Comment by RyanZAG | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RyanZAG | Hacker News Reader

I personally find people demanding Linus change to fit them to be the rudest thing I have ever seen.

Let's look at the history quickly: Linus sits down to write an OS as a hobby. It's a huge success and he shares it for free with everyone who wants to use it. Some big corporations like Intel see how good the thing that Linus has made is, and they employ people to help him out.

They then turn around and say Linux is now a big corporate project, and Linus needs to watch his manners? Fuck them, they wouldn't have Linux without him. It's beyond rude for these people to demand Linus fit their corporate culture. I'd say they are welcome to communicate privately with Linus - with a lot of respect owed to him - and convince him to the merits of behaving differently. But to go to the press and make a public statement on how Linus needs to change himself? It's simply disgusting.

Linus is free to act however he wants, and anybody dealing with him is free to walk away. They won't though - Linus has shown incredible ability in managing contributors and also great 'taste' in keeping the kernel working smoothly. This article, however, is plain rude.

Shorter version of your argument: "How dare you tell your parents to change the way they treat you, you're alive because of them!"

Living beings have pressured each other to change for one reason or another since the beginning of time. Linus is an effective leader and an asshole. Could he be more effective if he's less of an asshole? That's an open question. It's not any more rude to suggest it than him calling people stupid, idiotic, retarded for introducing kernel regressions.

Ps. She didn't go to the press. The tech press has a tendency to come to you. Sometimes it's better to clarify than stay silent.

I'm obviously communicating my argument poorly then.

Shorter version of my argument: "How dare you tell other people's parents to change the way they treat them - publicly in an interview?" Some parents might discipline their children more harshly than others. If I went to tell the press about how a parent gave their child a smack for doing something stupid, I'd say that would be very rude to that parent. Linus isn't killing anybody here - he's shouting at people who fucked up, and telling his staff to be more rude in sending away bad patches.

If she went to the press or the press came to her feels very irrelevant. She chose to answer in an interview she knew would be very public - she started this on a very public mailing list.

I would agree if this were a company project, or private organization, but its not, its a public dispute on a public project with a vast audience, and a press hungry for political drama-fueled clicks.

I don't think she said anything in this interview that was disrespectful to Linus, or anything other than color commentary. It's sort of like the press conference after a sports game where a player disagreed with the ref during the game and it was picked up on mic, and the press asked her about it after.

Her crime is that she took a stand against an authority figure. She might be wrong in the end, and talking to the press CAN be risky, but this specific incident doesn't seem to be all that bad.

The "Linux is Linus' baby, he can do what ever he wants"-argument is getting really old. For a very long time it has been a collaboration project where people work together. When collaborating you have to have respect for your peers or, at least, act in a respectful manner. If you can't do that then you are both childish and unprofessional. Name calling and personal attacks are only bad for morale and hinders collaboration.

The proper response to old arguments that no longer convince is to fork. If all the people who claim to be tired of working with Linus put their efforts where their claims are, they would have a viable fork.

No, you are wrong, and Linus is wrong and you are both worthless assholes who should just fuck off and die. Oh, you don't like my tone? Yeah, just like a loser to play the victim card. Learn to accept my different style of communication already!

The disgusting things here are Linus' behaviour and your rationalizing of it.

I don't personally mind your tone, but your message has no content. If you read any of the 'insulting' posts by Linus, you'll see they're insulting for a reason: someone messed up badly, and he always explains exactly where and how.

The difference is that Linus resorts to such communication for a reason versus you doing this just to prove your point.

Oh, and what is Linus' reason, if not to prove his point? He pretty much outright says so: he thinks it's necessary to swear to get people to listen.

>> he thinks it's necessary to swear to get people to listen.

That is correct, but ONLY when people (specifically kernel maintainers) produce much below acceptable standards. In case I am missing smth - can you point to an e-mail where Linus was cursing at a newcomer (i.e. not kernel maintainer)?

Are Intel and other corporations the ones saying he should watch his manners? It seems more that it's developers or maintainers, not corporations.

I just don't recall seeing corporations telling Linus to essentially be nicer, just developers. If you have links to the corporations doing it, please share.

I suspect most organizations are even more cutthroat than Linus: if we're paying you to contribute patches that are of strategic benefit to the company, and for whatever reason those patches are not accepted, we'll find someone else to contribute our patches.

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