Earlier quoted context omitted.
That email is just so Stallman. You have to enjoy his single-mindedness.
Very true. That makes the mail kind of redundant.
No, it serves a purpose of driving Stallman's point more. Good enough.
Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'
151–160 of 483 posts
Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
The low emotional intelligence on display throughout this thread is both disappointing and unsurprising. I have fired "nice and really trying" people. Because they were decent people, I have also then recommended them to my personal network for positions that are better suited to their skills (and more than once have they gone on to success at a friend's company), because hiring somebody who can't do the job is manag…
Thank you for providing a glimpse into a mind bending gymnastics one might need to engage in to convince himself or herself that it is different somehow: this is actually why work references are absolutely useless - people love to coddle incompetence in order to be perceived as "nice bosses". If someone's being unable to do a job is management's fault ( in this case yours, since you are the manager of the person that…
I have absolutely no idea how you can draw this conclusion.
There is a pretty obvious difference between "giving feedback in a respectful, polite and constructive manner" and "giving feedback in an aggressive, disrespectful and unhelpful manner". The former isn't "coddling" – it's "being a decent human being".
The problem I see is that too many people seem to confuse "having strong views and standing by them" with "being an unnecessary dick about it". You don't have to do the latter to achieve the former, and I'd argue that it is almost universally harmful.
Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
> The only reason "body size" is mentioned, is because the author is fat. The only reason why "gender identity and expression" is mentioned, is because the author is trans. For most of these cases, a simple "don't discriminate on disability" would suffice. Is being fat or trans a disability? :/
Yes. Morbid obesity (as a disease, not self-inflicted) qualifies as a disability for social security.
Transsexuality falls under gender dysphoria (as a hormonal disease, not psychological).
If you have reasonable recourse it is not a disability, and only you can help alleviate any (perceived) discrimination.
The question then remains: Does Linus have reasonable recourse to change his harsh behavior, or is this who he is by nature? If it is who he is by nature, then this CoC is bullying him for something he can't change.
Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there more Europeans here in HN? Because this hard push for empathy and stuff it just feels... weird to me. Empathy as the ability to see through your own biases and understand others POV is good in every setting. Empathy as a way to not communicate directly is just a waste of time. Most malicious people I've encountered in my career are the types that comes with smiles, corporate language and all that stuff.
'Empathy' in most of these cases mean: don't act like a vitriolic douche. Don't insult or belittle the person. Learn to critique without being an asshole about it. On the other hand: take criticism of your work without taking it personally. That's arguably a lot harder than the former, but it's gotta be done. It helps a lot when the person isn't being an asshole about the criticism though :)
I can agree with you.
Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
He's making it an issue for himself and contributors to the Linux kernel. If you're none of those, then it shouldn't affect you. Everyone else is making a mountain out of a molehill, however.
As far as why... I suppose you can read his words yourself.
Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're not wrong. It means diversity quotas are being pushed and excellence is no longer pursued (or at least it's not the first metric).
No. Its recognition of the fact that "meritocracy" is a satirical myth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
Meritocracy underlines the very system of capitalism, though.
It's not ideal, but it is what it is. Capitalism rewards meritocracy in the local maxima.
Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 d…
What offensive rules have you faced?
People going after antirez recently. Dude's italian. Stop projecting your American racial baggage on him.
Now, some people have gone after the terms 'whitelist' and 'blacklist'. Also extremely silly. Nobody confuses black people for literal chromatic black. "Wait, you're actually a shade of brown! That guy too!".
And, sure, maybe I should just be reasonable and go along with this stuff. It's not hurting anyone, right?
But how come the loudest and dumbest get to dominate the discourse? We all must obey them, or else we're racist or at best unreasonable?
Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'
#158His 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.
the question of the status quo is itself politicised. One side (progressive sphere) says people who don't belong to the normed group (cis-white-hetero-male in US/EUR) are inherently treated worse, either consciously or unconsciously (bias), and conscious effort has to be made to overcome this. Another (classical liberal sphere) says that exclusionary behaviour are the exception and most people abide by the golden rule, and that bias is small or insignificant enough to be inconsequential. There are other interpretations but I understand these are the two canonical ones. If you belong to the former you may feel the need to be conscious of your behaviours to make sure you don't perpetrate feelings of "othering". If you belong to the latter you likely feel that you don't need to treat people differently based on intrinsic characteristics. This is really the defining ideological split of current politics, IMO.
Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'
#159If 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?
Imagine you are Linux and you receive a messy patch so poorly structured that you can't follow the logic of the code. As Tony Hoare used to put it, the kind of code that doesn't have obvious bugs, but isn't obviously free of bugs.
What do you tell the submitter? You can't really point at specific problems, merely at a gut feeling that the mess must be hiding problems. Then the submitter shoots back: "You rejected my code just because I'm a paraplegic transsexual gay man of color!"
Now what? How do you "express how [you] feel in a constructive and helpful manner?"
Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 eq…
You must be insufferable to be around.
Here's a novel idea, how about instead of directly resorting to "Your code sucks." we instead say something like "I think there's still some work to do here. Here's the way I would have done this." It's really not that hard to give constructive criticism.