Re: [RFC PATCH] futex: Introduce __vdso_robust_futex_unlock

[Mathieu Desnoyers]

Thomas,

On 2026-03-24 17:35, Thomas Gleixner wrote:

Thank you for your thoughtful and candid reply. I appreciate both the
apology and the cultural self-analysis, which is a rare and valuable
thing to receive.

I want to share one additional reflection, because I think it situates
your cultural self-analysis within the structure of authority and earned
standing that governs LKML.

You approached our exchange as peer sparring, two people with equal
standing who could joust and move on. You are not wrong that I could
have responded in kind. But I don't, and not because I lack the
vocabulary for it. I don't, because I am aware that these exchanges
happen in public, in front of contributors who do not have that
standing. When two senior figures trade barbed remarks on LKML, the
message received by a less experienced observer is not "these two peers
are sparring", but rather "this is how things work here." That is a
precedent I am unwilling to set, regardless of whether the immediate
exchange between us would have resolved cleanly.

This also means the problem does not become smaller when the target is a
junior contributor, it becomes larger. The assumption of reciprocity
that makes peer sparring tolerable in your frame collapses entirely when
there is no reciprocity possible. A newer contributor on the receiving
end of the same remark cannot fire back, cannot absorb it
professionally, and is most likely to simply go quiet or step away.

I raise this not to reopen the grievance — your apology was genuine and
I accept it fully — but because I think this framing is useful for the
broader question of what norms we want to establish on this list. The
behavior is most costly precisely where it is least visible: in the
people who say nothing and disengage.

Sincerely,

Mathieu

--
Mathieu Desnoyers
EfficiOS Inc.
https://www.efficios.com