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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

He's probably right, but he expresses his ideas so poorly that he turns straightforward points into drama, I think intentionally. He doesn't just not give a shit about standards (probably healthy), but also what any of his audience thinks about his ideas (probably not so much).

At this point, his flailing supposed anger is really just schtick. He deploys it so casually you just assume it isn't serious. Ironically, he could convey his contempt for standards, or for people who adhere to them slavishly, far more effectively if he simply wrote in a civil tone, rather than continuing to try to affect his Andrew Dice Clay of Programming persona.

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What makes you think Linus would be more effective if he used a different tone? That seems like a tough argument to win given how tremendously effective he is. It doesn't seem like an exaggeration to me to say that Linux is the most successful opensource project of all time and among the best managed of all time in terms of the number of use cases it's managed to address over time and the number of people who have contributed. Not, I will grant, in terms of number of people whose feelings have been hurt. But I fail to see the evidence that Linux would actually be better off if Linus behaved differently. If we had good Linus and bad Linus we could A/B test, but sadly, we don't. We just have the one Linus, and he's been more effective than anyone in opensource over the last 20+ years. So it seems a lot more likely to me that his behavior is part of that effectiveness, not in opposition to it.

He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard!

I know you're being lighthearted here but that kind of thinking is actually another form of "appeal to authority".

FWIW, having not looked at any of his LKML rants for years, he seems to have mellowed out a bit in this one.

This assumes consistency of tone over time. It'd be interesting to get some data on how his approach has varied over those 20 years. It'd also be difficult, since this is a somewhat subjective measurement, but perhaps a PPP (profanity per paragraph) metric.

Linus used to be much more polite... until some developer attempted suicide after discovering, too late, that their patches were not going to be merged. Since then he's much more direct, and his SPP (suicide per paragraph) metric is much better.

You have it reversed. The only thing that makes his behaviour slightly bearable to others is his effectiveness. Otherwise the community would've dumped him right away. Not like there's any reason not to, except for his technical knowledge.

This is kind-of a survivorship bias example.

Cripes. He's not the first opinionated, yet strangely effective Engineer the world has ever seen and will not be the last either.

I personally happen to like his approach in general but as I'm sure you are aware: "You can please some of the people most of the time and most of the people some of the time but this aphorism sounds a bit tired these days"

I don't really think this is about pleasing people or not. More about self respect. I for one would have to be way too drunk to pun on a shitshow like this in public, also when there's no apparent reason.

But well that problem belongs to those who work with him, so I don't care. All I wanted to say is that because he gets away with it, it does not mean that us the halflings will too, so that's not a good advice to somebody thinking of participating in the general open source sphere.

Dunno, whenever I dig into one of the "shitshows" I find I mostly agree with it. I'd say a decent fraction of the ones that make hacker news are some form of "Don't break userspace". He obviously feels it's quite important, and there's been several cases of failed perception (like the gnome folks breaking userspace "like linux does").

Sometimes it's worth being a bit over the top so that the entire community you are working with gets the message loud and clear. Seems like other communities (like bsd, gnome, debian, etc), often have extensive documentation, policies, and best practices... which are often ignored because every developer doesn't keep 100% of the best practices in mind at all times.

I suspect a big part of why user space is broken so rarely in Linux is exactly because Linus has made such a big deal about it in the past.

I suspect a big part of why user space is broken so rarely in Linux is exactly because Linus has made such a big deal about it in the past.

Its almost as though he identified a weak point and ameliorated it! That's what an Engineer does.

which are often ignored because every developer doesn't keep 100% of the best practices in mind at all times.

There is no such thing as best practice - that is a nonsensical phrase that I think someone involved with MS created many moons ago and caught on in IT and I absolutely despise. There is good and bad practice but you had better be very, very good at something to tell me that you know best about that something.

