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While Linus should not be saying that all civility and political correctness are fake, I think there is a valid point to be made. For many people, such things ARE fake, and they prefer environments without it. The key idea, though, is that both are viable options.

There is nothing inherently superior about "I think this patch could use work" vs "This patch is garbage", outside of emotional response, and to some people, the first is actually worse, for the reasons he stated. And just as it would be out of place for someone in google to state "You ought to be expressing your code reviews with less weasel words and more profanity to be more honest", it is wholly out of place for someone to come in to the linux kernel mailing lists and demand everyone stop swearing as much to be more "professional".

They think your communication sucks because it is indirect and dishonest. You think their communication sucks because it is vulgar and excessive. Maybe the best solution is to understand that in a different culture, similar ideas may be expressed differently, and be tolerant of these cultural and personal differences?

How about "This patch has the following problems...." which would be much more conducive to getting the person to fix them, rather than provoking a flame war.

I've been online since the 80s, and I have seen this attitude over and over, that somehow, SHOUTING and INSULTS are "just part of the process" of engineering culture, and if "you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen"

It's really an excuse for people, in many cases with ego problems, to justify behavior that most people find distasteful. It's no wonder many people are turned off from STEM fields where this kind of "alpha male" behavior is wide spread.

We need more Vulcan and less Klingon, especially in fields where people consider themselves intellectually superior, more educated, and supposedly, more rational.

"more vulcan less klingon" i think bones would disagree. I also don't think Neelix GNU operating system would be any good, it would just keep reaffirming sloppy development until everything fell apart because those people shouldve been dumped at the first habitable planet.

Vulcan ships look less sloppy than Klingon design IMHO.

Aesthetically the Vulcans certainly have the Klingon's beat, but was "Do humans think our ship looks nice?" high up on the list of Klingon design considerations? ;)

Just like Linus said, some people work better with certain types of people. If you are a highly sensitive person then working with Steve Jobs/Linus/Bill Gates [1] is probably not going to go well.

The question might be that because Jobs/Linus/Gates are in positions of power and management, should they have to adjust their personality when working with other people?

I'm not convinced that should be the case. Choosing to work with someone is largely voluntary.

[1] http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/No-Bull-Bill-Gates...

The big difference between Linux and Jobs/Bill Gates is that people working on Linux are not employees. They are more like friends at a dinner party. The host can be a jerk to his party guests when they say something the host finds disagreeable and as long as it is personal opinion and doesn't come to blows the offended guest can just leave in a huff and have their own party where the host is not invited.

The only problem with this perspective is that Linus is kind of the only show in town where it regards the Linux kernel. You can't just leave and have your own party without the host because the host has a monopoly on this particular party.

Sure, you can fork the kernel, but good luck with that!

As much as anything can be forked, the Linux kernel can be forked.

The only barrier to forking is the fact that most kernel developers are not bothered by Linus. Which raises the question of why we should want a fork if nobody wants a fork...

Narrator's comment, to which I was responding, implied that some might want a fork because the host is a 'bad' host.

The other barrier is the effort required to compete with what is currently the most used Linux kernel base. It's not like forking OpenOffice, KDevelop, or Eclipse where you can compete as an alternative on top of a standard OS. It's replacing the basis of the OS that everything else is written to work for.

There are absolutely no technical limitations to forking the kernel. Hell, even XFree86 got forked. Make a point of not breaking userland (aside: one of the things Linus flames for) and you will be fine in the short term until you fail to implement features that Linux proper implements and others choose to use.

The problems with forking are social. You are only going to have a handful of people working with you instead of Linus (because nobody cares that Linus can be a meanie) and as a consequence you are only going to have a handful of people using your fork instead of Linus' (because nobody cares that Linus can be a meanie). Because of this progress on Linux will progress faster than progress on your fork, which will make your fork obsolete (but nobody would care, because nobody would be using it, because nobody cares that Linus is a meanie).

These are not problems with forking Linux. These are problems with forking anything if nobody cares about your fork.

"because nobody cares that Linus can be a meanie"

The thing with being abusive is that people won't actually tell you what they really think.

If you really think there is demand, then by all means, fork. Nothing should be stopping you if there is demand.

> Because Linux is a success, it must be because of Linus's particular brand of being a jerk [...] If you have a problem, explain what's wrong calmly and coherently, it's more efficient. Simply telling someone that they, or their code, is a piece of shit is not likely to be as efficient.

You're setting up quite a straw man there by making it look as though Linus's first reply to things he doesn't like is "this is a piece of shit". In fact, if you go through these threads, in almost every case there is an escalation where he explains his reasoning first, in detail and repeatedly. When someone really doesn't get it, he will indeed escalate to foul language. Is that a bad thing? I don't think so. Unlike established corporations, the Linux community doesn't have options like subtly threatening to fire someone.

>You're setting up quite a straw man there by making it look as though Linus's first reply to things he doesn't like is "this is a piece of shit". In fact, if you go through these threads, in almost every case there is an escalation where he explains his reasoning first, in detail and repeatedly

Yes it's true, his first responds isn't "this is a piece of shit". It's "YOU are a piece of shit".

Here is the C++ rant: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57643...

As far as I can see, that was his first post to that thread. He said his target was "full of bullshit", then proceeded into a rant about how C++ programmers are so bad he wants to deliberately keep them off his projects by pissing them off.

I think it's a good example because there are plenty of criticisms of C++ one could make but Linus does a terrible job of putting forward those criticisms. He seems to be so blinded with rage that he can barely form a coherent argument.

