Linus on "acting professionally"
marc.info
marc.info
Aggression is not warranted in a professional environment; neither overt (a la LKML) or covert (passive). Lying is not warranted under any circumstance. Being professional means not calling people names.
All of this stuff is what you get taught in kindergarten, it's not rocket science. Mental abuse is no better than physical abuse, and given I don't buy that hitting developers with sticks makes them "better" somehow I'm also not going to buy into clue-by-four beatings being any better.
Also way to go to ignore all the other arguments he made, before talking about office politics, it seems like you just skipped to the end.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3977141&cid=442916...
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3977141&cid=442909...
To me Linus is kinda like Wagner, I do like and enjoy his work, but as a person he is not someone I'd aspire to emulate.
(Nitpick: Do you mean Richard Wagner or someone called Vagner I’ve never heard of?)
I am now poorer for the time wasted replying to your post.
Edit: Just saw your reply to the OP: "If she is dimwitted to a point that she doesn't understand even when it's explained, I'd try to find a new wife."
Words fail me.
Also the wife in question is a theoretical construct, not an actual human being, that was for purpose of mental experiment made 'extremely dumb'. He isn't saying his or any other wife/parter was dumb, he made a thought experiment to demonstrate his point. Try to not be so obtuse.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wagner#Racism_and_anti...
If she did that, I'd definitely say it is a stupid/bad idea because X, Y, Z and move along. She just lacks context/knowledge why it is a stupid idea. If she is dimwitted to a point that she doesn't understand even when it's explained, I'd try to find a new wife.
Note: meant Wagner, and it's fixed.
I feel sorry for her and you haven't even found her yet.
Precisely, but that is the for the person themselves to feel and not to be told. If you get off on telling people they are lesser beings than you then there is something intrinsically wrong with your impulse control; it's called learning, and the day the world makes that a shameful thing is the day we all return to the middle ages.
N.B, this was specifically related to he/she having to feel dumb for even thinking it. Doing something when you have no expertise in that field is an entirely different kettle of fish. It seems in this case he/she would have been insulted for contemplating the idea inside the boundaries of his/her own mind..
edit: hrm, that rather seems your point in linking them.
I'd agree there are degrees of someone being a dick. There is also the matter of it being done in different context, it's different to be a asshole in public is different that in semi-privacy of a mailing list.
Another thing to note, that both commenters didn't go into foreign language swear mode :) and called Linus a devil's cunthead. They pointed out he is behaving as douchebag.
If the response is 'context', then it should also be pointed out that we only ever see the slimmest speck of his emails from the list and we never see them in the context in which they're presented. As someone else in the thread mentioned, we don't see the many messages where he doesn't behave this way; we don't see the actual personality that is seen when working with him.
It's true we might miss some of the context by not being there, that said, from his previous discussions you can draw a lot of observation that help clarify the current context.
Point of the messages was that him acting "unprofessional" will actually cause the same behavior he is trying to avoid by acting "unprofessional".
The other comment spends the first half in character assassination and really gives us no particular reason to consider that author particularly versed in how to behave professionally.
The thing is, if you stop and actually read how Torvalds presents himself, it's not just spewing forth expletives. There is a lot of consideration and thought behind what he says. It's just that this hoopla erupts because occasionally an uptight person makes a complete meal of things by publicising one of these comments out of the greater context. It's pretty much textbook yellow journalism.
The things Linus mentions are what happens as a result of supposed "professionalism".
People are emotional, reactionary creatures with very different needs.
These people are kernel developers, not 4 year olds. If they commit code that is fucking stupid, they should be called fucking stupid for it. As was shown on a recent post - Linus reverted to swearing in his native tongue because English wasn't sufficiently rude enough for him, and those who let the fuckup slip through all admitted their fault and identified that they would take steps to ensure it didn't happen again.
In open source, the office is the mailing list. Life is tough. Say sorry and make sure it doesn't happen again. Move on - and outside the US, I think swearing is pretty common if you do something stupid - working environment or not. I don't think this means that we all have to adhere to US standards.
I'm guessing your co-workers knew you'd been chewed out but how much worse would you have felt (I guess plenty) and how much more would you have learned (I guess nothing) had your dressing down been in public?
Much of this isn't about some artificial standard for the sake of it, it's about getting the best out of people. Public beatings have been shown not to do that. If the OSS community wants to behave this way then it can but ultimately it's going to drive a bunch of people away, or cow them into not really speaking up for fear of retribution and as a result will likely miss out on valuable contributions.
There seems to be a thing here with a lot of people saying "I work like this and like it". That's fine but the worst mistake you can make with others is often assuming that everyone else is like you. a lot of management science is bullshit but alongside the nonsense there is actual quantitative research about how people behave and so on.
There is possibly a discussion to be had around whether programmers (or more strictly people with the potential to be good programmers as that's what you want to optimise for, rather than the people who are currently programmers) are typical but as a hypothesis I'd rather go with programmers behave broadly as other people do.
What is "it", exactly? Any public criticism? Public belittling (which is severely different from a proper dressing down)? Swearing? There's a lot mixed in here.
And does research conclusively establish a significantly different reaction to otherwise identical acts in public vs private?
> I'd rather go with programmers behave broadly as other people do.
Even if programmers behave broadly as other people do, that doesn't mean they'd have the same reaction to the same behavior in two very different scenarios.
Our dressing-downs[1] are as likely to come from our peers as our management. And even when they come from managers, we have a much different relationship with them. We are in positions of relative power and economic security, as well as positions of trust. A manager is more peer or patron than overlord, and we are more agent than minion. This is a very different dynamic than most jobs.
I question the relevance of any research on this that doesn't specifically target highly-skilled fields with economically-secure workers.
[1] Dressings down? Can you make bandages out of soft feathers?
Ultimately it depends on what you're trying to achieve when you're talking to someone. There might be occasions when being shamed in front of the team is the best thing for the person but I'd suggest that they're few and far between.
As a manager if I act angrily towards you then regardless of what you've done I'd suggest that I've both failed - yes you might have done something which has annoyed me but I've then responded by handling it badly. The best I can say at the end is that I didn't start it. The twice I've lost my temper publicly at a member of my team my overriding sense afterwards was that I should have handled the situation better. Certainly in neither case do I think what I did got the best from the person in question (one I think viewed the whole thing with complete indifference, the other was demotivated by it).
In terms of the specifics of the research, it's been a while since I looked at it (back in my days studying). I recall that public was generally a greater demotivator than private but I'm not aware of anything that's been done on different skill levels - would certainly be interested in that. My gut feel is that while there might be differences constructive engagement in private would still be the most productive way of handling it - I don't think programmers and other skilled workers are that different to the rest of the world. If anything I'd suggest they'd be more inclined to dislike anything involving anger directed at them - after all, they generally have the option to go elsewhere so why should they put up with it?
The comments you make about everything being out in the open are interesting. I can see if the manager or other berater is untrustworthy that this could be a thing, but if there are overall issues of trust of that type I think that how this sort of thing is handled is largely irrelevant in the face of that much larger problem.
You can't even trust yourself. You've "lost your temper" twice. Why won't you do it a third time? A fourth? A fifth?
Does it not occur to you that this is all just part of being human?
And yes, I've lost my temper twice and will probably do so again but as with those times when it has happened in the past I'll apologise, attempt to repair the damage and move on.
No-one needs to be perfect and unbiased, for the most part your flawed best with good intentions is plenty. If you find yourself working with people who don't have good intentions then maybe the level of suspicion is fair enough but personally I'd get the hell out of there rather than work in somewhere that poisonous - 20 years working has taught me that it's simply not necessary to put up with places like that and that there are plenty of alternatives.
I much prefer being publicly berated.
Perhaps you have never worked in a good office, on a good team where people respect each other.
These people are kernel developers, not 4 year olds. If they commit code that is fucking stupid, they should be called fucking stupid for it.
Why? It's rude and additionally it doesn't seem to achieve anything positive that can't be achieved more politely.
It saves time when you don't have to carefully structure each criticism in a compliment sandwich and so forth. It's understood in this environment that that's how the story goes - the excerpts people see of 'linus being rude again' are tut-tutted by a bunch of people who've never read a single other message on the kernel mailing list.
I was using the 'compliment sandwich' as a shorthand for reviewing all the commentary to make sure it's pleasant or polite. That stuff does take effort and time, particularly if you aren't intimately familiar with the other party and have to generalise it to the generic person. I've done a hell of a lot of support in my time and this is abundantly clear to me. There are even people who perform better when you swear around them, because they don't feel like they have to control their language.
Couched phrasing takes effort - and Torvalds is one of the few technocrats who still gets his hands dirty in the trenches.
The closest friend I'm with the more I swear. What I don't get is people awkwardly swearing in presence of people they just met. I see it as attempt to desperately get connection to other people.
Why are you apologizing?
I can only imagine only the most socially incompetent people would actually find it a major time-sink to say things civilly. You don't have to make a compliment sandwich, saying "Your kernel patch throws a bunch of warnings, what the fuck is this?" is hell of a lot better than "which one of you retards can't read the guidelines?"
The basis of civility is to avoid personal attacks when it's not about the person. This isn't about the person. You can be civil and still be pissed off.
The only reason being polite saves time is because someone is unpracticed at it.
This comment (and indeed your comment) are both polite and completely disagree. I spent a while thinking of how best to express my point, but none at all working out how to avoid being offensive.
But if it makes you feel better: fuck compliment sandwiches ;)
Politeness does not mean standing for incompetence.
Lying is dishonorable, counterproductive in context of multiple cooperating people, and a really bad idea overall, purely objectively. Swearing, linguistics-wise, is indeed a completely normal ("natural and ok") trait (present to some extent in individuals of all cultures, gender, professions etc., even in some higher animals) that is orthogonal to anyone's performance. How could you possibly equate these two is beyond me.
I'd say is a cultural thingie. Compared to other languages English has very few swear words/expressions, for example in my native language you could swear at someone by saying something like "fuck your mother's dead relatives" (it sounds way worse in original, trust me). If someone were to say that to my face my first instinct would be to see if I can beat him right there on the spot (and if yes, would I risk going to prison for hospitalizing him?) and if no then I'd think of swearing back with something even harsher (while looking for an escape route).
On the other hand everybody lies, that's why we have things like contracts etc, it's assumed that at some point or another we'll stop telling the truth.
When has Linus actually worked in an office? Would he really know what it's like?
AFAIK, he moved from Finland to USA in 1998 to work at Transmeta. He was already famous at that time, and presumably could dictate his working terms. I recall reading an interview that suggested he was mostly working from home on the Linux kernel already back then.
Maybe that's why his notion that "professionalism" equals neckties and backstabbing seems like a caricature out of a '90s TV show.
The algorithm might be stupid, that doesn't make the person stupid. Ad hominem attacks are a very poor way to defend your point and will result in people not wanting to work with you.
Saying "grow a thicker skin" won't make it better either.
Linus is a brilliant engineer, his people skills not so brilliant. But we all knew that already.
it's possible to be succint, harsh, and directly to the point without swearing or being abusive. for example, off the top of my head:
"stephen, this code is riddled with basic errors and is completely unacceptable. please fix a, b, and c immediately and know that if you make mistakes like this again, your contributions will no longer be welcome."
versus:
"stephen, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU??!?! seriously, a FUCKING JUNIOR DEV would not make mistakes like this. why are you wasting my time with this FUCKING BULLSHIT? FIX IT NOW OR YOU'RE FIRED!"
imagine in both cases the person writing to you has only a professional relationship (ie, is not a friend who has the type of relationship with you where the 2nd paragraph would be an establish, half-joking form of communication)
honest open criticism != rude dick
It takes a little more work, because you have to think carefully about your words and calm down, but that action itself makes
a) the criticism more useful b) creates a frame where the criticism is more likely to be acted on and leave no resentment
Also, I believe that apologizing is something we should do more often. As in "I don't apologize for my behavior" is not as good a path as "I'm sorry I blew up, but I did have a point".
(Edit: My experience includes Fortune 100 in consumer tech and finance)
the point is it's taken in a certain spirit, and you can't force people who don't know you well, or don't share that sensibility, to partake of that spirit.
even if you personally prefer that style, it's hard to argue that it's effective from a practical perspective. for the large majority of people, the first example is far more likely to actually get you your desired result than 2nd.
In this scenario Stephen has been hired to write code/produce something, I'll go all-Marxist on this and say he was hired to produce plus-value. He was not hired to be sworn at, no matter how good or bad his code/work might be, and this is why swearing directly at people is unprofessional.
