Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by ploxiln » Sun, Sep 16, 2018, 10:37 PM UTC

kryptiskt wrote: post #58

wyclif wrote: post #31

As 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.

Or has that "hacker subculture" actually worked AMAZINGLY BETTER THAN ALL THE CORPORATE CRAP OUT THERE.

Corporate/Professional: Symantec, Microsoft

Rude/Hacker: Linux, OpenBSD

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

#272

Post by cobar » Sun, Sep 16, 2018, 10:38 PM UTC

zeroname wrote: post #181

dx87 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. I remember when one of the kernel maintainers announced why she was going to stop contributing, one of the reasons listed was "Linus has advocated physical abuse of kernel maintainers." Looking at the email that was given as evidence though, Linus told one of the maintainers something like "You're over 6 feet tall, if the contributors won't give you their patches in time to be merged, say you'll smash them…

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…

There is a certain cost in time and energy required to separate yourself from harsh statements like that identify it as such. While it's pretty easy to say, yes he's not suggesting physical abuse, the statement implies this guy is not going to cut me any slack, I can expect to get verbally attacked for missing something in my code, etc.

Bad code has a cost associated with it as well, it takes time to reject it, explain why it's wrong, and deal with the frustration of someone less experienced. Unfortunately with some developers they want to push that off on the person writing the code and bear none of the burden.

I've seen the costs of the latter in open source projects I've worked on. People who feel encouraged stick around, support the community, and when given good feedback will often learn from it and submit better patches. Taking the time to communicate and make sure everyone feels included is part of the cost to get that.

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

#273

Post by philwelch » Sun, Sep 16, 2018, 10:38 PM UTC

msbarnett wrote: post #143

torstenvl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested to know your thoughts in more detail, because I have a different perspective and have a hard time trying to see things from your point of view. From my perspective, people react to social condemnation of their actions. When someone does something incompetent, and they are gently corrected, that sends a certain message. When someone does something incompetent and they are lambasted , that sends the m…

There’s all kinds of problems with your perspective, most notably that it presumes the existence of an objective arbiter of “competence”. In reality, in the past Linus has lambasted people for patches that Linus misunderstood, which had no beneficial impact whatsoever and instead led to a least one case in which a highly competent contributor vocally said he was walking away from kernel development over Linus’ immatu…

> It’s also important to recognize that essentially nobody chooses to be incompetent

Nonsense! Sometimes people decide to do just enough to get by in life and otherwise completely check out. Other times, people decide to care about their work. Sometimes, they care so much that they get deeply emotionally invested in it. What people do and do not care about is based on their values, and values are instilled by the culture around them. Part of that culture is maintained by publicly rebuking people for flouting cultural norms.

And--by the way--everyone who has ever criticized Linus for the way he communicates is doing the exact same thing--publicly rebuking people for flouting some cultural norm that they want to normalize.

Now, judging from the results, I would say that for kernel development, "not breaking backwards compatibility or tanking performance" has been an extremely valuable cultural norm to maintain, while "not cursing at people on the mailing list" hasn't been necessary to date.

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

#274

Post by thomasahle » Sun, Sep 16, 2018, 10:39 PM UTC

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…

> 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 agree this is the common narrative, but surprisingly to me, it seems that the conservatives/right-wingers are getting very good at using outrage themselves. E.g. three times as many professors are being fired for expressing "liberal views" compared to "conservative views" [1], and the situation appears to be the same outside of academia, with people like James Gunn.

Not saying that all conservatives get outraged, but they certainly seem to do so a good deal more than immediately comes to mind.

[1]: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/3/17644180/po...

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

#275

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Sep 16, 2018, 10:40 PM UTC

msbarnett wrote: post #143

torstenvl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested to know your thoughts in more detail, because I have a different perspective and have a hard time trying to see things from your point of view. From my perspective, people react to social condemnation of their actions. When someone does something incompetent, and they are gently corrected, that sends a certain message. When someone does something incompetent and they are lambasted , that sends the m…

There’s all kinds of problems with your perspective, most notably that it presumes the existence of an objective arbiter of “competence”. In reality, in the past Linus has lambasted people for patches that Linus misunderstood, which had no beneficial impact whatsoever and instead led to a least one case in which a highly competent contributor vocally said he was walking away from kernel development over Linus’ immatu…

[deleted]

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

#276

Post by JoshTriplett » Sun, Sep 16, 2018, 10:40 PM UTC

Take a look at the chart in https://twitter.com/ErynnBrook/status/1038893975279550465

Many people are so afraid of ending up in the bottom right (just giving in) that they head for the top left (zero-sum competition).

This underlies some of the things people fear about codes of conduct; they're afraid that they're being pushed into that bottom right corner, rather than striving for better collaboration.

Be direct. Be clear. Seek the best solution. Don't be awful to people while doing it.

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

#277

Post by losvedir » Sun, Sep 16, 2018, 10:41 PM UTC

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

It certainly will if Linux kernel development continues successfully. I don't see why that wouldn't be the case, but you can't really use this to end the myth just yet.

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

#278

Post by comesee » Sun, Sep 16, 2018, 10:41 PM UTC

zeroname wrote: post #181

dx87 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. I remember when one of the kernel maintainers announced why she was going to stop contributing, one of the reasons listed was "Linus has advocated physical abuse of kernel maintainers." Looking at the email that was given as evidence though, Linus told one of the maintainers something like "You're over 6 feet tall, if the contributors won't give you their patches in time to be merged, say you'll smash them…

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…

Eye for an eye leaves everyone blind

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

#279

Post by tomp » Sun, Sep 16, 2018, 10:42 PM UTC

DC-3 wrote: post #187

meowface wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the language of the Contributor Covenant [1] contains anything really objectionable by anyone, even people who wouldn't consider themselves left-leaning. "Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks" is arguably the only ambiguous part. That said, I am a bit skeptical of the CC creators' motives and goals. [1] https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/1/4/code-of-con...

The contributor covenant is fairly in-objectionable. Yes, the list of 'privileges' is a bit of a checklist for left-wing soapboxes, but it's not necessarily a bad thing to explicitly list traits commonly targeted by bullies and harassers. The problem many people have with it, as you imply, is that it's the thin end of a doorstop, at the thick end of which is the Post-Meritocracy Manifesto: https://postmeritocracy.org…

> but it's not necessarily a bad thing to explicitly list traits commonly targeted by bullies and harassers.

I see a big problem by them omitting protection for people of different political opinions (whereas e.g. religion, which is essentially opinion, is protected).

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

#280

Post by nyolfen » Sun, Sep 16, 2018, 10:43 PM UTC

zorpner wrote: post #178

wolfgke wrote: post #160

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. So you advocate a witch hunt against these people?!

As always, the people fighting against codes of conduct manage to explicitly prove the need for them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_tactics