I was referring to the delivery more than the content. Frankly I don't know much about his side of computing, so I cannot agree or disagree anyways. My message in this thread is to the random guy getting into FOSS: don't make an annoying freaky nerd out of yourself becaue one particular annoying freaky nerd has been very successful. That he is so is not necessarily the cause of his success, and might even be invisibly detrimental to it.

> That he is so is not necessarily the cause of his success, and might even be invisibly detrimental to it.

I do not know him personally, but people who do know him comment that he is a nice, considerate, thoughtful person.

Linus has actually chimed into this metadiscussion in the past, basically saying something along the lines of "the audience is too big and too varied to be subtle. If I am not very explicit, someone will misunderstand this, usually as an invitation to keep wasting my time" (IIRC) -- which, having managed much much smaller projects, I tend to agree with and can only imagine how much more true this is an the Linux Kernel scale.

The Finns I know are all very direct "straight shooters" - I guess that's part of it.

> That he is so is not necessarily the cause of his success, and might even be invisibly detrimental to it.

From three decades in the industry, I would say it's likely contributing to his success (though, it is independent of the cause/origin of his success, which is being smart, diligent, persistent and lucky). The ability to cut down and through bullshit is IMO fundamental, and it seems impossible to do without occasionally being rude.

You can still be direct without having to act out or treat people like they're idiots.

It is not impossible to narrow down the complaints without being rude. Most people do that just fine, with way larger projects than his kernel.

His behaviour is just unnecessary and distracting. It's almost as if he does it for publicity or shock value. Maybe that contributes to his success, but it shouldn't.

I find it weird that people try to defend him rather than acknowledge it is just one of his character flaws. People aren't perfect, and neither is he. Doesn't take from his achievements but acting like he's in the right to behave this way is just enabling him. If people want to emulate him, they should look at the good and leave the asshole behaviour behind.

> Most people do that just fine, with way larger projects than his kernel.

What are your examples? Please qualify project size by number of contributors and their organizational and cultural diversity.

According to [0], in 2015-2016 there were over 5,000 contributors sending patches, representing over 500 organizations (and likely, something like 50 countries/cultures/languages). Linus, through the LKML, corresponds with many of them, and has a small number of deputies. He is not paying any of these contributors, so he can't actually fire them, unlike e.g. Zuck, Jobs or Gates which, according to rumour, are/were all much less polite than Linus to their subordinates.

> It's almost as if he does it for publicity or shock value

He most definitely does, and uses it effectively. When he does, he mostly attacks ideas, not people. I've been following the LKML very intermittently, but my impression is that he is mostly kind and thoughtful in his answers while being direct. Those times that get to HN/Slashdot/Reddit/common-knowledge are few and far between, and mostly the 3rd or so response to the same thing (though, it has happened before on a "first offence").

> People aren't perfect, and neither is he. Doesn't take from his achievements but acting like he's in the right to behave this way is just enabling him. If people want to emulate him, they should look at the good and leave the asshole behaviour behind.

No one said he was perfect. Some of us believe that it is effective; call it "necesary evil", but it's one of the very few management tools that he has - basically, refusing a merge, and voicing an opinion.

I eagerly await your examples, as my experience is that people with much more management tools at their disposal are not better in this respect than Linus. Especially those examples (of "most people") that coordinate submission from 5,000 people mostly interacting directly with them.

[0] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/the-top-10-developers-a...

> Especially those examples (of "most people") that coordinate submission from 5,000 people mostly interacting directly with them.

This is wrong. He has said himself on video multiple times that his correspondents are the subsytem maintainers, which are way fewer in number (a handful of people).

He is on the LKML[0], and does respond to many people, not just the handful of maintainers. I'm sure he doesn't read the entirety of the LKML (hundreds of messages per day), and for sure he has a private channel (mailing list or otherwise) with subsystem maintainers, but he DOES correspond with a lot more than that handful, and when I was reading the LKML, he would even occasionally respond to first-time posters.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_mailing_list

Well, look up what companies like IBM, Google, Amazon, etc. are doing with thousands of workers and all the organizational and cultural diversity you want.

