Is this a legitimate leadership technique? I mean I presume the intention is to have a kind of megaphone which will get the attention of a widely dispersed, highly independent group of people. The ultimate cat herding weapon. On the other hand I find it really unpleasant and feel like there must be better ways.
TL;DR: It's okay to yell at someone if they're being stupid, but you need to be sure.
"This is wrong, you've introduced a bug here. Go fix it."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_behavior#Leadership.2C_dom...
It's not a "technique". It's Linus' personality. One can go back to his Usenet postings from 1991 and see he's been writing like that when he was not a leader.
The problem that people are having with Linus' rants is that he makes the receiver uncomfortable and offended. I have been on receiving end of such rants. It feels really shitty, and I would love never to be subjected to something like this.
But the point is, it's directed towards a person who is about to significantly worsen the quality of a core information tech that is used by billions of people around the world. Thousands of human-hours will be lost. Millions of people affected in one case or another. And quite probably, in a couple of cases something really bad will happen if a process that previously worked flawlessly suddenly quits. Isn't Linux used anywhere in critical infrastructure? Hospitals? Domes? Banks? And it's not a random contributor, but (as I understand it) a major maintainer - a person who has a lot of authority and responsibility that goes with it.
So yeah, I think that this person deserves to feel shitty for a bit.
Perhaps it is for the Finnish. Check out "management by perkele" https://infogalactic.com/info/Management_by_perkele https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_profanity#perkele
This approach also doesn't work in modern professional armies note that from the beginning SF Troops (starting with the SAS) are very informal.
I don't really mind people swearing, but attempts to frame that as something noble when it is nothing but emotions targetting argumentation technique are ridiculous.
Bigotry of low expectations is something like saying voter ID is racist because black people don't have voter IDs and are not reasonably expected to be able to obtain them.
Sure. But he knows that, right? In which case participating in an international project with the extreme of norms in your homeland is not a "he can't help it" situation. It's no different from me saying "I'm not Finnish, but I really like Finnish culture, so I'm going to be an asshole." I'm still choosing to be an asshole.
> Bigotry of low expectations is something like saying voter ID is racist because black people don't have voter IDs and are not reasonably expected to be able to obtain them.
(This is mostly off topic, but the standard claim here is that the legal system makes it intentionally difficult for black people, or people who live in majority black areas, or poor people to obtain voter IDs. I don't think I've seen a serious argument that anyone actually thinks black people are racially less competent at getting IDs.)
I dare you to find European devs who believe terms slave and master in tech context are offensive and should be replaced.
I also saw a Swedish guy suggest (on a Stack Overflow Site) that some one with the first name Mohammed change this to his "White" name of Martin - they seemed totally oblivious of what they just sugested
What's with the Europeans or Americans believing all sorts of generalized falsehoods about their counterparts ?
Of course there are European developers who hold such beliefs.
Oh, hello, I'm a European dev and I'm making a concerted effort to remove those terms both from my vocabulary and any code / tickets / documentation I come across.
I think you'll find that the Americans don't have the only legacy of slavery to be worried about - they just kept it going longer than most. As a British person, I've got more than enough historical shame about slavery to make me want to avoid those terms.
"Primary" and "replica" seem just as good to me.
You can argue whether this development model is a good one, of course, but I think it's quite clear that it's working as intended, rather than these being random outbursts.
What do you mean?
If by "legitimate" you mean effective, then sure; linux kernel development seems to be humming along and providing value to lots of people.
If by "legitimate" you mean socially acceptable, then I'd look to the large community that seems to find little problem with "Linus language".
If by "legitimate" you mean causing no harm, then perhaps you have a case. Linus does seem to get under some people's skin. But what are our priorities, really?
From a stoic standpoint, Linus' words have nothing to do with anybody but himself, so it says a something about me or you if we get bothered by him.
However you look at it though, Linus is a human just like you or me. If we dislike him, then we're free to ignore him and move on; why spend time trying to argue what he "should" be doing?
That's just a rephrasing of the old rhyme "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me." -- which has been shown to be wrong. Sure, you can go around and try to block everything away, but it will still take its toll.
I find it often pays to ask, "Hmm, why would I be bothered by that?" in place of saying "You should stop saying that."
That's actually an interesting strategy. I'm not sure it works for everyone, but I would at least consider it.
I have the same problem as Linus that I'll go overly dramatic and nasty in calling people stupid in replying online, something I don't do to people's faces. The more strongly I feel about something, the more likely it'll happen.
It's like some sort of social filter doesn't get applied, one I use when I'm speaking, but it just gets skipped when typing. When I read back those posts, I'm embarrassed, not proud of my "technique".
It's my problem, not the victim's. Luckily, because I'm not internet famous, those sort of posts get downvoted and I get some sort of feedback loop. But Linus gets defended and the cycle continues.
Here I'm mainly thinking of us on the recieving end. From this standpoint, by blaming Linus or whomever for our emotional reactions, we end up disempowering ourselves quite a bit. There's a lot less we can do about Linus than about our own emotions and psychology, which is why I think it's useful/skillful to introspect instead of blame.
With the roles reversed though, it's certainly more helpful/skillful to focus on how we can communicate effectively. Blaming others' actions/reactions is just as disempowering as before.
You're trying to dominate a social situation, because you think you are right (and by extensions, that there are others who will support you and strengthen your position) and because there's a lack of physical threat.
In the real world, you would not want to cause a ruckus, because there could be consequences, and your are not the dominant member of the group. For example; someone could punch you.
If you could, you would want to dominate any situation that you can. We are wired that way.
By what measure? Linus seems to be getting away with it.
Whether it's because his other qualities (or just the other qualities of the Linux project) let him do that and this style is detrimental or whether the style actually helps, is a different question.
There are many other rhetorical devices, raising your voice is not the only way to counter inattention.
You may want to read Linus' earlier messages in the same thread, such as the immediate predecessor, just as an example:
How many times you say, "I guess you didn't understand what I said; in this project it's not acceptable to sacrifice the user for developer convenience" before you "raise your voice. Some people seem to think the only acceptable answer is "never". (And if you do, there is a zero-tolerance policy where you kick out the developer in question, even if he is the founder.) That's not the Linux kernel, for better or for worse.
I think you're grossly overestimating the impact Linus' rants have on the industry.
A previous employer had someone in that "role", I don't think he will ever be able to work at any company that employs a former cow-orker of his. It may be fun for a short while for a certain kind of person, but it's career suicide.
There are some roles, like the one Linux has, where a critical aspect of the work is to tell NO to people and reject most of their requests.
I'm not saying it's acceptable or not, just that I don't buy your claim that the tech industry is special in that regard, let alone that Linus is somehow the source of it.
I see a bunch of github issues where Alice comes up and tell the developers their code is insecure.
Of course code is art, so developer Bob takes it to heart and say something along the lines "what do you mean? Can you prove it? I don't think I agree, the code is nice like this".
And then Alice and others start becoming aggressive, Bob starts getting defensive. At the end nothing is probably fixed but Bob is now sour and will probably become someone like Linus.
What I'm saying is that Linus must probably have had, and still has, to respond to a bunch of "f*cking morons" (to quote his words) and he's developed a thin skin has well as a wearable douchitude as a result of that.
Someone mentioned Usenet archive from 91 when Linus was just the same.
Nice assumptions though.