A Case Study in Not Being a Jerk in Open Source
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A Case Study in Not Being a Jerk in Open Source
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Re: A Case Study in Not Being a Jerk in Open Source
#2This must be a cultural thing.
There are plenty of people who happily interact like this daily. It is a personality. People talk and act in different ways, they are different people, I think it is reasonable for them to continue acting like themselves.
I don't find the way Linus writes offensive in the slightest. To me it is mildly amusing while making a point. I don't want to have all communications in a forced polite cotton wool tone, it becomes robotic. Further encourages people to act over-sensitive, making it harder to communicate.
Re: A Case Study in Not Being a Jerk in Open Source
#3People are incredibly fucking thin-skinned. A few choice cuss words can get across points than paragraphs of inoffensive wishy-washy bullshit will obfuscate. And righteous anger cuts to the heart of a problem like Alexander through the Gordian knot.
If you can't point at shit, and say that it is shit, and it needs to be done better, then I don't want to work with you, or depend on your outputs. I am glad that there is someone like Linus helming the ship; Jobs was not different in kind, nor Gates in his day. It's a shame that we don't have more strong, extremely competent stewards like him.
Re: A Case Study in Not Being a Jerk in Open Source
#4People are incredibly fucking thin-skinned. A few choice cuss words can get across points than paragraphs of inoffensive wishy-washy bullshit will obfuscate. And righteous anger cuts to the heart of a problem like Alexander through the Gordian knot. If you can't point at shit, and say that it is shit, and it needs to be done better, then I don't want to work with you, or depend on your outputs. I am glad that there i…
Zzz...
Re: A Case Study in Not Being a Jerk in Open Source
#5People are incredibly fucking thin-skinned. A few choice cuss words can get across points than paragraphs of inoffensive wishy-washy bullshit will obfuscate. And righteous anger cuts to the heart of a problem like Alexander through the Gordian knot. If you can't point at shit, and say that it is shit, and it needs to be done better, then I don't want to work with you, or depend on your outputs. I am glad that there i…
You are clearly in the author’s group 3: people who say we should just tolerate this sort of thing. In that spirit, I could simply say you’re full of shit and move on, fully knowing you won’t be convinced by anything I say, but I won’t do that.
Instead, I offer you this: the revised email is half the length of the original, and still makes the case as strongly as the first based on the logical arguments. How would you rewrite it?
I don’t mind being told “no, don’t do that; it’s stupid,” provided it’s backed up with logic and an alternative way to proceed. In this case, the second email does this (the alternative way to proceed being just don’t merge the changes, or reword the commit messages).
I have no problem with cursing. I probably curse a little too much, in fact, and here it clearly gets in the way of the message, which is, in both cases “I can live with doing this, but your reasoning as to why we should is wrong.” Or, more bluntly, “no, don’t do this for these stupid reasons.”
What I do have a problem with is gratuitous abuse of someone who’s attempting to make a positive contribution and has, apparently, submitted a reasonable pull request.
Re: A Case Study in Not Being a Jerk in Open Source
#6If Linus had written the reworded email the author is proposing here, this author wouldn't be writing this blog post, and we wouldn't be clicking it on HN and reading the contents of Linus' points.
As to the actual detail of the author's proposed rewordings:
> I'm not talking about the changes themselves - I can live with them. But the _rationale_ is pure and utter garbage, and dangerously so.
becomes
> These changes look OK, but I'm not sure about the rationale.
This rewording imparts an entirely different message to the original. If I read the latter, as a programmer, I would get the impression that Linus thought the commit was "OK". He clearly did not. At no point in his email does he indicate that anything is "OK" about this commit in any way.
> The caps in "AND STANDARD" is another way to indicate frustration [...] None of these carry any meaning about the technical problem; they're just expressions of anger. [...] Most critically, it's possible to describe the danger of this code without
It's important to point out that the author says "it's possible to describe the danger of this code without". He's describing danger but his rewording removes all emphasis, urgency or import in the tone of the email.
> If you were in the "I'm afraid that being nicer would hurt Linux" group, do you think that this email is worse?
Yes.
I'm sorry, but while the argument that Linus makes excessive use of ad hominem and is disrespectul is a valid one, and he could/should temper that, this example is a failure to demonstrate how it would improve things. The final email draft in the blog post is milquetoast; I would forget it within minutes if I were on that list.
Re: A Case Study in Not Being a Jerk in Open Source
#7Linus seems like a jerk if you see him as an entitled engineer maintaining a popular OSS library.
But if you instead see him as a CEO, responsible for every single part of the Linux kernel, running on one billion machines, his behavior becomes natural. Even warranted, since, often-times the people at the recieving end of his wrath are not making some whoops-daisy technical mistake; they are trying to exert power and extend their influence through the code they write.
Remember how grsecurity tried to destabilize the Linux kernel?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14633163
Or how one core maintainer broke userland and refused to fix it?
https://m.slashdot.org/story/179833
Linus shut them down.
Linux keeps a thousand volunteers in line. The vast majority of whom are not subordinates, duty-bound to respect nice words. At this high level, with such enormous stakes, I wouldn’t want a weak willed leader who lets the children run amok.
Re: A Case Study in Not Being a Jerk in Open Source
#8[deleted]
Re: A Case Study in Not Being a Jerk in Open Source
#9People are incredibly fucking thin-skinned. A few choice cuss words can get across points than paragraphs of inoffensive wishy-washy bullshit will obfuscate. And righteous anger cuts to the heart of a problem like Alexander through the Gordian knot. If you can't point at shit, and say that it is shit, and it needs to be done better, then I don't want to work with you, or depend on your outputs. I am glad that there i…
You are clearly in the author’s group 3: people who say we should just tolerate this sort of thing. In that spirit, I could simply say you’re full of shit and move on, fully knowing you won’t be convinced by anything I say, but I won’t do that. Instead, I offer you this: the revised email is half the length of the original, and still makes the case as strongly as the first based on the logical arguments. How would yo…
I categorically disagree that the revised email makes the same case. The first sentence that Linus wrote indicates that he finds it questionable, but the revised statement puts words into Linus' mouth: "this looks ok but..."
That's not even the same sentiment. Okay versus Questionable.
Not sure why the Tone Police feel it's necessary to do this.
Re: A Case Study in Not Being a Jerk in Open Source
#10If Linus had written the reworded email the author is proposing here, this author wouldn't be writing this blog post, and we wouldn't be clicking it on HN and reading the contents of Linus' points. As to the actual detail of the author's proposed rewordings: > I'm not talking about the changes themselves - I can live with them. But the _rationale_ is pure and utter garbage, and dangerously so. becomes > These changes…
Ok, so, maybe the revised email should be more forceful and say “this is a bad idea.” I have no problem with being told what I’m proposing is a bad idea.
As to the supposed “danger,” I think the author may be reading into it too much. Linus himself says he could “live with” the changes. That, to me, does not sound in any way dangerous. What he has a problem with is the reasoning behind why these changes should be made. “This is a bad idea” covers that.
Quibbling over wording doesn’t change the fact that he can effectively get the point across in half the words without insulting anyone or going off on a rant.