As an aside, I'm surprised at the people who say that swearing to other people's face is "manly" (or something of the sorts). In the part of the world that I live if you swear someone directly in the face you'd better be prepared for a physical fight or worse.
You are trying to create uniformity and conformance, which is not in our nature. Some people are polite, others are not (Linus for example). The working environment of the kernel mailing list is public and subject to harsh language because it's run (rather successfully it could easily be concluded) with the philosophy that people should be able to express themselves.
"you are trying to create uniformity and conformance, but people are different. some people are kind and patient with their children, others are explosive and sometimes beat them. some of those children grow up to be very successful and hit their children. who are you to tell people how to raise their children?"
to be clear, i am not saying linus's swearing in an email is even the same league as child abuse, but the logical argument above and the one you are making is the same.
honestly, it just seems like a clever piece of rhetoric to justify treating people any way you please. it reminds me of the evangelical christians here who are against gay marriage, and argue that they are the victims now because they can no longer preach against homosexuality in peace, and lobby for laws against it, what with all the liberal media painting them as monsters and not respecting their rights to express their own religious beliefs
Actually, he swore in Finnish in that post, and as a Swedish-speaking Finn, Swedish, and not Finnish, is his native language.
http://www.muktware.com/news/2857/which-linus-torvalds%E2%80...
I understand the whole "you've obviously never ..." thing that people do to state that their experiences are not representative, but it just sounds dickish in your post. I think it's pretty obvious that the person you are replying to has worked in an office, and has had a good dose of reality.
My Finnish colleague seems to like it. I'm told shouting "Perkele!" is a great stress-reliever.
Why? Wouldn't you achieve the same thing by calling the commit fucking stupid? Why resort to personal attacks?
If someone commits code that is fucking stupid then by all means call the code fucking stupid. But then actually take the time to identify the cause for the mistake. Is that programmer following best practises? Are they being careless? Are they working on something they don't have the expertise for? Are they spread too thin? If you identify the problem you can try to fix it. Instead of abuse, you should be giving clear and direct instructions on how to not make mistakes like that ever again. If you call someone "fucking stupid" then you incorrectly identify the problem and, moreover, you're being abusive, which can be very harmful.
Calling someone stupid after he did something stupid is different than calling him that as a main point of his semiannual performance review.
This obviously doesn't hold true for all individuals, but Americans tend to prefer the "Let's all hold hands and sing kumbaya" type of social dynamic. "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything." Much emphasis is placed on not hurting anyone's feelings, and maintaining the appearance that everyone likes everyone else.
Northern Europeans, meanwhile, tend to prefer the "We're all adults here, so let's cut the bullshit and say exactly what we think." Being honest and genuine is more important than being liked.
This part, I find really significant: And hey, I don't actually think we've personally even had any problems. And I realize that you may react very strongly and get nervous about us having problems, but realistically, do you actually expect to like all the other kernel engineers? And equally importantly, not everybody has to like you, or necessarily think they have to be liked by you. OK?
That strikes me as a very Northern European view, that is not as likely to be shared by most Americans. It's just not how we're socialized in America. And too often, "professionalism" gets defined as "American style," while anything un-American is deemed unprofessional, which is not quite right.
I'm no shrinking violet. I got a good ass-chewing from time to time in the Navy and each time I deserved it. That said, you'd be surprised to hear that ass-chewing doesn't happen NEARLY as often as you'd expect it to in a hyper-aggressive life-or-death type world like the military.
I can't imagine anyone in the civilian world getting their panties bunched up enough to justify the kinds of shit I see from people who get their nose bent out of shape when someone screws up, but see it I do. Often, I think it's an over-reaction.
It's one thing to yell at someone who makes a mistake that might get people killed. It's another to flip out because it might make someone's browser run slower or crash.
YMMV.
Some of the coaches you're talking about display apoplectic aggression as a matter of routine. Linus is never genteel, but his serious rants are unusual. You just don't hear much about him the rest of the time, because most of what he says is completely uninteresting to non-kernel-devs. It seriously skews your perception.
The real danger here is that once you've developed the
habit of berating people who screw up, you'll continue to
do it when it's not really called for.
Leaving out the reasons would also be ok, but don't be surprised if this results in confusion and anger. (However, the abusive alternative to this will likely not help reducing the confusion or anger.)
"This work is bad because of reasons A, B, C."
Leaving out the reasons would also be ok, but don't expect other people to agree with you if you do that.
Being straightforward doesn't require one to be abusive.
Of course it was later followed up by telling him to go fuck himself but that's how things go.
https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/15/407
" I really fundamentally believe that being honest and open about your emotions about core/process is good. And because it's damn hard to read people over email, I think you need to be more honest and more open over email. I'm generally nicer in person. Not always."
The only thing worse than someone using a fallacy is someone calling out a fallacy that isn't there.
that describes pretty well what is happening in so called professional environments. I have been pissed up at people and told them in their face what I thought of them when they fucked something up for the 4th time in a row, and I was reprimanded for this several times. Office politics does not like honesty. It encourages fake politeness and you indeed end up with people talking in your back like women. This sucks bad and I applaud Linus for taking the stance of saying what needs to be said.
Call it rude or impolite, call it thoughtless or insulting, but don't call it unprofessional. If there's one thing that nobody can dispute, it's that Linus knows how to get shit done and knows how to run an effective team.
There's nothing stopping anyone from mounting a coup d'etat. Anyone can fork the kernel, build a team of developers and usurp Linus. They'll struggle to build that team, because Linus is deeply trusted with the stewardship of the kernel, in no small part because of his "unprofessional" behaviour.
It's quite easy for an open source project to just waddle around and start blindly accepting things random developers contribute with no real decision or filtering process (cough PHP). They may verify the code's not buggy or that it at least does something that could be of use to someone, but they generally don't care if it fits in with the overall design and goals of the project.
Having someone who has the complete vision in his head, who's also extremely technical and knows what changes are good and bad, is absolutely invaluable.
Forking code essentially gives you the ability to take everything, and then move it in your own new direction. You leave behind only the parts you thought were "bad" or unprofessional or whatever.
Yes it is. Saying you can just fork it is like saying you can just move yourself and all your family and friends to another country.
You might be able to move yourself but moving any significant amount of developers is in practise impossible.
So it's better to force that significant amount of developers to do your bidding? That sounds just a just a weee bit unreasonable, IMHO.
You're basically saying that you want the fruits of Linus's labor without Linus there to do it?
Perhaps you're saying that you can't take the community with you? That doesn't seem like a reasonable expectation. You can fork, and you can continue to pull from upstream, but you can't force people to use it.
I was not interested in contributing any of our work (mostly netfilter related) back to the core precisely because I have better things to do with my emotional energy than engage with the aggressively toxic personalities of LKML.
That's one of the joys of open source, of course, doing your own thing.
In contrast I had a much better experience contributing to Postfix and Dovecot, where the benevolent dictators did not feel the urge to spew pages of vitriol in response to a blunder when a neutrally worded admonishment would do.
I've heard of plenty of people who prefer one language over another because of the nicer community. Eventually that should mean that projects with friendly communities are more successful.
So you want to censor everyone who doesn't buy into your flowery child talk? Fuck that. Cursing is a perfectly fine means of setting emphasis and I sure as shitpissfuckcuntcocksuckermotherfuckertits am not going to surrender that just so some shithead I don't even care about can jack off to his or her little control fantasies.
You don't like that? I couldn't really give less of a fuck; You're supposed to be a tech person, write a few sloc to filter profanity out or something but don't get on my nerves with that shit.
And yes, that was offensive and I am fully aware of that. That was also exactly what I was going for.
I have to concede that abuse is never a good thing, but since you seem to be seeing profanity as a problem I'm not sure we could agree on what exactly constitutes an 'abuse'.
EDIT:
It was (correctly) pointed out that censoring communication was not mentioned or even necessarily implied in smtddr's comment so this might not apply to said comment. That said, this still reflects aptly what I think about censoring away profanity.
Swearing all the time is not equivalent to talking like an adult, despite what you might think.
People communicate in different ways (and with different "curse-densities") and that is completely fine. What isn't fine is trying to get everyone to conform to a certain way of communication that you personally think is agreeable.
Diversity is to be cherished, not frowned upon. It makes for a more interesting world, and I am not willing to lose that just to make my environment have a few less sharp edges.
I don't need nor am willing to be rolled up in bubble wrap for what somebody calls my "own safety", which then isn't even determined by myself.
If the effect of not censoring yourself in this regard is to work in a much less diverse environment, which side is going to give? Honest question.
And a good one, too. The honest answer is: I don't know. I think this is highly contextual. At least I can't make a generalized decision for that. If the "less diversity" bit for instance means incorporating a 'No Nazis'-rule then the choice might be clear while in other cases it might be much more nuanced. As a rule of thumb I am against limiting someone's freedom until there is no other way around it. I would for instance only vote for a 'No Nazis'-rule if there would be a real problem with Nazis without that particular rule.
If, however, we are still talking about the case of censoring out profanity, you know my opinion. The people who are filtered out (or constitute the "less diversity") are the sort of people who get offended by me making use of a basic freedom (the one of speech). I am not interested in meeting people like that - frankly I hope they stay as far away from me as fucking possible.
This is similar to the reason of why I am against anti-discrimination rules at hacker cons; They are liable to be abused at some point while not providing anything of worth.
The sort of abuse they are supposed to prevent are reason enough to throw someone out even without those rules. Any major abuse is reason enough to get thrown out of a hacker event, or really any event.
The argument I have heard a few times for anti-discrimination rules is that girls get hit on all the time. I was kind of flabbergasted when I first heard this. I mean I can understand that it gets on ones nerves, but kicking someone out of an event because they hit on somebody really is not the right thing to do. If you don't want to get hit on there's a plethora of ways to communicate that in a non-verbal fashion, like wearing a wedding ring or - less subtle - wearing a shirt that says "I don't want to get hit on" or something, you get the idea…
I can use profanity in a peaceful manner to set emphasis and if someone feels attacked, denounced or otherwise mistreated they can just talk to me. Seriously, I don't bite and if I see your point I will act accordingly. Even if you are offended by someones actions that doesn't mean that they are unyielding dogmatic assholes - Just give them the benefit of the doubt and try to reason with them. And if it works you might've just broadened your personal horizon, maybe even made a new friend.
You'd think a community consisting of some of the most intelligent people on this planet would manage to have a proper communication culture, but in many aspects we are clearly lacking. I hope for this to change and of course discussions like this are a great first step towards doing so.
This is interesting. My instinctive reaction to someone trying to censor me is pretty damn negative, and I can swear like a sailor. On the other hand, what you wrote reminded me of a super sweet, gentle guy that I worked with once who was just genuinely freaked out by my profane manner. From a different country, deeply religious, etc. etc. I found out from a third party that the guy was weirded out by the way some of us carried ourselves, since the guy was a gentleman and wouldn't/couldn't say anything.
Of course I started behaving more carefully around him, and a little more carefully in general. He was always nice to me and a very, very skilled worker, someone I respected, so it would have seemed churlish to me to do otherwise.
> If you don't want to get hit on there's a plethora of ways to communicate that in a non-verbal fashion, like wearing a wedding ring or - less subtle - wearing a shirt that says "I don't want to get hit on" or something, you get the idea…
I believe the onus is entirely on the guy who is trying to be charming (if that's what we're talking about, as opposed to simple catcalling sorts of harassment) to notice when the object of his wit does not reciprocate with a smile and a kind word and to move the fuck on before his behavior gets creepy. I suppose I'm agreeing with you, as not smiling is a pretty clear form of communication - no rings or shirts or pepper spray are required.
I'm not sure what we should do with the guys who aren't clever enough to pick up on such signals but I'm open to a Soylent Green sort of option. (attending the average hacker event seems like a punishment all its own to me, so I'm useless for envisioning rules for something like that. Punish them by making them attend more hacker events?)
This, I believe, is the wrong way to go about it. To me this seems like some sort of culture clash and in my opinion staying silent is the wrong way to go about this.
If I notice someone getting offended by my profanity I just tell them that they were not the target of that profanity and that I have no 'beef' with them. I haven't ever met anyone with whom this was a problem. I usually make a pretty good case for open communication, depending on sobriety of course. ;)
I believe the onus is entirely on the guy who is trying to be charming (if that's what we're talking about, as opposed to simple catcalling sorts of harassment) to notice when the object of his wit does not reciprocate with a smile and a kind word and to move the fuck on before his behavior gets creepy. I suppose I'm agreeing with you, as not smiling is a pretty clear form of communication - no rings or shirts or pepper spray are required.
