Verbal abuse on LKML
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Ironically his argument about fake politeness is EXACTLY what he's getting. People are pretending that his horrible behavior is acceptable just because they don't want to get on his bad side. Acting professionally is not about politeness, it's about not muddying up the conversation with information that's not useful.
[1] http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3977141&cid=442916...
EDIT: Had to add one more gem from the Slashdot discussion, this one by Culture20[2]:
It's not "fake politeness" to stop using abusive language, it's normal politeness.
[2] http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3977141&cid=442909...
I think this is wrong. This argument does not make sense for people who are not in any way directly involved with kernel contributions, but have nevertheless formed an opinion about Linus. I, personally, find his antics to be quite entertaining and refreshing. Reacting strongly to small technical detail is something that should be encouraged, not banished.
Or maybe they're just willing to accept the occasional insult from a guy they respect, admire, and who has done so much good for them. Kinda like how people forgive Bill Clinton for lying to them about his private shenanigans because he was a damn good president overall.
I don't excuse myself for calling him that. I'm neither smart nor polite.
People are flawed, you can't expect to have the good without the bad. That's not an excuse to be a jerk, but one needs to step back and be objective about the package that the recipient of their personality critique is offering society. He's rather forthcoming about his value proposition as a person, and it can't be argued that it isn't a good one.
It's extremely selfish to intentionally create controversy and put your own personal feelings ahead of what he and his team are doing. On top of that, trying to turn it into a women's rights issue and getting the Ada Initiative involved is just shameful.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1525480
" You have to be harsh with code: People mistake politeness for uncertainty. Whenever I said 'I prefer if you XYZ' some proportion didn't realize I meant 'Don't argue unless you have new facts: do XYZ or go away.' This wastes my time, so I started being explicit.
But be gentle with people. You've already called their baby ugly."
(OSS projects I've done code review on include: Django, PyPy, Topaz, CPython, Twisted, and OpenStack)
Bonus point if your code review system can flag a comment as "Defect" to make it more explicit. It does not need to involve four-letter words or cussing in Finnish.
I think Rusty's right: you can be unequivocally harsh with the code, but not swear at or call people morons.
Angry words are a waste of time!
:P
(NOTE: this comment may have been written just to slam Python and the GIL... I hate it so much)
Neither have I, that's why my opinion of him doesn't count for anything.
Words are just a way to express something we want to communicate, and their meaning must be considered within the context they are expressed.
When Linus says something like "This piece-of-shit commit is marked for stable, but you clearly never even test-compiled it, did you?" https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/13/132 , he clearly has an insane reaction to something that at the end isn't nothing more than a normal human mistake.
But what his exaggerated reactions want to really express is "I INSANELY care about kernel quality, so I have INSANE reactions to actions that lower its value", and in this way he subliminally transmits its kernel care to the subject of the rant.
What do you think about my interpretation?
About "despises being nice" this seem to me just a trait of an egocentric personality, which is fairly common in our individualist society between overachiever people (Steve Jobs is a classic example). I don't mean it is a pleasant behaviour, but frankly as citizen of a west country I'm used to it.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.stable/58049/focu...
thus reacted on Linus claims:
On Fri, 12 Jul 2013 08:22:27 -0700, Linus wrote: "Greg, the reason you get a lot of stable patches seems to be that you make it easy to act as a door-mat. Clearly at least some people say 'I know this patch isn't important enough to send to Linus, but I know Greg will silently accept it after the fact, so I'll just wait and mark it for stable'.
You may need to learn to shout at people."
Seriously, guys? Is this what we need in order to get improve -stable? Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation and violence. Ingo Molnar and Linus are advocating for verbal abuse.
Not _fucking_ cool. Violence, whether it be physical intimidation, verbal threats or verbal abuse is not acceptable. Keep it professional on the mailing lists.
Let's discuss this at Kernel Summit where we can at least yell at each other in person. Yeah, just try yelling at me about this. I'll roar right back, louder, for all the people who lose their voice when they get yelled at by top maintainers. I won't be the nice girl anymore.
I think she's definitely right. Keep it professional. The implementation of any piece of something can be stupid. It's often not because we want to make it that way, or because it's stupid as it is, it's stupid in a given context. Somebody like Linus is somebody who must handle at that level. There bluntness can help. Still it's about the context, not about what people who produce work are or aren't.
Just don't call people stupid, don't intimidate, threat or abuse them personally.
