It's totally possible to joke and have fun, just don't... attack people and their ideas. Try not to blame. It's actually very simple in practice and isn't very far reaching at all.
You can still have fun, you can still joke around, but you have to realize if you attack people it's going to create a hostile environment for a lot of people, men and women included.
For example, one problem I consistently face is with interruptions. In my native culture, interruptions are entirely normal outside of formal speech. I try to tone this down in the workplace to accommodate other people, and similarly, most people try to understand that I mean well when my lifetime of cultural baggage slips through. But I have to be incredibly careful with my speech patterns around "respect and inclusivity" people, because they always interpret my interruptions as intolerable and deliberate rudeness.
The famous "characters" of open source are notorious, not famous. No one looks at a Linus rant and says "Wow I want to try my hand at adding a patch for Linux!". No, they say "Wow, I want to have that kind of power!"
That's just the rub, isn't it, you don't get to decide that we have to be hazed because you want the potential to hold that power of us.
He probably just thinks the kernel itself is more important than the people hacking on it. He's probably right.
People who think it would be awesome to get their code past Linus, and at least very funny and instructive to have their code shat on by Linus, do :) Some of us just don’t care about or even like ‘hazing’. You know, cause once you show you can take the hazing, you’re in the group.
Yeah I don’t want to be, like, epically pwned by my boss on a code review at work, but neither do I want my coworkers believing that I may find a smiley emoticon or “I don’t understand this” to constitute some sort of hostile environment.
It has the drawbacks of ostracizing those who are less confident with English and would prefer direct communication, the potential of being misunderstood and intimidating those who would prefer a more professional approach. If it cannot make the code better then it is poor engineering practice.
1. It sets up a challenge that incentivizes people to try to contribute; they "think it would be awesome to get their code past Linus"
2. It serves a form of initiation ritual (a hazing) to give people a sense of belonging to the group
(I'm not sure I personally buy point 2, because as far as I know Linus is nice to newbies.)
Beyond that, I can list plenty more:
3. It builds trust in your sincerity. If you openly bitch about everything that pisses you off, then when you say that something is decent work, people know you mean it.
4. As a direct consequence of point 3, it makes the environment much more welcoming for people with scrupulosity complexes, who might otherwise worry that they're just being a nuisance who everyone would rather not have around (but is too polite to shoo away)
5. It drives away hyper-PC social-justicey types who would otherwise impose CoCs and disrupt everything with conflict and hatred.
6. It sets a tone in which people feel free to speak freely, which sets people at ease who would otherwise be anxious about accidentally giving offence (perhaps because they have poor English skills, perhaps because they're neuroatypical in some way that affects their social skills).
Are there downsides too? Sure. But this is just the age-old set of tradeoffs between having a politically correct space and a politically incorrect space; different people will feel alienated (or be rejected by the group) in each of them. For me, anti-PC spaces are home; they're where I feel comfortable and safe and able to contribute, while PC / intersectional feminist / social justice spaces feel oppressive. I guess silveroriole feels the same way.
This is where the disconnect is, I think. You stated this very confidently, presumably because it seems obvious to you that everyone would feel this way. But let me assure you, there are few things I would enjoy more as a programmer than having Linus critique my code, including the parts where he swears at me and calls me a moron who shouldn't be allowed within 50 feet of a computer. I had a couple different professors whose feedback on my work was often Linus-esque, and that's part of the reason why they were some of my favorite teachers. I can also assure you I am very much not alone in feeling this way.
Now, this doesn't mean that allowing Linus style communication would be a good idea in most work environments and I wouldn't advocate for it, but your comment shows a pretty concerning lack of appreciation for the fact that a lot of people are wired very differently than you are.
Codes of conduct like the one being laid out in this article are often seen by people like me as tyrannical - behave and interact in the way that we personally like best, or be cast out. So naturally, I work as hard as I can to prevent them from being put in place, and undermine them if and when they are. An attempt by the "woke" crowd to meet us thicker skinned types (for lack of a better way to describe it) is something I'd welcome with open arms, but nobody seems much interested in that.
Are you seriously saying you can't deal with people being courteous, professional, clear, and inclusive?
Wait, what? I assume you mean you don't want _anyone_ to be in position of "cultural politeness enforcer"? But by literally saying you don't want women in that position (it only or especially bothers you when it's a woman?)... you seem to be kind of revealing some unappealing things about yourself.
My read of silveroriole's comment is that the commenter is a woman lamenting the fact that women are in the position of "politeness enforcer" far more often than men, and this causes people to treat her differently (i.e., like the "fun police") because they assume she is aligned with that world view.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make your substantive points thoughtfully from now on, we'd be grateful.
I also think the parent commenter's interpretation is an exaggeration.
For a lot of developers they see their work as an extension of themselves. I think this might be the case for a lot of folks whose primary work is thought work.