The reason why I started the kernel summit over ten years ago was because there were certain topics that are much better discussed in person, and that over time, if we don't have sufficient face to face interactions, the quality of e-mail discussions can start to become frayed.
One of the reasons is that e-mail is just not as expressive a medium as face-to-face conversations. As a result, when people feel that they aren't being heard, because they aren't getting those critical non-verbal cues, they start escalating. They start using stronger words, such as F*CK. They start doing exactly what they claim to abhor to their verbal opponents in the debate, which is describing their fellow kernel developers using demeaning terms. They start using loaded, and over-reaching words, like "abuse", which ultimately ends up hurting their own case. I suspect this is happening because it's easy when a body feels that their message of say, "could we please treat each other with more respect", isn't getting heard, it's very easy and very tempting to resort to "Linus is an AB-UUUUUUUU-SER!". May I make the polite suggestion (and we'll see how well polite requests get honored via e-mail), that we take this discussion off-line, and wait to try to discuss this in person at the Kernel Summit? Regards, - Ted -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/