Because if you want me to "act professional", I can tell you that I'm
not interested. I'm sitting in my home office wearign a bathrobe. The
same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to
buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and
backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because
THAT is what "acting professionally" results in: people resort to all
kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their
normal urges in unnatural ways.
In all seriousness, this line of reasoning is pretty fallacious, Linus has somehow jumped from "not actively abusing anyone" to the conclusion that this inevitably leads to backstabbing and passive aggressiveness.
He provides no evidence to support this claim, and I think many of us who work in reasonable office environments know that this is just simply not the case. Don't let Linus's stature cloud the fact that he's making unsubstantiated claims and just expecting you to go along with them.
But I don't try to impose my standards, or any work place standard, upon others.
Why do you think there is any abuse?
If you see 2 guys in the street, one insulting the other one, how do you know there is any abuse?
Couldn't they be very good friends that have been talking to each other like that since years? In this case, is there any abuse?
With first you can argue. With second, you're just suffering an attack of a bully.
On another extreme, I can imagine going buzzwordy like Microsoft would mark the death of Linux it is now.
It's reasonable to point to the cases where Linus crosses the line from "this is shit" (I think everybody can agree that he definitely has contributed enough to get the right to claim something like that, even in these words) to personal abuses.
Negative feedbacks are the only thing that protect every physical system and people too from going full wacko. Linus has the right to give a negative feedback, but should be expected to receive it himself when he crosses the line.
Maybe it's because I don't live in the "civilized" West, where the act of swearing has become something of a "look how cool he is", the parts of the world I live in you risk being beaten senseless (or worse) if you swear at someone in his face.
'Come to the dark side, Sarah. We have cookies.' -- Linus
Next, we'll be down to having respect for colleagues and maintain civility in all cases.
This does not mean you run around screaming at people, usually, that gets you fired.
However, these folks have formed their own community, and set the rules of conduct for it. If she wants to try to change those, great. But this should be a discussion for members of that community, not one of trying to get the world writ large to come down on them. (At least from where I sit, she is trying to do the latter, rather than the former. Maybe i'm misreading it though)
Essentially, she wants the community to change not because the community wants to, but because everyone else outside the community wants them to.
This seems, without thinking very hard, quite wrong.
She always retains the option of starting her own community, etc.
Note that even the law recognizes the issues here in the US. Generally, small non-governmental groups can't be forced to open up membership or to avoid discrimination. So the local old boys club generally can't be forced to accept women, for example.
That's still a strawman, and not a valid response to anything she actually said.
But this should be a discussion for members of that community, not one of trying to get the world writ large to come down on them. (At least from where I sit, she is trying to do the latter, rather than the former. Maybe i'm misreading it though)
Have you read the actual mailing list discussion? She's rather patient, polite and constructive, while Linus spouts mostly BS like the above strawman. So how do you come up with that "agenda" of hers?
If you can't talk with some people, the next best thing is to find people with brains to talk about those people. There is nothing wrong with that, it should be encouraged.
Essentially, she wants the community to change not because the community wants to, but because everyone else outside the community wants them to.
This seems, without thinking very hard, quite wrong.
Then try thinking, it could go a little something like this: maybe, just maybe, she's the first mentally grown up person to stroll deep enough into that mailing list to ever raise the point. This is not wrong, just awkward, and "that's just the way I am" is a response fit for a 5 year old.
Actually, this was Linus's response to what she said, and as I said, he's not wrong. She wanted people to stop spouting verbal abuse and treat everyone civilly. Linus's response was that this is essentially fake civility and fake professionalism, and as I said, he's not wrong.
"Have you read the actual mailing list discussion? She's rather patient, polite and constructive, while Linus spouts mostly BS like the above strawman. So how do you come up with that "agenda" of hers?"
1. Yes, I have.
2. Because she posted on G+ asking for the support of others outside of the community to support her?
The very first line of the post says:
Please speak up, either here on Google+ by resharing this
post, or commenting on this post with words of support. If
you dare, you can also reply to my lkml email.
"Then try thinking, it could go a little something like this: maybe, just maybe, she's the first mentally grown up person to stroll deep enough into that mailing list to ever raise the point. This is not wrong, just awkward, and "that's just the way I am" is a response fit for a 5 year old."
No, actually, she isn't. I've been on various versions of LKML since 1998, and she is definitely not the first mentally grown up person to complain. Posting to G+ to get the general support of others not on LKML to go yell at LKML seems, as I said, quite wrong.
