On Sat, Aug 09, 2025 at 04:37:51PM -0400, Kent Overstreet wrote: > showed that it was possible, but the common consensus in the user > community, among people with the data (i.e. quite a few of the distros) > is that btrfs dropped the ball, and regressed on reliability from > ext4/xfs. Kent, you eeem to have ignored the primary point of Josef's message, and instead, prceeded to prove *exactly* what he was pointing out. Let me quote the most relevant parts of his e-mail, in case you missed it: > Btrfs doesn't need me or anybody else wandering around screaming > about how everybody else sucks to gain users. The proof is in the > pudding. If you read anything that I've wrote in my commentary about > other file systems you will find nothing but praise and respect, > because this is hard and we all make our tradeoffs. > > That courtesy has been extended to you in the past, and still > extends to your file system. Because I don't need to tear you down > or your work down to make myself feel good. And because I truly > beleive you've done some great things with bcachefs, things I wish > we had had the foresight to do with btrfs. > > I'm yet again having to respond to this silly childishness because > people on the outside do not have the context or historical > knowledge to understand that they should ignore every word that > comes out of your mouth. If there are articles written about these > claims I want to make sure that they are not unchallenged and thus > viewed as if they are true or valid. > > ... > Emails like this are why nobody wants to work with you. Emails like > this are why I've been on literally dozens of email threads, side > conversations, chat threads, and in person discussions about what to > do when we have exceedingly toxic developers in our community. > > Emails like this are why a majority of the community filters your emails to > /dev/null. > > You alone with your toxic behavior have wasted a fair amount of mine > and other peoples time trying to figure out how do we exist in our > place of work with somebody who is bent on tearing down the > community and the people who work in it. And how did you respond? By criticizing another file system, and talking about how wonderful you believe bcachefs to be, all of which is beside the point. In fact, you once again demonstrated exactly why a very large number of kernel deevlopers have decided you are extremely toxic, and have been clamoring that your code be ejected from the kernel. Not because of the code, but because your behavior. In general, file system developers have been the ones that have been arguing that you should be shone more grace, because we respect the work that you have done. However, don't mistake respect for your code with respect for your behavior. There are *many* developers in adjcaent subsystems (for example, block and mm) who have lost all patience with you. This is not just one or two people; so please don't blame this on the people who have been trying to reach out and help you see what you have been doing. Quite frankly, it is astonishing to me how *many* people who have been arguing for "git rm -r fs/bcachefs" as soon as the merge window opened and effectively asking why Linus has been extending as much grace as he has up until now. Programming is a team sport, and you have pissed off a very large number of people on the team. It doesn't matter how talented a particular indiviual might be; if they can't work with the other people on the team; if they are toxic to the community, it doesn't matter whether or not they might be technically correct on a particular point or not. Many decades ago, when I was working group chair for ipsec, there was a particular individual who was super-smart; and who was often technically on point.. Unfortunately, he had the habit of appending phrases such as, "as any idiot could see" at to the end of what might otherwise be a very insightful comment. It didn't matter that the point that he raised was one that was (a) correct, and (b) missed by other people in the working group. The way that he phrased it meant that no one wanted to listen to what he had to say. Because I wanted the ipsec standardization to succeed, I acted as that person's intermediary, rephrasing his arguments and technical points in a way that was easier to understand, and more importantly, stripping out all of the adhominem asides. It took a huge amount of work, and psychic toil, and it isn't something I would ask someone else to do. All of this being said, unless you can find someone willing to be your intermediary, and hopefully your coach in how to better work with other people, I fear that the only thing we can do is to find the most graceful way for you to leave the community. And fortunately, I'm very glad that at the end of the day, it's not up to me. - Ted
