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Comment by beachstartup | Hacker News Reader

this issue comes up every couple of years - these guys write linux, you can't make them do anything. they are untouchable and will do/say whatever the hell they want. linus especially - is a grown ass man and does this in person too, as is his prerogative. anyone see his github speech? he stands up in front of 300 people and calls them all idiots.

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Sarah Sharp is part of the people who "write linux" - she's the xHCI driver maintainer at Intel.

While this is a great contribution, and more than I have done for open source, this is a far cry from "writing linux". Also, it's her job at Intel.

if alan cox couldn't get linus to change, how the hell does she think she will?

i honestly don't get it.

I'm not sure how many people it would take for Linus to change his ways, but I'd guess that it'd take some kind of intervention, and that seems exceptionally unlikely.

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.

Do we have to beat you over the head with the "all progress depends on the unreasonable man." (or woman, in this case) quote?

Do note, it said unreasonable, not douche bag (man or woman).

you read something that i did not write.

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.

Do you have a link to this speech?

I think he means the git talk at google [1] where he defines a few things at the start, among them "wrong, stupid: people who disagree with linus" and states that therefore, during the talk, by definition everyone who disagrees with him is stupid and butt-ugly.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4Xp...

Which is the exact opposite of doing it in person though, it's being all cute and funny about it. Actually doing that in person would look and feel radically different.

i'm 100% certain linus is not being cute, or funny. he means it when he says certain people are stupid.

Compared to the stuff he types into his keyboard it's still lame, and being cute and funny in comparison.

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.

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