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Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#51

Post by nalllar »

steve_taylor wrote: post #24
nailer wrote: post #15

I remember looking at Linux's angrier style maybe 15 years ago (I would have been 22) and not being bothered. Someone made a stupid mistake and was getting a bollocking. Looking at it as a 37 year old last week, I'm surprised a grown man needed to be so aggressive. You can destroy the opinion or the behavior using reason without the aggression, which distracts. I like that Linux is changing this, though I do have con…

> I do have concerns about the CoC being used for political purposes That's the CoC's entire purpose. Its author (the same person behind the post-meritocracy manifesto) has said that yes, the CoC is a political document.

Being political isn't a problem. Free Software is political.

mjg59 put this far better than I could:

> A reminder that free software is fundamentally about breaking down barriers preventing people from participating in a social endeavour that grants them more control over their computers, and anyone who argues against that process is not helping the cause of free software

> Some of those barriers are technical (DRM, proprietary software, undocumented hardware) and some are social (unwelcoming communities, abusive maintainers). You don't get to focus on one category and deny the other.

> Alleged free software advocates who defend abusive individuals aren't helping the cause of free software by doing so. Push back.

> "If anything deserves a reward, it is social contribution" - the GNU manifesto by Richard Stallman, 1985.

https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/1042709376442687490

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#52

Post by tomlock »

Does anyone else find it weird how so many people can think Linus is utterly brilliant and thoughtful, can agree with him on almost everything he's done and said up to this point, but fall back on the belief that he's been conspired against and corrupted when he says things like:

> "...I may have my reservations about excessive political correctness, but honestly, I absolutely do not want to be seen as being in the same camp as the low-life scum on the internet that think it's OK to be a white nationalist Nazi, and have some truly nasty misogynistic, homophobic or transphobic behaviour. And those people were complaining about too much political correctness too, and in the process just making my public stance look bad.

> "And don't get me wrong, please - I'm not making excuses for some of my own rather strong language. But I do claim that it never ever was any of that kind of nastiness. I got upset with bad code, and people who made excuses for it, and used some pretty strong language in the process. Not good behaviour, but not the racist/etc claptrap some people spout.

> "So in the end, my 'I really don't want to be too PC' stance simply became untenable. Partly because you definitely can find some emails from me that were simply completely unacceptable, and I need to fix that going forward. But to a large degree also because I don't want to be associated with a lot of the people who complain about excessive political correctness."

I dunno, maybe if he was being brilliant and thoughtful for all those years, he's still... being brilliant and thoughtful now?

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#53

Post by elorant »

rectang wrote: post #4

It's interesting that Torvalds describes himself as "not a people person", when he's a gifted communicator who has been tremendously successful at managing the community around Linux over many years. His current refinements are making a great thing even better.

A community of programmers isn't the same as a community of average Joes. Engineers care about facts not so much about sentiment. That is why you can be harsh and still get the message through. Trying doing that in the general public though won't work. If you notice politicians always talk to the public like they're imbeciles. Short, easy to remember messages without a lot of technicalities. Quite the opposite of the way we communicate.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#54

Post by maxxxxx »

asdkhadsj wrote: post #8
rectang wrote: post #4

It's interesting that Torvalds describes himself as "not a people person", when he's a gifted communicator who has been tremendously successful at managing the community around Linux over many years. His current refinements are making a great thing even better.

This is more of a question than a critique on your comment, but: Couldn't he still not be a people person _(perhaps a poor communicator)_, and still manage a successful community? I say that because historically it's been a bit of a meme around how forceful and abrasive Linus is. Yet, he's often right, or at the very least very informed. He's a very smart man who has done very smart things. I'm not sure if the Linux…

The fact that he has been leading this for so long shows that he is a great communicator. You can't do this without.

Communication skills doesn't necessarily mean to be smooth and agreeable. It's one facet of it but not everything. On the other hand some people may think his style works because he is abrasive and emulate that (like some people didnand still do with Jobs).