I don't get what is "necessary" with his insults. Would delivering the message calmly not be understood?

There's nothing to make anyone believe it's an "effective" strategy. Some people are deterred from contributing because this guy can't act professionally. The only reason people still want to contribute is because of the importance of the project (aka thousands of projects depend on a good linux kernel).

He can accomplish the same things, without going ballistic, in shorter time and with the respect of others earned. It's still using the same few management tools and he can retain his bad temper for when a situation actually calls for it (which is almost never). Blowing everything out of proportion is crying wolf.

Maybe he is not that bad of a person to work with. Hopefully lower than how bad Gates and Jobs were. But he sure seems to hide it well since that's all I ever hear about him. But I guess bad publicity is still publicity.

> Well, look up what companies like IBM, Google, Amazon,

Does any of these companies run a team with 5,000 people contributing to the same codebase?

Do you have it on good authority that most of the people in IBM, Google, and Amazon that manage those 5,000 people teams are nice and polite? Because I've heard a lot about Amazon to the contrary. Do consider your selection bias: You know everything Linus tells the world, you only hear about Ballmer's chair throwing, but not any other profanities,

> Would delivering the message calmly not be understood?

Yes, he tries/tried occasionally. The wikipedia entry for LKML has more info.

> He can accomplish the same things, without going ballistic, in shorter time and with the respect of others earned

That goes counter to Linus' experience, and a few other people's.

> It's still using the same few management tools and he can retain his bad temper for when a situation actually calls for it (which is almost never). Blowing everything out of proportion is crying wolf.

Are you on the LKML? He almost never does it. You hear about it when he does. He is not shy with criticism, and he never sugarcoats anything, sure, but he goes ballistic very rarely.

> But he sure seems to hide it well since that's all I ever hear about him. But I guess bad publicity is still publicity.

You admit that you have no idea what happens between the times you hear of him. You implicitly say your model is "IBM, Amazon and Google", in which you hear nothing of how disagreements are handled, and none of which have the scale and diversity of the LKML in a single team.

It is my impression that your beliefs are not grounded in data or even anecdata. It does not make them wrong, and I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm saying you have not made any convincing argument to say you are right.

It is very rare to see him treat people like they're idiots.

There's a very fine but very clear line in a lot of his rants between very harsh language used against solutions he doesn't like, but without making it personal, like in this case where he's attacking the rationale, and attacking the C standard, but is very explicitly avoiding attacking the people (even taking pains to point out he's not suggesting people on standard bodies in general are incompetent). The closest he comes to attacking people directly here is when he calls people who use -fstrict-aliasing "fcking morons" when* they use -fstrict-aliasing, so even that is conditional on behaviour rather than assigning a trait to the person in general. You'll sometimes see him making wide-ranging accusations about general categories of people (e.g. I remember a rant about people who think it's a good idea to do reads a byte at a time), but rarely about specific people.

On the rare occasions when he attacks people directly, I have yet to seen an example which doesn't fall in the category of either attacking persistent repeat offenders who has refused to listen to more polite rebukes (his attack on Kai Sivers being the most obvious example [1] - notably while very direct and personal, that rant was also comparatively civil in terms of actual language), or attacks that fall in the "I know you know so much better, or you wouldn't be in the trusted position you're in" category (his attack on Mauro Carvalho Chehab for a change that broke userspace [2] falls in that category; Mauro has contributed to the kernel since 2005, and have worked on it as his job for years - in this case Mauro took it on his chin, apologised for the breakage and the discussion remained strictly on topic on the technical issues afterwards).

Frankly if I'd gotten a dressing down by Linus in that category, I'd print it out and frame it, because harsh as they may be, I don't know of any case of people having gotten those without having demonstrated time and time again that they should know better first. You don't see him ranting like that at beginners. You see him ranting like that when he's disappointed because he has high expectations of you. Doesn't mean people can't get upset by them, of course, but it changes the nature of it quite a bit.

