Linus on "acting professionally"

you just don't get it. you're still stuck on the notion of "socially inacceptable behaviour". the whole point here is that the standard by which you judge "socially acceptable" is broken and detrimental to the community. Linus behavior is socially acceptable. He is honest, passionate, says what he means, and most importantly, he is forgiving and doesn't hold grudges.

The type of behavior that Linus is railing against here is the politically correct culture of insipid office politics, forced politeness, and concealing the true meaning of communications in order to make the communication a more effective tool of political manipulation.

this encourages duplicity, causes people to become disengaged from the work and obsessed with their political relationship to their coworkers, and it breeds long lasting unacknowledged and unforgiven grudges. its a horror show. but you consider it "socially acceptable" because it matches your standard of politeness for some reason.

Which part of his behaviour in this email is unacceptable in particular? Let’s look at it:

> Mauro, SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Okay, so he tells Mauro to stop talking because he apparently thinks that what Mauro was saying is wrong. To make very sure that what he wrote is read, he puts in fancy caps and some light swearing, which, however, is not directed at anyone in particular. A more polite version of this would have been ‘No.’, but I don’t see any bullying/abuse.

> It's a bug alright - in the kernel. How long have you been a maintainer? And you still haven't learnt the first rule of kernel maintenance?

It appears that this guy violated some rather important rule of kernel development which he should have known given his experience. Again, no name-calling or directed swearing whatsoever, however. Again, a more polite version could be ‘We don’t break userspace, and you know that.’, which doesn’t look particularly different to me.

> If a change results in user programs breaking, it's a bug in the kernel. We never EVER blame the user programs. How hard can this be to understand?

I would wager the guess that similar problems pop up from time to time and Linus is getting tired of seeing them all the time, hence his question. Again, no name-calling at all, also no abuse, but a (justified, though maybe slightly aggressive) question.

> [technical details]

> Shut up, Mauro. And I don't _ever_ want to hear that kind of obvious garbage and idiocy from a kernel maintainer again. Seriously.

Again, no name-calling of the maintainer, but only an assessment of what he wrote, which, to Linus, appears very wrong. Again, more politely, this would have been ‘No.’

> […] And you've shown yourself to not be competent in this issue

This is the first personal ‘attack’, however, it is still only aimed at the competence rather than person, and if the above holds true, is yet again entirely justified. Is this the line with which you had a problem?

Linus then goes on to explain again why this particular idea was ‘TOTAL CRAP’, with some more colourful adjectives regarding the patch. Again, no abuse.

> The fact that you then try to make excuses for breaking user space, and blaming some external program that used to work, is just shameful. It's not how we work.

This could be interpreted as somewhat personal, though it likely only means ‘I expected better and am disappointed in you’.

> Fix your f*cking "compliance tool", because it is obviously broken. And fix your approach to kernel programming.

Note that the ‘fucking’ is for the ‘compliance tool’, which apparently is broken; the comment regarding kernel programming is again directed at their competence rather than person, so I don’t see any particular abuse there, either.

The remaining question is then, why didn’t Linus just write something along the lines of ‘No. / Don’t break userspace. / No. / No.’? Likely because then someone would have called him out on not going into details or because they got the same email regarding three small mistakes and a question and now don’t know whether this issue is a similar ‘small mistake’ or something more problematic.

Aren't they talking past each other?

Sarah says: quit being sexist, racist, and stuff.

Linus says: I'm a shouty dude and that's fine.

To which I say: surely these are non-overlapping concerns?

But when you say "your code sucks" a lot of people hear "you suck", especially when they've put their heart and soul into it.

Still, I think we all know how difficult and time-consuming it can be to deal with people who just "don't get it" and won't listen. If Linus finds that cutting people like that off at the knees is an effective strategy for managing open source projects, who am I to argue with him?

I swear he must have some copy/paste responses for this by now. It seems like it pops up every couple of months, when someone shows up seemingly completely oblivious to the way Linus has behaved for the past what, two decades? And decides they want to be a part of the kernel team? How does that even happen? I only have a passing familiarity with Linus and his kernel development team and I fully know what I could expect if I decided to become a part of it.

Regardless, why would anyone think they can tell him what is or is not professional? I think once you've created something on the scale of Linux, you get to define that word for yourself. It reminds me of the line from Parks & Recreation: "Everything I do is the behavior of an award winner because I HAVE WON AN AWARD."

Don't screw with the formula folks. Linux is too damn important to screw up, and Linus obviously knows what the hell he's doing.