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Comment by d0m | Hacker News Reader

That is something I don't like about Linus. He's so aggressive when he speaks; it's insulting. Explaining to the guy the good attitude to have toward backward compatibility and "not my problem" thing, is totally great. However, doing it in a so harsh tone is just plainly aggressive and useless. In fact, I'd argue that it is even less than useless as if someone talked to be like that, I'd be even less reticent to try to help. Add to this the fact that Linus, being well known and respected, simply demolished him. It's like if I kicked my little 12 years old cousin' ass in front of everyone to make him understand that we he did wasn't right. Good job Linus. I feel like posting on this forum now.

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Growing a thick skin and dealing with a curt reply allows information to flow faster. All Linus is doing here is setting the bar. Doing it in flowery everyone-wins language is more time-consuming and the longer you communicate on the web, the more you realise that frequently it's just not worth the time drain. The attitude Linus is commenting on is something he's known for railing against for a very long time.

If you're trying to make a world-class product, you can't afford the time to wrap all comms with your developers in niceties - you need to define where you stand and what's expected in solid terms.

Also: given his thorough explanations that go along with the chiding, I'd much rather be on a forum that has that kind of poster.

I don't think that's a good enough reason for interacting with the world as though you have aspergers. The technical excellence of linux may offset the problems caused by such an abrasive method of interpersonal relationships but that doesn't make it ok.

Ah, so it's not okay to act like Linus did, but it is okay to throw out Asperger's like it's an insult? Your morals around civility are curiously labile.

For the record, Linus's behaviour is not typical of Asperger's Syndrome.

No one's saying Linus should be -passive- about his point, just not hostile. Here is a shorted, edited version of his post without the offputting aggression:

"The user doesn't care.

Pushing the blame around doesn't help anybody. The only thing that helps is Fedora being helpful, not being obstinate.

Also, the fact is, that from a Q&A standpoint, a memcpy() that "just does the right thing" is simply _better_. Quoting standards is just stupid, when there's two simple choices: "it works" or "it doesn't work because bugs happen".

Reality is what matters. When glibc changed memcpy, it created problems. Saying "not my problem" is irresponsible when it hurts users.

And pointing fingers at Adobe and blaming them for creating bad software is _doubly_ irresponsible if you are then not willing to set a higher standard for your own project. And "not my problem" is not a higher standard.

So please just fix it.

The easy and technically nice solution is to just say "we'll alias memcpy to memmove - good software should never notice, and it helps bad software and a known problem"."

Not being an ass isn't difficult with practice, and it can even save time when communicating.

That's just it. He's not being particularly hostile. He's being blunt.

Go back and look at the thread. Linus isn't wading in with abuse. He's a solid part of the discussion from the start (I stopped counting his responses when I got to 7 in the first 50) and at least for those first 50 he's polite as everyone seems to demand him being. Explaining both his point about the function and about the user-doesn't-care view, repeatedly, politely - just as all the naysayers in this thread are demanding of him.

Heaven forfend Linus actually show frustration at having to repeat himself again and again, like an ordinary human would!

Molehill, meet mountain.

You've got to understand that it is very hard for highly technically proficient people to be nice to everyone. For someone at Linus's level, a LOT of time is spent answering what seems like the worst kind of stupid questions.

This causes massive compassion fatigue. Take that into account, and it becomes clear that Linus is not as big an asshole as you think.

You've got to understand that it is very hard for highly technically proficient people to be nice to everyone.

Of all the arguments for being brusque on the web, this is the one I find most unappealing... as well as the least applicable for the matter at hand.

As far as I can tell, there's nothing about Linus' reply that depended on his admittedly high level of technical competence. In fact, it seemed he was saying "don't rely on being technically correct, consider the consequences"... in a way that got people's attention.

"I'm smart, so it's OK to an asshole" is about as shitty as an attitude as "not my problem, I'm just going by specs" - in fact, it's kind of similar. ... I bet all the up-voters thought they were the "highly technically proficient people"!

"it is very hard for highly technically proficient people to be nice to everyone"

They being so damn smart does not give them the right to be condescending and insult people who can't keep up. So I'm not as smart as he is, does that make invaluable? Does that give him the right to call me stupid? What if I am doing my best? If my best try isn't really helping, then they should simply ignore me, not attack me. Nothing gives anybody the right to insult people.

It's the guiding principle here on HN: be civil. Just like others need to polish their technical abilities, being nice is something they should work on.

I doubt that it has anything to do with technical proficiency. People like Steve Wozniak, Alan Kay, Tim Berners-Lee don't have the reputation of being assholes.

In general, sites like Hackernews or Stackoverflow wouldn't work at all if smart people couldn't handle answering basic questions without being jerks.

For every non-asshole, you can find an asshole with technical proficiency.

For every Steve Wozniak there is a Steve Jobs.

You're incorrectly implying that Steve Jobs is technically proficient. He's an electronics technician and a cult leader, not a hacker.

I've known people compensate for their technical shortcomings by playing nice to everyone. Usually Engineers who happened to be Engineers by having a degree but don't have the passion for it and just in for the money. Asshole ones are the type that don't compromise just to be agreeable.

