1. Most of Linux is written by paid contributors. They won't leave.
2. Most of those who kindle this flamewar are not Linux contributors but the alt-right. They also got involved in the Larry Garfield-Drupal affair (which was extremely poorly communicated).
3. If I may offer an explanation on why Code of Conducts are important: https://medium.com/@chx/a-note-from-an-open-source-lead-deve...
It's naive to think that things like source code hide our race, gender, orientation, ect; and that we leave our biases aside when collaborating on a computer program.
The reality is that many people are this naive, and/or fear that someone with an agenda will create a political environment where one's lack of a minority identify becomes a liability. There's also a valid concern that an inclusive agenda can be used to force people into a project who really don't belong in a project.
That's why discussion of these topics with empathy for the naive is important. Calling someone "alt right" because they haven't 100% bought onto a necessary change really is an "if you're not with us, you're against us" statement. That kind of attitude goes directly against the kind of inclusivity that something like a CoC is meant to foster.
Yet how can one explain the considerable negative reaction to the CoC on Phoronix's forum and Slashdot, which are hardly bastions of either 4channers or any kind of right-wing movement? They're highly pro-Linux.
For example, a developer expresses a non-conformist opinion on transgenderism on Twitter. Bam, activists show up in droves on the project's issue tracker and bludgeon the developer off the project using the CoC.
> unconditionedwitness@redchan
I'm not sure what I define redchan as, but alt-right isn't a crazy description to me.
https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/24/1497
"You must respect women who do NOTHING for you and even NOTHING for anyone else except exist as a USELESS physical entity (females who are not sweet young brides for men or mothers and just consume are not useful for anyone other than themselves: the purpose of females is to create more human beings and to bring happiness and pleasures to men: they are superfluous in any other capacity, as a class)... who rules over you ... or else you are punished.
You slaved away writing the code. When they feel they don't need you anymore they seek to tear you down.
You have a remedy: Recind the grant. You did NOT sign away your OWNERSHIP of the code you wrote.
The anglo-american belief system is that males are to be slaves of women and their masters. This belief system is now being imposed on even hobbies like gratis software development. They wish to give men no refuge, no place to build something outside the eye of the middle-class ("white" or english) woman. To keep men checked and obedient at all time in all things."
---
Now in hindsight, maybe the use of the term "anglo-american" should suggest that the author is not, himself, American, and so perhaps alt-right would not be the best term.
What a vile website. It's clearly alt-right and despicable.
there's an episode of you are not smart about this:
https://youarenotsosmart.com/2018/02/26/yanss-122-how-our-un...
It appears to be a right-wing outrage machine about black celebrities and feminists, targeted at young white North American men.
So, I'd say it's not inconceivable that the guy is alt-right.
What horrifies me is how utterly incompetent the media is at recognizing trolling. They simply regurgitate whatever gets presented to them by supposed members of "anonymous" or the "alt-right" etc. I'm convinced the majority of this noise is just 4chan nerds trolling the media and watching the results for the lulz.
But the media empowers it all to have actual consequences in reality.
Quality of journalism has gone completely down the tubes. And I don't mean in the "fake news" fabricated by journalists sense, I mean in their plain incompetence and being used as puppets to validate the nonsense they report on by ... reporting everything as-given.
Nothing seems to be investigated correctly prior to reporting it anymore.
I expect you're correct. However, the threat here isn't that a bunch of developers will leave. The threat is that any developers will leave and rescind the license to use their code. That would mean that code would have to be removed from the kernel, which would break backward compatibility. IANAL, but I believe an attempt to maintain compatibility would be "based on" the previous code to which the linux kernel now has no claim, and would therefore be a violation of copyright as well.
I don't really see any practical way you'd be able to remove code from the kernel in an event like this. You'd basically have to fork it.
> Most of those who kindle this flamewar are not Linux contributors but the alt-right. They also got involved in the Larry Garfield-Drupal affair (which was extremely poorly communicated).
I believe you're conflating a lot of different groups under the label "alt-right" here.
The bottom line is that there is a cultural shift happening, and there are many who oppose this sort of thing that aren't "alt-right" in the least. Mislabelling them as such serves to further inflame the divisions within our community, and allows their concerns to be dismissed out of hand. I think this is a mistake.
GPLv2 is not the only license without an explicit "no-take-backsies" clause, and pretty much all literature I've read about open source previous to this incident suggested that although you could relicense future versions of the code, you couldn't put the genie back into the bottle on old releases.
Also, to be frank, I think that if there _was_ settled law saying you could rescind old licenses, it would have far-reaching ripple effects throughout the open source world. Let's be clear, it would be a weapon that could be used by any slighted maintainer or former maintainer to damage a project, for _any_ reason. And if a single or group of maintainers could do it, a corporation with dollar signs in its eyes could do it just as easily. Be careful what you wish for.
Which I think is a mess because of how that reaches out. It may also be another point in favor of the GPL just being a bad license. If I rescind the GPL on my code, then everything that depends on it needs to rewritten and there may be things that aren't aware they're using my code that needs to be rewritten.
Then what about if someone modified my code? Then where does the copyright lie?
It's crazy.
I lacked the financial means to enforce my rights in court so I dropped it and moved away from spending 10-14h a day contributing to wikipedia.
The kernel is probably not as corrupted as wikipedia management is, so they may allow for rescinding GPL if asked but would that prevent the removed code from being added again rewritten or not? Could the original author sue for copyright violation ?
I posted my writeup on reddit and there were a number of people in the comments who crystal clear never saw an open source project in their lives OTOH they had post history on places like /r/the_donald and /r/kotakuinaction . I will not even try to separate GamerGaters from Trump supporters, the alt-right as an umbrella will do.
I have not said everyone is such but -- much more than there should be (which is zero).
I'm a T that doesn't fit into the LGBT community, at all. Most of my beliefs run perpendicular to the community at large and in some cases I get irritated with them for trying to police how people should treat me - this policing usually results in my interactions with others being worse off. But because I don't conform to the community, I'm not a "real trans". I'm depersoned and outcast. The LGBT community has treated me worse than any other community I've ever tried being a part of.
I'd be one of the first people targeted by people through the CoC for, ironically, being "anti-trans" and disagreeing with someone in the greater LGBT community. One such example, "tranny" is a word I claim to identify myself with and screw anyone who tells me I can't use it because it is a slur. They give the word power when they cower from it. Because of this, I won't contribute to any open source project with a CoC. It's been a political tool used to wrestle control of a project or oust someone that someone more popular doesn't like more often than it's been a tool to foster a more inclusive and friendly community.
Note that the idea I'd be one of the first targeted is merely perceived - the same bias, but mirrored, causing others to be excluded for a perceived preexisting bias against them.
Although I don't think they're the most valuable contributors. They're often motivated to contribute things that bring them value, not the community as a whole.