I think the point of the "getting hit on all the time sucks"-argument for anti-discrimination rules was that even if all the guys who hit on a girl stop it after (instantly) seeing that she isn't interested it would still be a lot of input which "sucks". So the case many people skeptic of anti-discriminatory rules saw was that a girl gets hit on all the time and even if they all do so in a civil manner, the one unlucky guy who represents the 'final straw' to that girl then gets kicked out. The examples I put up for showing that you're not interesting were aimed at communicating that before you get hit on. A rough analogue for this might be a spam filter - You don't have to manually decide whether or not something is spam by reading it, you don't have to read it in the first place. :P
Harassment is obviously a reason to warn somebody or - if they repeatedly harass someone - kick them out of the event. That said, I think 'catcalling' is very nuanced, couples or people who know each other for $random_reason can catcall each other in play and fun, you can also do it in a sarcastic/parodic fashion etc. The only thing I'd generalize about catcalling is that you probably shouldn't do it to someone you don't know (and of course not to someone of whom you know that they don't like it).
But in general I think pretty much everything I said here can be succinctly shortened to "Be merry, have fun and if you feel there's a problem - talk about it - just don't do it behind someone's back."
I'm perfectly capable of expressing everything I might express with profanity, without profanity. I'm now conscious of the fact that I'm a lot more persuasive if I take half a second to edit myself. The whole thing was a valuable learning experience.
> I think 'catcalling' is very nuanced
Interesting. I'd only ever use the word to describe the kind of rude behavior that happens between strangers on the street.
> the one unlucky guy who represents the 'final straw' to that girl then gets kicked out.
I wonder. The implication is that the guy said something which in isolation would have been completely within the bounds of good taste and then got kicked out. I bet this never, ever happens.
> But in general I think pretty much everything I said here can be succinctly shortened to "Be merry, have fun and if you feel there's a problem - talk about it - just don't do it behind someone's back."
That seems well-intentioned but entirely utopian to me.
Of course, from a social engineering standpoint that makes complete sense. But the point is that around my peers I don't need to edit myself; I do when I have to (I for instance swear a bit less in the presence of my boss), but I always take it with a grain of salt. I don't want to edit myself, I like being free in that sense and think that freedom of speech is something that first and foremost starts with yourself.
Interesting. I'd only ever use the word to describe the kind of rude behavior that happens between strangers on the street.
Might be, I'm not a native speaker so what I'm thinking about might still fit under the label of flirting, but I can't really say that I know the terminology 'normal' people use to talk about social interaction.
I bet this never, ever happens.
I think it's pretty unlikely, but possible. The point was that while (at least from my perspective) anti-discrimination rules don't do anything to enable a safe environment for minorities there is the potential for abuse. In my eyes those rules are snake oil, I think the TSA might be a somewhat fitting analogy if you think about their efficiency.
That seems well-intentioned but entirely utopian to me.
Of course it is, but that's not reason not to use it as a guideline and strive for its implementation. If you don't try, you'll never get there. You can probably already find multiple examples of me violating this guideline in this thread, but that doesn't stop me from at least trying to make the way I communicate better. :)
I generally associate overuse of profanity with laziness in word selection, but that's just me.
I agree with you on overuse. The only times where profanity has any impact on me is when someone who doesn't normally use profanity uses it for emphasis.
Do you have one single way of expressing yourself? Do you use profanity 100% of the time? Do you automatically reject all feedback on how you express yourself? ... On how you write code? ... Or how you interact with your colleagues?
Because, from your comment, that's how you come across.
All feedback can be made to be useful, even if you end up filtering it out early.
True that, I will try to get a bit less triggerable about this.
Do you have one single way of expressing yourself? Do you use profanity 100% of the time? Do you automatically reject all feedback on how you express yourself? ... On how you write code? ... Or how you interact with your colleagues?
No, of course not. I have however come into contact with quite a few people who tried to censor me before, that might be the reason why I'm so easily "triggerable" with this.
I'm just getting a bit jittery whenever someone tries to regulate free speech.
If you think I'm an asshole you are hereby invited to meet me at the OHM in a few weeks and yell at me. :)
This may be a guy thing, and a clash in behaviour of the sexes. Guys are more prone to bursts of aggressiveness, gals more adept of moderate long term aggressive stances. Which one is more difficult to handle is largely a matter of opinion. Quick bursts are automatically solved immediately, leaving bruised egos, long term allows more time to manage the underlying reason. Just because Linus' stance is flashy does not make it wrong.
Unless you posit that aggression is never warranted. Then, we'll have to disagree. Aggression is a normal behaviour, artificial suppression leads to non healthy alternatives; it's better to lay problems out in the open and fix them than to sweep them under the politically correct rug.
I'm sure there's no perfect dividing line between non-aggressive/aggressive. But it's generally clear when something is nearer the extremes.
"Alice, that's completely wrong because X, this code needs to be rewritten from scratch following principle Y." "Bob, what is this retarded shit? You stupid fool, go RTFM and do it again."
Fortunately for me, I'm in a position to choose exactly who I work with. (Unlike perhaps this Sarah is.)
I recently witnessed some programmer going to town, blasting out a supply cabinet. Hurling rage and profane insults at a supply cabinet just seems... uncalled for, to me. My personal evaluation is that the guy needs to learn to not let little things bother him so much. Though I doubt the supply cabinet was offended.
[edited the obvious typo]
[1] Of course, that's not to say that my brothers are unintelligent (they're very bright). However, one of the most important life skills I learned in public school was learning how to get along with those "pleasant idiots," as you put it.
[2] And I'm not disagreeing that kernel dev requires a more authoritative leadership style than most pursuits, but it seemed that this conversation had dropped into speaking in generalities about life.
However, don't conflate "tech type" with "high IQ/intelligence." The tech industry has the same percentage of idiots as any other, and our idiots aren't any smarter than those others' idiots just because they can scratch out a chunk of python or haskell or whatever.
It seems clear to me that you don't have contact with lots of women. Do you?.
It seems to me you are idealizing what you don't know about.
Profanity was not their forte(recent generations in some sectors could compete with men), but abusive speech is. They could be formidable verbal aggressors, specially between them.
The strongest verbal abusers I know all are women.
I Know a woman that was so socked that his father slapped her once, but now she is so verbal abusive with her children. I have seen it, and certainly if I were one of her children I would prefer a slap to this psychological pressure.
At lunch I said, "That's a good fucking burger." Female coworker says, "Goddamn right it is." This doesn't have anything to do with gender - it's about culture. Some people can handle profanity in the work place. The rest can fuck off. </joke> The rest can get a job somewhere more professional.
Linus is leading. So challenge his leadership, follow the man, or get out of his way.
Yes. The discussion shouldn't even be taking place. It is a waste of time. That's why the parent qualified Linus as the leader of one of the most important human endeavors of the last century.
Most project managers do not behave like Linus. There's a whole world full of people who "act professionally." Linus is not one of them, and contrary to some of hand-wringing I've seen in this thread he is not inspiring hordes of foul-mouthed abusive managers to go out and oppress poor developers.
How quickly people forget the Polio vaccine. I don't think Linux qualifies in the top 10, and hyperbole doesn't really help the conversation.
Is that so? The issue is manners on a mailing list. Qualifying Linux as a top-10, top-100, or top-1000 accomplishment or whatever definitely seems like quibbling when we're comparing it to a complaint that won't even be a historical footnote.
Yes, Linux has remarkable importance mostly because its installed base (IMHO it doesn't offer any innovation from an OS perspective, other that being stable enough and free)
However, that doesn't give Linus a free card to be abusive and rude. Yes, not being polite and being insulting is indeed being unprofessional, there are ways to say things and in most cases insults is the wrong path.
"If there's one thing that nobody can dispute, it's that Linus knows how to get shit done"
Yeah, Romans and Egyptians knew how to get shit done too, but we call that slavery in these days, so it is not precisely a good thing.
I am yet to see him abusing anyone. Verbal abuse mentioned is just swearing in aggressive tone of voice. How the word abuse got attached to expressing being pissed off is a mystery to me but I think it involves american lawyers.
No, he doesn't. If your boss or your client would talk to you in that tone you would call it verbal abuse. There is no such thing as a jerk free card, you can always be one but that doesn't mean is excusable.
"I am yet to see him abusing anyone. Verbal abuse mentioned is just swearing in aggressive tone of voice."
This is not the first time that we see this kind of emails from Linus so it is not exactly a new thing. I don't know where are you from that this is considered OK. I am a Venezuelan living in Canada and in both countries this is considered abusive, so it is not only in USA.
Are you referring to the email we just read? Because I find nothing at all offensive or inappropriate about it. A forceful dressing down to be sure, but not disrespectful.
I think this line is important:
I'm not polite, and I get upset easily but generally don't hold a grudge
If my client was rude and I wasn't ok with him I'd stop responding to him. That's the beauty of freelancing. You don't have to work for people whoose behavior doesn't suit you.
In my opinion swearing doesn't make you a jerk but jerks don't get free pass. They offend some people and get less respect and cooperation from them. That's the social price. No law necessary.
Abuse at workplace is much wider subject. First thing is that there has to be relation of power. Linus has no power over people who he swears at. They can freely choose to never interact with Linus again at any point in time at no loss to themseves or their loved ones. Heck, they can even take all the stuff Linus did, copy it and work on that instead.
It may look like masochism, but people who work with a "benevolent dictator" know what they are in for. We don't need to be "protected" and if you don't like it, just don't come, the same way I'm not going to play with soccer players because I don't play soccer.
From Dictionary.com, a boss is:
3. a person who makes decisions, exercises authority, dominates, etc.: My grandfather was the boss in his family.
So, for the people who is working on the linux kernel project, Linus is indeed their boss.
Anyone who works with Linus does so freely and can stop at any time they choose.
Furthermore, applying today's morale standards to civilizations thousands of years old doesn't strengthen your point as well as you think it does.
People are literally sitting around bitching and moaning that they can't play with a local, volunteer-staffed sunday afternoon basketball league because they don't like the people doing the volunteer staffing and organization.
You have absolutely NO right to demand that volunteer organizations began, ran, and maintained by other people change their behavior to suit you. The only time there is any duty created towards you is when (a) you are absolutely dependent on them for something, by their own doing, (b) they are forcing you to interact with such folks, (c) various other versions of coercion.
You do not get to dictate the behavior of every freely-assembled group of people which takes no action to coerce you to join them. You don't get to dictate the behavior of every group of people you might conceivably want to join.
This is some of the most entitled whining I've ever seen on HN.
No, I didn't. OP implied that because Linus knows how to get things done his behaviour is excusable, then I gave a counter-example in which that statement is false (at least in my opinion, there exists people who believe in slavery)
>"You have absolutely NO right to demand that volunteer organizations began, ran, and maintained by other people change their behavior to suit you."
"I" have no right to demand that (and that's the reason why I didn't). However, email's author has the right to ask for respect if he is feeling offended by his lead. Your phrase seems to imply that because is a volunteer group is OK if his leader is abusing, but for the people affected is actually worse because they are giving up their time and they are being offended by the project lead.
>"This is some of the most entitled whining I've ever seen on HN."
Well apparently if you don't like something you are free to go away, that was your argument right? In any case I think whining is acceptable in a discussion (which I think is this part of the site about but you are free to prove me wrong)
It beggars disbelief that some posters here can't see that torvald's insults add noise to his critiques. He states the issue, then ads in a bunch of pointless aggression. It seems like being honest succinct and to the point is most efficient. If your undies are truly in a bunch, you could add a comment at the end along those lines.
Some people link Job's success to his attitude. But his attitude didn't make him successful, it was his vision and ability to convince people.
That said, I think Linus is fairly professional in the core of his communication. Just because you swear doesn't mean that the message you're passing along isn't.
Yeah, he's earned a free pass to be a dick. That's how it works, right?
No. Let's have just a modicum of perspective. That's not to belittle Torvald's achievement or contribution to computer science, but on the scale of importance generally it's way down the list.
Also, while I admire what he's done, let's lay off the hyperbole for a bit. "..one of the most important human endeavours of the last hundred years"? Really? That's laying it on a bit thick there. But hey, you're entitled to your opinion too.
Or on a more serious note:
Sarah's involvement with the project gives her the right to voice her opinion. If people work together on an open source project and have a disagreement over management styles and professional conduct, this disagreement needs to be addressed instead of ignored.
In addition to the discussion on the mailing list, there will apparently be a meeting in meat-space as well that's going to involve cookies and brownies of questionable origin, so they are dealing with it.
