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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'

#301

Post by grigjd3 »

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…

I'm sure that some people go way overboard on social justice issues, but my reading of the CoC is that you keep your work professional. Generally, if you are polite and veer away from using racial slurs or sexist statements, you'll not run afoul of the CoC.

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

#302

Post by colemickens »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #165
alfredmuffin wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Empathy as a way to not communicate directly is just a waste of time It is this attitude that drives people, and especially women and minorities, away from tech.

I work with women, I don't think they are that stupid they cannot handle it. It must be something else. Definitely none of them cried or left because we get to the point in the meetings, or I don't compliment them before criticizing their work. I think not working like this may be even weird for some of my foreign coworkers.

I can't tell if people defending Linus's behavior are unaware of how overly abusive it was (not "to the point"), or are intentionally misportraying it in this thread.

The things Linus has said on LKML would be fireable offenses at most companies and I'm having a mini anxiety thing at the number of people here who desperately want an excuse to be unrepentant assholes.

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

#303

Post by sumeno »

evanspa wrote: post #133
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.

Because it is human nature to relate more with people who are like you

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

#304

Post by UncleMeat »

inawarminister wrote: post #156
RVuRnvbM2e wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Was capitalism meritocratic in 1920?

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

#305

Post by smoothy2 »

notacoward wrote: post #275
evanspa wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Natural tendency" does not mean intention. Few people intend to make minorities feel less welcome, but many more adhere to habits and cultural norms which have that effect. Here's an example from right here a couple of days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18061725 Another example: where I work, I recently took someone to task for saying "your shit is broken" in a very public thread. It's a phrase I've seen…

Listen, I take a huge exception to the way you said things. As a minority (non-white) person, I don't need you to speak for me and me to be your pet.

In fact, your attitude is highly patronizing and condescending, the fact that you don't see it, is problematic.

Linux Kernel was being run ok so far. Sure there were rants from Torvalds which went overboard sometimes but accept it as a quirk of the maintainer and move on. Including this COC is a huge can of worms though. Now you can be Brendan Eiche'd out of any open source project. When that happens, perhaps you'll be celebrating a win for your progressive values but a more real happening at that point would've been loss of good open source software which some of your pet minorities could have used.

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

#306

Post by Millennium »

opwieurposiu wrote: post #263
Millennium wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is indeed a deep betrayal of a hacker ethos: in particular, Geek Social Fallacy #1 (Ostracizers Are Evil). And you know what? That's probably a good thing. The radical inclusivity (i.e. exclude no one, for any reason) of the geek community led to some beautiful things. We took in the people nobody wanted around, and with their help, we built something special. But in our reluctance to exclude anyone, we forgot som…

You are completely missing the point. It's not about rejecting or accepting people. It's about rejecting or accepting patches.

I'm not sure that the CoC-alarmists see a difference. Reject the patch, reject the person: to them, it's all the same. And I'm not sure they're even wrong on that particular point, at least in the case of rejecting patches for reasons that don't have anything to do with the content of the patch itself. You are rejecting the person in that case. I just don't see anything wrong with that.

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

#307

Post by ethbro »

mcherm wrote: post #258
ethbro wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civility is the bedrock on which justice is built. That's why Gandhi, King, and Mandela effected change. And so many passionate others did not.

You listed a few examples of individuals who effected great change and were civil. (Mostly civil. Gandhi, King, and Mandela were each accused by their detractors of being insufficiently civil.) I could easily list examples of individuals who effected great change and were NOT civil. Neither list would prove anything. An actual analysis of leaders who were then classified according to their civility and rated on their…

My broader rationale goes like this:

- The objective of any movement is to effect a change

- The number of people pro- or anti- change is always dwarfed by the number of ambivalent or mostly-ambivalent bystanders (aka those who don't really care)

- The shortest path to the object is therefore converting the bystanding mass to your side

- You convert people more easily if you don't scare them

- Overthrowing the system and militancy always scare people

I don't have my books on designing effective protest movements in front of me, but I'll post the names when I'm home later. The above ideas are all cribbed from reading.

PS: Not that militancy doesn't have a place. But unless you're willing to start a civil war and have substantial economic and popular backing before initiating hostilities, the state is always going to have more power (see point about silent bystanders).

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

#308

Post by notyourday »

tylermac1 wrote: post #160
notyourday wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is not optimal resource allocation of my most valuable resource - time.

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

#309

Post by kyberias »

mcguire wrote: post #280
davidkuhta wrote: post #41

Anyone else get a chuckle that out of the myriad of relevant quotes, the author selected, "He... once [described] an Intel fix as 'complete and utter garbage'". Good for Linus, I'm happy that he's not looking to adjust his technical expectations: "technically wrong is still technically wrong, and I won't start accepting bad code just to make people feel better about themselves."

They could have taken a quote from 2012: " "...should be retroactively aborted. Who the f+ck does idiotic things like that? How did they not die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?" "

That is just super funny. It always will be.

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

#310

Post by rich_ard »

jlawson wrote: post #287
sonnyblarney wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huge difference between being 'very frank' and being a true douche. Both can be perceived as jerkoff but I think only the later really counts as that. As far as 'meek guys' turning to jerks with a taste of power - it's very common for all types. Without going into my background I had a chance to witness 100's of young people come into, and go out of power. Almost everyone 'over identifies' with their power…

I'd love to read more about what you've seen with power rotation, with any specifics or stories you could give. It's not something I've heard before.

It's a feature of Boy Scouts and the patrol method, in which youth are encouraged to take on leadership positions for six-month periods.
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