We should also keep in mind that the fact that he's trying to change his behavior does not mean that it has been counterproductive overall for Linux over the last three decades. It might not be optimal now for leading kernel development, or it might not be optimal for him as a person. However, this introspection really does not mean that Linux would have been more successful if he'd been nicer in the past. Maybe yes, maybe not -- but some commenters seem to imply that this email is somehow a proof that people calling Linus out in the past were somehow right.
Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
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Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#72he is getting old
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#73Maybe this will finally end the myth that "you can be rude and insulting as long as you're right" that people seem to attribute to Linus's outbursts
I have to wonder if Linux would even be remembered other than as a footnote at this time without his forceful personality being in the mix. Many things fail when they get pecked to death by ducks. His forceful personality carried the day on many occasions.
You can be forceful without being an asshole about it.
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#74[deleted]
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
People can be ruthless without being abusive. Linus had effectively ultimate power over the kernel for quite some time, so he could have said things like: "I disagree with this patch and I'm not going to merge it. It does these things wrong, and this line of reasoning makes no sense. Change these things and explain the reasoning behind this and I'll look at it again." Most of his rants that I've read could have been…
> People can be ruthless without being abusive. Everybody has a different conviction about what is abusive and what is not.
One of Linus's more colorful rants:
"Of course, I'd also suggest that whoever was the genius who thought it was a good idea to read things ONE FCKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte should be retroactively aborted. Who the fck does idiotic things like that? How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?"
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#76As someone familiar with LBT's mailing list rhetoric since the early days, I'm guessing a big part of what's happening here is that LBT hasn't changed the way he communicates but the rest of the world has moved on. And let's face it, the engineering and programming world has gotten a lot more politically correct—I think the main factor driving this is the increasing presence of women in technology. What I mean is tha…
> [...]I think the main factor driving this is the increasing presence of women in technology.
I don’t agree. I find situations like these stem from the number of qualified developers interacting within these communities. In the past, when the depth of talent was small, people put up with epic levels of ego and bullshit. The only way to move the needle forward was to grin and bear it.
Today, we have a greater density of talent with the diverse skills needed to contribute to these core projects. Caustic personalities aren’t worth dealing with any longer when you have a bunch of non-assholes you can rely on.
Don’t be a dick, do your job without being abusive, and if the community you’ve been trying to contribute to finds you to be boorish and not worth the effort to engage with, adapt—as Linus is going to try to do.
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#77Maybe this will finally end the myth that "you can be rude and insulting as long as you're right" that people seem to attribute to Linus's outbursts
Is that really a myth though? Being surly and right can be workable indefinitely. As opposed to success via being polite and flattering while being wrong. Fundamentally they would be a parasite. Not a dichotomous extreme though in that it is better not to be rude unless it is called for. And rudeness can be very called for in response to evil.
There's no dichotomy here - you can be both right and wrong, and rude and polite. These are not related, and frequently not correlated at the least either, these are just two independent coordinates. Moreover, in many cases, you yourself is not in the position to know where on the right-wrong spectrum you ended up. Linus tends up to end closer to the right than wrong end, usually - but this is not universal, and it's not correlated with rudeness. Since being in rude-wrong quadrant makes you a jerk, and being in rude-right quadrant is no better than being in polite-right one, it is a good rule to try and stay on the polite half-plane as much as you can. Linus seems to realize that too, which is especially great because he is one of the few that can actually get away with many things. So his realizing he still should not is IMHO a positive development.
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#78Maybe this will finally end the myth that "you can be rude and insulting as long as you're right" that people seem to attribute to Linus's outbursts
Is that really a myth though? Being surly and right can be workable indefinitely. As opposed to success via being polite and flattering while being wrong. Fundamentally they would be a parasite. Not a dichotomous extreme though in that it is better not to be rude unless it is called for. And rudeness can be very called for in response to evil.
“Indefinitely” presumes you can be right one hundred percent of the time. I’m not, and I don’t believe it’s even possible.
How one handles human failure is important, just as it is with handling bad input in code.
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#79As someone familiar with LBT's mailing list rhetoric since the early days, I'm guessing a big part of what's happening here is that LBT hasn't changed the way he communicates but the rest of the world has moved on. And let's face it, the engineering and programming world has gotten a lot more politically correct—I think the main factor driving this is the increasing presence of women in technology. What I mean is tha…
If you look at the tech world of the 80s, 90% of it was very buttoned-up and proper, despite being male-dominated. The rudeness comes from Linux' roots in a youth-dominated hacker subculture. It just doesn't work very well when they aren't teenage hackers anymore, but have gone mainstream and are working at it in a professional capacity.
> It just doesn't work very well when they aren't teenage hackers anymore, but have gone mainstream
What has gone mainstream is in my opinion something very different than what the original hacker ethos was about. See for example https://aeon.co/essays/how-yuppies-hacked-the-original-hacke...
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#80Hopefully this will inspire leaders of other projects to realize that it's not okay to be a toxic jerk just because you're smart and in-charge and confident that you're right.
He gets focused on a task at hand, and everything else is sight in the distance. Talented people can't be entirely social 100% of the time. That will burn you out real fast trying to keep a smile on your face all of the time. I'm the same way and I'm up-front with everyone I hire about this. That when I become so focused on a task, that sometimes, you just have to take what I may say "with a grain of salt" and move on. I've lost one person who couldn't handle it. The rest are still with me so far (it's been years).