Nothing more to see here, and the internet at large can move along - rallying in support of a the semi-mystical Linus that cannot do wrong is misguided and unnecessary - I'm confident he's able to fight his own fights...
There are some extremely dedicated people who are prepared to put up with his tantrums to work on the kernel. I'm not sure that's the same thing as knowing how to run an effective team. He's at the top of a hierarchy but he doesn't run most of the activities in it, he doesn't even interact in a meaningful way with most of the people in it.
What are examples of Linus not interacting "in a meaningful way with most of the people in it"?
And because of that, it's entirely possible to be at the head of an organisation made up, primarily, of far better people than yourself.
Heck, it's highly probable that's going to happen if you fall far beneath the average in social skills and have significant leverage along some other axis. Nice people will generally refuse to work with an arsehole - but every now and then someone will, (maybe because they have thicker skin than the average, or value your leverage more, or come in for less of your flak.) So, the people who are nice and will, for whatever reason, put up with you tend to end up filling those positions because no-one else can do so effectively. If they're nasty, then no-one will be more likely to work with them than they are to work with you and the problem recurs one level down - except this time you need to find people'll who'll work with five (or whatever the size of your immediate project team is) arseholes rather than one to make the project work.
This all, of course, depends on the alternatives that the people at the base of the hierarchy have. In situations where the people can't go elsewhere it often seems to be very much a case of, 'You'll take it and like it, if you know what's good for you.'
Does any of this mean Linus is bad at running teams? No. But it does mean that he's not necessarily any good at it just because the system's giving reasonable output. The naive model of a hierarchy as something in which all the influence flows from the top down is nonsense.
If I gave examples of other very successful open source projects in which the project maintainers act courteously, would you change your mind?
Because he's a rock star who continuously proves it with results, Linus can say and do whatever he wants. He's earned it, and most people will not only tolerate his abrasiveness, but they'll accept it.
Many people who might be very good at what they do but are not rock stars think they can act like Linus, Crockford, DHH or [insert grumpy tech icon here]. Personally, I think that's a mistake, because "pretend rock stars" just end up being regarded as overrated tools.
Seriously?
He did not invent Unix, more like wrote a famous flavor of it.
Someone like Dennis Ritchie would get the credit for that not Linus.
Just look at this message: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1TUvG3J...
There is no justification for this kind of behaviour. If anybody else behaved this way, they would be sent to a psychiatrist. But apparently since it's Linus Torvalds, he's just being a little "harsh" and that's necessary to get his point across.
Why is it that so many people demanding politeness of Torvalds can't live by their own rules? Perhaps what Torvalds is saying is true, that people will find ways around the 'false rules'.
I meant to express my frustration how the community often accepts socially inacceptable behaviour from accomplished people.
When "normal" people fall into a rage, we tell them to learn coping with their anger. If they keep yelling angrily at people, we might even suggest they see a psychiatrist. Not as an insult, but because we sincerely believe that they could maybe learn some coping strategies to get along better with other people.
But for some people the rules are different. When someone complains that Steve Jobs verbally abused his employees, or when someone complains that Linus Torvalds uses unnecessary profanity, a lot of people start to justify this behaviour. They claim it is necessary for their success, etc.
I remember one of this 'Linus Swore!' threads on HN a while back, linking to a comment of Torvalds' that had little in it but anger... presented out of context. I went back and had a look, and it was in a bug thread where it was around comment 120. Up to that point, most of his comments (about 10% of the thread) were informative and trying to explain the issue to the recipient of his eventual ire, who obstinately refused to give way. That Torvalds had spent a dozen patient comments was not advertised... only the one with his final anger.
This is why these threads fire passion in me despite not being a kernel dev myself, because there is clear and constant misrepresentation of who he is and how he operates.
But what makes me sad is that when he does snap, there's a large number of people who come and justify his behaviour. People don't say "You are misrepresenting him!". People say "He gave so much to us. He has the right to behave this way."
You think Linus is mental. You can't massage it out to be non derogatory unless you give up the content.
The type of behavior that Linus is railing against here is the politically correct culture of insipid office politics, forced politeness, and concealing the true meaning of communications in order to make the communication a more effective tool of political manipulation.
this encourages duplicity, causes people to become disengaged from the work and obsessed with their political relationship to their coworkers, and it breeds long lasting unacknowledged and unforgiven grudges. its a horror show. but you consider it "socially acceptable" because it matches your standard of politeness for some reason.
Does anyone familiar with it think the Linux kernel development community has successfully avoided all that? Not Linus himself, but the community he leads and whose norms he helps set?
There's a happy middle ground between being rude and playing insipid office politics. It's called politeness and doesn't have to make communications less effective or less honest.
It is tedious when people keep saying that "avoiding sugar coating" means "be rude".
It is fine to avoid sugar coating something. It's not fine to be rude.
> such a bad error that you wish them to hear your deep concern/annoyance
There are many ways to express deep concern or annoyance without being rude, and without sugar coating something.
"It is very frustrating to me that I have to check so much of your work. Please take extra-special care next time you commit something. Here are the errors you've made so far. This has involved a lot of extra work, and has distracted me from doing other work. This is not the first time you've made these simple mistakes. We appreciate your effort, but it might be better if you worked on $OTHER_THING rather than $THIS_THING until you understand our requirements."
That is professional, harsh, true, constructive, and gets stuff done. It's not sugar coated. It's also not rude.
_This_ is the problem. We're all engineers here, right? We appreciate that swearing in such a fashion is a concrete implementation of an abstract concept. The abstract concept of scorn or vehement disagreement. It just so happens your implementation was a little off before:
"Apparently I wasn't careful enough in my wording"
... but even if you tidy it up, its still the same abstract.
This post more or less proves his entire point. I can wander around in a professional capacity and utterly slaughter people with fancy sounding words because my implementation of scorn is _very_ sly when I'm in enterprise. Yours is IDENTICAL.
> socially inacceptable > fall into a rage > yelling angrily > see a psychiatrist > Not as an insult > learn some coping strategies > get along better with other people
That is all 100% unadulterated scorn. It's incredibly, incredibly personally _offensive_..... but your implementation is sly so it's acceptable in a "professional" environment.
Personally I prefer Linus's implementation as its more straight-forward and its easier to see what he's thinking making it more clear how he feels if one were to work together with him.
The thing is, the kernel mailing list being in the open makes it so we see conversations like this, but they should be seen as the equivalent of a private conversation, because that's what they really are.
Being told what you did was moronic is very different to being told you are a moron.
Linus is rude, not abusive. There is a difference.
If you perform this text in a "professional" manner then you will completely lose the correct tone of the message, which is: DON'T FUCKING DO THAT.
Psychiatrist? Bully? He's not punching this person in the face he's teaching them a very hard lesson on the correct attitude of a kernal maintainer.
> Mauro, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Okay, so he tells Mauro to stop talking because he apparently thinks that what Mauro was saying is wrong. To make very sure that what he wrote is read, he puts in fancy caps and some light swearing, which, however, is not directed at anyone in particular. A more polite version of this would have been ‘No.’, but I don’t see any bullying/abuse.
> It's a bug alright - in the kernel. How long have you been a maintainer? And you still haven't learnt the first rule of kernel maintenance?
It appears that this guy violated some rather important rule of kernel development which he should have known given his experience. Again, no name-calling or directed swearing whatsoever, however. Again, a more polite version could be ‘We don’t break userspace, and you know that.’, which doesn’t look particularly different to me.
> If a change results in user programs breaking, it's a bug in the kernel. We never EVER blame the user programs. How hard can this be to understand?
I would wager the guess that similar problems pop up from time to time and Linus is getting tired of seeing them all the time, hence his question. Again, no name-calling at all, also no abuse, but a (justified, though maybe slightly aggressive) question.
> [technical details]
> Shut up, Mauro. And I don't _ever_ want to hear that kind of obvious garbage and idiocy from a kernel maintainer again. Seriously.
Again, no name-calling of the maintainer, but only an assessment of what he wrote, which, to Linus, appears very wrong. Again, more politely, this would have been ‘No.’
> […] And you've shown yourself to not be competent in this issue
This is the first personal ‘attack’, however, it is still only aimed at the competence rather than person, and if the above holds true, is yet again entirely justified. Is this the line with which you had a problem?
Linus then goes on to explain again why this particular idea was ‘TOTAL CRAP’, with some more colourful adjectives regarding the patch. Again, no abuse.
> The fact that you then try to make excuses for breaking user space, and blaming some external program that used to work, is just shameful. It's not how we work.
This could be interpreted as somewhat personal, though it likely only means ‘I expected better and am disappointed in you’.
> Fix your f*cking "compliance tool", because it is obviously broken. And fix your approach to kernel programming.
Note that the ‘fucking’ is for the ‘compliance tool’, which apparently is broken; the comment regarding kernel programming is again directed at their competence rather than person, so I don’t see any particular abuse there, either.
The remaining question is then, why didn’t Linus just write something along the lines of ‘No. / Don’t break userspace. / No. / No.’? Likely because then someone would have called him out on not going into details or because they got the same email regarding three small mistakes and a question and now don’t know whether this issue is a similar ‘small mistake’ or something more problematic.
That, of course, doesn’t mean I want others not to swear, not everyone has to behave exactly like me for me to be happy :)
The fact that you managed to describe "SHUT THE FUCK UP" as a slightly less polite version of "No." leads me to believe that this theory is quite plausible.
Be Impeccable With Your Words
Don't Take Anything Personally
Don't Make Assumptions
Always Do Your Best
This is from an excellent book called, "The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom" by Don Ruiz.
We could all do with a lot more of number two, don't take anything personally.
This is really a Postel's Law situation. Yes, your life will be improved if you can receive bad behavior and not take it personally. But it would be a shitty world to live in if this burden was only on recipients. The only robust way to maintain a worthwhile society is to expect, in the general case, that adults will have control of their impulses. Enabling this kind of behavior from celebrities is a loophole we might try harder to close, but fortunately, most of us don't have to deal with celebrities.
I can't control what kinds of behavior that others will tolerate, and I won't lose sleep over the existence of name-calling among adults in the world, but there's no way I'd keep a job where I was treated that way, let alone continue to volunteer my time in that situation.
Being impeccable with your word takes the "burden" off of the recipient, which of course is the first agreement.
This is the start of the thread. It is pretty obvious that no one is being serious about actual violence. It's just banter. Harmless (and not at all unhealty) banter.
The type of communication in the LKML has always been straight to the point and without unnecessary diplomacy. Sometimes it reads as assertiveness, sometimes it reads as rudeness. The point is that it works.
Every community has its "rules". Those rules are made by its members, all its members. If you disagree, act differently. If you are right and the others are wrong, they will follow you.
Asking for "professional behavior" when others are just acting normally is whining for politically correctness, which is pretty annoying and a sure way to not change anything.
And a context that scares people off is not one that I would say "works".
This is not about grinding newcomers to the LKML, this is about the type of communication between people that have known each other for quite some time, and are well aware of each other's technical "sensibilities".
True, the LKML is also known to be a bit harsh to newcomers. But only in a sense that newcomers are often unaware of the high technical standards that the kernel abides to, and often resent the level of criticism or suggestions for change that they receive.
It does not matter that he does this to people he knows well and perhaps can even handle this kind of verbal abuse. He does this publicly to the entire world which is not acceptable in my book.
Linus really has only a few tools at hand to restrict otherwise almost unlimited access he is providing. Instead of usual secretaries filtering and rationing access, he has to be blunt whenever he encounters inconsiderate time wasting. Like he said previously, occasional swearing shortens the e-mail queue. If Linus resorted to hand holding he would never get anything else done, because there is virtually endless demand for it.
Some of the most offensive put-downs come as faint praise from people who are just so convinced that they're always reasonable to the nth degree. I'd rather someone come out flailing so I can defend myself and my work, with both of us being wrong (and open about it) from time to time so it's not something unusual or noteworthy.
Some people call this being transparent. Let people see what you really feel, and let them be sure that when they see your approval, they can be damn sure you are really approving and not just faking it.
Now, there is a difference between being transparent or honest and being aggressive or rude, and I don't approve of the latter. But that interpretation depends on the people involved and their relationship: what may be considered rude by a third party or someone from a different culture, may be considered normal and acceptable by the ones involved.
If you would take offense by something that you say/said to others, they you are being rude. Otherwise, you are being honest. Pretty simple rule.
But sometimes people are just so used to politically correct (faked) behavior that they take transparency for rudeness, and honesty for impoliteness.
