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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

#961

Post by jancsika »

coffeemug wrote: post #559
jancsika wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example in today's environment when someone suggests something stupid, it is no longer acceptable to say "this seems stupid to me" because it might hurt someone's feelings. What is no longer acceptable is to personally insult a developer for breaking things, poorly designing an API/implementation, etc. By "personally insult" I mean call someone names, curse at them, sarcastically suggest they should have been a…

> call someone names, curse at them, sarcastically suggest they should have been aborted, and many other such tactics. That's a positive change. But it also ought to be possible to say "this is a dumb idea" or to engage in friendly ribbing when someone does something dumb. These are good, healthy mechanisms in normal groups of people. Eliminate all teasing, and everyone is friendly on the outside and bitter and resen…

> But it also ought to be possible to say "this is a dumb idea" or to engage in friendly ribbing when someone does something dumb.

"Friendly ribbing" doesn't translate well on a public mailing list, especially one with an international audience.

> People should be teased for breaking things.

Again, that doesn't work very well on a public mailing list, especially one with an international audience. If people break things they should be told clearly and precisely what they did wrong.

> There is such a thing as attempting to be too professional.

Do you have an example of a current FLOSS project that is too professional?

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

#962

Post by hnzix »

LaGrange wrote: post #902
hnzix wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression was more "All models are wrong, therefore all models are valid". Some models are less wrong! It seems to me that the postmodernism movement correctly called attention to social models being somewhat arbitrary and power-based but then (motivated by ideological agendas?) ran with the ball to say this means all cultures are equally worthy (where worthy means "should be promoted"). To use an exaggerated exa…

> My impression was more "All models are wrong, therefore all models are valid". That's a misrepresentation. It's actually fairly interesting where that misrepresentation originated from (hint: it was propaganda from totalitarian movements). It's a reaction to modernist assumption that "absolute truth" is possible for any question, and in particular, how often that truth _just happened_ to be personal taste of some d…

> "you can't just ... declare Helvetica to be the objectively best font."

You, sir, are a scoundrel and a heretic.

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

#963

Post by wwarner »

I'm of 2 minds. He goes to bat for the rest of us defending the quality of the kernel and the open source movement, and he wastes no time and he doesn't mince words. But he was doing the same thing 20 years ago and was nicer about it and by being nicer invited more participation.

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

#964

Post by brennebeck »

LinuxBender wrote: post #947
JohnBooty wrote: post #939

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally like calm, rational logical inspirational leaders. I would like the fictional Captain Picard! Those are very hard to find. Great example! He was fictional, of course, but he was a good example of a leader who took no shit and held his crew to high standards, yet cared deeply for his crew and did not resort to petty rants. Although didn't he sleep with or almost sleep with Dr. Crusher? Maybe Linus shouldn…

Apparently there were no Federation regulations against this. [1] [1] - https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/141670/what-are-th...

I’m honestly shocked. I mean, it was the 80’s, but still, it’s Trek.

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

#965

Post by wpietri »

hnzix wrote: post #621
wpietri wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're looking for a science-ish expression of postmodern insight, consider the line from statistician George Box: "All models are wrong, some models are useful." This isn't particularly shocking to anybody familiar with the history of science. Newton's model was wrong but useful, for example. All software is wrong but useful models of the world. (Well, some of it is wrong and useless, but you know what I mean.) P…

My impression was more "All models are wrong, therefore all models are valid". Some models are less wrong! It seems to me that the postmodernism movement correctly called attention to social models being somewhat arbitrary and power-based but then (motivated by ideological agendas?) ran with the ball to say this means all cultures are equally worthy (where worthy means "should be promoted"). To use an exaggerated exa…

I hope you realize the irony of complaining about the notion that viewpoints are equally worthy when you base your complaint in... your own viewpoint about what postmodernism means to you.

But no, I think you'll find practitioners of postmodernism are perfectly capable of making value judgments. They just make using different frameworks and different criteria than the the people who came before them.

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

#966

Post by a_tractor »

dnomad wrote: post #515
DC-3 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not opposed to the adoption of this CoC. I think it's a positive for the Linux community, and I think it will be helpful (so long as Linus changes his attitude too). I would not like to see this ideological wedge driven any deeper into the gospel of the Linux community, however.

The fact that you think that it's an "ideological wedge" says more about you than anything about the evolution of linux community. Some people see threats everywhere, they go through their whole lives insisting X is really Y, and A will lead to B and therefore nothing should ever change. Since these people are irrational and provide no rational basis for their paranoia (or even historical examples) healthy organizati…

It is interesting that at no point do you actually deny the fact that this so called "evolution" is entirely ideological.

Your illogical and fallacious attempt to gaslight rational pattern recognition, with regard to the obvious ideological basis of these "codes of conduct" brigades, is defeated by the fact that some people do quite accurately and consistently see threats only when and where they appear, and often when other people do not, with full control of their rational faculty.