In the end as a leader you need to have a vision where things should go and be able to communicate that. You need to give people freedom to do what they need to do but also sometimes clearly say "no" and risk to alientate some people.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#55

Post by simias »

rooam-dev wrote: post #31
matthewmacleod wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s essentially a cliché false dichotomy. Wouldn’t it be even nicer to work with someone who can express how they feel in a constructive and helpful manner?

Sometimes "constructive" requires more effort, which for an engineer could mean "overhead". Especially if communication is text based (email, chat, etc.), it's more difficult to express your emotions. My imho of course.

As far as I can tell Linus's feedback is almost always constructive in that it generally points out precisely why he thinks something should or shouldn't that way. The problem is that he sometimes splices personal attacks and uses an overly aggressive tone which doesn't really help anything.

I can somewhat justify using a very corrosive tone if you're not in a place of power and you want to be sure that you're not ignored (I'm not a fan of it but pragmatically it sometimes gets the job done). However it's clearly not the case here, he has the power to reject any contribution he doesn't fancy. And his developer clout is huge enough that he'd still be heard if he criticized third party projects he doesn't maintain.

From a purely pragmatic point of view I don't see what his corrosive tone gets him. Actually I can easily see what it cost him, some devs have resigned from their maintainer position in the Linux kernel and probably many more who gave up contributing at all because they were worried they were going to be shot in flight.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#56

Post by tomlock »

yashap wrote: post #33

His quotes about political correctness are pretty interesting. Basically that neo-Nazis have tried to brand themselves as “just practical people against excessive political correctness,” but really that’s just a facade covering their true hate and racism. But now, if you’re ACTUALLY just someone who’s against excessive political correctness, you risk being associated with neo-Nazis. I’d consider myself pretty left-wi…

Have you personally, in real life, encountered many people who were "outraged" by you using he/she?

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#57

Post by bufferoverflow »

tylermac1 wrote: post #17
stemc43 wrote: post #10

If not for this guy - we wouldn't have Linux. I'd much rather work with honest person that can tell me how he really feels then nice spoken liars.

If you think that nice people can't tell you how they really feel without being abusive then you're delusional.

But he is clearly telling everyone he isn't nice.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#58

Post by blktiger »

rectang wrote: post #30
asdkhadsj wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more of a question than a critique on your comment, but: Couldn't he still not be a people person _(perhaps a poor communicator)_, and still manage a successful community? I say that because historically it's been a bit of a meme around how forceful and abrasive Linus is. Yet, he's often right, or at the very least very informed. He's a very smart man who has done very smart things. I'm not sure if the Linux…

Torvalds' written communications are incredibly well-composed, full of information and get his point across well. On the basis of his emails alone, he's a "gifted communicator" in my view. Not everyone who is as logically brilliant as him can write like that. Despite that, I'm sure that when he says he's "not a people person" there's something to it. Maybe a certain difficulty reading people or anticipating their res…

IMO, the thing that he doesn't seem to understand is the difference between criticizing the implementation and criticizing the person. Pointing out flaws in the code is not the same as calling a person stupid. If he could just learn to explain why the code is bad most of his people problems would disappear.

Not all, since some people take criticism of their code poorly, but if you aren't committed to the highest quality code possible then you probably shouldn't be working on something like kernel development. There are some ways to reduce problems with those kinds of people though. Asking probing questions to get the person to think through the problems on their own to fix them for example. Or having a standards document that all kernel code is expected to conform to so you can just point out parts that don't conform to the standard.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#60

Post by notyourday »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #21
stemc43 wrote: post #10

If not for this guy - we wouldn't have Linux. I'd much rather work with honest person that can tell me how he really feels then nice spoken liars.

That’s essentially a cliché false dichotomy. Wouldn’t it be even nicer to work with someone who can express how they feel in a constructive and helpful manner?

Do you ever fire people who are nice and really trying?
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