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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'

#131

Post by deelowe »

yourbandsucks wrote: post #113
mikeash wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish people would stop being so concerned about what other people think. If treating people well is the right thing to do, then do it. If people are nasty when they try to make you treat people well, ignore them. When people say that they wanted to do the right thing but got pushed away because the advocates were jerks, that just sounds like an excuse. That’s not to say that it’s ok to be a jerk just because you’re…

The thing is, on most political or religious topics, people leave that stuff at home and don't bring it to work. The SJW people are bringing it to work and right into everybody's face. I'm not saying "guess what, then, I'm the opposite, let's go be racist". I'm saying "could you please get that out of my face".

Are we still talking about the LKML here? I don't feel "SJW" has much of anything to do with this outside of a few very isolated incidents. Personal attacks and disrespectfulness has been a staple in that community for decades at this point and definitely predates the somewhat modern hatefulness surrounding bias and privilege.

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

#132

Post by matthewmacleod »

notyourday wrote: post #60
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?

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

Yeah, I've done that – and I've not been a dick about it.

Why is it such a prevalent idea that someone has to be an asshole in order to give negative feedback, or to take an action that someone doesn't like?

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

#133

Post by evanspa »

Vinnl wrote: post #64

His feelings about two of the "sides" of this argument are so recognisable. I'm generally in favour of going out of my way e.g. to make minorities feel more welcome to compensate for the natural tendency to make them feel less welcome. However, the nastiness of some of the people in "my camp" pushes me away from it and makes me reluctant to openly support that cause. In effect, they're really counterproductive, and t…

Why do you feel it is "the natural tendency" to make minorities feel less welcome? My natural tendency -- and anecdotally, pretty much everyone I know -- is to treat people well regardless of their race; to treat people the way you'd want to be treated.

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

#134

Post by yourbandsucks »

mikeash wrote: post #126
yourbandsucks wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, on most political or religious topics, people leave that stuff at home and don't bring it to work. The SJW people are bringing it to work and right into everybody's face. I'm not saying "guess what, then, I'm the opposite, let's go be racist". I'm saying "could you please get that out of my face".

You said this stuff “pushes me away from it.” It should push you away from the troublesome people, and nothing more. When you say most people leave this stuff at home, that seems to imply that the status quo is neutral. It isn’t. Continuing to treat people the way you always have is just as much of a statement as saying you should treat people differently. It’s just easier to find agreement.

I'm a different person than the original poster, but hey I'm pushed away too, so let's go with it.

SJWs do not have a monopoly on thought, on how to deal with societal problems, or any of that. This isn't a 'tolerance of intolerance' thing, it's a 'tolerance of those outside your very narrow camp' thing.

Most of the individuals I've encountered couldn't tell you who their congressman is, and they'd never go door to door canvassing voters. But they want to make up an ever-escalating list of things that are offensive and enforce it on me at work.

Are we trying to break down barriers or are we trying to erect them?

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

#135

Post by yosefzeev »

krapp wrote: post #115
yosefzeev wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is but you don't need an OS to define it.

But it seems as if the politics being discussed here apply to the project and its contributors, it's not as if a Code of Conduct is being applied to you, the end user. Unless they add something political to the license itself, I don't see why it would matter.

If it doesn't matter, why is Linus making it an issue?

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

#136

Post by notyourday »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #132
notyourday wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, I've done that – and I've not been a dick about it. Why is it such a prevalent idea that someone has to be an asshole in order to give negative feedback, or to take an action that someone doesn't like?

Because me telling you that your code sucks is not being anti-gay if you are gay or anti-trans if you are trans. It is me telling you that your code sucks. You should either make your code not suck, or you can GTFO unless I'm lower on the org chart than you are, then you can do whatever you want, including telling me to shove it or GTFO and based on how I feel about it, I can either forget about it or GTFO. That's equality - we are dealing with code and not our sexual lifestyle(s). Org chart is used to determine who gets to win in the argument if neither of the two sides are willing to budge.

Alternatively, we can spend a year debating if me using a word "suck" is appropriate or triggering because you found out based on the DNA testing of your twice removed uncle that his grandfather was lactose intolerant which caused you to develop an emotional response while your code continues to suck and create problems, causing the company to lose money or a project to lose users.

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

#137

Post by inawarminister »

notacoward wrote: post #104

IMO the most interesting part - especially relative to the discussions I've seen right here - is near the end. "But if people at least realise that I'm not part of the disgusting underbelly of the internet that thinks it's OK to show the kind of behaviour you will find if you really have been reading up on the 'discussions' about the code of conduct, then even that will be a really good thing." Yes indeed, if you loo…

see, the problem is that the same thing can be said vis-a-vis the COC toting social justice warriors, making things nasty to everyone just to bring their pet political issues.

Indeed, things such as The End of Meritocracy manifesto... Seems to beg the thought: is the trolls in the underbelly always this nefarious that it needs this amount of unhealthiness, or are they, at the end of the day, swelled by reaction to the unwelcome attack on the functioning internet cultures?

[0] https://postmeritocracy.org/

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

#138

Post by zaphar »

elorant wrote: post #53
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…

This is a myth about engineers that I've almost never seen demonstrated in reality.

I suspect we would be better served by just admitting that engineers are people to with all the flaws that come with it.

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

#139

Post by pavlov »

navane wrote: post #22

I would like to see a scatter diagram with 'technical contribution' on one axis and 'CoC contribution' on the other axis, for all people involved.

That's like using "List of black Nobel Prize winners before 1950" as evidence that IQ correlates with skin pigment.

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

#140

Post by DanielBMarkham »

simias wrote: post #97
Vinnl wrote: post #64

His feelings about two of the "sides" of this argument are so recognisable. I'm generally in favour of going out of my way e.g. to make minorities feel more welcome to compensate for the natural tendency to make them feel less welcome. However, the nastiness of some of the people in "my camp" pushes me away from it and makes me reluctant to openly support that cause. In effect, they're really counterproductive, and t…

There will always be garbage people in "your camp", whatever that camp might be. Hell, for some people in "your camp" you'll be the nasty one. The big problem with the internet and modern social networks is that they suck at filtering the noise and getting the interesting bits. In the end if we're not careful we only hear those who shout the loudest and most provocative things. A well researched essay on gender studi…

>You'll find that the vast majority of people are vastly less extreme than what twitter and reddit would have you believe.

Yep. The medium itself makes everybody look about 100 times more radical than they actually are.

Look at it this way: if you're busy working on a small technical detail, your conversation will be around that detail, right? You may be an asshole, and it looks like he's working on that, but you're an asshole trying to make something useful. That is, you have a goal that you can be measured against. "I am not able to fix this problem because I cannot talk to people online without pissing them off" is a problem with delivering tech that you can identify and fix.

Sounds like your filter works for a while, as long as everybody agrees on some larger value structure.

Where all of this falls apart is when there's no larger structure that agreed upon. You see this in startups or academic/political discussions. Sometimes you know something's wrong, and you feel strongly about it -- but you're unable to articulate it in a manner that can be easily consumed. That's almost always going to come out wrong. But it needs to come out.

Contrast this with the rest of the internet, where people are not creating a small detail inside an agreed-upon value structure. There's no evaluation criteria except for bike-shedding. They've got nothing to do but to look at whatever your communication is in the abstract. There's no overall gain that might be weighed against bad phrasing. It's all downside. "I don't think that was a very nice thing to say" This can be both a true and non-productive thing to say in certain circumstances. That reality sucks, because people don't want to hear it -- after all, they don't share your value structure -- add to that plenty of time on their hands and an unlimited ability to look back on anything you've written. The system itself has problems.

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