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Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

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Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#291

Post by odonnellryan »

ealexhudson wrote: post #175
icelancer wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Being able to call out bullshit doesn't mean having to curse it out. Here we go. >> All Linus needs to do is say something like And all you need to do is be that nice and be as brilliant as Linus is. Oh, it's harder to be that smart than it is to be that nice? Maybe consider that for people as highly gifted as Linus, it actually isn't. What you take for granted as normal behavior isn't always normal to others, esp…

I think you're misreading my comment. The original post was "we need this brashness", my point is, we don't. If a specific individual is unable to communicate without that, that's a totally different matter - being able to accommodate a wide church of people is a crucial diversity matter. Would it have been clearer if I had said "All someone in a project leadership position needs to say ..." ? I'm arguing against tha…

How much attention would this have gotten it if was a polite note somewhere?

Maybe less. Probably not more ....

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#293

Post by ams6110 »

dschuetz wrote: post #199
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus, like Jobs, is a bully. He lives under the sword. The moment he stops being right, everyone will swiftly turn against them. What separates them is that they're almost never wrong. Not when they pull out "this is garbage" card. This is a difficult ability to learn. You need to stay quiet most of the time, then be a complete asshole when it's important. I really hate that aspect of our industry. But that's just h…

I think there needs to be a clear distinction of what a bully is and what they do. Bullies are violent for no reason, for the pleasure of it. Linus is at most verbally harsh for pretty obvious reasons, the main reason being the harsh his language the more important the issue is. His attacks and critique are never on the personal basis, yet people get offended for no apparent reason instead of focusing on the issue. S…

> Bullies are violent for no reason, for the pleasure of it.

Not quite. Bullying is continuing targeted agression for the purpose of demeaning another person and getting power over them.

A one-off diatribe, blunt or even mean-spirited statement, by itself, is not bullying. A person can be an ass without being a bully.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#294

Post by hashkb »

pdpi wrote: post #271
bassman9000 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should treasure it while it lasts, before PC culture silences him. And before downvoting, recall how many threads regarding Linus abusive behavior (sic) we've had.

Can we stop repeating this? Assertiveness and assholery are not one and the same. Linus has both in abundance, and we can decry the one without wanting the other to go away.

If you can't claim "PC has a chilling effect" without being asked to stop claiming it, the case is closed.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#295

Post by Random_Person »

mrmondo wrote: post #8

I think we should count ourselves lucky we have someone so good at spotting bullsh*t like this - and isn’t afraid to call it out as they sees it. Intel & friends have absolutely disgusted me lately, it could be all to easy to settle for less based on their standards, but let’s not let them set the standard - they’ve shown they can’t be trusted with quality and when they fail - they can’t be trusted to be transparent…

I fear for the future of post-Linus linux.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#296

Post by marcosdumay »

watwut wrote: post #222
brynjolf wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boring. Heard it all before.

Is that supposed to mean that you agree, that you think everyone agrees or that you disagree for reason you refuse to say?

I guess he's going for the indirect, impolite, with low information density option.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#297

Post by catach »

tome wrote: post #204
DoreenMichele wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I gather, some of this is cultural. His country of origin is just generally blunt and direct about things. That directness is generally associated with multicultural environments where subtler context-dependent communication simply does not work. Some of the quotes I am seeing here from him are things I think are unnecessarily harsh, but most are not. Discussions about something he has said or written seem…

I'm not sure you replied to the correct post since it didn't really seem to be about Linus's style. Anyway, this argument comes up again and again. Regardless of the style in his country and language or origin he is writing in English, in public, for an international audience. One expects a different sort of tone.

> in English, in public, for an international audience. One expects a different sort of tone.

I agree that this is true, but two points stick out to me:

1. Generally the motive for this convention stems from organizations wanting to sanitize their image.

2. FOSS project communication is overwhelmingly pubic.

If we accept that all organizations need some amount of blunt communication at some point, and if we accept that public bluntness has so far not had a measurable negative perception impact for Linux, then it seems inevitable that the project will be an exception to expectations.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#298

Post by Sean1708 »

roel_v wrote: post #63
gambiting wrote: post #35

Am I the only person who finds this extremely difficult to read? The top says "David wrote" and then it looks like he's replying to a message from Linus Torvalds. So any quoted text is by Linus, right? But then....the letter is signed by Linus? So who wrote it? I know this is some ancient technology but Jesus, the user interface is horrendous.

