Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any data for this?
Yes, here for example https://lwn.net/Articles/915435/
Appreciate it! I tried, but couldn't come up with the right search term.
So, total being between around 60%!
Occurences of swearing in the Linux kernel source code over time
231–240 of 278 posts
Re: Occurences of swearing in the Linux kernel source code over time
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't like to look at it as fear, but I think fear is what explains a lot of the backlash toward PC culture (people don't like to be afraid; it's common to lash out at things that cause fear). I avoid offending people not because I'm afraid of being yelled at or cancelled; I do it because I know what it feels like to be offended, and I don't enjoy it, so I don't want to make someone else feel that way. Certainly I…
Nah, it’s not fear, it’s indignation. You can see it on full display in the comments here. It’s not, “we shouldn’t have to live in fear of saying the wrong thing.” It’s, “how DARE they try to dictate what I can say.” It’s obvious when people get so upset over an idea as simple as “don’t curse in your work.” Not even “don’t curse out loud, just “don’t put it in your code.” It’s the easiest thing in the world to do. It…
I think it's, clearly, both. The fear is what prevents people from putting ascii sequences in their code, even though they want to (as this comment section shows).
Re: Occurences of swearing in the Linux kernel source code over time
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't personally care about language choices in code, but I'll play devil's advocate and speculate as to why a business might be concerned. 1. Reputational harm in the event that code needs to be shared. Say, the code gets read in court, or an outside consultant is brought in who is given access to the code. The company likely wants to maintain the same standard of professionalism that they expect when their employ…
>The idea that arbitrary sequences of phones or characters will cause anyone within ear or eye-shot to become offended is rather absurd. No more absurd than the notion that a mere sequence of sounds could convey any other meaning or elicit any other response.
> No more absurd than the notion that a mere sequence of sounds could convey any other meaning or elicit any other response.
Disagree. The fact that voluntary communication works is somewhat miraculous, sure. But the idea that a reader could be made to experience something unpleasant against their will by mere words is far stranger. Obviously unpleasant meanings can be conveyed through words, but the idea that the words themselves can be inherently unpleasant feels like some kind of moral panic/social contagion (like if there was a satanic panic centered on the "brown note") rather than a real thing.
Re: Occurences of swearing in the Linux kernel source code over time
#234Theory: the shift towards lesser swearwords is a sign of corporatization, making the linux source a soulless bland hellscape of confirmity.
> bland hellscape of conformity I see three reasons to use swearwords sparingly, even though they don’t particularly offend me. 1 Managing my own emotions. Most swearing is negative and that drags you down which is not very productive or fun. 2 Managing others‘ emotions as they burst out, which stresses the people around the swearer. 3 Some people just can’t say a fucking sentence without gratuitous swearing which ma…
I know someone who generally does not swear directly at people, but uses swear words profusely when angry and believes it is unreasonable for anyone to judge them or have negative feelings about this, because it's just words and they aren't swearing AT people.
A few years ago, they went to a fan event here in Japan hoping to buy multiple copies of a zine for their friends overseas, and when told they could only buy one copy, they stood in front of the stall and cursed profusely in English out of frustration. After the event, they found that the Japanese side of the fanbase had unfriended them and removed them from online communities because of their outburst. They were completely blindsided by this. (In fact, their version of the story was just, "I went to an event in person and after that everyone unfriended me, I don't know why they're like this." I only heard about the swearing incident from a mutual friend.)
Anyway, there's obviously degrees and nuance here but I think people who swear profusely-but-not-at-anyone-specifically don't realize it still sometimes comes across as hostile.
Re: Occurences of swearing in the Linux kernel source code over time
#235You can check company names too ! It's interesting to see that by default, the graph shows google,apple. But adding meta, and IBM really changes the plot. Meta went from 2K to 10K+ from 2018 to 2025. While IBM seems to have stopped contributing in 2008. Since they the merging with RedHat, I would have expected to see them increase again but none of RedHat / IBM seems to have increase. https://www.vidarholen.net/conte…
It's talking about occurrences of the word, not contributions. That's a really lousy way to measure corporate contributions.
IBM is contributing a lot. LWN publishes development statistics after each kernel release: https://lwn.net/Articles/1022414/. IBM was 5th in terms of lines changed, 17th in terms of changesets, 20th in terms of signed-of-by counts. That's alongside the contributions by Red Hat which was higher in all but lines-changed terms.
Re: Occurences of swearing in the Linux kernel source code over time
#236https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/#fuck*,shit*,d...>
linus says gay rights, I guess
Re: Occurences of swearing in the Linux kernel source code over time
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
i like to think it’s solely down to linus. 4.18 was the second half of 2018, around the time linus took some time away and went off doing therapy to work on his “communication issues”.
It's not. I can't reproduce the exact datapoints from the site using `git grep`, but most of it seems to be down to a single commit that removed repeated usage of fuck from one file: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/a44d924c81d43ddffc9...
I'm getting the feeling someone has strong feelings about IOC3. From a quick bit of googling that appears to be a Silicon Graphics ASIC
Re: Occurences of swearing in the Linux kernel source code over time
#238I'd note that "retarded" can be a technical term which is not an insult or swear word which means "delayed" (e.g. "tardy") In an internal combustion engine you could have "advanced" or "retarded" spark timing for instance. It's an amusing area where denotations are the same in French and English but the denotations are different. [1] All over Quebec you see convenience stores called "Couche-Tard" (Sleep Late) which c…
However that doesn't explain all usages here: https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Atorvalds%2Flinux%20retard...
Direct quotes: "we shouldn't need asm for this, but gcc is being retarded" and "The switch is so retarded that it makes our command/entry abstraction crumble apart."
Re: Occurences of swearing in the Linux kernel source code over time
#239My take on this is diametrically opposite to the “swearing is never okay” crowd here — if you’re not swearing about your work at least occasionally under your breath, you don’t care enough for me to enjoy collaborating with you.
People will immediately start arguing against this stance while simultaneously enjoying the fruits of Linus Torvalds caring enough about Linux kernel quality to use colourful language to encourage others to take critical issues as seriously as he does.
Re: Occurences of swearing in the Linux kernel source code over time
#240The "Blooeans" for misspelled true/false is pretty funny.