Once you put some practice in, you can even do it with the same level of brevity as a immature tirade. I have immense respect for Linus and his accomplishments, but he frankly doesn't deserve a medal or apologetics for his refusal to increase his interpersonal intelligence. There is a higher level of humanity to aspire to than yelling at one another like cavemen OR Machiavellian passive-aggressive faux-politeness.
When I taught high school in Baltimore, I taught a lot of students whose most basic frame for interpersonal interaction was might-makes-right yelling and cursing. One of my goals was to demonstrate that no matter what, it's possible to conduct yourself without devolving to that level. It admittedly made it difficult for me to get my points across sometimes, but on the whole, I think I taught my students a very valuable lesson--that there is an alternative. In the end, there was a certain level on which my students always trusted me to treat them with human respect.
I expect more from a professional than a high school student. Being "politically incorrect" can make it easier to express your emotions, but it can also cause deeply held long-term resentments that manifest in unpredictable and damaging ways. Crying foul about political correctness is just making excuses about refusing to put in the effort to see things from others' points of view. And it also refuses to acknowledge that you yourself have your hot buttons that will set you off as well. And when emotional buttons are getting pressed, intellectual messages are getting lost.
Faux-politeness is exactly what Linus is criticising here and he definitely doesn't engage in it. And there is no evidence of him yelling like a caveman at this person. Are you referring to some other example? I'd like to see that. The only time I've seen him yelling and fully throttling someone is when they appear to really need a kick in the ass (multiple horrific offenses).
And when I talk about behaving like a caveman, I should be clear that I'm generalizing the behavior he's trying to legitimize. I don't claim to have an in depth knowledge of his behavior outside of the handful of times things he's written have popped up here or on Slashdot.
For all I know, these are isolated incidents. But even if that's the case, I think it's behavior he should be working on improving, instead of rationalizing. Whether it's coming from him, Steve Jobs, the former Rutgers basketball coach, or whoever else, I simply don't believe that being rude or bullying is optimal or morally acceptable. And I'm not some softie hippie who thinks we should all argue with kid gloves. It's quite possible to be severe and explicit with your thoughts, without being insulting, either to the person or their work.
Why? There are plenty of things that people can work toward improving. He doesn't see his behaviour as something that requires improvement.
You think rudeness is morally unacceptable. He doesn't. You are free to disagree and never work with him if you so choose. But you can't legitimately claim authority on the better way based solely on personal opinion.
If he had to "work for a living," ie: work in a job he needed, rather than a job he wanted, he would likely have had a job which enforced behavioral norms. He probably wouldn't have been as happy, but he likely would more polite.
One of the things schools do is to socialize us to maintain civility. This only works for some people. It's clear to me that Linus is rather incapable of realizing he's being a douche, and even if he does realize it, he's not interested in changing for other people. And since it's Linus' sandbox, you either deal with it or go home.
However, the main point of his argument is valid. People are different and we should align ourselves with people that support our preferred way of working. If you can't work with Linus directly because he's a douche, then you better find an insulating support structure, or find another project.
You talk about being 'incapable of realising' - perhaps review your own comment.
Calling someone a douche isn't constructive criticism. And there's a difference between attacking a person and attacking the actions - and look at what Torvalds does. Even his famous "shut the fuck up Mauro" comment is telling Mauro that his behaviour is inappropriate. He's not saying 'Mauro, you are a douche' directly insulting the guy, he's saying "I'm angry with you because you're breaking our tenets", talking about his actions and behaviour, and he even finishes up with expecting Mauro to fix the technical issue - a tacit acknowledgment of capability.
Of course some people don't care about that. People don't fix things they don't feel are broken.
You're acting in self-centered, antagonistic manner that is aggravating the relationship.
Similarly, if someone thinks being called a "jerk" is an insult devoid of constructive criticism, then they're likely either intentionally obdurate or they lack the self-awareness to identify their failings.
I'm perfectly aware of my ability to be a douche. I just choose who to be a jerk to. Strangers on the internet: possibly; colleagues I work with: not so much.
It's either that, or you don't actually understand what constructive criticism is.
If Linus actually read my HN comment and (a) was offended and (b) wanted constructive criticism, he would see that I believe he is poorly socialized for working in a certain (rather popular) type of work environment. That seems to me pretty constructive. Linus would not be suited for a job in diplomacy, or any other type of relationship-intensive enterprise.
Now, if I just said "Linus is a douche," I'd give you your point.
I already regret starting this up again, because you seem to be committed to your point. But WTF, I had 10 minutes to kill before I pick up my kid.
Not if you go by the dictionary definitions. By what definition is any form of criticism an insult?
I don't have a problem with his attitude. I wouldn't like working with him, but I at least accept it.
Say 'Sarah Sharp' was hired by her company as a kernel developer. She knows that, if she makes a commit and Linus doesn't like it, he will write up what she has done like it was terrible (rather than slightly careless, or even just different from how he'd do it), and her boss will doubt her competence. Twice, three times, appears on google when he searches for her name... maybe she'll need a new employer...
So Sarah can either throw away her Linux expertise, and go work on BSD for way less money, or live in fear of Linus. Personally, I don't like living in fear. But presumably, she likes renting a house for her kids to live in. So there is nothing she can do except wake up in the night, unable to sleep until she checks the mailing list one last time.
I'm sure Linus doesn't care if she cusses at him. His worst case isn't homelessness.
You are suggesting that getting a shake down from Linus is a bad thing. Well, only if you have no arguments of your own to stand upon. Otherwise, it benefits you to even have an argument with Linus (even if you end up on the wrong side - which isn't guaranteed to always be the case).
In hindsight yeah. The catastrophic 'could be homeless' stuff was deliberate, and I thought it was a good idea at the time, but it's not realistic.
In tech, things are made by teams, and some people have a lot of power over others. If the others are young, they might be more vulnerable because they would find it harder to up and get work elsewhere, and because they haven't developed belief in their skills yet.
I don't really care about Linus and Sarah. But having been on the wrong end of a dysfunctional senior the odd time, stopping bullying in the workplace is important for productivity and making going to work a nice thing.
Some quotes I liked:
So as far as I'm concerned, the discussion is about "how to work together DESPITE people being different". Not about trying to make everybody please each other.
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.
Not shouting people down is good because it means that people who are more reserved but who have valuable things to add get their say.
Not calling people stupid is good because generally people working on a project such as this aren't stupid and you're missing a chance to find out what really went wrong (misunderstanding, miscommunication or whatever).
Even if what they have said IS stupid, not abusing people for mistakes is good because abuse is a sub-optimal way of teaching.
Yes modern organisations have taken much of this too far and ended up as insincere, inefficient behemoths, but some of the standards within the community seems to be throwing the baby out with the bath water and taking almost gleeful pride in doing so.
And I'd always prefer a competent asshole boss to a friendly guy that doesn't know how to do his job.
Personally, I think too much niceness and, by extension, political correctness is bad for honesty, truth, effectiveness and, ultimately, for culture. The culture in the office and the culture as a whole.
We shouldn't expect to go through life with everyone being nice all the time. It's not realistic. Tough love is good. I don't want to live in an environment of friendly bullshit.
And thus I am happy that Linus is the way he is. A very accomplished man that doesn't care about your precious political correctness.
(I assume Steve Jobs was similar in that regard.)
I'd rather have my feelings hurt in exchange for an honest
opinion than to hear worthless words that sound nice.
And I'd always prefer a competent asshole boss to a friendly
guy that doesn't know how to do his job.
IMO it's important that a person can position themselves in a company so that they mostly communicate with colleagues who share communication style.
Anyway, Linus is known for his personality even outside Linux kernel development team, so I wonder whether this issue is blown out of proportion.
Torvalds is saying, "Some people think there SHOULD BE a universal 'professionalism' that 'we' can haggle over in the public sphere and then enforce on bystanders in local contexts" and "Other people think there are just local relationships in groups to be negotiated ad hoc in those local contexts." And he works as though the second statement is more credible.
Saying "we" should be "professional" is actually assuming a bunch of very contestable propositions from the first word. There absolutely ends up being a bullying component when you invent a broad "we", declare other people to be members of it, and then try to enforce norms on that imagined "we".
And I say all this with the caveat that Torvalds is probably too blunt for me. But that doesn't make him wrong.
The people who curse and yell and throw angry hissy fits are the exact same people who infuse work environments with the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords when forced to operate in a professional environment.
If his self-description really is accurate ("I'm not polite, and I get upset easily"), then telling other people "deal with it" is just an asshole move to do, nothing more nothing less. He could stand to become a better person by figuring out why he gets upset so easily and finding ways to either mitigate or work around that deficiency. Because however effective he may be right now, he would be even more effective then.
> So as far as I'm concerned, the discussion is about "how to work together DESPITE people being different". Not about trying to make everybody please each other.
One method of getting people to work together despite people being different is to get everyone to agree to a standard communication protocol when dealing with each other. This is often consider getting everyone to act professionally and in many/most organizations the standard of conduct is enforced from the top down.
It can be enforced from the top down because the people at the top can provide the right mix of incentives and can cull those who do not conform.
In most volunteer communities it can be difficult/undesirable to enforce a detailed/strict code of conduct. It can limit your access to volunteers and is one more hurdle to joining the organization. Think of how much sales/conversions can drop if a user has to click through one more screen or is required to click one more confirmation, now add on top of that the user is trying to volunteer, an action which is more complex if not more costly then a simple purchase. It would be interesting to quantify the codes of conduct(how they are enforced not written) from different web forums and correlate it with member growth, retention, and level of interaction.
So in a diverse volunteer community it seems advantageous to first encourage members to be generous of what they accept before encouraging them to be careful with what they share.
So this discussion is not about whether shouting and cursing is morally acceptable or not. It's about who's going to make compromises, who's able to make compromises and who are we going to lose in the process. What Sarah (probably) implicitly says is 'I hate this, and I don't want to work in an environment like this - and there might be other people who feel the same'. If Linus thinks that he cannot work in a different way then (because he's pretty important for Linux) probably Sarah is going to be sacrificed in some way. That might be all right, but again: this is not a moral issue.
while people tolerate it at different levels, the phrase "some people" is misleading: almost nobody likes to be shouted at, or even feels neutral about it.
>It's completely valid to argue that shouting is just a culturally different, but acceptable way of expressing one's thoughts but then you need to be aware that you'll potentially lose people who just simply hate this form of communication.
this is true, but it's worth noting the same logical argument applies to physically hitting someone. and indeed, in other times and other cultures this was and is acceptable. and whenever those social norms have changed, there are people making what is essentially the same argument linus is making (just substituting "hitting" for "yelling").
Well, most people don't like criticism either, even when it's constructive. Some things are necessary even if people dislike them, but I don't think shouting is like that.
I think the question is, for any kernel developer--do you care enough about Linux that you want to be negatively reinforced when you're being stupid, or do you care more about feeling good all the time?
Same is true in work environments: You criticise the work, do not insult the person. Otherwise problems will be swept under the rug until they start to rot and can't be hidden any more.
[1] You can actually achieve the exact opposite: Peeing is a gesture of submission for dog puppies, so if you yell at them, they might just pee again.
The puppy-newspaper thing was intended to just be an evocative metaphor--I'm well-aware that hitting actual puppies with actual newspapers doesn't help anything. This is mostly because it's hard to understand, whether as a puppy or a human, exactly what you did that led you to being hit with a newspaper. Harsh words are much clearer than newspapers in giving causal structure.
(Though, if the stimulus-response is direct enough, words aren't exactly necessary; those "invisible fence" shock/noise collars for dogs do work, since the dog is given a much tighter feedback loop. As soon as they leave the defined zone, a pain-signal begins; as soon as they re-enter the zone, it ends. They can do science to figure out what is and is not painful, rather than being presented with a punishment and then having to use abductive logic to derive (that is, to guess at) possible causes. On the other hand, it is very hard to do science about where is or is not safe to defecate, unless you have the runs. ;)
I believe being a loud-abrasive-dictator works for Linus because he is famous for being a loud-abrasive-dictator.
That's not important. What is important is the reader. Let's be clear on a few things
#1 - Linus doesn't run a business. He's the kernel admin, he's a popular figure, he manages millions of lines of code. That's an entirely different game than what is necessary to run a small/mid/large business. Comparing the two is an apples-to-hammers comparison.
In a business, or small open source project, you have to be willing to deal with what you get. You will make sacrifices, it wont be easy. You might have this great idea but only 2 people are willing to work the occasional weekend on it; are you about to start an email chain calling them all dogshit coders?
Linus doesn't have that problem. He's famous for being Linus. You are not famous for being you.
