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Abuse is indefensible

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Re: Abuse is indefensible

#181

Post by dwb »

vox_mollis wrote: post #154
dwb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shanley Kane criticised Linus and got her and her family's addresses posted, death threats, rape threats, and other horrific abuse. If you think gender isn't an issue, you haven't educated yourself well enough.

This comment is very amusing in the context of the article. Shanley Kane uses abusive language, at minimum, two orders of magnitude more often than Linus does.

Abuse requires a power imbalance in favour of the abuser. That was not the case for Shanley's criticism.

Re: Abuse is indefensible

#183

Post by tptacek »

dwb wrote: post #181
vox_mollis wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is very amusing in the context of the article. Shanley Kane uses abusive language, at minimum, two orders of magnitude more often than Linus does.

Abuse requires a power imbalance in favour of the abuser. That was not the case for Shanley's criticism.

I think I know what you're trying to say, but it probably isn't true that abuse requires a power imbalance, unless "willingness to abuse" is itself a form of power, in which case the word doesn't mean much anymore.

Re: Abuse is indefensible

#184

Post by norea-armozel »

arguseyes wrote: post #109
norea-armozel wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe since he can't communicate without expletives or being overly coarse he can appoint someone else to the task of explaining the problems with code contributions?

Or maybe he doesn't care about random cultural norms of some region on this planet ... and doesn't need to? Should he end all his messages with "Long live our dear leader Kim Jong-Un" to not offend North-Koreans?

This is not equivalent to what I've stated, but thanks for strawmanning my point entirely. :)

Re: Abuse is indefensible

#185

Post by norea-armozel »

arguseyes wrote: post #103
norea-armozel wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps everyone can learn to communicate in a clear and concise manner? Just an idea.

The recipient of Linus message understood all his points fairly well.

I didn't. And I can see others having the same issue.

Re: Abuse is indefensible

#186

Post by dwb »

sarciszewski wrote: post #67
dwb wrote: post #26

Linus doesn't deserve to be in his position. Technical merit doesn't excuse being a horrible manager of people.

> Linus doesn't deserve to be in his position. What exactly do you mean by "in his position"? It's his project that he started years ago. His participation is likened to a monarchy, not a democracy. His further involvement is, therefore, not something that can be decided by an election. He doesn't deserve to be in his position with respect to a project he started and owns? That doesn't make any damn sense.

Yes, I'm saying that he doesn't deserve to be in charge of a project he started and owns. It's bigger than just his pet project now, it affects lots of people and many people spend a significant fraction of their life working on it.

Re: Abuse is indefensible

#187

Post by eis »

eis wrote: post #173
enneff wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't like how Linus behaves, then don't deal with him. Noone forces you. Linus' status in the Open Source community makes him a role model for some people (whether he likes it or not; I suspect he doesn't), and so people imitate him. It's much less palatable coming from someone with less credibility and experience.

That's another problem. Maybe adult people shouldn't have role models that they blindly copy in every way.

To the downvoters: may I ask for a reason? Are you saying blindly copying people is a good thing? I don't get it.

Re: Abuse is indefensible

#188

Post by micampe »

raverbashing wrote: post #166
tptacek wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

overflow_usub is the code that gets called when your compiler doesn't support __builtin_usub_overflow (Linus opposes both the function and the intrinsic, of course).

True, however how it is used in this case leads to unnecessary opacity (I'm referring to the || mtu Sometimes 'smart code' is not necessarily better (I'm open to disagreement, though)

> Sometimes 'smart code' is not necessarily better

I would argue that it's usually not, especially in large and long lived projects. “Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program”.

Re: Abuse is indefensible

#189

Post by tptacek »

cholantesh wrote: post #147
ceejayoz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because it was a bad idea that ruins the Linux Kernel. That seems a bit hyperbolic. > Kernel development isn't for everyone. Very little is "for everyone". That's not an excuse to offer criticism in a nasty manner. The article links to a nicer response that's a) shorter and b) a lot more likely to educate and build up a better contributor.

I'd go even further - kernel development isn't just 'not for everyone', it's for very few. Relatively speaking, how many people are competent enough to contribute to the kernel? Those that even make the attempt are doing so voluntarily - if the reward from that is to be entreated with a hyperbolic rant, why would they bother going any further?

You all realize that this argument cuts both ways, and probably even cuts against Linus harder, right?

By the time Linus is ranting at someone at LKML, the person he's ranting at has --- statistically, at least --- already qualified themselves as especially competent. These people aren't arguing over Rails template languages.

I'm coming to realize that the sociology of Linus LKML rants is pretty fascinating.

Re: Abuse is indefensible

#190

Post by marrs »

mikeash wrote: post #159
marrs wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lesson a lot of people are going to learn from this is, "Don't submit any code to Linux." That's true, but not really a problem. Linux is one of the most popular open source projects out there.

It's still a problem if you want to keep it that way, or if you value quality over quantity.

But the shouting is intended to maintain quality. I appreciate that you doubt it does this. You could be right, but the article doesn't convince me of this.

It seems to have a different agenda anyway, that the shouting is unacceptable regardless of any benefit. I'm not sure I go along with that either.

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