The recent unconscionable reinstatement of RMS to the FSF Board has got me stewing about injustice in our community. I'd like to share a personal story about Sage Sharp and the cost of toxic culture. 1/n
Mar 22, 2021 · 8:38 PM UTC
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Please note that I am explicitly NOT tagging Sage in this thread, because I'm not sure if this is a part of their life they want to relive. This is simply my take on a history that is already well-documented. 2/n
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I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Sage at OS Bridge 2010 on their work on the Linux USB 3.0 drivers. At that time Linux was the ONLY OS with true USB 3.0 support, and all because of Sage's work. 3/n
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Sage is a technical force and I was blown away by the content in the presentation. But what struck me the most was Sage's joyfulness. They joy of finding an important contribution in something they loved. 4/n
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There was also a bit of whimsey as Sage displayed a rogue's gallery of various USB 3.0 devices they had tested against. In short, one of the Top 10 best technical talks/speakers I have ever seen. 5/n
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Five years later, came the well-documented blow up where Sage had the temerity to suggest that developers submitting Linux kernel code should expect professional critiques of their work... 6/n
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... and not abusive, ad hominem attacks. Read about this dark chapter here geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/… 7/n
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The upshot was that Sage, fed up with the toxic community, walked away from Linux kernel development in 2015. We are all the poorer for it. 8/n
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And if this happens to very public, valued contributors to a project, we can only imagine the chilling effect on many on the fringes of the community who MIGHT have made substantial contributions. 9/n
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How much have we lost? The world will never know. But here's a small data point which shows what can happen if marginalized groups in FOSS are mentored the right way. 01.org/blogs/2013/open-sourc… 10/n
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When projects fail do some of them fail due to lack of diversity of thought on the development team? Would teams work better with greater diversity? The literature suggests this is so. 11/n
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Every time we excuse bad behavior because of an individual's contributions to a project, we discourage many others who might have made even greater contributions. 12/n
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Every time we excuse bad behavior, we signal to others that such behavior is acceptable and make our culture even more toxic. Every time we excuse bad behavior, we become part of the problem. 13/n
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I love Linux, FOSS, and information security. I do not love the cults of personality in our industry and the rampant abuse an harrassment that seems to have become the norm. 14/n
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