#2 - YOU need to know how to be critical and polite. I don't care what Linus gets to do. You as a developer, you as a person who isn't famous, you as someone working in a team must (MUST) learn how to give constructive criticism.
"Bob, This isn't up to our quality standards, here's an example (cite)".
Easy, no frills, no shit-sandwich, no sugar-coated-political-correct-everyone-holds-hands-and-sings-around-the-campfire filler text. It's clear and it gets straight to the point. Learn how to do this, or fight an uphill battle with diminishing returns.
Linus can start a project tomorrow and have a hundred developers working on it, you cannot.
#3 - I'd take Linus' opinion on business culture with about the same size of salt as I would when listening to Jonathan Ive's opinion on middle-eastern-politics.
Everyone gets to have an opinion on something. I'm sure Tim Cook has an opinion on healthcare, and Bill Gates has an opinion on footwear. This doesn't make them experts on the subject or even any more informed than your average person. They're famous for doing X, listen to their opinions on X, take everything else as amateur opinion.
Linus is the kernal admin. I want to know how he manages 15 million lines of code, I want to know how he forks/branches/merges this code, how he handles bugs, how he tests it, and how work is handed out. I want to get his opinion on managing code not managing people. He doesn't deal with payroll, 401ks, employee vacations or benefits, he doesn't care about retention, he cares about code.
The problem that you don't explicitly mention is that people see Linus behaving this way and feel it's acceptable, and they carry on that behaviour.
Some open source environments are toxic and horrible and it's hard to correct that when you have very public figures acting in that toxic horrible way.
Linus is absolutely right that in the professional sense the same behavior simply moves to the shadows. By being professional we vent the same feelings in hushed murmurs and ever-so-gentle sideband criticism.
This is a hugely astute observation. I agree with it wholly.
and the judgment of behavior -- the social expectations -- is absolutely a thinly-veiled tactic of control.
However this is slightly troubling, depending on who is being addressed.
In the court of public opinion, this "social expectations is a thinly-veiled tactic of control" will never fly.
Even in these post-formal-etiquette times.
Without implying too much, I'd say that this is partly the reason that programmers (or the technology set at large) cannot appeal to the sentiments of the society.
That is partly the reason why industry lobby groups have a tough time communicating the general appeals of technology firms on Capitol Hill.
Sensible thinking would suggest that these manner of affairs, while seemingly harmless within technology circles, doesn't help anyone's cause when the support of the larger public and/or governmental agencies and courts is needed.
Actually, expecting a moderate appreciation of effort isn't by any stretch of the imagination "social expectation". Calling my code shit because it doesn't compile is fine but repeatedly doing so and getting away can only be interpreted as a power play - the very act of using your influence as a leverage to bring your subjective opinion to professional relations.
Last time I checked there was an industry who paid dearly for people skills. Just not software - because it doesn't matter. THAT'S the social construct - that it's ok to be tech-savvy and lack social skills.
And what is repeatedly submitting code that doesn't compile (wasting many people's time)?
In this situation Linus absolutely and quite rightly holds 99% of the power, and my point was that the social obligation trump card is being played as a way of trying to equalize the field, and it just isn't useful or valuable in this scenario (the other poster quite rightly points out that social graces are the rule when dealing outside of a particular group -- mostly when you're trying to curry favour -- which of course is true).
There is recurring sentiment that Linus needs to soothe all egos and comfort all comers because every submission is a selfless act of heroics that Linux desperately needs. We all know that isn't true: People want their contribs accepted into the kernel because such is a great professional accomplishment. A part of that accomplishment is making it past Linus, and if you can't then try harder next time.
Also, just because trash code that doesn't compile is bad (because it is, no denying it) doesn't mean that we can justify every behavior that will get generated, right? If there are incompetent people who don't double-check what they're doing, they should take a KICK. He'll save both himself from the trouble of having to repeatedly call out other people's sheer incompetence and the project.
Yeah, control about being a decent human being, if anything, but not about what goes into the kernel. So what's your point?
And how is talking about "thin skin" not also an attempt at controlling people, in the opposite direction? Pah.
Linus doesn't have to be put in his place, and if you don't like that tough luck.
Linus is put into place, every day, every minute, by people being even more blunt about even harder stuff while remaining respectful. Just like a turtle is put in its place by a fox. And if you don't like that on behalf of Linus, well.
Conversely, an average OSS developer will drive people away with this attitude unless the benefit of working with him is so attractive that it outweighs the pain of abuse (in which case he's probably not 'average' at all).
Assholes who really deliver get a pass from (some of) the world. Doesn't mean that you can get their results by being an asshole.
See the amount of developer churn in the *BSDs and some of the Linux DE projects.
Would we have had Linux on the desktop much earlier if developers used the robustness principle in communicating with their colleagues?
And those aspects of his personality would be exaggerated by the level of communication and questions and input that he's come to receive over the years.
Doesn't make it 'right', or 'kind', but I suppose it gets things done.
Actually, this email is pretty polite and to-the-point. I don't know exactly what it is that he said that was offensive in private, but he's actually being pretty reasonable here.
The thing is, some people spend a lot of effort when writing to check that they don't accidentally leave "sharp edges" in their writing (and then they still fail to find them all) while others write the way they would talk and assume that their tone of voice is "obvious" when of course it isn't. I expect if you knew Linus personally (I do not) his most outrageous written comments would seem just fine.
There's a ton of research on how written communications (especially with relative anonymity, etc.) can lead to cascading flamewars and so forth without anyone setting out to troll or be outrageous. Linus lives in that world, so he probably offends a lot of people accidentally just as a matter of percentages.
> most successful open source project ever
Surely that would be BSD which, without Linux, would probably be Linux (and was Linux before Linux), and with Linux is still most of Linux and a good deal of Mac OS X and iOS, and without which Linux would be irrelevant.
I think what's being discussed is Linus' reaction to someone's patch on the lkml a few days ago. https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/13/132
Here is a preview:
>What the F*CK, guys?
>This piece-of-shit commit is marked for stable, but you clearly never
>even test-compiled it, did you?"Hey! This is broken. It doesn't do X, Y, or Z. Please make sure to check code thoroughly (refer to $DOCUMENT) before committing." is direct, tells people what's wrong, and isn't hostile. People will be offended by it, but those people can be made to understand that they are being given useful direct advice.
Getting specific details - instructions or guidance even - is far better to solving the problem efficiently.
This is a "You know better than this!" rant, not an attack on some new guy.
Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 00:04:50 -0700 From: Greg KH To: Sarah Sharp Cc: linux-usb@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [RFC 0/3] xhci: Remove useless debugging
On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 04:28:51PM -0700, Sarah Sharp wrote: The xHCI driver is what, two years old now? It's high time it put on its big girl pants and stop crapping out useless debugging information.
You now owe me a wet-wipe to clean my laptop up from the coffee I just
snorted out my nose all over it.
The wind was probably blowing South East instead of North West or something on the day Sarah decided everyone needed to be more "professional".
Genuinely interested in this research. Care to cite?
Here's a quick example thanks to google:
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/02/70179
But this is a drop in the bucket.
It's essentially saying that not only should Sarah Sharp be willing to put up with all the hostility, but that the only reason she's complaining about it is to make a political point. It's a way of snidely arguing that she can't possibly actually care about the issue. That's far more dismissive of other people's reactions than anything Linus Torvalds is complaining about, and yet he's trying to claim that he has the inclusive moral high ground and Sarah Sharp is the one who's ignoring the fact that different people react differently.
> Linus doesn't run a business. He's the kernel admin
He's also the original author. And he still is an awesome developer and the Linux kernel is not his only accomplishment. Git is another one. Linus is one of those people that can change the face of our industry over night and he has done so at least twice.
Not only that, but if you read his trail of angry emails, one thing is for sure - he's also one of those people in the open-source community that care deeply about users. Many of his rants are about changes in the kernel that break the userland. This is not so different than a business owner caring for his customers.
> I want to get his opinion on managing code not managing people. He doesn't deal with payroll, 401ks, employee vacations or benefits, he doesn't care about retention, he cares about code
That's an odd statement to make. A business owner cares about revenue, not payrolls, 401ks, employee's vacations or benefits - those are just things that a business owner must do to secure the company's revenue.
Also, you're wrong, because Linus's job and greatest skill is in managing people. If it were about "the code", Linux the kernel would have taken a back seat to 386BSD.
My personal rule of thumb is do not say something written that I wouldn't say in person, especially if I am using a profanity language.
So, while it's your good rule of thumb, my observation over the years is it is not followed by many.
Erik's influence ended outside of comp.lang.lisp and the influence of that usenet group was fairly small, in the greater scheme of things.
comp.lang.lisp was very important prior to the founding of Stack Overflow, EmacsWiki, and so on. It was a lot more important to Lisp than any Lisp company, and maybe more important than all Lisp companies put together.
comp.lang.lisp is long dead.
However, I wasn't talking about only Common Lisp users, but about users of all Lisps. Elisp and Clojure have similarly-sized Freenode channels #emacs and #clojure, each substantially bigger than #lisp. Various estimates of the number of Emacs users put them around 5–50k people: there are perhaps around 15000 Elisp users http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3311227/emacs-user-base-s... or 0.5% of Ubuntu users using Elisp http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/35312/emacs-u... (some tens of thousands) or 5300 Github users with Elisp repositories http://www.quora.com/How-many-people-use-emacs-per-day?share....
How many Emacs users just use it? How many already need help to configure .emacs ?
My personal rule of thumb is do not say something written that I wouldn't say in person, especially if I am using a profanity language.
Basically, he's a very very very successful troll :)
>Also, you're wrong, because Linus's job and greatest skill is in managing people.
He doesn't manage people. He manages their contributions. Why are they contributing? Because they want to make it better.
In general, businesses don't have volunteer employees who work there solely on the basis of wanting to make the product better. Their decision to work there is also based factors like the salary, the benefits, the culture, whether they like the people they work with/for, etc., some or all of which will vary from person to person.
For a completely imperfect analogy, it's okay that [project leader X] makes some sexual jokes every now and then. But if he sexually assaulted someone, that would be too far.
Is it possible, in your mind, for Linus to go TOO FAR in one of his rants, what would that look like, and how should people react if it happens?
Sarah thinks it's already happened, that he's already gone too far. Where do you propose to draw the line? Because there I believe there IS a line.
And as a bonus, I think it resulted in a positive outcome.
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2012/06/nvidia-addresses-linus-torv...
Linus obviously has some differences, and yet is managing to pull off this amazing project that affects so many of us.
Forget business and software development, the world needs to learn how to work this way, because there's no way the entire world will ever "be professional" in that we all agree to the same ideology and behaviour. If the human race as a whole is going to function effectively, we need to be able to work together even though we don't always agree. If we can do that, as Linus does, we win.
Linus isn't a drill sergeant and his poor imitation thereof when he power trips doesn't get his point across any better than just saying "X was a bad decision, don't do it again for reasons Y and Z".
That's right, he's actually a lieutenant in reserve of the FDF.
He got his start of leading men by training a bunch of recruits for FDF, and his leadership style "management by Perkele" very closely matches the one found all over in Finland among other reserve leaders (Finland maintains conscription, and officer training is considered a very good experience for leadership roles even outside the military). Not an imitation.
So, like, I don't agree that the name-calling is effective. But, maybe, Linus does. Can we still work together even though we might be screaming at each other? Can we still make progress? If we can do that (without debilitating each other) I think that could be seen as a good thing.
Linus' point is that there is no universal definition of "professional" and there never will be. There's just a bunch of different humans walking around on this rock floating in space, each with their own minds and ideas about what's right and what makes the most sense (sometimes similar, often times different). With billions of us out there, it's probably impossible for us to all be on the same page at all times. But maybe we can be on the same page, for some things, some of the time and tolerate the other things where we're not on the same page in the interest of progress (however you want to define "progress"). I think that's more realistic, and I think that's all we can ever hope for. There are no "rails" when it comes to human behaviour, imho.
Also, he isn't always abrasive, usually just if things don't go right.
I think that saying is deeper than it seems at first blush. It's a reminder that we are 100% in control of how we react to words. We choose how we react to words. You can always choose. Anyone who complains about language is implicitly saying they're unable to control themselves and how they react to words.
The reality is that most people (probably even including you) cannot do this 100%.
Total equanimity is something to strive for in our own lives, but it should not be a criteria by which we judge other people. And it should not be an excuse to be a jerk.
One of the key insights of working together constructively with other people is that I don't get to decide how other people think. If I want them to do something, I have to get them to see why they should do it, from their own perspective. Abusing them, and then telling them to get over it, usually does not work well.
