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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

#221

Post by Mtinie »

tomohawk wrote: post #158
dralley wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is understating it bit. He did mostly focus on technical aspects, but he did also occasionally say things like "whoever wrote this should be retroactively aborted", which is going waaaaaay too far and is going to make someone feel bad, period.

So, what would you do? Would you rather have Linux, or would you rather that noone ever get their feelings hurt by harsh comments? Perhaps he should have been given the boot years ago for saying such things, but would we have Linux today? I really don't think that that is a false choice. You and I did not create Linux - Linus did. You and I did not keep it going despite the massive flock of ducks constantly pecking.…

Did Linux suck the air out of other, competing projects throughout its history? If so we can’t possibly consider what was or wasn’t lost.

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

#222

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

iherbig wrote: post #194
briandear wrote: post #159

Can you explain what “left-leaning” has to do with it?

It's a bit difficult to explain, but I'll try. In the current political climate, the left and the right have been divided by the public consciousness into the following dichotomy: The left is overly sensitive and looks for things to be offended by. The right is concerned with maturity and personal responsibility and anti-political correctness, where those things are defined primarily in contrast to the left's perceiv…

I agree that what you've said is a commonly painted picture, but (as many people have pointed out), it's more that "the left" and "the right" are often both "overly sensitive", but about different things.

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

#223

Post by zeroname »

SBArbeit wrote: post #9

It's about fucking time. I personally stay away from software created by people who lack empathy; technical goodness !> creating a good environment and product for actual people. I don't go to restaurants run by douchebags either, no matter how good the food might be. And Git has the UX of software created by someone with no empathy. I hope Linus heals from this, and I hope the culture of the Linux community changes…

Your "criticism" of Git's UX is basically an ad-hominem attack on Git contributors, who you do not actually know personally. Are you sure it isn't you who lacks empathy?

I'm not fond of Git myself, by the way.

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

#224

Post by tptacek »

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.…

That is a non sequitur response to my comment.

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

#225

Post by tomp »

ivraatiems wrote: post #216
iherbig wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit difficult to explain, but I'll try. In the current political climate, the left and the right have been divided by the public consciousness into the following dichotomy: The left is overly sensitive and looks for things to be offended by. The right is concerned with maturity and personal responsibility and anti-political correctness, where those things are defined primarily in contrast to the left's perceiv…

> The left is overly sensitive and looks for things to be offended by. > The right is concerned with maturity and personal responsibility and anti-political correctness, where those things are defined primarily in contrast to the left's perceived over-sensitivity. I think this is the right's perspective, but it's not an accurate portrayal of the left's. I therefore disagree with the assertion that this is a fair repr…

hehe I think his description of the left and your description of the right are the more correct ones. Both other descriptions more accurately describe the political center.

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

#226

Post by petercooper »

Zhyl wrote: post #28
Leszek wrote: post #4

Maybe 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

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'm not empathetic and have poor EI (medical reason) and have concluded similarly that being rude as a general rule is unproductive. First, I don't want to be on the receiving end of it myself(!), but nor do I want the time sinks of drama, a mutiny, or a revenge attack. Being thoughtful about your words seems to be a good idea for anyone, whether they're emotionally intelligent or not :-)

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

#227

Post by InclinedPlane »

qrbLPHiKpiux wrote: post #80
Pxtl wrote: post #15

Hopefully 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 o…

There is never an excuse for being an ass, even less so when it's a known pattern of behavior. When you screw up without bad intentions once that's one thing, when you continue harmful behavior having been told by many that it's harmful then it's intentional.

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

#228

Post by tomp »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #163
ufo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That's a really interesting perspective. I wonder if you/we could learn this without going to therapy... Maybe we should/could teach this in school?

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

#229

Post by cowmoo728 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #218
cowmoo728 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 F CKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte should be retroactively aborted. Who the f ck 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?"

That's actually the funniest damn thing I've read in a while. Totally unprofessional and inappropriate for the context, but hilarious. Maybe he needs a creative writing hobby of some sort as an outlet to help keep such glorious color out of his professional emails. (I'm totally serious and would email him the suggestion if I didn't think it a waste of time because I don't know the man, he doesn't know me, yadda.)

It would be great in a satire or fifty shades of grey: programming edition spinoff

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

#230

Post by ivraatiems »

tomp wrote: post #225
ivraatiems wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The left is overly sensitive and looks for things to be offended by. > The right is concerned with maturity and personal responsibility and anti-political correctness, where those things are defined primarily in contrast to the left's perceived over-sensitivity. I think this is the right's perspective, but it's not an accurate portrayal of the left's. I therefore disagree with the assertion that this is a fair repr…

hehe I think his description of the left and your description of the right are the more correct ones. Both other descriptions more accurately describe the political center.

Hmm, that's a good point. I'm not sure I agree, but something to think about.

I think it might be more accurate to say the negative descriptions accurately describe the bad-faith actors, and the positive ones describe the good-faith actors.

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