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Comment by pmelendez | Hacker News Reader

> "He has led one of the most important human endeavours of the last hundred years"

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.

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People criticizing Linus in this thread really seem to act like their arms are being twisted to work with him. I mean you literally compared him to a slaver. You know what the key difference is? He's running a voluntary programming project, which people are welcome to voluntarily join if the project and its other members suit them, and are welcome to leave (with all of its work-product at this time) if they want to, when they want to.

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.

>"I mean you literally compared him to a slaver."

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)

He gets a free card to be rude and you get a free card to not like him and never do any favours for him and he gets a free card to not care what you think, do or don't do.

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.

>"He gets a free card to be rude and you get a free card to not like him"

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.

> If your boss or your client would talk to you in that tone you would call it verbal abuse.

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 boss was rude I'd wait up a bit to see if he'll last longer at his job than I could put up with. I wouldn't like him. I wouldn't do any favors for him. Boss is part of the job. If you don't like that part of the job you'll like the job less. If you like it little enough you overcome your inertia and leave job.

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.

Linus is not your boss. Nobody is forcing you to contribute to the kernel. If you want to, he's the "benevolent dictator". If you don't agree, "fork it and go your own way" as someone else said.

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.

> "Linus is not your boss."

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.

Linus exercises authority over his project. He decides which contribution to take in and which to leave out. He is a boss of linux. But not the boss of people who contibute because he has no authority over them to exercise.

Making people do things against their will or fear punishment by death is not exactly the same thing is swearing at someone is it?

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.

I think you missed my point, I was addressing a comment that basically stated that the behaviour is OK because he knows how to get things done and I gave an extreme example of how to get things done with an innapropiate behaviour. I think the comparison is correct in that context

define good ... oh well...

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