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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

#331

Post by wybiral »

tptacek wrote: post #314
jakeinspace wrote: post #257

Linus is stubborn, persistent, and unyielding to what he sees as bullshit. These I believe are all very valuable qualities for the head of a massive software project, and may be part of the reason as to why Linux is where it is today. However, Linus is also a bit of an asshole, turning technical criticism into personal seemingly personal attacks. I believe those 2 sets of qualities are separable, but I would guess it…

He's not just stubborn, persistent, and unyielding: he's performatively so. In his most notorious attacks, he's clearly playing to an audience. That could be the problem. He clearly can separate the blunt stubbornness ("we do not break userland, period") from the performative rudeness ("SHUT THE FUCK UP MAURO"). (I mean, to be clear: what the fuck do I know? I've never been in the position Linus is in.)

Yeah, I think that there's a line between being terse and assertive vs seeming to derive pleasure from going off on people. It sounds like Linus is recognizing that here and hopefully works on it some.

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

#332

Post by tptacek »

DC-3 wrote: post #322
JoshTriplett wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a common problem , and one heavily abused and weaponized. If you want to argue about the level of taxation, the right size of government, regulations on business, whether public or private is the most efficient way to accomplish a goal, or myriad other areas of policy like those, go right ahead. Those kinds of things are absolutely reasonable subjects for healthy and reasonable debate. (They're rarely on-topic…

What about religions that make others unwelcome, hurt others, or question their right to exist? Should they get protections in a code of conduct or anywhere else?

The Linux kernel Code of Conduct takes litigating the religious affiliations of kernel contributors right off the table.

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

#333

Post by krn »

> I am going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand people’s emotions and respond appropriately.

At the risk of being downvoted, I think that Linus, just like Steve Jobs, might have been dealing with a mild Asperger's syndrome[1], which he has very little control over:

"People with Asperger syndrome often have difficulty 'reading' other people - recognising or understanding others’ feelings and intentions - and expressing their own emotions. This can make it very hard for them to navigate the social world.

They may:

    appear to be insensitive
    seek out time alone when overloaded by other people
    not seek comfort from other people
    appear to behave ‘strangely’ or in a way thought to be socially inappropriate.
They may find it hard to form friendships. Some may want to interact with other people and make friends, but may be unsure how to go about it."

[1] https://www.autism.org.uk/about/what-is/asperger.aspx#Social...

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

#334

Post by LukeShu »

twtw wrote: post #295
hoosieree wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is somewhat ironic considering Linux is written in C, which is the most stubbornly "one thing at a time" language in widespread use today.

It's not ironic at all. C doesn't not do anything promoting a syscall per byte. Even if you think that's what you are doing, libc is probably buffering for you behind the scenes.

If you're using fopen(3) "stdio" (buffered I/O), then yeah, fread(3) and friends will buffer. But if you're using open(2) and read(2), libc's not going to buffer that.

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

#335

Post by zemo »

merpnderp wrote: post #289
zemo wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ignoring your emotions and the emotions of others and seeing all of life as an exercise of pure rationalism is not emotional maturity, it's emotional cowardice.

Parent didn’t say ignore them. I’m pretty sure they meant not be an emotional child completely incapable of surviving the slings and arrows of life. Rule your emotions instead of being ruled by them.

acknowledging your emotions is not being ruled by them.

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

#336

Post by djrobstep »

blazespin wrote: post #269
jakeinspace wrote: post #257

Linus is stubborn, persistent, and unyielding to what he sees as bullshit. These I believe are all very valuable qualities for the head of a massive software project, and may be part of the reason as to why Linux is where it is today. However, Linus is also a bit of an asshole, turning technical criticism into personal seemingly personal attacks. I believe those 2 sets of qualities are separable, but I would guess it…

The key, I find, is to be extremely direct and brutal in one on ones. Don't hold back, but be very supportive and positive when more than two people present. I try to explain this to be people I work with, but I don't think everyone appreciates it. Horrible people, in my opinion, are those that do the opposite.

Psycho alert

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

#337

Post by DoreenMichele »

threatofrain wrote: post #330
DoreenMichele wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually the very definition of abuse. I am much more comfortable with people being publicly blunt. At least there is no gaslighting involved where the victim wonders if they imagined it because everyone keeps telling them "he would never do that" or whatever. If you are on excellent terms with someone and they trust you, etc, it can work to be more blunt in private. But most people doing that are just hiding…

Perhaps you might prefer open debate or critique, but I think most people would prefer that negative speech not occur in public. I think even politely negotiated debates can end up looking embarrassing if other people who are watching can form a justifiably negative narrative. When people are having a discussion in a visible business setting, to some degree, the precise words being spoken by either party become less…

Let me put this another way:

Abusive people are always, without fail, at their ugliest when there are no witnesses and they have plausible deniability.

I'm aware that dressing someone down in public has its own problems.

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

#338

Post by Ws32ok »

tptacek wrote: post #329
Ws32ok wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just one example from that manifesto: “We have an ethical responsibility to refuse to work on software that will negatively impact the well-being of other people.” This a terrible slippery slope. It eliminates any military, security or even anything useful. A thief’s well-being is meant to be negatively impacted by a security measure. A guidance system in a missile is intended to negatively impact the well-being of t…

The Contributor Covenant says nothing of the sort. It is entirely reasonable for developers to believe that the statements in the Covenant are a baseline for professionalism and, at the same time to disagree amongst themselves about whether they should contribute to military projects (or whether they buy into a "post-meritocracy" philosophy).

I was referring to https://postmeritocracy.org/

As per the comment to which I was replying.

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

#339

Post by quotemstr »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #300
tomp wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

That's a common problem , and one heavily abused and weaponized. If you want to argue about the level of taxation, the right size of government, regulations on business, whether public or private is the most efficient way to accomplish a goal, or myriad other areas of policy like those, go right ahead. Those kinds of things are absolutely reasonable subjects for healthy and reasonable debate. (They're rarely on-topic…

The freedom to propose ideas that don't offend anyone is no freedom at all. You're arguing that people can discuss among themselves what doesn't matter much, but only an ideologically correct few get to weigh in on topics that really matter.

This is the governing philosophy of the Ayatollahs of Iran, who let lay people debate and hold elections, but who reserve real power for themselves. What you've proposed is no different.

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

#340

Post by zeroname »

cobar wrote: post #272
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…

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, expla…

> There is a certain cost in time and energy required to separate yourself from harsh statements like that identify it as such.

It's not a "harsh statement", it's a joke. If anything it's flattering of that person's stature.

> 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.

I don't think it implies that, but that's besides my point. The remark was represented as "advocating physical intimidation and violence", which given the actual context is basically libel. You're free to interpret anything you want about the personality of Linus from him making such jokes, but misrepresenting it like that in public is dishonest and harmful to discourse itself.

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