He really talks in extremes. I see all his points but it doesn't make these things pure garbage.
Easiest way to herd cats on a mailing list.
> I see all his points but it doesn't make these things pure garbage.
Well.. you see his points and his opinion. People are always in a hurry to take affront to this, but really, he's just putting the argument where it's ultimately going to end up anyways, and in the process, he gets to avoid the dozens of follow-up emails that fruitlessly attempt to convince him out of this opinion.
You're really only left with two options, disagree and move on, or fix the problems he has with it and try to get him to use it again later.
Most of the times Linus is an asshole are completely justified. Being rude to groups like Nvidia isn't hindering progress.
Does he even bother reading them nowadays?
If anything, I would say that if git were less popular, its developers wouldn't have to deal with constant complaints that their UI scares noobs.
https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/8/9/924
https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/8/8/873
https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/8/8/855
https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/8/8/760
https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/8/6/209
https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/8/6/219
https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/8/6/322
https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/8/4/634
https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/8/3/919
If you didn't notice from the dates, those are all (Literally all, I didn't leave any out) of Linus's emails from the past week or so. The only one that even really has a complaint in it is the ext4 one that you've likely already seen, and the rest are extremely helpful and include detailed descriptions of what he was thinking or what he'd like to see.
Technology choices are largely driven by network effects, and small variances in the seeds of the networks can ultimately dictate which networks win and which ones lose.
But even the Linux kernel and git aside, the fact that people listen to him despite his frankness speaks volumes for how respected he is.
Personally, I think I'm on "your" side -- as it were -- on the side of civility, but sometimes you've just got to get shit done. Properly, which sometimes means shouting the right things at the right people[2].
I do think it's unreasonable of you to say that Linus is not "being reasonable", as you've clearly implied in your comment. To my mind he's being entirely reasonable, just not very "polite" or "civil" or whatever you want to call it.
[1] As in: Rise up the corporate ladder.
[2] Sorkin's "Too Big To Fail" was a big eye-opener in this regard, FWIW.
I'm literally using the terminology of the person that I'm trying to refute! :P If you want to argue phrasing, take that to jacquesm.
(Which reminds me: There should probably be some sort of mandatory-quoting mechanism on HN. It seems weird that you can snipe comments by editing at just the right time. That's not what happened in this case, I'm just saying that it would probably be a good thing to have measures against it. Sorry, that's my META-rant done.)
But Linus already has.
http://www.karelia.fi/welcomingguide/the-finnish-way-of-life
What to American sensibilities are grave insults to Linus is most likely just him speaking his mind without any filter in place, the way he was brought up.
These are two extremes, and you can find a middle ground between them.
In particular, here's a middle ground from someone objecting to Linus for willfully breaking userspace because he didn't think backwards-compatibility was important (a thing that he flames others to a crisp for), in a way that clearly expressed objection but not insult: https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/5/29/541
What's the last time someone did the opposite and searched for all the times when Linus was on his best behavior?
Have you considered the parallels with the Richelieu quote:
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. "
Linus has written far more than six lines and I'm sure you'll be able to do a stellar job of hanging him. But you're going to have to consider whether your ability hinges on Linus' perceived personality or on the volume of his communications and product.
But I think it's a little weakened by the fact that Linus doesn't think that his poorest behavior was actually poor or indefensible; if pressed he says it's exactly what he should have done.
As a good counterexample involving a developer of another kernel, I once mentioned 'bcantrill making a personal attack on the Solaris development list in the midst of a technical argument in 1996, and he found the HN thread and replied to me with an unambiguous apology, despite it being almost twenty years later and him doubtless being a different person now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9040602
Even the smallest sign that Linus genuinely thinks the behavior was suboptimal (not a "I want you people to stop complaining," which is basically what the Code of Conflict was) would go a long way towards changing everyone's perception of his behavior. But he's standing by the six lines.
...see? You can be direct, even uncompromising and arrogant, without being abusive.
To quote from the original comment in this thread:
>You're a moron.
I don't believe the Finnish mentality justifies being so aggressive - and if it does, I'd better stay a long way away from Finland, which is clearly an awful place to live.
> >You're a moron.
> I don't believe the Finnish mentality justifies being so aggressive
A previous Hackernews thread referred to a reddit thread that found the now deleted comment that Linus responded to [1] [2].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3962978
[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/tionj/linus_tor...
Well, considering that Linux is pretty much powering the world it seems to me that his style of communication tends to mesh perfectly well with the people that he's working with and that they actually get the job done. As opposed to a whole pile of floundering competitors which are of course much better from a technical perspective and tend to have more polite maintainers.
The man gets the job done, in a similar way that an army general will get the job done. Whether he would be equally effective if he would polish his words on those occasions where people get offended is something we probably will not know.
If you're easily offended don't contribute to the Linux kernel.
> If you're easily offended don't contribute to the Linux kernel.
That's a pretty shitty attitude to take. And you don't have to be "easily offended" to dislike interacting with Linus.
Why?
The Linux kernel is mission critical, that means that tons of business and individual depend on it for all kinds of stuff that if it went down would be a major event with the losses likely hard to put a figure on.