Probably depends on how old you are. To me it was completely obvious and much, much clearer than most 'modern' user interfaces. Every person replying prefixes each line with > . Proper email clients do this automatically. This way you can tell from the number of >'s how far back on the 'stack' you have to go to know who wrote it. You start reading from the top, mentally associating an indent level (nr of >'s) with a…

The issue I have with most mailing list interfaces like this is how difficult it is to find context. This post is a perfect example, it's pretty easy to find David's email by clicking the "In reply to:" link but I've been searching for a good 10 minutes and I still can't find Linus' original email. Going to "Messages sorted by: [ thread ]" doesn't show it, going to "Messages sorted by: [ date ]" and looking for emails sent around 2018-01-21 11:34 doesn't show it, and short of searching through every single one of Linus' emails I don't really know how to find it.

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#299

Post by jerf »

Fnoord wrote: post #144
DoreenMichele wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I gather, some of this is cultural. His country of origin is just generally blunt and direct about things. That directness is generally associated with multicultural environments where subtler context-dependent communication simply does not work. Some of the quotes I am seeing here from him are things I think are unnecessarily harsh, but most are not. Discussions about something he has said or written seem…

> From what I gather, some of this cultural. His country of origin is just generally blunt and direct about things. I've heard this blunt(/direct/honest) argument quite often (and the same about my country, The Netherlands), but I've also seen Americans in IT who can be very blunt. I attribute it not to country_of_origin, but to the [autism] spectrum.

There's another explanation too, which is that if you pay attention as you age, you find that nicely wrapping up all your engineering points in a polite wrapper can very easily put you into the unenviable position where half your audience doesn't correctly penetrate the circumlocutions to understand what you were trying to say, while the other half goes right on ahead and gets offended anyhow, because what they are offended by is that you are disagreeing with them at all, no matter how much padding you put on that.

I'm probably still too verbose (ha... "probably"... I flatter myself), but I went through a phase in my late teens and early twenties where I qualified and wrapped in polite circumlocutions everything I wrote. It makes in incomprehensible, honestly, and it doesn't work anyhow. I still got flamed. (Good ol' Usenet.)

There's a time and a place for politeness. That time and place is most times and most places. There's a time and a place for directness, bluntness, and even outright impoliteness; I'd submit "Intel is just going to leave a critical vulnerability in basically every CPU in the world, and throw up an obfuscating cover of flags and workarounds and PR to try to pretend otherwise" is a reasonable time for those things.

(Personally, I don't expect miracles. Intel ought to come out and say "Look, this is going to take some years. Here's some workarounds in the meantime, and here's our plan going forward." I think everyone who understands the situation understands that a true fix is very difficult. But if it looks like they're going to try to skate by on some weak workarounds and a heavy dollop of PR, the industry as a whole really needs to pushback, not just Linus.)

Re: Linus Torvalds: “Somebody is pushing complete garbage for unclear reasons.”

#300

Post by vonmoltke »

pjmlp wrote: post #263
DiabloD3 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been quoted by Google developers on why Nexus 5 fell off the support track so early, around the same time Nexus 4 did: it took a herculean effort to get the binary drivers to even remotely work right on Android 6 due to being unable to drag in newer kernels. This is partially why Treble is being worked on, to just completely disconnect the actual Linux-based HAL from "the OS", thus trying to negate a lot of th…

That is just an excuse from Google that many blindly accept. First, of all there are legal obligations known as contracts. If Google was serious about Nexus 5 support from OEMs, it would have had contract in place that would assure the necessary support regardless of what OEMs would decide. Secondly, Treble is yet another solution that will die, because Google, again, decided to leave to OEMs the task of delivering T…

> First, of all there are legal obligations known as contracts.

That kind if snark is unnecessary and degrades the conversation.

> If Google was serious about Nexus 5 support from OEMs, it would have had contract in place that would assure the necessary support regardless of what OEMs would decide.

I'm not sure who you are referring to with "OEM" here, but Google took on the responsibility of maintaining the OS images for the Nexus devices, not the companies they contracted to build them.

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