The World Is Changing - You Can Feel It In The New Linux CoC (Code Of Conduct)

In the last couple of weeks, a few unprecedented events have happened in the linux and open source world, and these events seem to validate the struggle or proxy-war that is going on under the hood since last several years or perhaps even decades.

The world of technology doesn't exist in a vacuum, it co-exists with the world of politics and interacts with it. It affects the ongoing political happenings in the world, and gets affected by them, in turn.

Unlike a professionally run company like Microsoft or IBM, the open source projects don't follow any strict ISO standards, rules or processes to create software. They are essentially loosely tied communities where decision making rests on their founders or BDFL (Benevolent Dictator For Life) as they are popularly called, with some consultation with members of inner circles who might be having commit access to the projects.

Just in the span of last two months, two such BDFLs have bid farewell to the very projects they have founded: First, Guido Van Rossum, creator of the Python programming language took a retirement from the project, and now Linus Torvalds, Linux creator and BDFL of the Linux Kernel Project apologized for his behavior and took a sabbatical.

And if recent discussions in linux and FOSS circles are to be trusted, these events aren't unrelated, they are part of an ongoing larger ideological conflict between some old and new ideas, between meritocracy and diversity based selection, between technical coding and social coding. And this conflict is very much linked to the larger progressive vs traditionalist or left vs right political warfare going on in the broader world at large.

Though there aren't any hard and fast rules about whom to hire and fire in FOSS projects (the volunteers aren't exactly compensated, but its a prestige to work in popular projects such as the linux kernel, and also has high career prospects), the unspoken rule practiced until now has been a merit-based selection or meritocracy. There have been traditionally no Code of Conducts governing a contributor's behavior or attitudes in developer forums, bug trackers, etc., developers have been free to proceed as they want, even if the need of the hour was to shout, raise havoc and reprimand a contributor for what he/she has done.

Indeed, Linus Torvalds himself is known to lose his temper and shout at contributors for their mistakes, but his temper has never been an issue for the last 25 or so years which is the age of the linux kernel project. In fact, Linus' short temper was always taken in the most joyful or humorous way in FOSS circles. It was generally accepted that Torvalds always behaves like that, but people also acknowledged in that same tone that Torvalds was also generally right about things, hence no big deal.

But in the last decade or so, we are seeing the influx of a new generation of coders in the FOSS world who give importance to other things like diversity, inclusiveness, gender equality, behavior or conduct, etc. than technical rights or wrongs. Its clear that the dominance and importance of this new breed of coders is increasing a lot because few days ago, the unprecedented has happened: Even the great Linus Torvalds had to tone down his anger and apologize to everyone for his bad temper.

The fact that just a day after Linus' apology, a new code of conduct was introduced in the Linux Kernel project is signalling of the fact that these happenings are all due to the increasing importance of this new diversity band of coders. The proponents of the diversity group are many, but there is a leading and organized initiative called Post Meritocracy Manifesto started by transgender activist Coraline Ada Ehmke. She is also the author of the new Covenant code of conduct that was accepted by the Linux Kernel, and according to Reddit is "also famous for creating at least a dozen Github shitstorms trying to purge ideological dissidents, sometimes for remarks made in their personal Twitter accounts."

Surprisingly, even Linus' own daughter, Patricia Torvalds is a signer of that manifesto, according to the linked reddit post:

In an interview on opensource.com three years ago, Patricia, who runs the Portland branch of "Guerrilla Feminism", affirms the need for "safe spaces" in the Open Source community:

I think this applies well to attracting and maintaining a talented and diverse mix of contributors: Safe spaces are important. I have seen the misogynistic and racist comments made in some open source communities, and subsequent dismissals when people point out the issues. I think that in maintaining a professional community there have to be strong standards on what constitutes harassment or inappropriate conduct.

What happens in future remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: Software development process won't ever be the same if this group continues to dominate the sphere of FOSS. The values this group rebels around such as diversity, feminism, social conduct, etc. may have some merits, but can it really replace the meritocracy based selection process which has been the standard in FOSS projects since decades? That remains to be seen.