removing toxic emailers

[Iain Sandoe]

Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> wrote:

> Paul Koning via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>:
>>> On Apr 14, 2021, at 4:39 PM, Ian Lance Taylor via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org>  
>>> wrote:
>>> So we don't get the choice between "everyone is welcome" and "some
>>> people are kicked off the list."  We get the choice between "some
>>> people decline to participate because it is unpleasant" and "some
>>> people are kicked off the list."
>>>
>>> Given the choice of which group of people are going to participate and
>>> which group are not, which group do we want?
>>
>> My answer is "it depends".  More precisely, in the past I would have
>> favored those who decline because the environment is unpleasant --
>> with the implied assumption being that their objections are
>> reasonable.  Given the emergency of cancel culture, that assumption
>> is no longer automatically valid.
>
> I concur on both counts.
>
> You (the GCC project) are no longer in a situation where any random
> person saying "your environment is hostile" is a reliable signal of a
> real problem.  Safetyism is being gamed by outsiders for purposes that
> are not yours and have nothing to do with shipping good code.
>
> Complaints need to be discounted accordingly, to a degree that would
> not have been required before the development of a self-reinforcing
> culture of complaint and rage-mobbing around 2014.

responding to Ian’s original statement:

I am one of the people who would not be “here” if the environment was
hostile.  That is not a theoretical statement - I declined to contribute to  
one
project already because of the hostility of the interactions.

Although I love to be paid to work on GCC, the truth is that almost all my
contributions are voluntary and I would not choose to spend my spare time
in a conflicted environment, period.

For those of us who are ‘freelance’ these lists and the IRC channel are
pretty much our workplace, it needs to be civilised (for me anyway).

responding in general to this part of the thread.

* The GCC environment is not hostile, and has not been for the 15 or so
  years I’ve been part of the community.

* We would notice if it became so, I’m not sure about the idea that the wool
   can be so easily pulled over our eyes.

I confess to being concerned with the equation “code” > “conduct”; it is not
so in my professional or personal experience.   I have seen an engineering
team suffer great losses of performance from the excesses of one (near  
genius,
but very antisocial) member - the balance was not met.  Likewise, it has been
seen to be a poor balance when there are three gifted individuals in a  
household
but one persecutes the other two (for diagnosed reaons).. again balance is  
not
met

One could see the equation becoming a self-fullfilling prophecy viz.

  *  let us say compilers are complex, and  any significant input over length of time
    will require a resonably competent engineer.

  * reasonably competent engineers with a good social habit are welcome everywhere

  * reasonably competent engineers with poor social habit are welcome in few places.

  - those few places will easily be able to demonstrate that their progress is made
   despite the poor atmosphere, with no way to know that something better was possible.

responding to the thread in general..

* Please could we try to seek concensus?

  - it is disappointing to see people treating this as some kind of point-scoring game
   when to those working on the compiler day to day it is far from a game.

Iain