Additionally, as far as I can tell the people involved here were not old timer core git contributors, they were new people making an honest attempt to contribute, so the argument being put about that he only targets old hands who have a thick skin isn't true.

He didn't write that blinded with rage. He carefully crafted a work of literature. The person he responded to was one of those sociopath fact-assumptors that make every online conversation difficult.

>his first responds isn't "this is a piece of shit". It's "YOU are a piece of shit".

Come on, you should be able to construct an argument without making up quotes to support your point:

DK: "No idea why [Git is written in pure C instead of C++]. Please don't talk about portability, it's BS."

LT: "YOU are full of bullshit. C++ is a horrible language. [7 paragraphs explaining why]"

The linux kernel is a far less dysfunctional social setup than any of the other places you mentioned (even though it's older than some of them), and I weakly suspect it's partly because of Linus's modus operandi.

People notice his swearing but not who he attacks. My observation has been that he's exquisitely careful about picking his targets, always picking people who've been in the group for a while, and never attacking a noob. This sets an extremely egalitarian tone for the group: nobody is immune, and anybody can be questioned on their actions.

(I'm a lot less sanguine than him, though, about the effect this confrontational ethos has on the participation of women in the group.)

He's attacked noobs before (I specifically recall one case on the git mailing lists) but I've never seen him attack a noob who wasn't trolling and already flinging mud themselves.

"I see a lot of confirmation bias in these kinds of threads." and I see yet again, another apologist for the herd mindset.

Enlighten me, what is the herd mindset? Was Mr Spock on Star Trek or Data "part of a herd mindset", because they didn't engage in verbal insults on the crew when they disagreed?

Let's not beat around the bush. This is exactly the type of insidious tripe that wants to make everyone the same, that wants to live in a gingerbread world where they hold hands and sing Kumbayah. We tell kids in school and adults to "be themselves and be an individual", yet, your way of thinking wants to remove any individuality and homogenize them so every one is polite and considerate of everyone else's garbage opinion as if they all had equal weight, They do not. Telling people they are doing something dumb, even in harsh terms can be useful, as it will drive the point home. That's not to say be mean, but, be direct and upfront.

Oh that's right, not wanting people to be jerks is tantamount for wanting _Harrison Bergeron_.

This slippery slope argument is garbage and YOU are a piece of shit for advocating it! You must watch Fox news and are a devotee of "shock jock" radio that tickles your reptilian brain and amps up the right neurotransmitters in the risk reward system to crave impolite and rude behavior!

(I hope I drove home the point with that bogus rant that individuality-through-angry-shouting doesn't elevate the debate at all, it just incentivizes the other party to become even more recalcitrant and unreasonable)

Hot tempers and passionate are not the problem. Strongly worded rebuttals are not a problem. Direct ad hominem attacks are just unnecessary. You can be strong and aggressive without telling people to "SHUT THE FUCK UP"

Trust me, being a dick isn't only way to be adversarial.

> Oh that's right, not wanting people to be jerks is tantamount for wanting _Harrison Bergeron_.

Literally? No. Nobody is suggesting that we weigh down others with chains.

Of course I don't think Vonnegut was being literal either...

I like the bogus example because though you claim it's bogus it went through your mind I may very well watch Fox News given my focus on individualism. I find it fascinating that people that have a difference of view point are always lumped into a black or white view of the world so people can "figure them out".

That observation aside, I easily see what your point is, but I don't agree with the principle of it. In this case this wasn't a direct ad hominem attack by Linus. I fail to see that given the rest of the email thread. More importantly however is the fact that the individualism involved is what makes things interesting and gets the points across. Since you like literature it seems, you should surely understand the importance of the reviews and critics of such works. Often these were quite brutal, but again they drove home the points, whether they are right or wrong isn't the issue either. A sugar coated world just isn't a reflection of a real world.

I have to agree with the "Linus isn't perfect" assessment. What's got him this far is in the results - much of his abuse is accompanied with "this is bad for userland" and a specific indication of where the patch went wrong.

But criticism of developers is apparently too difficult for him. He doesn't distiguish between "this code is bad" and "YOUR code is bad" - indeed, he seems to enjoy pinning the perp and assuming they are an idiot and not just ignorant.

Ah yes, this is just brimming with positivism and love: http://edward.oconnor.cx/2005/04/rms

Could you enlighten me, what did Stallman write about Jobs again?

"As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, 'I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone.' Nobody deserves to have to die – not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing."

Clearly, that was an angry denouncement... /sarcasm

No, it was passive aggressive bullshit, hidden in eloquent crap. The very thing Linus tries to avoid.

Seemed to be pretty obvious truth to me. Steve Jobs has created an ecosystem that is far more locked down than the 1984 he envisioned in the original Mac Ad. He has ushered in an era of computing in which the general purpose device is giving way to a device where you don't even control what content you can put on it.

We used to think that DRM on desktop PCs was bad, but for mobile devices it's 10x worse.

Now, see how I just explained the issue with Steve Jobs, instead of saying "He was a piece of shit who passed of Woz's work as his own, lied to him about money, denied paternity of his daughter, verbally abused employees and kept them in a state of fear, maintained an 'enemy list' of journalists, .....!" That's inflammatory rhetoric, and not relevant. The only thing that is relevant is the sea change in DRM'ed computing platforms have been popularized and his role in them, which is what Stallman was alluding too -- the effects of his leadership.

"As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die -- not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing."

And? I mean, it's tasteless right after his death, but is it equivalence to personal attack and intimation?

Is the world black and white, and if someone says even one negative thing, then it's a full equivalence?

You can delete the Stallman reference, and the point still stands.