Software developers who disagree with the new PC "Code of Conduct" (CoC) may legally prevent the Linux ecosystem from using their code.
As an undergraduate, one community within the maths-physics-computers mostly geeky ecosystem that I was rather allergic to were the fans of Linux. The typical members of that Linux community wanted everything – starting with software – to be free and open. They had a serious psychological problem with capitalism and its incarnation known as Microsoft. "What's your problem with those things," I would ask. They would answer – using some euphemisms – that they were really hopeless piles of left-wing scum.
In some sense, they were analogous to the Bitcoin or Tesla community today. Those communities pretend to be apolitical except that some of their "apolitical" views assure that they are far left nutjobs.
But are programmers left-wing or extreme left-wing in general? Well, I don't think so. It just doesn't work like that. The distribution of political views among coders isn't too different from the distribution in the general public. The bosses of the Silicon Valley Big Tech companies are surely excessively likely to belong to the extreme left-wing fringe. But there are communities – like the gamers from the anti-feminist Gamersgate – who are much closer to conservatives.
Even the communities that look overwhelmingly left-wing are "somewhat" intellectually diverse – I am reminding you of that as a decorated contributor to Wikipedia and Quora.
How does it really work inside the community of volunteers who have contributed to Linux? At the beginning, there was Linux Torvalds who is a jerk of a sort but in some sense, he's been a rather "politically neutral" jerk. And immediately after him, you find some people such as the notorious hardcore Marxist (and Marx's lookalike) Richard Stallman.
However, in the past, the Linux community hasn't been filtered so that the developers would be guaranteed to be far left. And many of them just aren't. The Linux developers also had a Code of Conflict but it's been a formality and no one cared about it.
A week ago, a new Code of Conduct (CoC) was released. It's a regulation that requires all Linux developers to be SJW snowflakes who are careful not to hurt or melt any other snowflake. The SJWs must have contaminated the bulk of the "political organs" of the Linux developers' community. I am not actually certain which of the CoCs is the main source of the controversy – whether one at Kernel.org or Linuxfoundation.org CoC for events or another one.
You're not allowed to talk to any person in a way that takes zir race, gender, boob size, transsexuality etc. into account, not even by the way how you look at zir. If you see someone who looks or speaks in a politically incorrect way, you have to immediately report zir to the event organizers or to Mr/Ms/M-LGBTABCDEFXYZ Angela Brown, a Linux Foundation VP enforcing the political correctness of Linux. Also, you're not allowed to criticize code that comes from underrepresented groups. Needless to say, almost all of the Linux code came from white cis (not transsexual) straight (not homosexual) men and the snowflakes think it's a problem.
As a Linux developer, you must fight against meritocracy because it's an evil system that gives privileges to the privileged etc.
Well, you may see that the versions of the CoC above are bad enough but they're not extremely bad. At the same moment, you may find lots of SJWs from that community who "interpret" the CoC in such a way that you would immediately terminate their lives if it were perfectly legally kosher to do so. At any rate, the adoption of the CoC is a toxic development that all decent members of the Linux community must be alarmed by.
A week ago, we learned that:
Some developers of the Linux kernel and similar things are just fatally disgusted by the CoC and they prefer not to be associated with a project that was hijacked by individuals who are as filthy as the SJWs. So they say that unless the CoC is revoked (Linus Torvalds has already stepped aside and "committed" to the CoC, a spineless jerk – he embraced the toxic rules after he was forced to apologize for having been a jerk of a less ideological type in the past, and these three things are clearly related in some way), they will ask the courts to prevent the Linux users from using their code.
While Linux has been marketed as "truly free software" that no one owns, some legal analyses indicate that this is impossible. In many countries, there are laws that allow any person to defend his good name from the association with some groups he dislikes – and these laws probably beat his previous consent. Even Stallman has admitted that the threat has "teeth".
It is not quite clear whether the revocation of the consent for everyone to use the code could apply "retroactively" – to the software that is already being used out there – or just "for newly released software". If it's the former, the courts' decisions could have an immediate devastating effect on the world of Internet servers and even Android devices where Linux plays a central role.
Even if it were "just" the latter, these anti-SJW developers' success in the court would mean that no new version of Linux – and, I guess, no new version of Android that uses the parts of Linux – may be released again. At least up to the moment when their parts of the code are replaced with "materially different" replacements.
Some estimates say that it could be 10% of the Linux code. Because it's rather hard to localize that code and make sure that the new replacement interacts with everything around just like the original code (to change the names of the variables is surely not legally enough), Linux could be suspended at least for years.
There could be some negative implications for many companies and all of us. On the other hand, I am rather attracted by the idea that the opponents of the contemporary SJW insanities could credibly show that they're a relevant group that must be taken seriously. The Linux development has been an apolitical activity but if this conflict escalates, the community would be polarized if the legal threats were turning into tangible legal moves.
You could see a group of far left-wing developers to try to write a new similar "ideologically pure" operating system in which the non-PC people would really be banned. If such a process were taking place, I believe that all cautious and sane users would avoid such a left-wing operating system like a plague. There would be an obvious worry that such a left-wing political system could be created so that it also harms the politically incorrect users and you surely don't want to allow such software in your house.
If the removal of the consent means to stop the development and evolution of Linux and the new version releases, I tend to be for it. This threat is rather surprising – the conservative part of the community adopts some boycott-style tools that you would instinctively associate with the SJWs themselves – but there's some common sense behind the surprises. If we never use any of the "powerful tools" of the modern era – tools on the boundary of information technologies, law, and politics – we are pretty much guaranteed to be defeated by the far left-wing loons who are willing to use and abuse literally any tools.
