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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.”

#591

Post by somestag »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #569
somestag wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that kind of a non sequitur? The idea that "Google is evil" (not that I agree with it) and the idea that "It's possible to construct a culture where people can air grievances and criticize others without inducing flame wars [like at Google]" are arguments that have nothing to do with each other. There is no role reversal, even if we unreservedly accept both premises.

No, it is not a non sequitur. There is no separating out corporate culture from the fact that it is a corporation. FOSS is not a for profit corporation. Expecting it to function like one is not reasonable. Trying to impose corporate culture as the standard for FOSS is not only not reasonable, it is counterproductive. If you want corporate software, cool. But if you want FOSS to exist at all, there has to be a fundame…

I think we disagree on your assumptions.

Positive team environment and corporate culture are not inextricably linked. They may overlap depending on the corporation in question, but they are not one in the same. This should be obvious since you can have a positive team environment on teams where no corporation is involved (e.g., hobby projects). Clearly the suggestion that FOSS should have a positive team environment cannot be the same as the suggestion that FOSS should have a corporate culture.

Think about how your logic would look flipped around. If leads at Google were encouraged to slap people down when they disagree with their suggestions, then you'd have to suddenly argue that Linus should change his tune because otherwise he'd be fostering a corporate culture, and FOSS must have a different culture than that.

Clearly that, too, would be a non sequitur.

As for the rest of what you said, I think you know no one is suggesting anything of the sort. There's no reason to straw man here.

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

#592

Post by vlovich123 »

candiodari wrote: post #572
quotheth wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is obvious, and it's extremely sad to me that people believe otherwise and vehemently argue that Linus is justified in his pety rants. It was always pathetic . The response is shockingly adult, given the culture Linus insists on trying to push: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.2/05282.html What an excellent writeup, despite the tantrum Linus threw just a few replies earlier. I'd highly recommend on…

> I'm sure I'll get downvoted though for calling Linus a baby, because somehow insulting Linus for his flaws is never ok but when Linus does it it's so cool! I'm pretty sure people aren't up in arms about Linus being a baby, but about your refusal to call out people on "subpar performance". Replace "subpar performance" with whatever you feel is an acceptable name for executing wrongly on very bad ideas. And I feel li…

Here's the thing though. People always make mistakes. It's an unavoidable fact of life. The more power you have the bigger the scale of your fuckup. The problem is the denial of a problem (which Intel did in some ways & didn't in other) & making misleading statements. Those were all decisions not made at an engineering level BTW so berating an engineer won't help.

Finally, reading that thread further, it does seem like Linus's rant was a little premature & mistaken. David really handles it well & explains in detail in what way Linus may be misunderstanding what's going on. It's hard to know if that response mollified Linus or if he still thinks it's bunk & that thread was just taken offline so that it wouldn't have the noise of useless spectators chiming in, but it seemed like Ingo was perhaps satisfied & moved the conversation back to a way to solve the Skylake problem in a maintainable & clean way without the undesirable implementation that was originally proposed (you know, the whole point of an RFC). An RFC typically means they were looking for feedback & discussion not getting yelled at, especially for things outside their control. That being said, I certainly understand how frustrated everyone is with this given the amount of work that's been put into this by everyone.

Engineering culture is fundamentally about learning from mistakes (either as a community or individually). We can't fear them & there are limits to how much you can go to prevent making them before you just get decision paralysis. For that reason mea culpas are also unproductive. You should acknowledge your actions & your role in it - if you think you behaved incorrectly then of course apologize if you want to - but the person would made mistakes is just as much a victim of their environment as others (i.e. if I threw you into their position without the benefit of hindsight, would you do necessarily do a better job?) Yes corporate America has issues (as does every human endeavour btw) but I'm not convinced that in any way has to do anything with this discussion.

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

#593

Post by donatj »

russdpale wrote: post #589
donatj wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posit there is no nice way to reflect when something is actual garbage. When it should go into the trash bin instead of being merged, even with modifications. It’s never going to be nice to hear. In lessening the blow you lose the message. You lose the true meaning. You lie.

Or it just means someone lacks a proper grasp of the English language! I find a thesaurus is handy.

