Midwits on HN and Reddit sympathize with him.
tl;dr
A guy found a bug in kernel on an obscure architecture no one cares about (PowerPC32) and submitted a patch. The maintainer decided the patch was no good and fixed it by himself, crediting the guy with "Reported-by" tag. A year later, the guy wrote a blogpost crying that wasn't enough.
Links
HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37671991
A lie in the blogpost
I was also open to working with him, addressing his feedback and sending subsequent versions of patches. He said (paraphrasing):
Sorry, I like my version better. If you want to be a Linux kernel contributor, here's an issue you could fix.
I found this really perplexing and insulting.
The funny thing is, the above "paraphrase" is actually a lie and the kernel maintainer was very polite and respectful. This is what he actually said:
Hi Ariel,
I've added Christophe to Cc who works on ppc32.
I haven't actually reproduced the crash with gdbserver, but I have a test case which shows the bug, so I've been able to confirm it and test a fix.
Thanks for your patch, but I wanted to fix it differently. Can you try the patch below and make sure it fixes the bug for you?
I've also attached the test case I've been using.
Christophe are you able to test these on some 32-bit machines? I've tested it in qemu and on one 32-bit machine I have here, but some more real testing would be good.
If the patch works then I'll need to do manual back ports for several of the stable kernels, and then once those are ready I will publish the patch.
cheers
Comment spotlight
The maintainer did exactly what they usually do, I see absolutely nothing unexpected here, note that this was an unsolicited patch sent to a security mailing list.
If this is what the maintainer usually does then the maintainer is a wanker. If they leave the project, the project won't be losing a good person.
Indeed, maintainers are disposable. It's easy to find a codecel willing to put years of quality work into an obscure part of the kernel, for free.
Random users and drive-by contributors are much more important to the health of the project. They are much more likely to be a good person. We must not let them feel unwelcome, at any cost.
Agreed. I see the job of an experienced maintainer as a facilitator who should bend over backward to help other people's contributions land cleanly. The help often involves feedback on style and architecture consistency, but a sign of a great maintainer is someone who credits others, and mostly stays behind the curtain making sure everything goes smoothly.
You WILL bend over backwards for random people sending their shitty patches and you WILL love it.
Amazing how the hostility is perpetuating all through HN here as well.
I have seen (and sadly self experienced!) this kind of story way too often. And let me tell you this: This guy is now burned by this bad interaction and is successfully shooed away.
And some folks wonder why "nerds" and "geeks" are seen as socially inapt...
I don't even think that Mr. Ellerman had any malicious intents. But it just shows again, that the so called people skills are nothing to be neglected when choosing leading figures.
To paraphrase George Carlin: "It's a big club. And you're not in it!"
The maintainer should be immediately removed from his position and replaced with someone with good people skills. Ideally from an underrepresented demographic.
Funny how it's the small contributors that inevitably end up being the ones who have to set their ego aside and not the well known committers. Sounds very much like an old boys club.
Yeah, it's shocking that established contributors set the norms for the project.
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A person named Ariel who contributes to the Linux kernel
I strapped myself into a EOD suit to prepare for the nuclear blast of pure stereotype...
...and he's a normal looking, identifies-as-male guy. Not a striped knee-high sock in sight! What's going on here?
Well apparently 'Ariel' is a male name in Hebrew and has only recently been treated as female due to The Little Mermaid. I didn't know this.
Still, I don't blame myself for assuming the worst.
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TBF I have a big clocking KDR in FOSS spaces.
Follower of Christ
Tech lover, IT Admin, heckin pupper lover and occasionally troll. I hold back feelings or opinions, right or wrong because I dislike conflict.
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That's like going to a kindergarten and being able to point out which people are children. Not impressive.
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Same, with a classifier that never tells me "no".
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You just made me feel young again
Thanks
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lmao dude is a default font, bootleg helvetica, what a goober
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Maybe this person has extremely pedestrian dreams, you never know
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"you found and kludged a patch for PowerPC in current_year? Welcome aboard!"
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The point of contributing to FOSS is to make the software better. If you made the linux kernel better, what does it matter that your name is in a commit? I'm surprised it isn't a sexy Indian dude writing this blogpost, whining about not getting to pad their resume with "linux kernel contributor" sounds like their thing
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i love those guys that correct typos in readmes to put the repo on their resume, king tier shit. yeah i contributed to this project, what about it? look no closer
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You're right. That is king shit.
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Not as good as those changing pronouns in the documentation to make it gender neutral
.
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that, and, if you're "worthy" of being listed as a contributor, 1 instance of not getting credit would be irrelevant.
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The only reason I've ever contributed to any large project on github (large as in companies actually use it) is because of better employment opportunities later down the line, because it looks good on your CV. If I fixed some vulnerability for example in spring and my name wasn't going on the contributors list, I'd be malding too.
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Do companies really care? Most places I've interviewed at don't even ask about my github account. If your name is not Dan Abramov most companies are not going to be impressed.
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I think contributing to something mainstream, like Spring would definitely be a big plus, in this case a PowerPC kernel is a very niche sector, I have no idea if there are any commercial cases where that knowledge could be leveraged.
We usually look at githubs if they are on an applicants CV/LinkedIn and we did hire people before just because they contributed to a framework that we were using. You would be surprised how many senior devs don't know how something works, even if they have been using it for 5 years, not how to use it, but how does it actually work. If you contributed to it there is a good likelyhood that you at least partly understand it works, of course if you just fixed a typo or set neutral pronouns idc.
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Really? That makes you better than most places I've interviewed in then. Wish someone cared enough to look at my profile
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Clout chasing scum be-gone from open source projects.
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Github stars were a disaster for open source.
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I dont write code for open source shit but I assume that if someone reports a bug it's much easier to just fix it myself so I know it's legit than install (or test) some randos patch to make sure they aren't leaving some intentional exploit in it.
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Anyways, he looks like a major drug addict
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Ariel was a man's name before The Little Mermaid came out in 1989
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Strags butt mad that his name isn't on it.
Also, reading between the lines, it sounds like their fix was janky and the other guy found a better way too implement it.
Get over it. The dude couldn't have possibly been any nicer about it.
Black lives matter
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Snapshots:
archive.org
ghostarchive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/16tf5ne/how_i_got_robbed_of_my_first_kernel_contribution?sort=controversial:
undelete.pullpush.io
archive.org
ghostarchive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37671991:
archive.org
ghostarchive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
This is what he actually said:
archive.org
ghostarchive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
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I don't understand what the computer kernel guy said that was bad or offensive or burned the guy?
I know many bend over backwards people and it scares me they are multiplying
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It's eyebrow-raising how much of software (and things in general) is the product of white and Asian scrotes just grinding away in their spare time for free.
Trans lives matter more than scrotes.
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Scrotes will do anything for clout. Male ego is a disease.
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Hi
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