marcan's responses, and Linus just basically came in and said to stop making noise.
