More info that points to what caused all the hate -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering
"Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"
141–150 of 487 posts
Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's really not political correctness to just keep technical discussions calm and non-personal. Meanwhile, consider the chilling effect that kind of attitude has. I know quite a few skilled engineers who would just walk out if their boss talked to them like that, regardless of the merits of the underlying discussion. It's just wildly unprofessional and when Linus does that kind of thing, it sets the tone for all the…
In this case Linus had tried for quite some time to get the person in question to stop pushing crap. Linus eventually told him he'd stop merging his code. From that point of view, if he'd walked after being talked to like that, it'd have been seen as a benefit by many. EDIT: I find it quite amusing that I get downvoted for a fairly dispassionate and mostly objective explanation of context, yet several of my far more…
It's quite possible to make it clear that he'd stop accepting code without descending to abusive language. Erecting a 'safety barrier' against someone who was doing a poor job and being verbally abusive are entirely unrelated.
You say that blocking these merge requests would benefit many; so be it. Being polite about doing that would benefit the same set of people, and may others at the same time.
Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
So isn't your beef really with the distro's which aren't fulfilling your needs? Maybe you should start your own branch with Systemd specifically excluded. That is how many currently popular distro's because popular (mostly relating to different windowing systems, etc but still). You could also move to Gentoo Linux which doesn't (and has no plans) to utilise Systemd as the default. Last point; systemd is so "crap" tha…
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This comment needs a disclaimer that I think it's possible to be opposed to the use of systemd, and not be flamey about it. And I don't mean to suggest that you're the flamey sort of systemd opposer.
That out of the way, I really hope that the FreeBSD community is not inundated with the flamey kind of systemd refugee.
Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
He named the GitHub repo which has his name in big bold letters: https://github.com/nanoscopic
Still not cool. Proper way is to reference commits and bugs. Just imagine someone Google your name and first link is to this comment: XY attacked me....
Go ahead and Google my name. You'll find that it is mostly just attacks on my character related to an incident with UMD and the FBI. Unfortunately people don't reference facts; news ( and people in general ) just believe what they want.
Once again, my point in referencing these people is to say that negative attitudes and attacks are widespread, and happens by many professional ( the people I mentioned ). I don't blame them; it is a hard community; I'd just like us all to have better attitudes.
Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"
#145discussion about petition on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3385276
Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know about anyone else, but when I read Linus write: "Of course, I'd also suggest that whoever was the genius who thought it was a good idea to read things ONE F✦CKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte should be retroactively aborted. Who the f*ck does idiotic things like that? How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?" https://lkml.or…
On the other hand, I don't consider this bad. Sure, it's offensive, but he has quite a good reason to be upset - reading one byte at a time will be really slow. Could he say it in a better way? Obviously. Could you interpret his words in a less literal way? Obviously. I don't know Linus, but he seems a good, selfless guy, with the best intentions at heart. If he's not politically correct, who the fuck cares? Sometime…
Whoa. Timeout. This isn't political correctness--it's basic human decency. Political correctness is replacing the use of a term for a euphemism. Even putting this in euphemistic terms should be completely unacceptable. If I told somebody at work that they were so stupid, I wasn't sure how they survived childhood, I'd be asked to leave, post haste.
I think that the OSS community (and IT community in a broader sense) has this idea that "they're just words," and so therefore, they should just be able to say what they want without consequence. But, words matter. A whole lot. Empires are built upon words. People rally around words. Words convey ideas, thoughts, feelings, and everything that goes with them. Why is rampant bullying accepted in this culture? Why is it the norm?
I'm not saying that things have to be all sunshine and rainbows. Yeah, sure, it's stupid to read a byte at a time, but you don't have to be an asshole about it. You can say, "Hey, that won't work," and be done with it. People should be treated with a modicum of decency. Remember the human, and all of that.
Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"
#147Yeah, this was discussed about an hour ago, and it hit the flame filter pretty fast. I'd suggest that it won't last very long on the front page. Incidentally, I find it very sad that we can't discuss this on HN. What has happened to Lennart, and the behaviour of Linus Torvalds as a bully, is probably something decent to talk about. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8414859
You need to understand one thing: you are wrong. Linus Torvalds is not a bully. He's in charge of one of the biggest and most successful project out there. And this project is open-source, and anyone can contribute to it. Anyone. Even your cat. Imagine the Windows codebase being opened to anyone, with anyone being able to suggest fixes and send patches, or ask questions, or make suggestions. You do not want any idiot…
Just curious - have you read some of Linus' posts referenced?
I personally don't think that a reasonable person who is familiar with such emails could honestly say that Linus is not a bully or that such behaviour is ever acceptable.
Being in charge of a very important project doesn't make it OK to tell people that they're so stupid they should have been aborted.
Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"
#148Open source is not awful. It's perhaps the most important thing to happen to computing, ever. Multi-billion dollar companies have formed largely around open source. It enables millions of people to do business. Learning how to code is easier than ever. Saying open source is awful because you've encountered assholes is like saying free market economies are awful because some vendor overcharged you one time, or saying…
Surely you can understand the intent of his message and of the phrase which you partially quote.
"Some elements of the open source community are awful to contributors"
"Open source is an awful place to be if you don't have a thick skin"
"The behavior I have observed as a prolific contributor to open source is awful"
All of these statements, I believe, accurately summarize his experience. All of these statements can be summarized "Open source is awful in many ways" for purposes of titling an article.
He's not trying to say that the concept of open source is awful. You don't have to jump in and defend that cause.
Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"
#149He's just the new Drepper. Coming from almost anyone else this might be reasonable, but him? Just pointing out someone else is an asshole does not negate you being an asshole. Honestly, it's people like him and the systemd noise on all sides that have made me lose faith in Linux. By contrast Linus has git too, which is potentially as big a contribution as Linux was in the first place. History may even demonstrate git…
I'd be very interested if you could provide evidence of Lennart being an asshole. I've honestly never seen him be anything other than professional.
Here is one of his more infamous statements: http://lwn.net/Articles/430699/ "What I actually suggested in that interview was not so much that the BSDs should adopt the Linux APIs, but instead that people should just forget about the BSDs. Full stop."
He's also been an annoyance in Steve Langasek (Upstart developer)'s Google+ feed, and his post regarding the inseparability of systemd-logind as a main argument for why Debian should adopt systemd, at the time of the heated debates, is another. Among plenty of other examples.
His hijacking of Wolfgang Draxinger's CCC talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmPKDeo9Oow
Announcing udev becoming systemd-only while referring to potential detractors as "systemd-haters": http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2014-May...
That said, Lennart does not deserve the death threats and the extremer vitriol, but the jabs and sardonic humor are par for the course, given he is a divisive figure, and has made a lot of people mad for good reason.
He's not as abrasive and destructive as Drepper is, certainly, but some people actually find indirect and passive-aggressive attitudes to be even more offensive.
Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"
#150Yeah, this was discussed about an hour ago, and it hit the flame filter pretty fast. I'd suggest that it won't last very long on the front page. Incidentally, I find it very sad that we can't discuss this on HN. What has happened to Lennart, and the behaviour of Linus Torvalds as a bully, is probably something decent to talk about. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8414859
Incidentally, I find it very sad that we can't discuss this on HN. What has happened to Lennart, and the behaviour of Linus Torvalds as a bully, is probably something decent to talk about. It's not that we "can't" discuss it, you just have to be prepared for the discomfort of disagreement from both reasonable and unreasonable positions. Bad positions will be argued well, and good positions will be argued poorly. The…
I think the parent was referring to HN's ranking system's tendency to apply a penalty to posts with many comments, in an effort to keep flame wars off the front page (if I recall correctly - it's been a while since I saw a "how HN ranking works" post and I can't find a source url, sorry).
This has the side effect of divisive issues not getting the same exposure as stuff everyone agrees on.