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Abuse is indefensible

blog.mozilla.org

11–20 of 221 posts

Re: Abuse is indefensible

#12

I've read a few of Linus' rants and been on the fence, but this one does seem to have crossed some sort of line into being unnecessarily abusive, and to add to that, unclear communication. The rewritten version really does emphasise a much better approach. Linus's rant doesn't read like it was written by... a stable person. I was in full agreement with the article up until this: >Of the many things I could say about…

[deleted]

Re: Abuse is indefensible

#14
My take on it was that the non-abusive rewrite would be much more useful to the submitter, as it lays out the issues. The original just make Linus look like he's lost it. Glad I don't have to work with him.

Re: Abuse is indefensible

#15
post #3

From the team that hounded out Brendan Eich... May I quote the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression: this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Freedom of opinion and expression also means people can point you out as being an abusive asshole. Goes both ways.

Re: Abuse is indefensible

#16
post #13

To be honest, Linus' rants is making a better point for me. I really feel his pain with overflow_usub, and i feel nothing when reading rewritten version.

Why on earth do I need to "feel his pain" rather than just understand the issues at hand?

Re: Abuse is indefensible

#17
post #9
post #6

I thought that finally I can see example of Linus being abusive. This was not it. Linus was attacking the work and ideas and cursing them. He was not attacking the person who wrote the code. Cursing is not abusive by itself. Cursing is emotional emphasis. I would not want to work in a environment where strong emotional language used to criticize your work is considered abusive. If conflict over ideas and work does no…

But do you not feel offended when you are the one who came up with the idea?

They... should be offended? Because it was a bad idea that ruins the Linux Kernel. Kernel development isn't for everyone.

Re: Abuse is indefensible

#18

I've read a few of Linus' rants and been on the fence, but this one does seem to have crossed some sort of line into being unnecessarily abusive, and to add to that, unclear communication. The rewritten version really does emphasise a much better approach. Linus's rant doesn't read like it was written by... a stable person. I was in full agreement with the article up until this: >Of the many things I could say about…

> Completely irrelevant and not true in my opinion.

Hardly, when talking about brash/abusive behavior in the context of an industry where women are underrepresented, I think it's plenty fine to mention that there might be a connection to be made.

> the gender of the poster makes no difference

Eh, I don't agree. It's well-observed in social sciences that men are given more leeway to be abusive than women are; one example is how often words like "abrasive" or "bossy" come up in performance reports: http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender-bias...

Or just look at our popular media: how many male antiheroes on TV have enough audience to support them vs. women antiheroes? For every Walter White or Doctor House or Tony Soprano, how many unlikeable women are there? Roxane Gay writes about this pretty well. http://www.buzzfeed.com/roxanegay/not-here-to-make-friends-u...

> Does the gender issue really have to be shoehorned into every story?

Per above, I don't think it's "shoehorned." And I think it's fine if we talk about it more than we currently do, because there's plenty to suggest we don't talk about it enough or are insufficiently introspective about it.

Re: Abuse is indefensible

#20

I've read a few of Linus' rants and been on the fence, but this one does seem to have crossed some sort of line into being unnecessarily abusive, and to add to that, unclear communication. The rewritten version really does emphasise a much better approach. Linus's rant doesn't read like it was written by... a stable person. I was in full agreement with the article up until this: >Of the many things I could say about…

I had the same feeling about the last bit of the article. Drama for no reason. I would be glad if the tech community focused more on tech than on shitstorms.

Some people are just too sensitive. If you don't like how Linus behaves, then don't deal with him. Noone forces you.

But why post an article on your blog which is associated with Mozilla including a gist of collected swear words? At least Linus didn't engage in some meta-drama nonsense.

unfamiliar: I don't agree though that this makes Linus a unstable person. In fact I'd say if people can't swallow some swear words, then they are in turn not emotionally strong enough.

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