Be Cordial or Be on Your Way | Hacker News Reader

Be Cordial or Be on Your Way

kennethreitz.com

26 pointsllambda30 comments

Comment from the linked site: "Linus didn't call his contributor a moron. He called the random person snarking him to make an exception for a 3-line-diff a moron."

Thank you for posting this; many of the original comments from this thread have been deleted, including the one Linus was responding to.

So, while I support the source's position, his post is misrepresenting the context of Linus' comment.

I remember the original comment, before it was removed, and I'm paraphrasing here, but it was: "Apparently Linus's shit doesn't stink." To which Linus replied, ending with "you're a moron." The article makes it sound like Linus was destorying the pull request contributor.

I was wondering why he posted that at "Joseph" but I saw no person before that with that name.

Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

Most of this post was written before the Linus incident, and he was just being used as an example.

I removed the stuff about Linus until I can find an accurate example.

sssh! If you explain what actually happened then this becomes a non-story and people can't use it as link bait or write comments about how much better than Linus they are.

Exactly. People really need to get off their high horse. Regarding the github pull request interface, I actually find it reassuring that Linus has rather strict requirements for contributing to the kernel source.

This blog post isn't about Linus, it's about being cordial in open source. This recent incident was merely being used as an example.

Apparently I misunderstood the context since the original comment was deleted, so I'll find a better example.

From all the open source contributions, we know Kenneth enough that he's not trolling. Thus I say assume that he misread the Linus discussion and leave it at that. He was trying to make a point and picked the wrong example.

The core of his argument is what's important. He has contributed countless open source tools and libraries, many of which are highly coveted. This is the sort of individual the Python community should (and does) treasure. The other day however he released a tool and was then essentially "teased" about the quality and size of the contribution on Twitter.

I think the person doing the teasing realised later this was a mistake as that whole discussion is gone now (from both sides) but I'm sure for a day or two Kenneth was downright depressed. The person doing the prodding is well known and was someone Kenneth respects. Constructive criticism from someone you respect is amazing but non-constructive criticism from that same person is debilitating.

The core concern is that words can hurt and prevent future contributions to OSS, especially if the unkind words are from someone you respect in the open source community.

Most of this post was written before the Linus incident, and he was just being used as an example.

I removed the stuff about Linus until I can find an accurate example.

Also, you are 100% correct about the context of this post. All is well now though :)

I'm glad to hear all's well. Your original point is incredibly important and I'm glad you made it.

Years ago when I was 13 or so I pointed out a bug in Blender to Ton Roosendaal[1]. My knowledge of C was ... let's just say I could probably cause memory leaks by staring at the code. He not only attempted to hunt down the bug but he made a 13 year old kid feel welcome in the community even though I was of next to no help in hunting down the bug.

Although bad interactions can stay with you for a long time, kind encounters like these stay with you too :)

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ton_Roosendaal

I'm amazed that this person apparently took more time to write a blog post than he spent reading the exchange he's talking about in its original context.

If he had, then he'd realize how silly it sounds to chastise someone like Linus Torvalds, as though he has an obligation to spend his time making sure that everyone interested in open source is lovingly brought into the fold with the utmost deference to their ignorance.

But I guess these days missing the point entirely is as good as having real insight, as far as click generation is concerned.

Well, if Linus had actually called someone a moron "upon receiving a pull request on GitHub" like the post claims, then I think it would be a perfectly legitimate criticism. Calling someone a moron just for trying to contribute would be completely unacceptable, especially for someone like Torvalds.

Of course, the problem is that Torvalds did not call someone a moron for submitting a pull request. He was responding to another person's comment on the request that has since been deleted. I think the lesson here is that GitHub maybe shouldn't let people delete their posts after they've been replied to.

It seems I picked a poor example for my post. Sorry about that — the Linus stuff is removed. That wasn't the point anyway.

Key lines: "Somebody please look at the diff. Thats a simple 3 line code addition. I agree to you @torvalds but you could have excused this time :)"

AND: "By the way, its quite funny that github is sending instructions to @torvalds on using git."

Neither of which lines does Kenneth mention.