Maybe you'd care to explain why you believe Linus is wrong, rather than saying it's a response for a 5 year old? People have the right to build and associate with the communities they like. She doesn't like his community. How is trying to get random people on G+ to complain about it anything but the response of a 5 year old?
BTW, your tone does not come across as very civil or professional.
As I said, after she tried to reason with them, on that list. You know, opposed to copying and pasting lots of flamewars she just came across and blogging about it.
No, actually, she isn't. I've been on various versions of LKML since 1998, and she is definitely not the first mentally grown up person to complain.
That just makes it worse, you know. So they're a lost cause then.
Maybe you'd care to explain why you believe Linus is wrong, rather than saying it's a response for a 5 year old?
"That's just how I am" is shallow unreflected bullshit no matter the context. In context, he's deluded if he thinks he couldn't be just as blunt and firm without making such an ass of himself. He talks about "playing the victim card" right after playing the "that's just how I am card", I'm sorry, but this is so fucking stupid that I'd rather just laugh at it, and anyone defending it. You can make up your narrative for that and think it proves whatever; I just can't be arsed.
BTW, your tone does not come across as very civil or professional.
Because I implied brainlessness? Aww. Well, that last line comes across as passive-aggressive and vague, and I suggest if you want to say something or think you have a point there, just make it. Did I claim I am better? To the contrary, that's why I don't buy the antics of Linus. Even if I did claim I was very civil and professional while not actually being that, it would detract zero from what I said.
This doesn't really change my point that it's honestly, nobody else's business what a given community decides to set for it's rules, unless that community is somehow impinging on other people's rights.
Here, it isn't. They keep to themselves. So yes, in some sense, if she can't get people in the community to agree, she should take her ball and go home. Appealing to mass authority in an attempt to generate pressure is not cool.
If i want to form a group of assholes that write software, that's on me. If you want to participate in my group of assholes, that's on you.
Asking random people on G+ to whine at me for being an asshole in that group is just childish.
We all know Linus is right most of the time. But I think his abusive tone isn't constructive and won't motivate people to do a better job.
Edit:
"Adopting the most effective style of criticism should be tempered by the cultural context, the recipient's personality, and nature of the relationship between provider and recipient."
The only reason I can see that being abuse is swearing. Swearing shouldn't be seen as offensive. It's just a good way of expressing certain points.
I am not a subscriber of LKML, so I am not sure, but I think that Linus understands this and doesn't abuse/insult anyone too often, or it will not be too effective. Otherwise, everyone would consider him a dick instead of a blunt and straightforward person, wouldn't they?
I see lots of strong words in LKML. So much that in some other lists there's the say "hey, this isn't LKML and this behavior is not appreciated here".
However in this case I don't see it. Linus and Greg were in no way calling out for violence, but instead making joke about it.
What I am seeing more often than I'd like is people losing the ability to joke at ourselves. For me over reaction is as disturbing as the strong words. Go to the link you pointed out here, read it again. Knowing the people who wrote them can't you imagine their troll face?
So as long as Linus treats everyone as a inferior retard until proven otherwise it is ok with me.
I think racism and sexism (and lots of other isms that split people on us and the others) don't have place in a society but I will fight very hard for the right of the people to express misanthropy.
TL DR: As long as Linus insults everybody it is ok.
Here's a thought, misanthropy is always projected self-hate, delusions of grandeur are just inferiority complexes, and Linus could use a shrink. Who doesn't, right? So I'm not judging. But if you're for calling a spade a spade, let's call a spade a spade.
it's bad enough with the sexist comments in here, perhaps we could avoid the racist ones as well?
See what I did there? how is that different from what Sarah Sharp did?
i honestly don't get it.
When Linus refuses to change, which he has and will continue to do, I'm not sure what the next step is to squash his sometimes impolite manner. Surely you can't ban Linus from the LKML or convince the Linux Foundation to remove him. For better or worse, Linus and his rants are here to stay. This #kernelhackers #abuse thing is entertaining to watch, but nobody should seriously expect a change here.
I suppose it's FOSS, so people who agree with Sarah's position could form their own separate fork and mailing list. More likely though is that every time Linus posts another rant about how poor of a job somebody did, they'll reply with some kind of shaming of his impoliteness, which Linus will simply ignore and nothing will change.
i think linus has every right to do whatever the hell he pleases, which i think is pretty obvious from what i wrote.
reading is fundamental.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4Xp...
