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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

#241

Post by maxerickson »

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…

A good illustration of your point is how people reacted to the study finding that there were ~3000 deaths in Puerto Rico that are attributable to Hurricane Maria.

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

#242

Post by davidgould »

trjordan wrote: post #27
Nasrudith wrote: post #16

A slowgoing development for him, still I sympathize and wish him the best while wondering ironically if personal issues aside what works best. It brings to mind fundamental organizational and management. Is it better to have a "rude" organization? Calling bullshit early and often instead of polite everything is fine stacks of lies since it would be impolite to point out having O(N!) code just can't work for anything…

"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." - Linus Torvalds A rude leader drives people away from the organization. It is directly counterproductive.

Actually this was written by Eric Raymond in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". Raymond dubbed it "Linus's Law" which may be the source of the confusion.

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

#243

Post by nostrademons »

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…

You could more neutrally put that in terms of tact filters:

http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html

The left believes in outgoing tact filters, where you watch what you say to avoid offending people. The right believes in "incoming* tact filters, where you just ignore people who say things that offend you. Both approaches have particular situations where they are superior, but it's hard to identify a general strategy that works better in all situations.

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

#244

Post by parabx »

sz4kerto wrote: post #86
blindwatchmaker wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been able to build successful organizations without being abrasive dickheads to their colleagues and subordinates all the time. I think it's a false dichotomy.

Do you have relevant examples (or even better, some statistics)? How do you measure this and how do you know if they were assholes or not? I guess you don't have a record of SLT meetings of large companies (as you have access to the emails between Linus and the maintainers). Leaders of large companies are _usually_ more aggressive, selfish and less agreeable than average people. This is a well-researched topic (and a…

I'ts not an company per se, but the rust community is fairly big and full of awesome, well mannered and cheerful leaders.

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

#245

Post by tomp »

grzm wrote: post #188
coffeemug wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. Linus always called a spade a spade, and I always respected that. In a culture where the Overton window has shrunk considerably and people habitually hide their thoughts, I think this kind of attitude is more important, not less. People give up ability to say certain things in the name of inclusion, and then lose ability to think those things in the first place. I'll take an asshole over a pushover any day, and…

> ”I'll take an asshole over a pushover any day“ This is a false dichotomy. There’s no need to be an asshole to not be a pushover.

It's not even a dichotomy. The poster is just saying which one out of two negative situations s/he prefers.

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

#246

Post by JoshTriplett »

sridca wrote: post #240
DoreenMichele wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a nice theory, but the reality is that those rules tend to get enforced differently for different people, so it fails to entirely stamp out problem behavior. Shit runs downhill. Whomever is at the top is the DNA for how things actually work. To me, the good news is Torvalds is taking some time to figure himself out. That is likely to make a major difference. Few people bother to really deal with the man in the m…

Yea. I fail to see how something like CoC can ensure a truly harmless community, when it is the covert power (the unspoken vibes, ambiance, etc.) that ultimately dictates the level of malice in a community.

A code of conduct alone doesn't, but it's a start. A statement like this one from the project lead(s) helps as well, to set the overall direction.

This isn't the end of the process for the kernel community; it's a major step in the right direction.

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

#247

Post by tomp »

serf wrote: post #142

I'm probably going to be alone in saying so, but I always enjoyed Linus and his attitude. (to me) it made him appear honest and dedicated to (his own) goals, and I always felt like that was respectable. (mostly) whenever he was proven technically wrong about how to do something he would concede to the technically better solution, and if he didn't do so he gave reasons for his conclusion. in other words : his technica…

I agree. I liked his rants, I found them entertaining, and I wish I was the target of one! (I would probably need to work on my coding skills first.) I wish people would grow thicker skins and get more emotionally mature, and be able to tolerate harsh words without taking them personally.

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

#248

Post by headsoup »

tomp wrote: post #209
hfdgiutdryg wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost certainly Linus didn't write his rants in order to gain some sort of sadistic pleasure I don't find that assertion convincing. I guess what would be called abusive by many was merely a "stern talking-to" to Linus. Which is why he needs therapy. It would be great if we would hold ourselves to higher standard of professionalism and stop apologizing for toxic behavior in software engineering. I've never seen anot…

> It would be great if we would hold ourselves to higher standard of professionalism and stop apologizing for toxic behavior in software engineering. Or we could take an alternative route, and collectively grow a thicker skin and show a bit more emotional maturity, instead of seeking offence in every situation. But then that's just my opinion. But that's the point, opinions differ.

What does 'growing thicker skin' mean then? How thick?

Shall I start to bully you and we'll test the thickness of skin required?

I get the sense that often the people that write these kinds of comments are not on the receiving end of the behaviour.

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

#249

Post by Ygg2 »

skookumchuck wrote: post #217
zeroname wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that "Linus has advocated physical abuse" based on that statement is completely disingenuous. It's an absurd interpretation. It was obviously humor and it wasn't insulting either. There are several cases where Linus went way over the top with insults, but throwing him under the bus because of that statement is ridiculous. That's the whole problem with these CoCs, if people get to apply the most uncharitable in…

For an example of what you're talking about, it's what diplomats do. Where a careless word misinterpreted across different cultures and languages could start a war, diplomats have learned to be, er, "diplomatic".

Yeah, we should all be like career politicians and learn to say nothing with as many words as possible.
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