I’ve done a talk about the kernel community. It’s a hot take, but with the feedback I’ve received thus far I think it was on the spot, and started a lot of uncomfortable, but necessary discussion. I don’t think it’s time yet to give up on this project, even if it will take years.

Without further ado the recording of my talk “Burning Down the Castle” is on youtube. For those who prefer reading, LWN has you covered with “Too many lords, not enough stewards”. I think Jake Edge and Jon Corbet have done an excellent job in capturing my talk in a balanced fashion. I have also uploaded my slides.

Further Discussion

For understanding abuse dynamics I can’t recommend “Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men” by Lundy Bancroft enough. All the examples are derived from a few decades of working with abusers in personal relationships, but the patterns and archetypes that Lundy Bancroft extracts transfers extremely well to any other kind of relationship, whether that’s work, family or open source communities.

There’s endless amounts of stellar talks about building better communities. I’d like to highlight just two: “Life is better with Rust’s community automation” by Emily Dunham and “Have It Your Way: Maximizing Drive-Thru Contribution” by VM Brasseur. For learning more there’s lots of great community topic tracks at various conferences, but also dedicated ones - often as unconferences: Community Leadership Summit, including its various offsprings and maintainerati are two I’ve been at and learned a lot.

Finally there’s the fun of trying to change a huge existing organization with lots of inertia. “Leading Change” by John Kotter has some good insights and frameworks to approach this challenge.

Despite what it might look like I’m not quitting kernel hacking nor the X.org community, and I’m happy to discuss my talk over mail and in upcoming hallway tracks.