To me, this post is like the selective editing FOX News or the Colbert Report occasionally do to take things out of context.

Not a fan.

It's hard being a project maintainer. Linus was more than explanatory. This is the kernel, after all, dealing with github gen pop can be quite tiresome, and I don't blame him at all for not wanting people to be throwing rocks at him.

Can you clarify how those "key lines" substantively change the situation? It's not clear to me how either of them justify "You're a moron."

I think the point is, and forgive the harshness of this, but the person to whom Linus called a moron was kind of being a moron.

Linus explained why he wouldn't accept pull requests from Github, due purely to the formatting of the commit log, and that guy starts insisting he do it because it's only a three line patch, basically ignoring everything that Linus had said.

Regardless the length of the patch, it doesn't alter the commit formatting.

I personally don't think I'd have ever resorted to calling someone a moron unless I personally knew them, but I very distinctly believed that guy to either missing the point, or trolling.

I grew up thinking extremely highly of Linus— my first commit to the Gnome project was in the early 2000s at the age of 15 (and it was far from perfect, but the project maintainers were extremely kind and showed me how to become a better open source hacker), and it definitely wouldn't have happened without Linus' influence as a developer.

The recent events are disappointing. It's always sad when you realize that your childhood heroes, no matter how big their accomplishments, can be stupid mean human beings just as much as anyone else.

I've learned over the years to try talk to people online as if they were standing right in front of me. Most adults would never call another person a name (in seriousness) to their face.

It's good manners but also from a practical perspective I was in a job interview once where they googled my name and they had a print out of snarky comments I had made on a public mailing list.

This is the same reason I've dropped using pseudonyms for the most part.

that leads me to ask, are you being nice because your name is attached to comment, or in spite of it.

Indeed I am!

> I was in a job interview once where they googled my name and they had a print out of snarky comments I had made on a public mailing list.

That would have been awesome. I would have sent a snarky tweet about it on the spot.

Every project should work on triage of both patches and bugs to make it as friendly as possible. It's the point where you can stop being simply a user and make a contribution, but it's also where you can have one bad experience and never try again.

Some projects both big and small do a very bad job of this. When I see Linus' comments I understand where he's coming from, but I also feel he's a bad gatekeeper with these interactions.

welcome to fox news. we'll teach you how to take things out of context, and tell you how linus has declared a war on github

It seems I picked a poor example for my post. Sorry about that — the Linus stuff is removed. That wasn't the point anyway.

this is a reply to the above and some other replies in the thread.

considering the timing of the post and specific emphasis on the pull requests, I can only conclude most of it was a direct result was probably from the linux kernel pull request debate. For an article talking about being cordial, it's a bad way to represent someone, especially with wrong context, and even more to bring someone like linus.

The only person who was the most cordial in the whole debacle on kernel tree was linus, esp. to the contributor. Now, after all the smearing has been done, just saying it's removed and should be good, is no way to handle it either.

I said all this because, I respect the work linus does and you do (i'm a python dev too, and use your work more than enough in my projects). It pains me to see someone like you to smear linus' name, and brushing it off saying it's not a important after damage has been done (not to linus, probably he'd not even care for this debate in the first place), and not even apologizing (i don't know, may be put a PS on the article or something).

Understanding you might be sensitive about negative criticism, I ask you to not take it personally. But, it pains me too see good developers talking about how to behave in OSS and then do the exact opposite, esp. from ppl I respect

This actually is one of my biggest fears about ever achieving a level of success that I become a notable figure in the free world... (I'm sure like anybody) I sometimes can be a pissy little butthead. I am absolutely sure that some days I am less than cordial to a moron or a jackass and everyone will see it. Doing it now as a nobody is one thing... but doing it when all eyes are on you is another. But there are times when a jerk is just a jerk and needs to be told it.

I agree about the general point of being cordial, but there is an exception for Linus.

Linus is purposefully positioning himself as the top-of-the-heap asshole.

You should be scared to submit code to Linus. It's just his position in the whole environment.

Contribute to smaller projects and the subsystem maintainers for your introduction to open source contributions.

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