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Comment by wolverine876 | Hacker News Reader

> he didn’t care too much about politeness - this was a magic recipe for him to be able to stave off garbage patch requests from motivated corporate peons.

Linus disagrees with you, so strongly that he invested a great amount of his time, reputation, and political capital in changing his behavior and that of his organization.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18000698

I think I'll trust Linus on that. Linux seems pretty successful.

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Their younger versions might not have agreed with it, but some people do mellow out in their old age. In this case, to me it's clear that he is doing a large turnaround, which validates Wyager's statement that he did not care too much before.

I'm not sure what that means, or what basis there is for any of it ? The basis for my comment was Torvalds' own statements and actions, and he's a pretty good source for Torvalds and for effective management and communication in the Linux community. Do you know him personally? Are you a maintainer?

It means that Linus used to be fairly brusk when he was younger (basis: e.g. flipping people off and telling people to "fuck off"), and recently he has apologized for his behavior (basis: the link you shared). To me this is him mellowing out in his old age. His younger self might not have agreed with this mellowing out, seeing it as unnecessary (basis: his responses previous to the apology to other people who called him out on his behavior). The fact that he apologized means that even he realized that he did not care too much before, but now he does, and therefore he wanted to make up for what he has done.

> To me ...

My question remains: What is the basis of that? Do you work with him? Read his biography at least (assuming there is one)?

The basis is the sentence before that one.

I guess it's just Internet speculation. I am looking for something with a real basis (not that you are required to give it to me).

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