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Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

lore.kernel.org

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

#751

Post by marmot777 »

quadrangle wrote: post #688
nomel wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, and maybe I’m in the minority when thinking this, but I can’t stand working with polite people. They not only slow down the progress of a project by often causing unneeded busywork, from simply not halting bad ideas, they often slow my learning progress down by not telling me I’m wrong. If you see something stupid, call it out. If I’m doing something stupid or say something wrong, call me out! There’s obv…

Politeness should be low-cost. People going out of their way to make everything super nice are treating everyone as though they have fragile egos. What people really want is to just know technically and precisely what is right and what is wrong so they can improve — leaving out all of the personal crap, positive and negative, except in the ways that people working together have normal human social relationships. So,…

It's quite possible to be direct without being an asshole. Some people never learn this for some reason.

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

#752

Post by babuskov »

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…

> We often label people who are all smiles while simultaneously extremely strict as passive agressive.

I get this label often and was wondering where was that coming from. Thanks for the insight.

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

#753

Post by dannypgh »

bipson wrote: post #744
JohnBooty wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet people tend to cluster onto the line separating "agreeable and lax" and "rude but firm" (as a sweeping generality) Consider this: A third category of people who are able to accomplish their goals by rallying others to their cause. They are essentially imposing their will on others, but are able to do it in a way that is not "rude." This is called charisma. - "Agreeable and lax"... you allow them to paint the…

There is a fourth category that fits your description of charismatic people quite well IMO: psychopaths. The distinction can be quite hard and might take some time.

I disagree that it's a good fit.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy

"Psychopathy, sometimes considered synonymous with sociopathy, is traditionally defined as a personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits."

Not quite sure how you got there from charisma.

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

#754

Post by marmot777 »

geofft wrote: post #519
tptacek wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

> He clearly can separate the blunt stubbornness ("we do not break userland, period") For what it's worth, he doesn't even avoid breaking userland. Off the top of my head, we had a problem at work a few months back where kernel 4.3 and below rounded up listen(fd, 0) to something nonzero, kernel 4.4 didn't, and a piece of commercial software was (inexplicably) using listen(fd, 0). https://ldpreload.com/blog/git-bisect…

Stubburn isn't likely to chase away good people. Infantile lack of self control is.

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

#756

Post by [deleted] »

marmot777 wrote: post #734
mindways wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I'm pretty sure that "tearing someone's work apart" doesn't require "tearing the person apart / humiliating them"... and I suspect it's the former rather than the latter which is, in the right contexts, useful in learning / improvement.

Well said. You can tear the work apart if needed but don't get personal. Ever.

[deleted]

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

#757

Post by bipson »

dannypgh wrote: post #753
bipson wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a fourth category that fits your description of charismatic people quite well IMO: psychopaths. The distinction can be quite hard and might take some time.

I disagree that it's a good fit. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy "Psychopathy, sometimes considered synonymous with sociopathy, is traditionally defined as a personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits." Not quite sure how you got there from charisma.

I met several seemingly charismatic "leaders" in my professional life that turned out to be manipulative egoists that didn't care about the effects of their doings, unless it affected them or their plans. We, that were affected went on to call them sociopaths. I am not a health professional, so we might have misused that term.

I was actually looking for the term sociopath.

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

#760

Post by ece »

wdewind wrote: post #534
JoshTriplett wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if his interlocutors "win" too much on their side of the "win/win", every user loses. You seem to be trying to find a way to turn this back into "win/lose". Try another interpretation. For instance, a patch might call attention to a problem, but it takes the wrong approach to solve it. Could we find a better solution to the problem? Nobody is suggesting giving bad code or bad ideas a pass. Are you under the impress…

I think generally you're right, but the comment you're replying to has something to it as well. If two parties are not "equals" in the arena they are in, things get Complicated. I'm not sure true collaboration is possible in situations where parties are on such uneven footing (and I mean this in the abstract sense as well: I don't think the model you've presented is complete as is does not give you a productive way t…

If you read what Linus said, nowhere did he conflate technical merit with social merit. Your comment very much does this. He specifically said there haven't been pain points around technical issues, but around process issues, which is what he's personally trying to fix.

Open source is about the community, and I think Linus figured this out later than most. Sure, you can dump some code out there and maybe even get users, but you won't have built a community that improves software until you've shown people can file bugs reports and patches or otherwise be a part of the community without being personally insulted. This is a pretty low bar tbh.

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