Perhaps such an issue seems trivial to most, or perhaps that's just how it is designed. Maybe this represents yet another incremental encroachment of a much larger and multifaceted threat that is intentionally difficult to understand?

There is also the relevant idea that those who represent more covert threats, would in fact desire to remain covert for as long as possible in order to further their malicious agenda. Since the continued existence of this agenda and its proponents depends entirely on deniability and ignorance, they will often lie and manipulate in order to ensure doubt and ignorance remains.

Organizations which ignore such astute, truthful observers while ignoring the existence of threats of such a deceitful nature certainly do not stay healthy for long.

>no rational basis for their paranoia (or even historical examples)

I mean you are really, really, really playing dumb here. The persistent denial is almost unbelievable, but it really shows a cowardice and fear of exposure that says more about the truth of this ideology than anything else I could say.

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

#967

Post by philwelch »

msbarnett wrote: post #956
philwelch wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 cul…

Suffice to say, I think this nonsense. The idea that Linus was ever screaming at some engineer from IBM or Intel because they were “trying to do the bare minimum in life” by trying to contribute to the Linux kernel both fails the Principle of Charity in viewing interpersonal relationships and is just utterly pants-on-head idiotic and a general indictment of your intelligence, upbringing, and education. You must be a…

Your demonstration falls flat because it lacks the personal expert credibility of Linus Torvalds and, most importantly, the ring of truth behind the basic point.

Linus Torvalds is widely accepted as an expert on kernel development (otherwise we wouldn’t be using his kernel and no one would care). Most Linux contributors respect Linus and care about his respect and approval. Conversely, I have no idea who the hell you are and no desire to earn your approval. As far as I know, you have never run any open source project of any real consequence or demonstrated any real responsibility for anything in your entire life. Why should I give a shit what you think of me and my ideas?

The rants that I have seen from Linus were in discussing points that were pretty unassailable and absolute: don’t introduce regressions that break userspace, don’t make a system call to read every single byte, etc. Being “some engineer from IBM or Intel” isn’t an antidote for the natural human impulse to cut corners or do dumb shit. Linus, in my view, never assumed that anyone was a fool: he just told them they were fools after they demonstrated their foolishness to him, most of the time in cases where they either did know better or damned well should have.

And yes, if I fucked up badly enough, I would want to be addressed that way, or at least tolerate it, given that it was from someone I respected and whose opinion mattered to me, or at least given that I was indisputably in the wrong. Working in an environment where no one is ever held accountable for cutting corners and fucking over everyone else is in many ways even more poisonous than the occasional public shaming.

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

#968

Post by a_tractor »

moosingin3space wrote: post #432
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…

Why do so many people on this forum seem to believe that being polite inherently implies lying to each other? I just want to understand this line of thinking. My workplace is extremely polite to each other AND we don't lie to each other. I recently submitted a code review that was full of violations of the style guide, and nobody was rude nor dishonest.

>AND we don't lie to each other

How on earth could you possibly know that?

>so many people on this forum >polite inherently implies lying

That understanding of "polite" is at least centuries old and spans almost every culture where the concept exists.

There is an entire structure of unwritten social rules that is designed to avoid the not-so-obvious dishonesty of politeness. For instance, in some cultures, it is polite to offer food to a guest, even to the point where a host might offer all food they will have for a week. They obviously do not want to go hungry for the week, but they will feel compelled, in the name of being polite, to offer it anyways. They will also never admit this to a guest, but as a guest if you are aware of their poverty then you will probably try to politely decline the offer, even if you are hungry. You could not in good conscious take the last of their food, but you also do not want to expose your reasons and embarrass them either... it goes on and on. Hopefully you get the point.

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

#969

Post by mmirate »

ilovewhiskey wrote: post #564
sincerely wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In your example - what's the point of thicker skin if people simply don't say mean things to each other? You can never control other people's behavior, only your own. Learning to deal with mean comments is a valuable skill.

> You can never control other people's behavior This is another way to say > we believe the world is harsh and unforgiving You seem to have internalized this perspective completely.

Post-scarcity is, at best, a distant fantasy.

Ergo, sufficient resources to forgive everyone, do not exist.

Ergo, it is best for any person to not expect forgiveness.

It's not a perspective; it logically follows from reality.

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

#970

Post by on_and_off »

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…

Or maybe that tech in general has a toxic culture problem and Linus definitely contributed to it by making it ok to be an asshole as long as you are skilled.

I often see people complain that 'soft' topics are not worth being included in conferences.

Being tough and being an asshole are two very separate things. The best engineers I have had the pleasure to work with were both technically skilled and great mentors/teammates.

Last time I have checked, software engineering is almost exclusively teamwork, it is time we start treating it as such.

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