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Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

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Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#161

Post by matwood »

zamalek wrote: post #134
Zhyl wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Tech people the world over need to remember the person. I don't even mean in a slightly soppy 'everyone is a real person with real feelings' way. I mean that in a practical sense you really hit productivity if you're rude. Simple exchanges or corrections become arguments because one party was acerbic or inflammatory which caused the second party to be defensive. The discussion gets derailed, the point gets lost.…

I don't treat people the same way, but I appreciate the blunt honesty. If we're having a few drinks as friends and you tell me that I'm an idiot, of course I will take that personally; however, tell me that as a developer and I'm motivated. So far as that goes, my mind works the same as Linus. I err on the side of praise, which makes me different - although my lack of praise for some individuals probably speaks as lo…

> but I appreciate the blunt honesty.

There is a difference between blunt honesty and being rude. Honesty is pointing out that you're not pulling your weight, or how you did something was incorrect and not up to the teams standards. Rude is calling you names or otherwise insulting you. The insults also often lack any reference to the issue. Telling someone they are an idiot does nothing for that person or the team.

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#162

Post by ivraatiems »

I have complained about Linus's behavior before many times, on here and elsewhere - it's in my comment history. I am extremely pleased to see Linus owning up to his behavior. In a weird way, given that I have no personal connection to him whatsoever, I'm proud of him.

I hope he makes good on his word as laid out here, I hope he takes the time he needs and gets some good help, and I hope this sets a strong positive precedent for Linux and the greater open source community going forward. This can't have been an easy choice to make, and I respect him for making it.

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#163

Post by tomjakubowski »

ufo wrote: post #66
d33 wrote: post #8

> I am going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand people’s emotions and respond appropriately. Wow. Torvalds going to a therapy. I seriously couldn't be more impressed about him, because he always seemed too much of a narcissist to me. I understand how difficult it might be to decide to admit that you have a problem at this stage. And for doing that, he has my deep respect. Which kind of brin…

> Which kind of brings me to the other point - would Torvalds be Torvalds if he was treated before? Some years ago I had to go to therapy for some issues of my own and back then I was afraid that it would fundamentally change who I am in some way. In retrospect that was a foolish thought. It made me wait longer to seek help than I should and in the end I was still like my old self (but better).

> Some years ago I had to go to therapy for some issues of my own and back then I was afraid that it would fundamentally change who I am in some way. In retrospect that was a foolish thought. It made me wait longer to seek help than I should and in the end I was still like my old self (but better).

I've been in therapy off and on most of my post-adolescent life. In the beginning, it felt like its only use was to have a place to vent about life to an agent who is largely external to it (i.e., my therapist doesn't know my family or my friends), but who has your back and is interested in helping you succeed. That certainly had value, but it didn't especially change how I lived.

There was a point where my attitude towards therapy changed completely, when I started really listening and paying attention to what my therapist was doing. I might describe to him an incident which made me feel some unusually bad (or good!) emotion, and the therapist would ask just the right questions (and follow-ups) to get at the root cause of why I really felt that way.

Eventually, I started to experience these internal dialogues which resemble a therapy session when I felt angry or sad or upset for some other reason. I might ask myself, "Why is this trivial argument with Person X making me so angry?", then examine my relationship with Person X, and then other recent incidents with this person, etc. etc. These internal "therapy sessions" not only help to calm me down, but also tend to point in the right direction to improve the overall relationship with Person X. I think it's been an amazing turn in how I interact with other people and helps me enjoy life.

So, in conclusion, I think that's one way to really benefit from therapy: deducing, by observation, the system or process your therapist is using to help you, and applying that same system to yourself. In other words, good therapy helps you learn to be your own therapist.

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#164

Post by alkonaut »

sz4kerto wrote: post #71

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,…

I don’t like the whole “to make an omelette you have to break some eggs” excuse.

If you can’t create something without hurting people then don’t create it.

Yes everyone calling out LT being an asshat has been right, from day 1.

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#166

Post by Sharlin »

cowmoo728 wrote: post #54
Sharlin wrote: post #29

A certain sort of ruthlessness and lack of empathy, accompanied by having an extraordinarily driven personality, certainly seems to often make things happen (see also: Steve Jobs). The ages-old question is – is it worth it? Do ends justify the means?

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…

Simply not accepting poor patches isn't ruthlessness though. It's just doing your job. Ruthlessness is disregarding negative externalities (in this case, people's feelings) in pursuit of a goal. Abuse is just one tool among others. Almost certainly Linus didn't write his rants in order to gain some sort of sadistic pleasure (certainly to relieve his own frustration, however!) but he truly believed it was for the greater good and, if we're to believe him, he wasn't actually aware of how much his words could hurt. I guess what would be called abusive by many was merely a "stern talking-to" to Linus.

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#168

Post by geofft »

wolfgke wrote: post #154
tptacek wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently that just didn't occur to Chris Mason, Olof Johansson, Dan Williams, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Steven Rostedt, and Linus Torvalds.

> Apparently that just didn't occur to Chris Mason, Olof Johansson, Dan Williams, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Steven Rostedt, and Linus Torvalds. But to Rafael Avila de Espindola (LLVM): > https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LLVM-Raf... > http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2018-May/122922.htm... and many FreeBSD developers: > https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/is-the-community-become-f... > https://www.…

I don't see any FreeBSD developers in any of the four links you provided. In one of them I see a specific claim that the people in the thread don't seem to be connected with the FreeBSD community.

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#169

Post by [deleted] »

wolfgke wrote: post #160
tom_ wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the really interesting part of introducing a code of conduct to me: that it flushes a particular type of person out of the woodwork. They are forced to reveal themselves. Forced . It's like you're playing one of those hidden role games, and suddenly you do something that means people have to reveal their concealed cards. It's almost magical.

> This is the really interesting part of introducing a code of conduct to me: that it flushes a particular type of person out of the woodwork. They are forced to reveal themselves. Forced. It's like you're playing one of those hidden role games, and suddenly you do something that means people have to reveal their concealed cards. It's almost magical. So you advocate a witch hunt against these people?!

[deleted]

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#170

Post by craftyguy »

anothergoogler wrote: post #101
craftyguy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And Git has the UX of software created by someone with no empathy. I would really like to understand what you expect a UX for a command line tool to look like. Maybe instead of throwing an error if you did something wrong, it would apologize to you first? Or perhaps it should preface all output with "dearest Sir/Madam, here is the information you requested:" ?

There would be no output. Sometimes you just need your software to listen , not try and solve everything, and it would understand that.

How in the world do you have a useful source control tool with no output?
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