I mean, we could say the same thing about Kent - when he’s getting pissy, it’s about ensuring the filesystem is bulletproof and no one loses data.

Thing is, we’re not talking about getting pissy. We’re talking about getting downright insulting and borderline abusive. Linus got suspended from his own goddamn Kernel for his behavior. Let that sink in for a moment.

And I honestly believe that’s where part of the problem comes from. Kent looks up to Linus in a way, and sees himself as entitled to mimicking Linus’s bad behavior, which turns into a clusterfuck. Linux is still a good kernel despite Linus’s behavior, and bcachefs seems to be pretty good from a technical standpoint despite Kent’s behavior (even the kernel maintainers Kent pissed off admit it). They both shouldn’t be behaving that way, period. But both are very talented from a technical standpoint, which makes policing their behavior that much harder.

Ideally, yes, someone else would take over communication with Linus, but my hope isn’t particularly high at the moment. I wish Kent would calm down (further) and play by the rules more (even though he’s far from the only one who has broken those rules), and I wish Linus would learn to take it as much as he dishes it out.

And that makes it such a shame: bcachefs would be great to have in the kernel from a technical standpoint. It’s the personal conflicts that are really messing things up at the moment.