Also, stupid is relative anyway. Who isn't stupid? Is Linus actually that stupid that he thinks he isn't stupid? And if he is, what kind of weight does he think this insult carries out of his mouth? Stuff gets tricky real quick like that.
Is there any plan of having a non-backward compatible linux kernel one day, or just to start deprecating features ?
Not being an asshole does NOT have to equal being politically correct. She's advocating clarity WITHOUT verbal abuse. That's SO easy to do: if you filter out the f-bombs that are directed at people as well as the STFU's and you're there.
There is so much in between verbal abuse and killing each other with kindness, it's not even funny. I find it sad that even Torvalds thinks in black and white like that. And then he hides behind "that's just who I am". Whatever. Very mature. I wouldn't even consider becoming a Linux kernel maintainer, much like I would quit my job the day my boss decides to treat his employees this way.
1) I hear plenty of foul and seemingly abusive language happen between friends. Are the examples given seem more abusive because we assume the parties are merely acquaintances? I also didn't take the time to follow the e-mail threads to see how the conversation started.
2) I remember once when I was 17 or 18, I heard someone swearing through a sentence (that should have been a good point in the conversation) and immediately thought they were a dullard. Then I realized that people might have the same perception of me and I quit swearing almost immediately. It doesn't really matter whether you find the curse words acceptable, the reality is that I can still verbally abuse someone using perfect grammar and "tenpenny" words. If the banter is not good-natured banter, how do you define verbal abuse?
3) Are Linus' responses to these e-mails simply indicative of the passion that's also let him lead the creation and fostering of Linux over the last 20 years? Would someone without that passion (whether using foul language or not) have succeeded in such a broad endeavor?
4) Are the supposed victims of the described abuse speaking out about this? I would assume that if they were truly offended, they would have told at least a few people, but I haven't seen any indication that they were offended. Linux isn't some dictatorial regime - have people "left the empire" (quit kernel development) because of this behavior?
5) Are the threads containing harsh criticisms balanced by e-mails pointing out how brilliantly someone solved an issue? It's more acceptable to rant about a mistake if you also rave over something extraordinary.
6) Has Linus ever lambasted himself publicly over his own mistakes? I tend to think any code I wrote over six months ago is pretty crappy (it's a perfectionist thing).
I can't condone verbal abuse, though I've seen similar abuse in person and in a professional environment, but I also can't say this is abuse without knowing the complete context. I tend to think personal attacks are out of place, but commentary on the technology can be as pleasant or harsh as necessary.
Linus: If you happen to read this, first I'd like to thank you for the work you've done. In some ways, I've grown my career as a side-effect of your work. Second, I'd like to say that following the mailing list would in fact be more pleasurable if the place didn't feel like walking through a ghetto.
What role do you play in the community and/or what
subsystem(s) do you work on?
Where do you get your paycheck?
-- Sourced from https://www.linux.com/news/special-feature/linux-developers/...
Linus:
Yes. And I do it partly (mostly) because it's who I am, and partly because I honestly despise being subtle or "nice".
[much later]
The thing is, the "victim card" is exactly about trying to enforce your particular expectations on others, and trying to do so in a very particular way.
You can call it hipocrisy or Linus being a fucking moron, but don't spit in my beard and tell me it's snowing, okay? Oh my oh my, that's just "how he is", but if others can't stand his crap, then that's them playing "the victim card." What a joke.
People don't exist for code, code exists for people. Well, the code that's worth making and keeping around, anyway. So good on her for standing up to him, and shame on the cowardly clowns just eating popcorn, and making a point of posting about it, too; for someone who claims to despise being nice, Linus sure has a big tolerance for sucking up.
Also maybe it's the fact that I'm Finnish too, but the best teachers from school I remember where those that valued perfection, and I don't think they raised their voice to abuse one, but to make a point...
I can still remember a computer teacher who went bananas every time someone used the carriage return in the middle of a paragraph, and physically broke of the key from the keyboard, just to show that It wasn't supposed to be used that way. Maybe some people got offended or scared, but to me it stuck, the importance between separating visual appearance and semantics...
>I won't be the nice girl anymore.
While verbal abuse is not acceptable, neither is the male-shaming language she is using there.
I won't be the nice guy anymore.Please note that when she points out Linus' behaviour, it is not because she got flamed. She did not get yelled at. The whole issue has nothing to do with her sex.
You are trying to turn it into a gender issue, which it is not - regardless of Sarah's stances on that matter.