this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
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Yes but that clearly was not happening. And now they lost a contributor for no reason.
I'd venture to guess this isn't the first time Linus has had to deal with devs who have ideological disagreements and one quits. It's not also his job to keep that from happening. What he said is true, there's a process they have for maintaining Linux, and it doesn't involve flame wars on social media.....it involves flame wars over email 😅.
But seriously, if a devs are going to get upset at each other and rage quit, it's not Linus' job to play mediator.
it used to be hard to imagining anyone wanting to work w someone as toxic as linus; but i've learned after my first 2 tenures at faang that developers are as tribalistic as any kardashian worshipper.
devs getting angry at each other and then rage quiting is just a sympton of a tribalistically shared belief of intellectual superiority among developers like when kardashian sisters have beef with each other and their followers attack each other for it.
Marcan was probably fed up and was looking for a reason leave. If that's not the case, then it's silly for him to just quit mid-discussion, before it's even become apparent what the reaction to Cristoph Hellwig's behavior would be and whether his reply would even be taken into account during the review process.
It was very clear that the reaction was going to be no reaction. That's the point. Several months later is not "mid-discussion".
Cristoph Hellwig's initial message was on 2025-01-08. Marcan's stepping down was on 2025-02-07. So no, it's not several months; it's barely one month. Getting in fights in mailing lists and making social media posts is not everyone's first reaction and it is arguably not the best reaction, especially for people in places of power. It is silly for Marcan to demand everybody's reaction to be as loud and as quick as his own.
Well, it turns out that the reaction was pretty clear not "no reaction". That's the reason this thread we're talking in exists. Marcan was objectively wrong if he assumed Hellwig's comments and nack would be accepted. Instead, Hellwig was explicitly called out for having no say on the matter and for producing "garbage arguments".
How many months should he have waited for an authoritative response?
I don't agree with Hector's response either but that has nothing to do with the fact that Linus left them alone for months to sort out between themselves when he could have simply stepped in and ended it.
This thread? The one that appeared months after he already quit? Not helpful.
Well, Marcan should wait as long as feels right to him. As I said previously, I'm pretty sure he was already pissed off about previous R4L issues and he didn't quit because of this alone. I want to be clear that I'm commenting solely on the expectation of a swifter response from leadership in the original email thread and not on Marcan's decision to step down, which I can't be the judge of.
So, I expect people in places of power to take their time when they respond publicly to issues like this, for various reasons. Eg:
At the very least, I would have waited to see what happens with the patches if I were in his position. The review process, which kept going in the meantime, essentially sets a timer for a decision to be made. In the end, Hellwig's objections would either be acknowledged as blocking or they would be ignored. In any case there would have been a clear stance from the project's leadership. It makes sense to me to wait for this inevitable outcome before making a committal decision such as stepping down.
Here's the thing though, is Marcan got called out (rightfully) for his shit by Linus, but Linus could have called out Hellwig in the same email. The lack of that, to my reading, felt like implicit support of Hellwig's position to me, and I can see why Marcan would have felt the same way.
In saying that, it would also be fair for Linus to not "give in to the pressure" of Marcan's actions on social media and basically given him what he wanted.
One was a direct result of the other. You can't separate them.
Neither of them have the authority to resolve it in private and it was clear by the third message that there would be no resolution between them.
They didn't calm down, it was plain to see that things were only becoming more and more heated until the conversation reached a breaking point.
Marcan asked Linus to come in and make an authoritative statement and end the bickering and he did not. Hector interpreted that as Linus being apathetic (which is a rational position given the time that had passed). I'm not going to try and judge Linus, I don't know what was going on in his life at the time, but it was, as Hector stated, a failure of leadership regardless.