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Linus Torvalds on aliasing

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Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#131

Post by mundanevoice »

strictfp wrote: post #95
mundanevoice wrote: post #51

When people can't find fault in the technical argument, they start attacking other things like. > Oh! He is so rude, He insults so much. If you have a better argument to counter his logic, please post that, it would be more useful for everyone involved. Posting pretty useless comments here is pretty lame.

Wait, so according to you it's OK to be as rude as you wish, as long as you are technically correct? I think most people couldn't care less who's right or wrong in this discussion. They are simply reacting to the discourse. Personally, I'm far from convinced that there even is an objective right or wrong in this question. It's probably just a matter of taste and/or perspective. I find Linus behavior rude because in d…

> Wait, so according to you it's OK to be as rude as you wish, as long as you are technically correct? I never said that. My argument is that people/culture are different. What is considered offensive/rude in some culture is considered normal in other cultures.

> Personally, I'm far from convinced that there even is an objective right or wrong in this question. It's probably just a matter of taste and/or perspective.

This is not always true. Sometimes there is only one correct/pragmatic way of doing something. And if someone asserts that it's nothing wrong.

> I find Linus behavior rude because in discussions like this he seems to have little to no understanding of other perspectives than his own.

You can't say this is the case always. I have read a lot of the discussions like these. A lot of times, he writes a pragmatic and valid explanation of his dislike about a certain topic.

> In either case, it's not exactly accepted public discourse.

Again, you are assuming all cultures and societies are alike, they are not. There is a vast wide world with different thinking and a culture other than the Silicon Valley bubble. It's time people stop generalizing everything under the sun.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#132

Post by simias »

pubby wrote: post #93
simias wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>C was created for writing operating systems That doesn't properly justify C's minefield around aliasing and type punning in general. It's UB galore. Thing is, whenever you're writing low level code that's tied to hardware in my experience you very often end up having to pun your types to match hardware constraints, and at this point the C standard basically says "lol good luck with that bro". I'm not a programming l…

>at the very least C should make reading from a different union member than was last written to "implementation defined" That's how it is :) The standard even describes union behavior as "type punning". I don't know if C++ allows it though.

You're right, apparently it changed in C99 so my knowledge is pretty out of date. Thank you for pointing it out.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#133

Post by qaq »

maxehmookau wrote: post #122
qaq wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to realize that extreme PC thing is very US centric and pretty recent at that.

I'm not American. I'm just a respectful human being who expects to be treated with respect at work.

Use of profanity is pretty orthogonal to respect but again it's very culture specific thing.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#134

Post by richmarr »

pubby wrote: post #34

To me, this rant seems more directed at C standards people than the guy he sent it to. That doesn't excuse his vitriol, but I hope people will read between the lines. Sometimes people forget that C was created for writing operating systems. They get in their mind that C is all about high-performance, and that making it competitive with FORTRAN is the way to go. I understand that, but it's not what C was created for.…

Except "strong opinions" is not what happened here. He's being verbally abusive.

I think it'd be helpful to be able to talk about this behaviour without needing to suger-coat it as "opinions".

There are far less damaging ways to say exactly the same things as Tovalds says, and someone with his position in the community should know better.

Punch up if you like, not down.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#135

Post by hvidgaard »

coldtea wrote: post #78
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #23

Linus has done some (okay, lots of) wonderful stuff. However, his attitude here is pretty extreme. Being incredibly rude, then proceeding to merge said pull request. If Linus is willing to merge the PR, then it can't be that bad. Surely there was a more tactful way to approach this, even for Linus.

> Linus has done some (okay, lots of) wonderful stuff. However, his attitude here is pretty extreme. Being incredibly rude, then proceeding to merge said pull request. He already writes that he's OK with the code ("can live with it") -- he's against the reasoning that accompanies it.

Good code or not, if he doesn't agree with the reason to merge it, why merge it?

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#136

Post by qaq »

AnthonBerg wrote: post #110
qaq wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to realize that extreme PC thing is very US centric and pretty recent at that.

PC? This is not politically correct, this is an opinion based on free will and self-respect. “I don’t want to volunteer where the boss is an abusive asshole.” By what definition is that PC?

using profanity and being "abusive asshole" are orthogonal concepts. I obviously do not encourage anyone to volunteer in projects they feel uncomfortable with.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#137

Post by mundanevoice »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #85
mundanevoice wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except BSD even being older than Linux never really took off either in Desktop space or Servers.

What are you talking about? BSD sees plenty of use, for its support of zfs, dtrace, and jails alone. Unless you're heavily invested in the Linux kernel and Linux-only tech, I'd advise to keep your software running on the BSDs as well as Linux to avoid monocultures in your own best interest. The strength of F/OSS is in giving you choice, eg. by providing two (or more) interchangeable, excellent O/S's and compiler suit…

I am talking about comparable usage. Do not get me wrong. And it's best for everyone if BSD succeeds because then we have a choice. My pet peeve is that it is incredibly difficult to contribute to BSDs (say OpenBSD) compared to Linux. F/OSS project runs on community contributions and thrives solely on basis of that. I hope they open the process up more so that more and more users contribute to it.

Also, essentials things like graphics drivers etc, work properly so that the devs like us start using it as a daily driver and contribute to it's usage.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#138

Post by zwischenzug »

mosselman wrote: post #119

I would go out of my way to avoid people who communicate like this with me. People put time and energy in making software better, at least in their own eyes, for others and then they get textually abused like this by someone who has his fame to protect himself with. He also does no service to his own arguments by peppering them with childish swearing because things like "So standards are not some kind of holy book th…

My wife works in mental health, dealing with people at the very lowest ebb. You'd think the therapists' internal meetings would be full of carefully worded and graded polite discussion, but just yesterday she told me about a meeting where the lead therapist said to one particular member of the group, 'If you don't do X right, we're fucked. You are fucking us up!'

I don't know if that's good or not, but it's not just in software that harsh words are used. And their stridency makes clear that this is an exceptionally significant point. I imagine that Linus's many more blandly worded emails don't result in this level of attention, so you wouldn't even be aware of his points there.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#139

Post by renox »

maxehmookau wrote: post #122
qaq wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to realize that extreme PC thing is very US centric and pretty recent at that.

I'm not American. I'm just a respectful human being who expects to be treated with respect at work.

And in my opinion there was nothing disrespectful in Linus'email (expect towards the standard people, but they truly did a big mistake..) so I wouldn't want to work with you as you seem 'overly sensitive'..

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#140

Post by pjmlp »

mundanevoice wrote: post #126
pjmlp wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BSD and MIT licenses are almost interchangeable regarding requirements to the code. They even appear as MIT/BSD in many projects.

Citations/Examples, please? I always thought these are different.

Simple Google search.

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/217/what-are-...

Relevant part:

"o what both the 2-clause BSD license and the MIT license have in common are:

    Permits use
    Permits redistribution
    Permits redistribution with modification
    Provision to retain the copyright notice and warranty disclaimer
In addition the MIT license also explicitly allows:

    merging
    publishing
    sublicensing
    selling
However, all these freedoms are implied by the BSD license, because all these activities can be considered "use" and/or "redistribution" of the software.

The practical differences between the 2-clause BSD license and the MIT license are marginal. Which one to pick is mostly up to personal taste. Especially considering that both licenses are considered compatible, so you can take code under one license and use it in a project under the other, as long as you keep the license text around."

Yocto has files with such dual license.

https://git.congatec.com/yocto/meta-openembedded/blob/fido/m...

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