Calling other people’s work “garbage” is not conclusive proof of arrogance, if that work is actual garbage. Linus has calmed down a lot over the years, yet at this point if he still has issues with somebody’s work, it’s probably best to listen rather than calling that arrogance.
Personally, I do believe the quality of Linux kernel has a lot to do with having a steward able to be firm and opinionated, rather than adopting a passive anglo management style where confrontation is avoided at all costs.
And critique of the work is expected when the quality of the work is the question. But all the problems here are about conduct, which doesn't seem to get through.
I think OP is expecting that to be the outcome, given the roughly 2/3rds "Kent is (insert insinuation)" vs the 1/3rd "your stuff works, please stick around".
I worked for a guy that was looking forward to this work five years ago for a business product need. I'm glad to see it's made some headway in that time, but I have to wonder what it'd take to salvage the introduction of it to the Linux public at large. How do you even reset this mess?
I think nothing will happen, and Linus himself will eventually be whipped into place. Kent has come a long way in terms of communications, and all this talk about preserving sacrament of "collaborative community of kernel dev" reads real rich. The fact of the matter: bcachefs is the only modern + reliable filesystem in Linux right now. To throw it out—is madness, frankly. git rm -rf would be a show of weakness... basically telling everybody that they don't care about technical merit anymore. But really nothing will happen because Linus will eventually get whipped into place. The software is too good for this petty trickery to take place.
If the filesystem corrupts data, it has to be fixed at the maintainer's discretion. This is what the users want. Tough luck it makes Linus' life harder! Not to mention that he's allowed btrfs to run unchecked for so long. Kent put it nice, actually, kernel work is not about pleasing egos of top guys; it's about delivering software for users:
> "Work as service to others" is something I think worth thinking about. We're not supposed to be in this for ourselves; I don't write code to stroke my own ego, I do it to be useful. I honestly can't even remember the last time I wrote code purely for enjoyment, or worked on a project because it was what I wanted to work on. My life consists of writing code base on what's needed; to fix a bug, to incorporate a good idea someone else had, to smooth something over to make someone else's life easier down the line. Very rarely does it come from my own vision. My feelings are entirely secondary to the work I do.
> If the filesystem corrupts data, it has to be fixed at the maintainer's discretion. This is what the users want. Tough luck it makes Linus' life harder!
Where do you get this idea? Lots of Linux users want lots of things - a big part of the reason Linux is so successful is because they don't get what they want, and the project instead focuses on stable development and release cycles. Many users want Linux to break userspace in this or that case. Do you think Linus should do that, because it's what the users want?
And lets not forget we're talking about an experimental filesystem. If you decide to use one of those, it's not asking too much of you to compile your own kernel.
Well, he already lost T'so, and I recall he's pretty high-up on the command chain. This appears to not be about technical merit anymore, vs existing as a "co-worker" with other kernel peers.
I cannot quote him because it's private. Kent is also aware of his decision.