Note that I'm not saying that it's a good thing- I'm sure there'd be more civil ways to express that too -, just that I think the importance of these rants is exaggerated.

[1] http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1404.0/01331.html

[2] https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75

I don't understand why people feel the need to go Kremlinologist on his tone.

He swears a lot. Who the fuck cares? His audience isn't HN or The Register or anyone else not doing kernel development.

The apparent desire for bland, well-scrubbed and boring is not universal. I haven't heard of a sudden increase in demand for talk therapy for kernel devs. Lots of engineers swear a lot, and that's unlikely to change anytime soon.

Now, if you'd like to discuss actual abusive managerial behavior, we could have something to talk about.

I haven't spent much (any) time listening to him, just heard that he behaves badly sometimes. This swearing of him, is it because he is finnish? They are known to be quite dirty in the mouth-department when they are upset.

https://satwcomic.com/bear-whisperer

https://youtu.be/dIfZKdZEJNQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7_pVrIshxA

It's a meme that a certain camp spreads so that when the inevitable time comes to replace Linus, they can get "their guy/gal" in.

Kernel commits should be to a much higher standard and his way of reminding people is necessary to steer the ship.

> "I don't understand why people feel the need to go Kremlinologist on his tone."

It's easier to discuss his profanity than it is to discuss a technical topic. (I'm not unaware of the irony inherent in this very comment.)

I think James Mickens expresses it correctly;

"""

When you debug a distributed system or an OS kernel, you do it Texas-style. You gather some mean, stoic people, people who have seen things die, and you get some primitive tools, like a compass and a rucksack and a stick that’s pointed on one end, and you walk into the wilderness and you look for trouble, possibly while using chewing tobacco.

"""

Kernel developers tend to, in my experience, be a specific type of person. They are writing software that will possibly save someone's life today. Billions of dollars changing hands using their code every second.

The average programmer on HN does not write code that will see more than a couple thousand users at once. Even people at google usually don't write code as important as the linux kernel (they write on top of the kernel, usually).

---

There is also some narrativ that Linus is being abusive and I kinda disagree. Linus doesn't take a dump on people who don't know better, he takes a dump on people who should definitely know better and who are long time kernel contributors in important positions. Because these people count. (Plus, he's finnish)

Link for those interested in reading the rest: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf

Good point that his style and profanity is intentional. But perhaps he uses the non-civil tone to drive home the point which he makes it clearer in the follow up mail [1]. Especially because the original commit message [2] he is complaining about goes overboard in appealing to the C standards and I think Linus is concerned that other people might think that is the recommended approach when the opposite is true as far as the Linux kernel code is concerned.

[1]https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/6/5/774 [2]https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rafael/linux...

No, he's wrong. Aliasing between union members has never been defined behavior. It just happened to work.

Now that optimizers are getting better, these long-standing issues are starting to surface in the real world. This is no different from when programmers do something dumb like

  j = i++ * i++;

which works until it doesn't. Or worse, someone runs Stroutroup's book through a static code analyzer and finds a wall of errors so the language is changed [1].

Code around it and move on -- as in the patch mentioned.

[1] https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/eval_order

It's gcc defined behavior. Not the BS (his words) C standard behavior.

Did you actually read what he wrote? He agrees that's what the standard says, thus the standard is not workable in reality, so he goes with GCC's (defined in documentation) implementation. It doesn't "just happen to work" in GCC, it deliberately works, and GCC is the only compiler the core kernel devs care about (see ASM goto).

Sure. And that's a terrible reason.

First, he's binding Linux to gcc forever. I've made that mistake and let me tell you, it's a mistake with surprisingly few benefits. A couple of asms and gccisms? Easily replaced.

Second, it is an error to call gcc's behavior "defined in documentation" as if that means it's okay to use. It's just a flag to support obsolete code. Long-term, the assumption that gcc will retain flags to support antique code is optimistic.