Please use your thesaurus and enlighten me to how then I say “this code is garbage” in a nice way, while clearly communicating the full meaning of:

    - this code is bad
    - you should reassess your skills and values 
    that lead you to believe this was good
    - your worldview may be flawed, look into that 
    - don’t do this again
    - you should probably feel bad too, to attach 
    emotion to strengthen your memories of this
    to make this a learning experience

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

#597

Post by somestag »

donatj wrote: post #585
Jaxan wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both? I think OP means that we should be nice and honest.

I posit there is no nice way to reflect when something is actual garbage. When it should go into the trash bin instead of being merged, even with modifications. It’s never going to be nice to hear. In lessening the blow you lose the message. You lose the true meaning. You lie.

I don't think there's a native English speaker in the world who reads the phrase " is garbage" and interprets that literally as "this is just a metaphor for deciding not to use something and thus throwing it out." No, there's always vitriol, and the writer knows that, which is why they say it like that--because they're feeling vitriolic.

I'm sure you can imagine equally accurate ways to reject code contributions; it doesn't really take any creativity. When you say that the "true meaning" is lost, what you're really saying is the true meaning was to make the contributor feel bad. If you want to defend that, go ahead, but that intent needs to be out in the open, not hidden behind the plausible deniability of words.

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

#598

Post by nodja »

mathw wrote: post #590
nnq wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the top comment on this about engineering culture?! Linus is valuable precisely because he occasionally d-slaps people around, waking them up, even when what he says may be factually wrong, and reminding them the at the core the tech must be sane, f people and their feelings! Yeah, it's good to have a 1 in 1000 brilliant people being aholes because it keeps the culture balanced. We need a dose of rascality, an…

Because, as the comment says, he is wrong . He may be technically correct in his assessment of the quality of the patches (I lack the necessary knowledge to even begin to assess it), but he does not go about explaining this in a sensible manner. He has never fostered a collaborative, inclusive atmosphere around the kernel. If anybody at my workplace talked to a collaborator in that way they'd be in a chat with their…

Most of Torvalds emails are not like this. In fact most of them are like you say, he explains his thoughts in a sensible manner. It's just when people play with fire that the lid comes of and makes the headlines.

A sensible mail discussing the details of some obscure technicality doesn't make HN frontpage.

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

#599

Post by donatj »

somestag wrote: post #597
donatj wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posit there is no nice way to reflect when something is actual garbage. When it should go into the trash bin instead of being merged, even with modifications. It’s never going to be nice to hear. In lessening the blow you lose the message. You lose the true meaning. You lie.

I don't think there's a native English speaker in the world who reads the phrase " is garbage" and interprets that literally as "this is just a metaphor for deciding not to use something and thus throwing it out." No, there's always vitriol, and the writer knows that, which is why they say it like that--because they're feeling vitriolic. I'm sure you can imagine equally accurate ways to reject code contributions; it…

The vitriol is the most important part of the message. If they don’t feel bad about what they’ve done what reason do they have not to do it again?

Without the vitriol you solve only the most immediate problem, when the true intention of calling something g garbage is to prevent many future problems. You learn nothing from being politely shoed off.

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

#600

Post by vlovich123 »

enriquto wrote: post #587
vlovich123 wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the most part he actually does a good job staying away from personal attacks. The problem is that his approach isn't going to yield great results. For there's 2 problematic parts to this e-mail. The first is the personal attack when he calls Intel engineers morons. That 1 little unnecessary addon is uncalled for because it's quite reasonable that there's a lot of politics going on at Intel that's interfering with…

The first is the personal attack when he calls Intel engineers morons. That 1 little unnecessary addon is uncalled for because it's quite reasonable that there's a lot of politics going on (...) can't be fixed properly without delaying & impacting revenue in a way that execs won't allow. If that is really the case, then calling the engineers morons is actually very much called for!

Note this is a hypothetical since it's quite possible it's not the case, in which case even by your logic the moron label is incorrect. So in your opinion engineers are unintelligent because they listen to the demands of people who can fire them or perhaps, god forbid, they're trying to balance technical solutions against revenue? That seems perfectly rational reasoning to me but that must be because I too am a moron.
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