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Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10492282 Wasn't it throughly discussed, dissected, analysed and debated in that very recent topic? The only new input this post beings is one more opinion among the many in that other HN post. Should it be considered a dupe?
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…
There are some people who believe it needs to be brought up more, even in places where it's off topic, because raising awareness is easy and historically it has been an effective strategy to move the needle on public perception.
Linus isn't celebrated because Linus is a famous programmer notorious for being quick to reach for the poison pen, Linus is being celebrated because he's a man, or so the story goes.
I agree that gender isn't relevant to Linus's behavior. The door swings both ways on abuse, after all. Humans of all gender identities are equally capable of being terrible to humans of any gender identity. But if the author's gripe is with the public reaction to it, it sort of makes sense why they would bring gender up. Namely: strategic political reasons.
Can anyone defend Linus' version as better communication than Eisenberg's?
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?
That's cultural differences 101
As a simple example: in Canada one might say "please do not feed the animals" in a Zoo. In some other places, for the message to have the same effect it must be as such: "It is expressly forbidden to feed the animals! Those being caught doing so will be expelled from the zoo!"
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.
Oh, and don't paint Brendan Eich as some kind of victim of the free speech police. He actively participated in trying to deny a large class of Americans the basic freedom to marry whom they wanted. And people decided they didn't want someone with that record running Mozilla.
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…
Also, it's sad, but after so many years on the internet I don't consider his language to be abusive. It's aggressive yes, but clearly there went much though into it. If I'm honest, i find it kind of amusing. But maybe that's just me.
Can anyone defend Linus' version as better communication than Eisenberg's?
TL;DR: different choice of words in writing help to compensate the lack of metainformation present in human communication like body language, tone of voice and choice of venue (like closed doors).
Reposting from the other thread:
Although the polite version is semantically identical the syntax of the message in many cases as important as the message itself.
Much of what makes human communication universally intelligible across cultures and languages like tone of voice or body language is lost in writing and the human tendency is to replace it with similar substitutes as it helps to convey meta-information that would be hard to convey otherwise.
I believe if one would analyze every single email sent by Linux to the list the great majority of them would have similar syntax to the polite English above but, of course, those wouldn't make the news.
The bitter rants seem to be reserved to the cases where it is imperative that everybody, involved or not, understand very clearly why that behaviour is not tolerable and the reason for that. Similar cases like the refusal to merge Kay Sievers further submissions [1] until he cleaned up and owned up to his mistakes or the reprieve of a maintainer [2] that broke userland with a kernel commit seems to follow the same pattern.
The difference to a professional setting is that, in person in a company, one can always call a closed doors meeting and express with tone of voice and body language the same message without the public spectacle. Even in those cases, specially when everybody knows what it mean to be called to the boss presence, it can be as embarrassing and intimidating as what happens in those forums.
[1] http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1404.0/01331.html
Can anyone defend Linus' version as better communication than Eisenberg's?
Nobody will try to pull that shit again for quite some time. The "Constructive" version will be handwaved by submitting the same code again and giving literally any deflecting excuse like "You're just afraid of using new technology like this function.
Right, in fact, if I were the developer who wrote that shit, I would probably think twice about doing any work on the code. Not because I was insulted but because I would be scared. I don't know about this specific situation and maybe it's political/religious. But maybe the girl/guy just wrote this code because they thought it was the best solution. Being screamed at by an authority like that (even if they don't mention you by name) would be quite demoralizing to me. But I guess you can argue that I just don't have what it takes to be a Linux contributor then..