Developing for such an environment tends to be a fairly harsh affair, Linus was not bred for this, he more or less accidentally found himself the leader of a substantial software effect, the likes of which had not been seen before outside of very large corporations. The fact that he managed to make this work and managed to get together a band of developers that work well with him - regardless of style - speaks volumes to me, I know I couldn't do it, work the best part of my life to give away my work and to be scolded for the form of my delivery would be reason enough for me to throw the towel in.
Personally, I've known bosses that were a lot less reasonable than Linus is who tends to simply be direct, to the point and sometimes (rare enough that people feel the need to point out their favorites) makes social faux-pas that I feel are minor issues, stuff that if it is part of someone's personality you can easily step over.
I've yet to be in a work environment where there aren't one or two 'hard cases' and typically they have their reasons for being short tempered, such as that when the shit hits the fan it is their shoulders that a disproportionate helping of manure will land on.
Being the maintainer of a large open source project has to among the the most thankless jobs in the world, being the chief maintainer of the Linux kernel is probably one of the worst of those.
The only other person in the open source community that gets such treatment is RMS and I really fail to see what the big deal is.
A lot of people subscribe to the idea that if you don't have a thick skin you shouldn't be in tech. That's a terrible attitude to take, there's absolutely no reason why that should be true, and it discriminates against a lot of people (including women). This attitude just contributes to the current toxic tech culture.
Just as it does not prove the opposite.
> And it doesn't mean that he should get a free pass on treating people badly.
From you? Or from those people?
If you're not the one that he was talking to why do you feel so strongly about it?
> A lot of people subscribe to the idea that if you don't have a thick skin you shouldn't be in tech.
I didn't say that. And I don't subscribe to that. But if you want to be in a project with a BDFL that tends to be a bit coarse then it certainly won't hurt.
> That's a terrible attitude to take, there's absolutely no reason why that should be true, and it discriminates against a lot of people (including women). This attitude just contributes to the current toxic tech culture.
Yes it would. But that is something that you mixed in all by yourself and you're making Linus the scapegoat for this particular shortcoming of the tech community, whereas Linus is just one person in an arguably un-enviable position who gets a lot of shit thrown at him for a few minor gaffes which the participants took a lot better than the bystanders. And personally I'm more inclined to see these as in the heat of the moment and soon forgotten afterwards, the fact that they are archived forever doesn't take away the dynamics of the original situation. Heck, if I got the kind of hate that Linus gets for his occasional flare-up I'd stick to solo projects. It's bordering on the ridiculous how this is pulled out of proportion.
My assumption is you aren't a woman, but I thought I would stop in and ask if you are. If you aren't, what is the basis for your idea that his communication style would discriminate against women?
If you don't do something because of a personal dislike, and expect others to cater to your culture and personal preferences, then the problem is you.
I've yet to work for a company where there wasn't some people I personally disliked working with. part of being professional is putting aside things like dislike and focusing on the core mission/goals and finding ways to work together despite how you feel.
Those that CANNOT work with linux I would say are those that are easily offended. Some may choose not to, but that is their own personal choice.
Now I see where the Klingon language drew some of its inspiration. :D
Things that don't conform to that standard are 'garbage' or are simply in other words 'non compliant'. Linus could express all the same ideas without profanity, if people cared about quality as much as he does.
Strictly enforcing some compliance to their developing process doesn't make Linux development 'unreasonable', because trying to change their developing process just because of some external web tool doesn't constitute 'reasoning'.
Trying to change their development process is just fire and motion ( https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/ ) from a third party.
I doubt you will find many people who think that the state of GitHub PRs today represents less progress than the state of the `git request-pull` workflow. And, to be clear, there are a lot of things I prefer about `git request-pull`, starting with the ability to provide inline commentary on the commit message itself. But it's clear that GitHub has built a better product that keeps improving and has enabled a lot of teams to successfully build their own software. `git request-pull` is easily available to anyone with email, and I use it myself when there's no PR interface for a git repo, but people still tend to prefer the GitHub-style workflow.
Seriously: Everyone calling Github "garbage" should be forced to use sourceforge until they're willing to reconsider. Or Bugzilla. Or trac. Or whatever it is that ubuntu is using to make it impossible to ever find anything.
But "whatever it is that ubuntu is using" — Launchpad — was pretty awesome. I used bzr before git, and I really liked Launchpad.
He is firm, strongly opinionated, and doesn't waste time catering to irrelevant feelings. That isn't "unreasonable", more "difficult" in my mind as far as personal interaction goes.
His actual opinions are usually very reasonable, just not communicated in ways that come across as such. At least in my opinion
There is always compromise. We can ask Linus to compromise, or we can. Are his inputs better put in at a technical level or at a human touchy-feelie level? What do you think is the best use of Linus' time?
It is incredibly easy to offer criticism, but very much more difficult to offer real and implementable solutions.
Why, from his point of view - if GH lacks functionality he needs and git proper delivers this functionality in conjunction with email, GH is just about as useful as an empty beer can ;)
But sure, outsiders with zero idea of what is being discussed love to take his words out of context and derive all sorts of bizarre conclusions.