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Comment by haberman | Hacker News Reader

> While I don't think I'd be as caustic as Linus, I can totally understand the level of exasperation that saga must have caused him given the series of issues in question. And at the point of this outburst, nothing appears to have worked: the stream of crap had kept on coming.

I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but are you saying that being exasperated is justification to be arbitrarily caustic?

There are plenty of open-source project leaders who deal with incorrigible people and do not talk this way.

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I'm saying that sufficient exasperation makes it understandable whether or not it is justified. Linus is human. Humans are not flawless.

> There are plenty of open-source project leaders who deal with incorrigible people and do not talk this way.

And a lot of people who "do not talk this way" are a lot worse by dealing with these kind of issues through backstabbing or veiled insults.

While some are saint-like and never say or do a bad thing to contributors, I don't buy that the lack of abrasive language in any way is a reliable indicator of civility.

I think Linus (and others) choose to stay verbally abusive because there they exist in a community that both facilitates and defends that poor behaviour.

There is a choice to be made. The choice stems from the basic mindset: am I fundamentally ok with verbally abusing people around me, or should I try to stop doing that?

I don't know what's in Linus' mind. Perhaps he is utterly incapable of never resorting to verbal abuse. But I doubt that's true.

It is in part a cultural issue. Realise that this form of "abuse" does not carry much weight in a lot of cultures. A lot of the strongest criticism of Linus comes from a cultural background where people are hyper-sensitive to direct language.

Verbal abuse and direct language are unrelated.

Direct language, without verbal abuse:

"I am upset and angry that you keep making the same mistakes."

That's clearly communicating how he feels, without verbally abusing his audience.

"I am upset and angry that you keep making the same mistakes."

No, remember the context: you've already used nice, direct words, and Kai has ignored them multiple times. Now you need to shake Kai's cage. Linus might have gone overboard, but his technique has more chance of success than yours.

Also, this is not a sterile corporate environment. The LKML is more like a dive bar than Applebee's and that's the way they like it.

If you equate 'sterile' with 'not verbal abuse', I suppose that's true.

Given that direct words were ignored multiple times, I would suggest that the next action is simply to not merge, without comment, after a final "You are ignoring us, we can't the time to keep correcting you. Your bad merges will be ignored without comment."

Such a path will get a developer's attention, and it involves no verbal abuse.

A problem with flinging abusive words around is that it artificially and needlessly limits the diversity of your community. Though, it might be that that's t he intent:

"The LKML is more like a dive bar than Applebee's and that's the way they like it."

This debate exists on a spectrum of gray areas, but I'm pretty sure "you should be retroactively aborted" crosses the line from "shaking someone's cage" to "flagrantly excessive verbal abuse", if for no other reason than it equate's the target's worth as a human being with their skill as a developer, which is obviously not a healthy viewpoint.

I'm a big believer in 'spectrum of gray areas'. This particular quote from Linus is particularly bad.

What I want to firmly point out is the general community's level of acceptance of verbally abusive language.

There could be a debate about what constitutes verbal abuse, on a case by case basis. And that would turn into a mess.

What I'd love to see is the community acknowledge that using and even encouraging such language is bad for everybody, and it's bad for the open source movement, big time.

I agree with you. The problem I'm seeing in this thread relates to this point:

> There could be a debate about what constitutes verbal abuse, on a case by case basis. And that would turn into a mess.

Right now, a lot of people simply do not make the distinction between verbal abuse and direct language. In other words, they are arguing that we should not bother discouraging verbal abuse because it "shouldn't" affect targets any more adversely than direct but non-abusive language.

I guess it's a debate one can approach from many angles. But maybe you're right, perhaps focusing on highlighting why one thing constitutes verbal abuse and others don't is too semantic of an argument, and it's more productive to focus on the fact that just because one person has never been truly bothered by verbal abuse doesn't mean that should be the universal expectation.

Yeah, I don't really have anything more specific in mind. I think your analysis is spot on.

Universal expectation? It seems you two are railing against a straw man. Abusive behavior, even on the LKML, even by Linus, is rare. If you feel as strongly as you seem to, please subscribe, form a first-hand opinion, and maybe contribute to positive change. (I contributed around 2001-2003 and really enjoyed it; I don't subscribe now).

Too many misunderstandings have been caused by well-meaning people reading too much into cherry-picked HN comments.

Hm. Because these comments are WAY off topic and have now drowned out the article and any rational discussion, I won't comment any further. Diederich, I hope you'll show more restraint with the Reply button.

The problem isn't that it's too abundant. The problem is that people make excuses for it every time it happens, instead of just saying, "Yeah, that was really verbally abusive."

I'm not trying to be pedantic here but, despite your quote marks, Linus never said that.

My interpretation of that email chain reads: anyone who is stupid enough to continue reading byte-by-byte after being told that it's a bad idea should be retroactively aborted.

The implied subject makes a big difference. (I still think it's over the line but I understand that everyone makes mistakes in the heat of the moment)

WRT what specifically Linus did and didn't say, that's a fair reading.

And everybody, myself included, says things out of frustration, in the heat of the moment. That's not what I'm talking about here.

I'm talking about how many (most?) open source technical communities are very much ok with language that is abusive. Indeed, many take pride in that fact.

When I say something that's inappropriate, I'll make a point of retracting it later on when I'm calm.

In the same video interview where Linus famously gestured toward Nvidia, he also said that he believes people capable of being offended should be offended. I suppose one could think of it as a way of filtering out people who focus too much on the messenger and medium rather than the actual message.

Random theory time: People who are harmful to the project, should be removed from the project. If you're not a company but an "open" project that can't fire people, you pretty much have to do this my making them not want to say. So if someone causes enough trouble, just pile on the verbal abuse until they get fed up and leave.

I think this is another false dichotomy. It's quite possible to efficiently limit the damage someone can cause to a project without resorting to verbal abuse.

Most simply, refuse to merge their stuff unless it has quality. You don't have to hold their hand; say: "You are making the same mistakes over and over again. Your stuff isn't going to get merged, and we're not going to spend any time explaining to you why."

> and we're not going to spend any time explaining to you why."

"any more time", please. The context should imply this, but some situations require high clarity.

I don't think 'high clarity' requires the use of verbally abusive language.

That is both obviously true and bears no connection to the post you're replying to.

It's a style choice, and I think both the choice to utilize it and the reception to it are heavily dependent on the participant's cultural background and upbringing. A lot of people see this kind of message, applied to someone who Really Should Know Better, as a form of tough love and half-tongue-in-cheek way to place extra emphasis on an important message.

Some people can form that understanding as the basis of their relationship and continue on happily, able to both give and receive this kind of criticism. To others, it is completely foreign and incomprehensible and they don't see the tongue-in-cheek at all and just interpret it as blatant, outright hostility, which is generally not the actual subtext.

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