You may have posted this in the wrong subthread; we were talking about Steve Wozniak, who's toward the top of the the 99th percentile both for niceness and engineering passion, and Steve Jobs, who's such an asshole he cheated Woz on contracts they were doing together and whose engineering skills are limited to stuffing circuit boards.

I remember this bug report. Since October 2010, Linus has posted a "me too" reply, then helped pinpoint the issue, then explained why shifting the blame to Adobe is wrong, then provided a workaround for everyone, then ran a benchmark proving the new memcpy code is crap, then helped people having issues with his workaround, and then finally went agressive towards Andre Robatino, whose previous comment is simply daft.

I read Linus' response as directed at people in the thread in general in addition to the previous poster. The "not my problem" attitude is pretty common in the world. In OSS, it seems even more important to be flexible in order to achieve something good for an end user.

How should Linus have addressed the other guy?

He wasn't insulting. Absence of ass kissing isn't an insult.

>In fact, I'd argue that it is even less than useless as if someone talked to be like that, I'd be even less reticent to try to help.

you sound like you're an ass with overgrown ego.

In general, one chooses whether to get things done or waste the time on gentle handling of ego of the people who can't control their own ego. It is a great boon for humanity that Linus has been choosing the former.

You can make your point without ass kissing or insulting/being overly aggressive.

See, in your post, the "You're an ass with overgrown ego" doesn't help your point at all; it's just provocative and seen as aggressive.

Try to remove that phrase from your post and you'll see that there's no difference at all. In fact, you would have wasted a little bit less of everyone's time. (See how easy it can be to be aggressive and provocative; even thought it wins nothing at the end.)

Anyway, if I understand your post, you are saying that either you gets things done or you're ass kissing the ego of people. First, that is plainly totally wrong. You can be productive without being an ass. Secondly, not being aggressive, is not the same thing as ass kissing.

It's like fighting to win a battle or a war. By being aggressive, you fight to win that small battle.. but if the contributor is pissed enough and decide to not work with some asses, everybody loses.

>You can make your point without ass kissing or insulting/being overly aggressive.

That exactly what Linus did.

>you are saying that either you gets things done or you're ass kissing the ego of people. First, that is plainly totally wrong. You can be productive without being an ass.

if you analyze the logic of your statement you'd find what it puts "not ass kissing the ego of people " as equivalent to "being an ass". We're back to square one.

This is the quote that's the most relevant and was unnecessary for getting his point across:

Quite frankly, I find your attitude to be annoying and downright stupid.

He was being insulting and unnecessarily aggressive.

Post #128 was stating logic and facts. Linus responded with logic and facts also, but before he did so, he stated the insult. Unnecessary and didn't add anything to the debate except emotional provocation.

If someone else doesn't get it, he can say, "This is my point, I hope it makes sense, if it doesn't, I don't know what else I can do to make you understand me." Something like that. And then just stop replying. Instead, he turns it into a pissing match.

This statement:

> you sound like you're an ass with overgrown ego.

stands in direct contradiction to this expressed desire:

> get things done [and not] waste ... time

because what you think the other person sounds like is not relevant.

This:

> Absence of ass kissing isn't an insult.

is useless for a different reason. If you are a manager, which Torvalds is, you need to be able to keep the people you're managing in a usable state. This is only very rarely done with brusqueness.

That is something I don't like about Linus. He's so aggressive when he speaks; it's insulting.

It might also be a european thing. We are more direct. Less talking around the issue at hand.

Perhaps not British though? A friend of mine (Australian) works in a company with offices in the UK and US selling education/health website software. In Aus and the US, business works as expected, you go in, make your case, get an answer yes/no and you're golden. In the UK they were finding that a great many places would agree to buy and then default at the next step.

They eventually learned to do the initial sell in a much more sideways manner as when confronted with 'do you want this or not?', British clients tended to just say yes to get them out of the office - even if they had zero intention of taking the product. Caused a lot of confusion until that was identified.

It depends. For example Swedes are very talkative, but Finns not the least bit. Finns are very direct and generally do not engage in small talk. Linus comes from Swedish speaking minority of Finland, so I guess that he is more talkative than an average Finn. Extensive stay abroad helps too. Still I wouldn't be surprised if he slightly hated twaddling :)

I absolutely agree that Linus is really aggressive in this example. But in this case, I think it's warranted because the general point he's making is so important: if Linux is to move forward as an OS, this attitude of "It's technically wrong, we don't care who we break" needs to die - it's helping nobody.

Actually, that's what I like about Linus. I find it humorous, but I also appreciate a "no bullshit", direct approach. He has it in spades, and he backed up his assertions with hard data.

It's true that I don't find myself particularly inclined to post on lkml — even though people were polite to me there when I was being kind of an ignorant asshole, I feel a bit intimidated by the brusqueness of the inner circle.

But I don't think I'm really in a good position to advise Linus on how to manage an open-source development community. Linux seems to be running at a high level of average competency despite the occasional hostility. Who am I to say that the hostility is dispensable? I'd like to believe it is, but I want to see an existence proof.

Both are bad, but I prefer Linus's up-front aggression to the passive aggressive tone of the person he is replying to.

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