Third, "the standard is not workable in reality" is simply wrong. I work on low-level systems. I somehow manage to work with devices and networks on a day-to-day basis without relying on this.

Ultimately it comes down to this: Linus put his faith in something which was explicitly removed from C 30 years ago. The writing has been on the wall for about 10 years now[1]: Good optimizers are going to do away with this mis-feature. Time to start adapting to reality.

[1] http://blog.qt.io/blog/2011/06/10/type-punning-and-strict-al...

> Second, it is an error to call gcc's behavior "defined in documentation" as if that means it's okay to use. It's just a flag to support obsolete code. Long-term, the assumption that gcc will retain flags to support antique code is optimistic.

Type punning through a union works on GCC without -fno-strict-aliasing, and is documented in multiple places. Among others, it's suggested as an alternative to fix code broken under strict aliasing here: https://gcc.gnu.org/bugs/#nonbugs.

It's also relatively safe to assume that GCC will continue to be able to compile the Linux kernel for the indefinite future, since it would be very high profile, cause a ton of drama, and result in many people to moving away from GCC (including contributors). It seems very unlikely to be a smart decision.

(That's not to say lower profile projects than the linux kernel should rely on this. Using memcpy/memmove is just as fast and that much more difficult).

The difference is that the code you wrote actually is dumb, but relying on union aliasing is not. :) A behavior doesn't need to be defined by the spec as long as it is defined by the implementation (gcc) you are targeting.

The code I wrote was dumb... and yet Stroustroup repeatedly made a variant of the mistake in the "C++ Programming Language." Turns out that the use of operator<< in iostreams is problematic.

I don't think a "civil tone" is necessary; directed anger can be good and helpful. The problem with Linus is that he just smears it around aimlessly, adding lots of boring noise to what may have been an interesting technical argument.

It's not real anger, is my point. It's just shit-stirring. Unless he's got far less self-awareness than I credit a functioning adult of his industry stature, he has to know that people reading his "idiot fucking brain-damage" spiel sort of roll their eyes and think "there goes Linus again"; nobody stops, catches a breath, and thinks "damn, he's really upset this time".

> roll their eyes and think "there goes Linus again"

You both seem to be unaware, that emotional responses are not universal. A swear word in a second language and a different less sensitive culture doesn't feel like much to cause anyone to care enough to roll their eyes.

"there goes tptacek moralizing to everyone again"

(I am merely trying to illustrate that we are all creatures of habit)

When I hear open source maintainers talk about their woes, it tends to be that they are a single person and their are many people who try to contribute who think they are offering great things, but who are in fact just giving them shit that they must then maintain for the rest of their lives.

In a world in which there are only two people communicating with each other, you're definitely right that the point he is making can be made better. But consider that he just made his point to thousands upon thousands of potential contributors, because the message was shared. This directly addresses two of the things I hear open source maintainers complain about: it discourages the giving of shitty things and it moves away from the poorly scaling one on one communication.

But is it effective? That's really the point.

I also feel like we see every single abrasive Linus email hauled out of context to make this point that he's an over-dramatic asshat, and not the mountain of mundane ones where he isn't torching somebody to make a point.

> The problem with Linus is that he just smears it around aimlessly

I take it you don't really read a lot of Linus' mail? I find it hard to believe that somebody would think that, unless they only got to see a highly biased selection of his emails.

Also, consider that we would never have had this thread in which several people are learning about gcc's documented behavior on unions if it hadn't been for the somewhat strong language. It serves a genuine purpose.

I consider his post fully appropriate, as I share his view of the quality of that aspect of the standard. The standard, for this specific issue, is so obviously unbelievably wrong, so much that it deserves the worst words to describe it, just to give the clearer view of wrongness to the readers.

At this point, if that's true, he should have written his condemnation very carefully and subtly. People would flip their shit; Linus must really be mad now!

What I read in your comments here is just "I know Linus uses strong language, and therefore I can't figure out if he's right or not."

