A lot of contributors are going to feel like this if their patch doesn't get accepted immediately and the maintainer in this case was extremely respectful even though the offered patch had multiple major issues. Contributors shouldn't feel entitled to free tutoring.
Seems debatable and debated, reading through the rest of this thread.
Regardless, I'll reiterate my point more straightforwardly: it's the maintainers' prerogative to treat aspiring contributors however they like, but actions have consequences, and some of those consequences may be deleterious to a project's health.
Most of the people commenting in this thread haven't looked at the code and anyone saying the two patches are equivalent can be safely ignored. Out of the issues kazinator pointed out, 1 and 2 are definitely major issues and 3 is debatable although it is definitely suboptimal.
> some of those consequences may be deleterious to a project's health
Of course, but I think it might not be in the way the "everyone can be a valued contributor" crowd thinks.
Of course! Who will keep the hordes of dimwits and dilettantes and LinkedIn jockeys at bay, if not those whose merit has already been proven?
This is unironically a very serious problem and why most of the best open source projects are basically corporate FAANG projects that are really only open source for optics.
Talking about utilitarian consequences, Linus had been way worse and while I fully agree from a moral perspective that his most extreme behaviors were bad, from a purely utilitarian perspective that didn't prevent Linux from being one of the most successful OSS projects out there.
Isn't this a little bit disingenuous? Do you really think the author of OP's blog post is upset simply because a Linux kernel maintainer has far more domain expertise than him and is in principle capable of writing a "better" patch?
That would be pretty irrational, I agree!
It would be pretty bad if he said that, but he never did.
Ellerman's actual words were "I wanted to fix it differently", so while I don't think Miculas' paraphrasing was entirely appropriate (why paraphrase at all?), I also don't think it was a misrepresentation of what Ellerman actually said.
It is not unfounded at all. The author clearly stated the reason they wanted their commit to be accepted was should they could be contributor.
I think it would be odd to disbelieve the author.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Speaking of pointing the above out, why is this comment flagged? Is this considered a personal attack too? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37677835
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You can see from my other comments in this thread that I prefer to engage respectfully with other commenters, even ones I disagree with, and I believe my total commenting history going back to 2016 will reflect that I do in fact take the intended spirit of the site to heart. But if speaking forthrightly to a bad faith and/or willfully ignorant interlocutor like this user drags me down to their level in your view, you ought to ban me right now. Thanks.
If you find yourself inspecting someone else's comments or behavior for how much bad faith you perceive, or what they couldn't be bothered to do, or anything of the "who said what" variety, you've already fallen off the path of curiosity* and this is a clear sign that you should refrain from posting. That's not a criticism btw! it happens to all of us and it takes work and practice to avoid it. But it's work we all have to do as a community, if HN is to last for its intended purpose. (Btw that's also the answer to why 37677835 was flagged - it wasn't a personal attack but it was a step off the garden path and into the weeds.)
When a commenter uses phrases like "bad faith" or "willfully ignorant" or "down to their level' about another commenter, it's usually a sign that they're too activated by a conversation to really practice this principle (from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html): "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." That's another sign that it would be good to refrain from posting until you no longer feel that way. Why? because first of all, you (I don't mean you personally, but all of us) are not functioning in the range of curiosity when you feel that way—it's physiologically impossible; and second, if you reply with what you call "speaking forthrightly" in that moment, you're quite likely to post things that land with the other commenter, and also the general reader, as attacks.
* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Semantics aside, I understand from experience how difficult it is to moderate situations like this, but as a user-privileged participant in any discussion I reserve the right to defend myself (e.g.) when somebody rolls out some half-baked strawman and then accuses me of going off topic. In this case I find it particularly ironic that in a thread full of completely baseless character attacks against Miculas, the author of the linked article (e.g. he just wants credit so he can put it on his resume), I'm the one who gets threatened with a ban for questioning that narrative and not then meekly rolling over for the ensuing tide of bullshit. If you want to see a real, unequivocal, totally one-sided personal attack, you need look no further than the original comment I replied to^[1], and you can't throw a stone from there without hitting another one. I note that those comments remain largely unflagged, which is not a surprise given how acutely vulnerable users of platforms like HN are to the bandwagon effect and similar biases.
My behavior in this regard is not going to change, but my experience in this thread is certainly raising some questions.
In the context of moderating an internet forum, we have to go by effects, not intent: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que..., for a number of reasons: (1) intent isn't observable or generally predictable; (2) effects are both observable and generally predictable; and (3) it's effects which ruin threads.
Everyone always feels like they're the one being singled out and treated unfairly—this isn't a reliable feeling, just a universal bias. If other comments broke the site guidelines as badly as you did, and the mods didn't say anything, that's only because we didn't see them.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
To which you state
> This was not a personal attack, it was a statement of fact.
It's a matter of opinion, not fact.
The lesson here, is always remember context. The point at which you start your input is surrounded with the context of before it. So if you were closer to the start the context of the previous strawman attempts wouldn't have been in play.
That could be, but on the other hand, the Linux kernel is more than 30 years old and is on its 6th version...
One might also consider the rarity of maintainers who can write high quality code and donate large amounts of time. To find and retain someone like that one might also be required to allow them to be curt with random people on the internet from time to time. I can see how drive by contributions could get old fast from their point of view.
Indeed, and while we're speaking in broad generalities, surely no strategy that worked to launch a project from tiny seed to maturity and market saturation has ever then failed to keep it relevant in the long term...
> I can see how drive by contributions could get old fast from their point of view.
Indeed. But (again addressing generalities) my issue here is that the contribution in question doesn't read as "drive by" to me.
If the rate of submissions falls then it certainly makes sense to adjust. Until then, don't fix what isn't broken.
This is a bit of a moot point, though, since I don't think it's very common for Linux kernel maintainers to behave this way. Correct me if I'm wrong.
This seems like a very cynical view of what happened here, and completely unfounded.
Obviously these big open-source projects need gatekeepers, but if the gatekeepers often make aspiring contributors feel violated and humiliated rather than offering feedback to get their initial contributions across the finish line, general interest and enthusiasm for contributing are going to dry up. Maybe that's by design, but it doesn't feel sustainable in the long term.