All people definitely can do this. They just choose not to.
I won't say that I always do, but I try to keep it mind. Its a lesson I really try to internalize.
Try this thought experiment. Let's say I show up at your office with a duffel bag filled with $1M cash ... and I said to you, snowwrestler 'I'm now going to make a bunch of nasty and insulting comments to you ... if you can laugh it off with a smile you get this giant bag of cash', I suspect you could find it in you to absolutely ignore everything I said and happily focus on the giant bag of cash sitting in front of you.
Wrong. The classic demonstration is Phineas Gage. A man who by all accounts had very good self-control until the day that an accident drove a railroad spike through his brain, taking out the frontal lobe that is responsible for said control. After that he lost control. Not through lack of will, but because of physical trauma. The same phenomena has been observed in lots of stroke victims.
Moving on, there are a ton of psychiatric conditions which are not even that rare that result in people who have hardwired reactions to words that are out of their conscious control. PTSD. Social anxiety. Manic-depression (at either extreme). And so on. These days we can map out how words get processed and see the short circuit that keeps the frontal lobe out of the loop. It isn't a question of willpower. We know how to treat these conditions and help people regain control. We don't do it by telling people to "try harder".
What about normal people? Well it has long been known that any normal person in the grip of strong emotion also loses control. It doesn't matter why they have the strong emotion - someone died, you were in a fight, etc - once you feel the emotion, you have no control. Furthermore every time we go through this pattern, we wind up laying a path that makes it easier to go through the pattern.
Afterwards it is easy for people to go through a thought experiment. Say, "I should have done this, said that, held my temper." Blame themselves. Promise they will do better But guess what? They are wrong. Next time they don't do better. Not because of lack of willpower (though that may be an issue), but because human brains don't work in the way we consciously think they work.
But note this is not just defeatism. Because it turns out that we can understand these classic patterns we have. And with understanding comes the ability to get better control. But not through having an iron will. Instead through having the self-awareness to know, "When I feel this and hold it in like that the next thing I know I lose control. So I need to pay attention to this early sign and walk away for 10 minutes, then come back and continue."
Edit to add: So because it's so well-compensated, I don't think that's a good example of equanimity. Equanimity means remaining calm and pleasant even when I'm not being paid--or if I'm being asked to pay.
And for those of us on the outside, we wouldn't tell a random developer that he should crank out 40 push-ups to prove his worth, like we might in the military. In the military there is what we'd call a bona-fide occupational qualification behind assessing the psychological durability of recruits.
Is there such as bona-fide requirement to develop software patches? Should there be?
I'll give Linus a pass on this much; his behavior here is well within the norms of the Linux kernel development community and his own previous behavior. He's the Captain of that particular ship and he's not doing anything illegal, nor does he intend personal injury, so at some point it's easier to concede that he will run that ship the way he wants and put on asbestos underwear, than to try to change both his behavior and the resultant mailing list culture.
But I think it's important to keep in mind that his kind of behavior must be very much the exception to the rule for software development, open or otherwise. If you breed a culture of aggressiveness then you must be ready to handle the people you draw in from that. It works for the military, it seems to work for the LKML, but I would be hesitant to hold it up as a general model.
And the military doesn't breed "aggressiveness" outside of specific services and roles that require it. It does demand an inordinate "attention to detail" due to the fact lives are on the line, whether that be on ships, planes or just normal activities.
This "attention to detail" is also seen among other professions, but seldom in software outside of NASA/avionics/medical/etc...
Linus has laid out guidelines and expectations which while demanding, can be followed. If you can't test your code nor follow a checklist, then maybe you shouldn't submit patches to him. It's the military equivalent of passing barracks/quarters inspections, it should be elementary for professionals.
Don't make it a strawman, as if the only alternative to treating each others like assholes is to be passive-aggressive backstabbers. Even the military has those, the Navy calls them SWOs :P.
Even Linus doesn't make that claim directly, instead he says that the other cultures you might try to enforce lead eventually to the culture of PC passive-aggressive backstabbing, not that those are the only two options.
I do agree that the Linux kernel has a much higher need for attention to detail than many other user-space projects. But I don't think every such detail-oriented project necessarily requires this type of culture. How is the environment developing SQLite, or Postgres?
And even if we say detail-oriented projects need alpha personalities to enforce these checklists, where does that leave the majority of open-source development?
But the message itself can be harmful. Psychological abuse is just as real to the brain as physical abuse is to the skin and muscle beneath.
If messages meant nothing then there would be no reason to talk about hate speech, sexually abusive speech, or the many, many other harmful messages people can and do convey to others.
It's not my job to build an impenetrable moat around my psyche just to survive other people being abusive.
Psychological abuse is just as real to the brain as physical abuse is to the skin and muscle beneath.
a. I'm skeptical of this claim. Would like to see your source b. Only to the extent you allow it. That's one of the defining features of being a human. I can actually say to myself 'pull it together, words are meaningless' or 'this guy is an ignorant, why would I care what he says'.
If words are meaningless why would saying anything to yourself change your state? It sounds like you are saying that you can use your own words to yourself to combat the harm of someone's words. That's very much different than saying that words have no meaning.
In fact, you are saying that people's words impose a cost on you. The fact that people have "capacity" to handle things said to them means a resource is being used.
Not everyone has grown up in the enviable position of being strong-willed and independent of thought, especially considering societal expectations. Suggesting anyone can just 'grow a thick skin' is as silly as suggesting you can change your gender by willing it.
My opinion is that humans are capable of incredible self control if they choose to exercise it. The more they're taught that lesson and learn their own strength and capabilities, the better.
Of course I'm empathetic with the kid you described. I'm saying he can rise above it though. You're saying he can't. We'll have to agree to disagree on that.
Would you say that it's wrong to slap people on the face then, or that the person being slapped should treat it as a lesson in learning their own strength and capabilities.
> I'm saying he can rise above it though. You're saying he can't.
He didn't say the kid can't rise above it. You assumed that.
I would say that the kid is not necessarily able to rise above it. But I would go further to say that it's not the kid's responsibility to have to rise above that at all, which I think is the point that's being missed here.
Just because your victim might be able to withstand your attack does not make you any less culpable for having engaged in it.
If you choose not to react to language then I can make you look weak or evil or whatever in front of those who do, and by the time I decide to make things physical you'll have no-one ready to help you. That's the lesson of the school yard.
The lesson of the world beyond the school yard, as above, is even more brutal.
Edit: Point being that being verbally attacked scares and upsets me/many others, and it seems to me that's a perfectly reasonable response to have.
Perhaps a backlash from disgruntled developers may be one of the consequences of Linus's behavior?
If you questioned every developer on this planet, for every kernel contributor, on every level of expertise, there are two that simply wouldn't deal with his shit and have been lost. The Linux kernel could have been much better.
This wound up being recorded, and it's online here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8
I think I lasted ten minutes and left after deciding it was too much. There was enough of that kind of energy going around already to willingly sit there and take in more. Besides, I had an interview to write up.
I assume it must be cultural difference, since I also checked with my colleagues and they do not think Linus was rude either during that talk.
I agree acting professional is not healthy for a real social interaction and you need real social interactions when you're building a collaborative system like Linux.
The only time i act professional is when somebody pissed me off and I'm not in a position to tell him he's a moron without being fired or otherwise get into trouble.
Whenever someone talented acts like a dick, take a moment to think of all the talented people in history who managed to remain civil despite their accomplishments. It's a long enough list to matter. No one gets a free pass.
It's not how grownups deal with each other.
There is no excuse for being mean. Period. Full stop. This is basic human courtesy - they teach it in grade school.
It doesn't matter if you're famous, or if you lead a project with tons of users and contributors, or you're nobody - anything that you can yell at people, you can also tell them politely. And you can argue about the technicalities of what constitutes "professionalism" or "abusive speech" all you want - the fact is, what Linus said was mean, and nobody should have to be on the receiving end of that. It doesn't matter if it's said in public or private, or whether the person he was talking to did something "stupid" (and haven't we all, at some point?) - nobody should have to be treated that way.
And if you think otherwise, well, I hope I never have to work with you.
Anyway: just because you act nice and act like you like somebody, doesn't mean you do.
I would much rather a person called me out on my bullshit than them politely skirting around the issue in an attempt to make me feel better and protect my feelings.
I personally have no experience writing kernel code, but I can imagine it's incredibly important that you get things right. So then if getting cursed at means you won't fuck up as often and learn from your mistake, then it works.
It's also important to remember that tone doesn't come across well online so you shouldn't overreact to what you're reading. If someone curses online you could read it very aggressively. But if you were to hear them speak it it might seem much less threatening and aggressive and most or a speech pattern/way of phrasing things/way of making a point.
Short is good, harsh is not a problem, if short means harsh, so be it.
The problem with cultural differences is that the effect of this might be not the intended one: the person you shouted at will consider you rude and as someone to avoid instead of reflecting on their actions and trying harder the next time. So it's not really smart to act like this, even if you feel it's "natural". You need to be someone important to be able to afford it and Linus (still) is.
‘Be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send’ has two clauses for a reason, namely that trying to gauge the effect of what one says on every possible group will fail. Sure, someone you tell ‘no, this is utter crap, go back and fix it’ might find that rude and will never talk to you again, but on the other hand, someone might understand ‘this could be improved here and there and maybe you could change that’ as ‘oh, that’s fine apart from some trivialities’.
> You need to be someone important to be able to afford it and Linus (still) is.
I wouldn’t say you need to be someone important, you just have to be in a position where you don’t have to care about possibly maybe hurting the delicate feelings of the other person.
http://www.khou.com/news/texas-news/Texas-teen-charged-with-...
"Texas teen charged with making terroristic threat after online joke"
Careful with baseball bats here! Whatever we consider it, the "online world" became bigger and started to be less tolerant for friend-between-friend exploring of "who can think of something nastier."
You, on the other hand, did not agree to something, felt mad or frustrated, and instead of conveying that frustration you snidely suggested that that he must be suppressing some "natural urges". Violent? Homosexual? From whose subconscious did those arise from? Not Linuses?
(See what I did there? What kind of urges might _I_ be suppressing?)
All in all: I find your reply to be a perfect example of what Linus is trying to avoid ("fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, _the passive aggressiveness_, and the buzzwords")
Freud would disagree and so do I.
> you snidely suggested that that he must be suppressing some "natural urges"
Same thing Linus did in the last paragraph. :-/
> your reply to be a perfect example of what Linus is trying to avoid ("fake politeness[...]"
That makes no sense. I am just trying to analyze and understand his behavior. There's no emotion involved at all.
> Freud would disagree and so do I.
So one can not curse out of anger or frustration without there being suppressed urges? I do not think Freud would agree with you.
If the "cursing" involves typing things on a keyboard, then yes, I believe there are some things (urges, actions) being suppressed.
By the way most of the theories of Freud have since long been discredited by the scientific community.
Then is raising the point: "How we manage a team of different people who need to interact each other ?"
It is not "if you don't like get out", it is more something like: "I know why you don't like, you don't like because you are expecting thing that you should not expect, so change your expectation."
Then him is using a very powerful language, maybe too powerful for a public mail list, but again is just the way Linus is, so get mad for it simply means to don't have understand a single word of his speech.
It worked for those two. There are probably a few other people in history it has worked for as well (Patton?). You are not them. If you treat people badly it will bite you in the arse.
(Its only 100 or so kilometers to the border)
That kind of working environment: "I openly tell you when you do s--t but I do not hold grudge against you, it is for our mutual benefit" was common in Russian software companies around year 2000. This is largely a part of the culture.
It looks like a rudeness for an unprepared Western folks, but in fact it is not -- it is just unwillingness (or lack of proper training) to play games when one can do work instead.
I left Russia in 2003, and in the following years got adjusted my ways to be... nice.
I work from home in my pijamas too, so I wonder why Linus didn't catch that skill?..
So if I get this right, we just need a Linus communication adapter that can translate messages so they are compatible with either side.
Does that mean when someone talks to Linus it should add swear words to be compatible with him? :)
I see his point, but it comes at a cost. People may start trying to work around him for fear of backlash rather than working with him. Or worse, just not try at all. We can only trust his technique has a greater net benefit.
I wonder if anyone has called Linus 'fucking stupid' (etc.) on the mailing lists, and how Linus reacted.
There are tons of useful discussions that simply don't happen on HN because anybody with an actual strong opinion gets helbanned. For instance Google's Go language is lauded here because of fake politeness, but almost universally dismissed elsewhere.