Which is wrong approach to your figuring out that. Instead, you can have only two approaches:

- learn enough about the topic discussed to have your own opinion

- consider how often Linus was wrong in his "expert" opinions (From my point of view, he's almost always right, but you are free to give the example of the opposite if you have them) and use that as a starting point.

Note: both approaches are completely independent of the speech figures of Linus' post, which is how it should be.

I personally, for myself, came to conclusion that most of the time, specifically for the issues I know more than enough to have my own opinion, I can trust that Linus' opinion will match my. And if it doesn't happen, that he will probably still be right and I have to reevaluate my initial opinion.

In this specific case, I would be very glad that people here try to even give some reasonable arguments why he would be wrong. Because "it's in standard" is not a valid argument, as soon as you accept that the standards definitely aren't guaranteed to be without even big errors.

The most problematic attitude I see is exactly like 'ramshorns (parallel post) asking "How can the standard be wrong" (the right question would be "where is the standard wrong"). The answer to the former:

A standard is just a document produced by a group of people trying to specify something. There's nothing that guarantees in any way that the product of any group of people doesn't contain errors.

The answer to the later: In this case, the standard "resolution" of the real need is obviously wrong, because the "resolution" is pretending that the need doesn't exist. And the need not only exists but is fundamentally necessary for the use cases where C is being used: being "low level" enough not to incur unnecessary penalties to implement something that is "natural" on the hardware level. Unions were used for decades to fulfill exactly that specific need that the standard body somehow managed to "ignore" and the compiler implementers looking for a "loophole" to produce unusable code sadly want to use. Such attitudes, both by standard bodies and by such implementers are also wrong.

edit: re tedunangst's "Linus is yelling. Do I care? Should I care? Is there any meaningful signal from the yelling" please read this my post again. I assumed I'm answering exactly this. And my opinion is really: you can assume Linus is right. He was so often right for such technical issues that it's a good start. Then, yes, care. Yes, you should, if the technical topics discussed have connection with what your work is. And if you don't program in C, and don't influence those who do, you can of course ignore the whole thing, but then the question is why are you involved now in the topic's discussion or consideration.

And for those that believe that there is really no correlation between Linus using strong language and him being rightly against some "practice," they should provide some proof that such correlation is negative or doesn't exist, as much as I know, it exists and is actually positive, exactly for some big issues I care about.

Linus is yelling. Do I care? Should I care? Is there any meaningful signal from the yelling to suggest that this is more important than, say, people who misspell commit messages?

How can the standard be wrong? Is what it says about aliasing unclear, impossible to implement, or what?

The standard massively conflicts with the practices used in existing C programs by existing C programmers. Yes, it's perfectly possible to write code that doesn't violate any of the (largely implicit, it's worth noting) strict-aliasing rules. But was it a good idea for the standard to allow optimizing compilers to silently break massive amounts of existing code that has worked for years? Even if that were acceptable, was it a good idea for the standard to disallow one of the more ergonomic and explicit ways (using a union) of reinterpreting an object as an object of a different type?

Some good reads on this topic:

https://blog.regehr.org/archives/1307

http://www.yodaiken.com/2018/05/20/depressing-and-faintly-te...

https://blog.regehr.org/archives/903 (See the end of Xavier Leroy's comment)

That's not anger, that's Finnish.

Torvalds comes from a Swedish-speaking minority in Finland.

That doesn't stop a few 'Finnish Finns' I know from considering the man something akin to a national hero.

He is bilingual as many in Finland are. What is your point?

Linus has spoken about why he speaks/writes this way before - https://youtu.be/MShbP3OpASA?t=2190

"On the internet nobody can hear you being subtle."

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds

It is ironic that his own arguments about the standards can be applied to his own attempts to convey ideas, persuade other people, and collaborate effectively with other human beings.

It's not really ironic, computers and programs are different from ideas and minds. His complaint is about computation and maintaining uniformity in computational philosophy, which is meant to allow development to flow with the least performance issues possible.

