Personally I haven't "observed" any effects one or the other, but I'm not a kernel developer either...
I think it more or less started with
this, who (Sarah/Sage Sharp) used swear words themselves, so hardly fair to criticise Linus for doing the same, who in that case, seemed to be
more polite.
Quote:
Originally Posted by frankbell
(Post 5987613)
I love it when courtesy, decorum, and professional conduct are libeled "political correctness."
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While I can see your point, there's also a flip side to that. That being that, pointing out valid flaws could also be seen by some as "rude", "unprofessional", etc. To me, when you're talking about a valid flaw, particularly when the person concerned should know better and still submits sub-standard work/code, then "being politically correct" could also minimize the problem, therefore they don't take it as seriously as it should be taken. A prime example of what I'm talking about is
here, in that case, it should have been obvious with just a simple compile that the code should not have been submitted in the first place, and the author(s) of that code clearly didn't test it properly. Surely it doesn't take a genius to figure out that there where problems with that code, and they should have been fixed before it was submitted, so I think in that case, Linus was right to say what he said. And to me, was simply stating what he was rightly thinking about it. I would not call that "unprofessional", it would, in my book, been "unprofessional" to say nothing in that case.
At the end of the day, there needs to be a proper balance, as well as what "being professional" means in practice, and there are clearly defined and accepted practices that promote a proper balance. And any CoC should be clearly accepted by all that fall under it, not just imposed on people. I don't think a CoC in itself is a bad thing, but when it impedes people being able to point out legitimate concerns/flaws, then that in my book is when it becomes a bad thing. I think some people just don't like/cannot handle criticism, but are quite happy to dish it out to others, otherwise known is complete hypocrisy (it's sad to say, but there are at least one or two just like that here - no names mentioned). It's the
intent and
meaning behind it that matter in my book, not how it's phrased/words used. I would much prefer someone be open and honest with me if I'm completely wrong about something, rather than sit there and sugar coat it, as I may not grasp the full seriousness of it, if they did sugar coat it. Once again, it's called a balance between conduct and best practices, both best software development practices, as well as personal conduct.
Because the danger is that you end up with a bunch of mindless drones that are more concerned with "political correctness", then doing the best job/work that they can. This
doesn't help anyone, certainly not the development of the Linux kernel (or the development of anything else).