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Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

> if his interlocutors "win" too much on their side of the "win/win", every user loses.

You seem to be trying to find a way to turn this back into "win/lose".

Try another interpretation.

For instance, a patch might call attention to a problem, but it takes the wrong approach to solve it. Could we find a better solution to the problem?

Nobody is suggesting giving bad code or bad ideas a pass. Are you under the impression that it's impossible to reject a patch or give technical feedback without being brutal or toxic?

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A large chunk of frequent contributors are paid by companies to heave features/drivers at the kernel with no regard to doing it the right way. To them it's about landing code ASAP.

Linus is already working in the win/win quadrant by default by merging these things all in the name of making the kernel better.

Occasionally a frequent contributor who has gained trust will start to merge trash in the name of meeting deadlines. This is usually when linus loses his shit at the people responsible.

This has nothing to do with a silly quadrant of being competitive/neutral/anything towards the collaboration itself. Linus is still looking for a win/win, but he's requiring people to fix their shit.

That quadrant is irrelevant about Linus's behavior because he's always collaborating. What you need is a quadrant describing how feedback is delivered to subordinates.

I think generally you're right, but the comment you're replying to has something to it as well. If two parties are not "equals" in the arena they are in, things get Complicated. I'm not sure true collaboration is possible in situations where parties are on such uneven footing (and I mean this in the abstract sense as well: I don't think the model you've presented is complete as is does not give you a productive way to structure this kind of relationship).

In the situation where Linus is far more qualified, and obviously so, and someone is trying to get him to "approve" a patch, there's no way it's ever really going to be a truly collaborative dynamic.

This doesn't mean Linus has to be a dick about it, but it's definitely not collaboration between equals.

If you read what Linus said, nowhere did he conflate technical merit with social merit. Your comment very much does this. He specifically said there haven't been pain points around technical issues, but around process issues, which is what he's personally trying to fix.

Open source is about the community, and I think Linus figured this out later than most. Sure, you can dump some code out there and maybe even get users, but you won't have built a community that improves software until you've shown people can file bugs reports and patches or otherwise be a part of the community without being personally insulted. This is a pretty low bar tbh.

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