This discussion has already achieved its real goal: to put "Linus Torvalds" and "Sarah" in the same sentence; this is the bullshit politics Linus talks about.
that's called "political correctness". I thought HN was about "disruption"... And yes , here you cant critize GO or suffer the consequences ;)
"The entire principle is wrong: it's like insisting that adults live on skim milk because the baby can't eat steak." - Heinlein
Therefore, I don’t put much stock in people telling Linus how the Linux kernel project ought to be run. When he writes,
The fact is, people need to know what my position on things are. And I can't just say "please don't do that", because people won't listen. I say "On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle", and I mean it. [1]
I’m inclined to believe him. Correspondingly, I have a hard time taking seriously the claims that the Linux kernel project, as a social system, would be better if Linus stopped doing what he’s doing and did something “nicer” instead. The historical evidence suggests that what Linus is doing (whatever it is) works better than what everybody else is doing.
I'd argue the former is more effective at addressing the problem at hand, while hearing the latter from someone you respect can be emotionally devastating for some people.
Still, I think we all know how difficult and time-consuming it can be to deal with people who just "don't get it" and won't listen. If Linus finds that cutting people like that off at the knees is an effective strategy for managing open source projects, who am I to argue with him?
Which leads to my point: you shouldn't be using his reasoning to justify your own actions. You are not a kernel developer replying to people on the kernel mailing list (unless you really are =)).
The fact that people look up to him and admire him does mean his cursing and attitude does have a harmful impact: people see him doing and use that as qualification for their own attitude.
There is also the assumption that professionalism means a lot of negative things. The truth is, it doesn't. Being a professional isn't about office politics (despite what some might want to believe). Professionalism is all about context. To slap a definition to professionalism and assume it applies everywhere equally means you need to accept those defining profanity as abusive everywhere in all context.
Basically, if you are using Linus as a justification to allow you to curse or be rude, you are doing it wrong and missing the point.
p.s. I should also note that I believe that anything that worth doing well takes effort. And while it's easier to skip being polite all together, I find that it's usually worth the effort. In the end, you spend less time dealing with discussions of profanity, and get to discuss the actual point. Context matters of course, which is why it works on the kernel mailing list, but not in many others.
This entire thing is the clash of two cultures: corporatism (and its drive to mediocrity/milquetoasts) vs "getting sh*t done right"-ism.
It all comes down to this: do you value political sensitivity, or calling a spade a spade (granted, profanity isn't required for this, but it certainly helps)?
Give me the latter any day. I'm an adult; I can handle it.
a) You're a stupid cunt if you think that's the fucking argument. Your comprehension sucks. Don't bother responding if you come up with retarded shit like this. Idiot.
b) No, the people asking for an end to viciousness are not asking for "politically correct" over-polite speech. You can call a spade a spade. You can call broken code broken. What you shouldn't do is call a spade a fucking useless spade. You shouldn't call the spade-user a clueless fuckwit. This is also not about "getting shit done". Starting a flamewar distracts people from the actual job, and makes people less, not more, efficient.
The argument that acting "professionally" is an act or compromise we must try to avoid is bizarre to me. I dislike compromising over all sorts of things but having manners and not just doing everything or acting in a way your impulses desire is much of what it means to be an adult than an adolescent.
Forget the term "professional" even, let's just go with "courtesy" or "having manners." Fake, they may be, but people who act upon negative impulses in public whether sexual, violent, or even just bad language aren't typically going to have a good time.
A thought experiment would be to replace "Linus" with someone you don't particularly care for and see if you don't wince just a bit.
I kinda like Linus, but I don't particularly care for most sports coaches. I don't follow any spectator sports, but even I know that a nontrivial fraction of highly successful sports coaches lose their temper. I think the people who are arguing for more restraint or care or kabuki wrapped around expression of justified anger should face some burden of proof to show that their way works better, rather than just demanding that organizations be run their way while implying that Linus's way works worse.
I think it's very important for a leader to make technical decisions correctly, including the technical decision whether something is screwed up enough to get angry about. (And my strong impression is that Linus is unusually good at this.) I have some preference for leaders trying to be careful and dispassionate and clear about expressing their anger (e.g., full sentences with constructs "this is unacceptable", followed any detail that might be needed to be easily understood). But judging by results, it's not clear that my preference works any better than Linus's. And in long-term interactions with serious people, any difference may naturally tend to be small: most conversations between people are more about "what does he really mean" than about what was literally said, and you can quickly learn if A generally means the same thing by "what the F*CK" as B means by "this is unacceptable".
Don't worry, later you'll be able to do the same
I guess it's a great example for young peoples that you can get away with any despicable behaviors as long as you have done something worthwhile in your life. People are then able to rationalize that by saying it was "warranted" or "thought provoking" or any garbage they can find to justify it, because somehow that person is in their "tribe".
Yes it's more efficient to say "I don't like that because X, Y or Z, change that." than "I don't like that because X, Y or Z, CHANGE THAT PIECE OF SHIT". Otherwise, you're implying that without swear words, Linus wouldn't have any power over the kernel.
Ridiculous isn't it?
And I'd fully expect any worker to say "Yeah, damn, you're right, that was stupid. Cheers, I'll fix that"
People didn't start building stuff in the digital era., It's the same principles.
I hope to hell all crap gets called out, otherwise we're in a position where the bridge builders "meant well", and I wouldn't want to cross a river over such a bridge.
Also, your example is actually a good example of why this technique is not only inefficient, but morally and ethically wrong, because if a single worker can destroy a bridge, then there is a couple of engineers that didn't do their jobs correctly.
[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188691...
He's absolutely correct that everyone doesn't have to like and be able to work with everyone. All the people who continue to find ways to complain about his behavior just don't like him. OK. Fork the project.
See: OpenBSD and DragonflyBSD for domain examples of what to do when you have personality conflicts in an open source OS project.
It's become a well known issue in professional sports with coaching where old time successful coaches have had to completely change their style to deal with the latest generation of athletes who do not respond well at all to the traditional dictatorship that coaches used to run.
Now a lot of hand holding is reportedly required. I'm not judging but struggle to think of anything great that was ever built by a committee.
As far as professionals cursing, I reckon most of the individuals on HN have never been in the military. There's a fine art of stressing the importance of paying attention to details, which good noncoms and shipmates enforce through creative profanity and rich English. It stress the importance of the situation.
Linus has explained his directness and lack of sugar coating several times. Sugar coating something, he believes, dilutes the importance of the message AND confuses his subordinates. "We can try avoiding X" is more ambiguous than "X is crap, you dumb morons". The latter statement is absolutely clear where Linus stands. Which is what communication is all about?
Plus, i reckon it is different in a "Proper Business" where employees are paid to do work directly under a manager. To avoid connotations of servitude and slavery, modern businesses decided that managers should be polite so that their subordinates feel that they aren't slaves. With Linux, no one is forcing you to commit "bullshit" patches.
RANT: I reckon a deeper problem is that a lot of kernel developers are now paid to work on it (as observed in this thread). So i reckon that in this case, the developer expects the same kind of feel-goody emails as her corporate manager keeps sending her.
Calling things "professional" is just more of the same - trying to enforce some kind of convention on others by trying to claim that it's the only acceptable way.
Being professional is similar to being politically correct. Don't say anything impolite or you'll offend people, don't say anything 'unprofessional' or you'll get fired, don't say anything 'not politically correct' or (in some countries) you'll have the police knocking at your door. That is where it leads and that is why I support his argument.
Additionally, in my experience, the above behavior leads to behind-the-back sneaky and spiteful behavior. People who don't like something xyz is doing, so instead of risking confrontation by telling someone politely that it's annoying / won't work, they'll talk to the manager or get back at someone 3 weeks later.
Isn't OP's appeal to "professional behavior" exactly the same as Linus' point? Professional behavior is the set of rules the world has evolved to find ways to work together when we're all different. Those rules work statistically well ... except for outliers like Linus.
I don't know much about Linus other than his brilliance and his verbal abuse... which reminds me of Bobby Fisher - breathtakingly beautiful chess mind and pathetic garbage heap of a person. I hope Linus is better than that, and suffers from nothing more than anger management and healthy rebelliousness
Regardless, why would anyone think they can tell him what is or is not professional? I think once you've created something on the scale of Linux, you get to define that word for yourself. It reminds me of the line from Parks & Recreation: "Everything I do is the behavior of an award winner because I HAVE WON AN AWARD."
Don't screw with the formula folks. Linux is too damn important to screw up, and Linus obviously knows what the hell he's doing.
I deal with a yelling boss by hearing him out and then, once the moment has passed, rerunning the event and mining it for real criticism, minus the emotional baggage it came with. If I find nothing, I disregard his gibber entirely; if I find something substantial, I make note of it and (in the days that follow) try to weed it out.
Worst case: I get nothing useful, in which case the boss was simply venting. Best case: I learn something about myself, and get better in the process.
Anecdatal, sure, but I've heard people tell of similar experiences. And my US data points included blue collar workers in Jersey, not exactly the pinnacle of PC, I'd say.
It's not about this LKML thread. The discussion is about justifying a certain set of behaviours that a certain group identifies with. Posts like this polarize the discussion. No one wins when there are only two options.
Personally I think losing your temper in public is a weakness. Swearing is a rude form of language. And I don't take people very seriously who are too quick to point out how stupid other people are (it's a sign of insecurity).
Start from here:
http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=137391145411685&w=2
Update: bad -> good.
I guess that Linus generally achieves results from a direct and terse tone, but that may also be the fastest way to get through his vast inbox. It's far from diplomatic bureaucracy and that's going to rub some people, but the parent was probably right on calling him out.
I just don't think this is the forum for this kind of gossip, why not leave it to lowest denominator tech journalism?
"Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untravelled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty," "meaningless," or "dishonest," and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best."
There are/were other people in similar positions who did not act in that way to their peers. If people that thought that treating others with respect, or remaining emotionally neutral toward them was something worth mentioning, HN would be flooded with newsgroup posts and emails. Most of the time we really only talk about Linus because he's an asshole. Usually noone really cares about the technical merits of his arguments. I don't really think it belongs on TBH.
That said, Linus is a jerk. He says things that are aimed to hurt people. It's one thing to 'not think about it', or to not 'play into the game'. But he goes well beyond that, saying things that are mean and vitriolic. He can get away with it, he's a genius coder, yeah, all true. He's still a jerk.
When I dont see your face, listen to you directly, It is rather hard to understand the importance of something. Especially when they are working on kernel, which is the most critical component.
Would Linus have said it loudly in front of hundreds of other Engineers? I would have properly called it verbal abuse. But in real life at least i can rise my voice and tone and shout without having to use a single abusive word.
Other than that,
This concept of "professional standards" of behavior is completely parochial. Try going to a constuction site. Or bootcamp. Or working on a pig farm. Standards of behavior vary dramatically between organizations, industries, and cultures.
Sarah says: quit being sexist, racist, and stuff.
Linus says: I'm a shouty dude and that's fine.
To which I say: surely these are non-overlapping concerns?
2. Accusing someone of sexism, racism, etc, is not "abuse". It is never an insult. If you get accused of it, consider being less sexist/racist/etc rather than taking offense.
There is really nothing about sexism/racism in there.
Linus swears a lot (compared to an American), and sometimes blows up at maintainers who do stupid things. That's what this is about. Not racism, sexism, or any other form of oppression you might want it to be about.
When you walk in on a conversation and hear "I keep her in a cage", they might be talking about their pet rabbit, not their wife.
Stop considering emotional outbursts, negative attitudes, lack of compassion and childishness as "normal urges". Regardless of your opinion on professionalism, it's just fucked up to be rude to people.
This isn't just an isolated incident either, but I'm no shining example of acting professionally.
The fact that the hacker community is full of mean gits is no coincidence. Let's consider where the opposite type of people (the ones who'll smile charmingly while stabbing you in the back) congregate - HR, PR, management, politics - all fields where creativity is less important than manipulativeness.
I'll take a brutally honest genius over a charming "socially intelligent" liar any day.
Do you really think the only way to communicate a mistake is like this: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 ?
And Linus is perfectly capable of giving a more reasoned response while still being direct: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/99 (same thread, Linus' reply to a reasoned response from yelled at developer)
Still pretty direct, but gone are the insults. Nobody has been asking for a sugar coating, but simply for Linus to stop being personally abusive.
Yes, people make mistakes. Really stupid mistakes. But if you think they're idiots, don't accept their contributions. If you don't think they're idiots, why call them that just because you can't control your anger?
I would argue that for many of the people I have met in my life, this would be a good thing. I don't we need to coddle each other all the time, but neither is the opposite workable or desirable - a little consideration is important.