As an undergraduate, one community within the maths-physics-computers mostly geeky ecosystem that I was rather allergic to were the fans of Linux. The typical members of that Linux community wanted everything – starting with software – to be free and open. They had a serious psychological problem with capitalism and its incarnation known as Microsoft. "What's your problem with those things," I would ask. They would answer – using some euphemisms – that they were really hopeless piles of left-wing scum.
In some sense, they were analogous to the Bitcoin or Tesla community today. Those communities pretend to be apolitical except that some of their "apolitical" views assure that they are far left nutjobs.
But are programmers left-wing or extreme left-wing in general? Well, I don't think so. It just doesn't work like that. The distribution of political views among coders isn't too different from the distribution in the general public. The bosses of the Silicon Valley Big Tech companies are surely excessively likely to belong to the extreme left-wing fringe. But there are communities – like the gamers from the anti-feminist Gamersgate – who are much closer to conservatives.
Even the communities that look overwhelmingly left-wing are "somewhat" intellectually diverse – I am reminding you of that as a decorated contributor to Wikipedia and Quora.
How does it really work inside the community of volunteers who have contributed to Linux? At the beginning, there was Linux Torvalds who is a jerk of a sort but in some sense, he's been a rather "politically neutral" jerk. And immediately after him, you find some people such as the notorious hardcore Marxist (and Marx's lookalike) Richard Stallman.
However, in the past, the Linux community hasn't been filtered so that the developers would be guaranteed to be far left. And many of them just aren't. The Linux developers also had a Code of Conflict but it's been a formality and no one cared about it.
A week ago, a new Code of Conduct (CoC) was released. It's a regulation that requires all Linux developers to be SJW snowflakes who are careful not to hurt or melt any other snowflake. The SJWs must have contaminated the bulk of the "political organs" of the Linux developers' community. I am not actually certain which of the CoCs is the main source of the controversy – whether one at Kernel.org or Linuxfoundation.org CoC for events or another one.
You're not allowed to talk to any person in a way that takes zir race, gender, boob size, transsexuality etc. into account, not even by the way how you look at zir. If you see someone who looks or speaks in a politically incorrect way, you have to immediately report zir to the event organizers or to Mr/Ms/M-LGBTABCDEFXYZ Angela Brown, a Linux Foundation VP enforcing the political correctness of Linux. Also, you're not allowed to criticize code that comes from underrepresented groups. Needless to say, almost all of the Linux code came from white cis (not transsexual) straight (not homosexual) men and the snowflakes think it's a problem.
As a Linux developer, you must fight against meritocracy because it's an evil system that gives privileges to the privileged etc.
Well, you may see that the versions of the CoC above are bad enough but they're not extremely bad. At the same moment, you may find lots of SJWs from that community who "interpret" the CoC in such a way that you would immediately terminate their lives if it were perfectly legally kosher to do so. At any rate, the adoption of the CoC is a toxic development that all decent members of the Linux community must be alarmed by.
A week ago, we learned that:
Linux developers threaten to pull “kill switch” (Lulz.com)See also MMO-champion.com for an alternative discussion thread to see the balance and interactions between the SJWs on one side and the mentally sane people on the other side. What's going on?
Some developers of the Linux kernel and similar things are just fatally disgusted by the CoC and they prefer not to be associated with a project that was hijacked by individuals who are as filthy as the SJWs. So they say that unless the CoC is revoked (Linus Torvalds has already stepped aside and "committed" to the CoC, a spineless jerk – he embraced the toxic rules after he was forced to apologize for having been a jerk of a less ideological type in the past, and these three things are clearly related in some way), they will ask the courts to prevent the Linux users from using their code.
While Linux has been marketed as "truly free software" that no one owns, some legal analyses indicate that this is impossible. In many countries, there are laws that allow any person to defend his good name from the association with some groups he dislikes – and these laws probably beat his previous consent. Even Stallman has admitted that the threat has "teeth".
It is not quite clear whether the revocation of the consent for everyone to use the code could apply "retroactively" – to the software that is already being used out there – or just "for newly released software". If it's the former, the courts' decisions could have an immediate devastating effect on the world of Internet servers and even Android devices where Linux plays a central role.
Even if it were "just" the latter, these anti-SJW developers' success in the court would mean that no new version of Linux – and, I guess, no new version of Android that uses the parts of Linux – may be released again. At least up to the moment when their parts of the code are replaced with "materially different" replacements.
Some estimates say that it could be 10% of the Linux code. Because it's rather hard to localize that code and make sure that the new replacement interacts with everything around just like the original code (to change the names of the variables is surely not legally enough), Linux could be suspended at least for years.
There could be some negative implications for many companies and all of us. On the other hand, I am rather attracted by the idea that the opponents of the contemporary SJW insanities could credibly show that they're a relevant group that must be taken seriously. The Linux development has been an apolitical activity but if this conflict escalates, the community would be polarized if the legal threats were turning into tangible legal moves.
You could see a group of far left-wing developers to try to write a new similar "ideologically pure" operating system in which the non-PC people would really be banned. If such a process were taking place, I believe that all cautious and sane users would avoid such a left-wing operating system like a plague. There would be an obvious worry that such a left-wing political system could be created so that it also harms the politically incorrect users and you surely don't want to allow such software in your house.
If the removal of the consent means to stop the development and evolution of Linux and the new version releases, I tend to be for it. This threat is rather surprising – the conservative part of the community adopts some boycott-style tools that you would instinctively associate with the SJWs themselves – but there's some common sense behind the surprises. If we never use any of the "powerful tools" of the modern era – tools on the boundary of information technologies, law, and politics – we are pretty much guaranteed to be defeated by the far left-wing loons who are willing to use and abuse literally any tools.
Anti-SJW developers threaten to kill Linux
![Anti-SJW developers threaten to kill Linux]()
Reviewed by MCH
on
September 29, 2018
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