Ideas can be impassioned, wrong, clever, ridiculous, circular, etc. Computation shouldn't be, but often is, because, preference.

It's hard to hold all that stuff in one's head alone, and consistently feel like every time a problem is solved, a new one magically gets created, without having anyone to talk to, that really 'gets it', without that person pushing every single button you have about preference in computation.

You missed the point. He is haranguing about ignoring reality, all the while ignoring the reality of how to effectively work in groups. His method of interacting with people is an idiotic way of doing that and he damn well knows that and just doesn't give a fuck and yet he wants to hold others to that standard in other areas.

He's talking about computation, getting the computations to be correct. If you read the end of his message he's well aware that the reality of thinking in groups and transmitting ideas through non-computational language are flawed.

It's an idiot way to you because you are too sensitive to it.

I could very well point out how idiotic it is to say a person is an idiot for calling other people idiots, but honestly I'd rather just laugh at the insanity computation tends to bring out in all those that have to work on computers with other people.

> He's talking about computation, getting the computations to be correct.

Irrelevant to my point.

> If you read the end of his message he's well aware that the reality of minds and ideas are flawed.

And he still doesn't work with in the confines of human social behavior.

> It's an idiot way to you because you are too sensitive to it.

And when it hinders his ability to get things done because other people think he's an asshole, I'm sure you'll still be here saying "hurrrrr durrrrr stop being so sensitive".

> I could very well point out how idiotic it is to say a person is an idiot for calling other people idiots,

If you want to think calling someone an idiot for idiotic behavior is idiotic, then you're pretty sensitive. However since I don't need you to do anything for me, it doesn't hurt me in any way to treat you like an ass.

Your point is weakened by the fact that Linus has managed an enormous project for decades with incredible success. That scores some reality and effectiveness points, surely.

That's great and it's a credit to him!

Have you factored in the opportunity cost of being an ass for decades?

I have not. I choose not to grumble in public that the enormous contribution to the world of a master craftsman could have been even more enormous if he'd done things the way I prefer instead of whatever way works for him.

And then I get back to work using his software which I paid close to zero dollars for.

Is there another gift horse whose mouth is so frequently inspected as Linus?

Oh excuse me, I should bend over for him then! Because his achievements are so great, he must be immune to criticism!!!

> the enormous contribution to the world of a master craftsman could have been even more enormous

Hardly, it's about the contributions that don't exist from other people because of the insufferable shit-headedness of working with him. But that doesn't matter to you because we can't criticize him now can we? No, we must bend over because he is so much better than us!

Where are Matthew Garrett and Sarah Sharp's Linux kernel forks? Anyone else I forgot?

I mean at least when the NetBSD group ego-tripped and removed Theo, he had the decency to work on OpenBSD.

People who really want to contribute will find a way to, always. Unless something else is more important to them than contributing.

Your complaint is that Linus is an ass, and this is how you choose to express yourself in public. Huh.

Your inability to realize that the the context of my criticism is on his ability to collaborate and that that doesn't apply to how I express myself in public is laudable.

Maybe it's a cultural thing? I don't find the language as being particularly abrasive, only as having personality, and quite expressive. But then swearing and cursing seems to be much more accepted in most of Scandinavia than it is in much of the English speaking world.

If the Swedish speaking minority of Finland is speaking anything like the good people of Åland, well, then it could be interpreted as trying to be quite polite. Never met any people who could get more obscenities into the most casual and every-day conversations then they can. It's really quite impressive.

Negative experiences create far stronger memories. That's just how the brain works. You can walk great distances and barely remember the places you passed through, but if you step on a nail at some point you'll never forget that event. That memory is simply much stronger than the others.

How many email messages does Linus send in a year? How many of those messages contain rants so epic they get posted here? I bet it's less 1% of all messages. Yet everyone remembers those messages and what they say. He might not be polite, but he gets his point across.

I think all the polite/diplomatic arguments would be 1% effective vs his "fuck you NVIDIA"

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