You should have high standards.
Torvalds often crosses that line into outright toxicity. I've written a few kernel patches that I never tried to upstream for that reason.
Torvalds often crosses that line into outright toxicity. I've written a few kernel patches that I never tried to upstream for that reason.
You may have missed the "retroactively aborted" one.
https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/6/495
To be fair, he's got much more self-control now.
That implementation is also hilariously bad:
> read things ONE F*CKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte
https://github.com/corollari/linusrants/blob/master/table.md
Someone who doesnt see a problem with this is probably one of those toxic people who dont realize they're toxic you mentioned. Nobody wants to be treated how Torvalds treated people.
Also, coming from an orchestral background, I'm well aware of situations where the leader needs to be gruff. A gentle conductor will never get the idiot violists playing in tune. (A harsh one won't either, but at least the violists will be too scared to make any noise.) That said, it's still unacceptable for a conductor to cross the line from gruff to personal attacks.
> Nobody wants to be treated how Torvalds treated people.
Exactly, nobody wants but so many can't stop until treated.
> Stop this "we can break stuff" crap. Who maintains udev? Regressions are not acceptable. I'm not going to change the kernel because udev broke, f*ck it. Seriously. More projects need to realize that regressions are totally and utterly unacceptable. ... That just encourages those package maintainers to be shit maintainers. ... And stop blaming the kernel for user space breakage!...
Hate 0.832673044602
For common sense.
Nobody has to work with him, and you chose not to. You don't contribute your kernel patches because you don't like the guy. And that's fine, and I even agree with your assessment that he's been abrasive.
On the other hand, it's his project. He does get to be dictator of his own project and the philosophies behind it. This is the beauty of open source: unlike proprietary software where money and power is everything, everyone is free to fork the kernel and stop dealing with him. In the open source world there are a long list of forks that have turned out to be more popular than their original projects.
The other beautiful thing about open source in this arrangement is that the people he's being a jerk to are people he has an employer power dynamic over.
If my boss is a jerk to me, yeah, that really sucks, because if I get fired my family doesn't eat. I'm forced to interact with that person, at least for a time.
I wonder if starting a comment by despising the parent is just being gruff or it leans on personal attack...
Regardless, to a newbie potential kernel contributor, that high level of toxicity can be intimidating, and the professional-programmers-only aspect is non-obvious, so it's easy to see why this would discourage hobbyists/free-time programmers from contributing.
example. I don't remember what all system Greg KH is responsible for, but for the sake of argument, lets say USB. You as a new contributor, try to contribute a patch to the USB subsystem. Turns out it is total garbage. For it to get Linus's attention, it has to have gone through review by Greg KH. Linus will light up Greg and only Greg because Greg has been doing this for 20+ years.
Now, do I feel he sometimes goes over board and unprofessional? Yes. But people keep contributing and the thing keeps chugging along.
A subsystem maintainer will pick up your patch if it is good, and they will deal with Linus for you. Most subsystems have their own mailing list because you need to visibility.
The process is described pretty well in Documentation/.
Asahi founder (plus community community) was heavy with drama and loved to attack and brigade anyone that didn't immediately bow down and listen to demands of their team and social media entourage. This isn't how the most important OS in the world should be led and Torvalds was right to call out that toxic behaviour.