Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off • Hacker News Board

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#521

Post by ceautery » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 1:35 AM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #318

Newton was an asshole too. The whole "apple fell on his head" story came about because he was so mean to people. I won't say that most geniuses are inempathetic, but many are. Einstein wasn't, some say Gauss was. Beethoven was. Linus is. And we'll accept Linus's attitude for being an aversion to bullshit, just the quality that we need in a kernel maintainer. I'm glad to see that Linus finally realizes that he has a p…

Einstein's letters to Mileva make me feel that maybe empathy wasn't his strong suit, either.

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#522

Post by hatmatrix » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 1:35 AM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #510

jakeinspace wrote: post #257

Linus is stubborn, persistent, and unyielding to what he sees as bullshit. These I believe are all very valuable qualities for the head of a massive software project, and may be part of the reason as to why Linux is where it is today. However, Linus is also a bit of an asshole, turning technical criticism into personal seemingly personal attacks. I believe those 2 sets of qualities are separable, but I would guess it…

I don't think it has to be 1D. What I think reality is can be plotted in 2D: abrasive | | effective------+-------ineffective | | kind You're claiming is (and the common trope is) the actual distribution is in fact a straight line with a -1 slope (y=-x). I think there's a general possibility that the distribution is focused around the y=-x here, but there are outliers (imagine the line blurred out) with some wings esc…

If you populate these quadrants most points might lie in QII and QIV (along the -1 diagonal) with few in QI and QIII (though maybe we all know many QI's in our lives...).

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#523

Post by manyoso » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 1:35 AM UTC

idontpost wrote: post #509

hnzix wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was forced to take a unit of postmodernism as part of my studies and came away no wiser as to what postmodernism actually is. There was a bunch of dense, impenetrable academic word games that seemed to be asserting that all truth is culturally relative. I don't find gravity or physics to be culturally relative.

Modernism is Descartes` "I will find a single indisputable axiom and can prove everything knowable from there." His axiom? "Cogito ergo sum." Postmodernism is rooted in the notion that there is no indisputable base axiom from which we can build our understanding of the world. It's unprovable assumptions all the way down. The consequences for this, if you accept it (you don't have to, but you're going to have a hell o…

Thank you. One of the best comments I have ever seen on this forum.

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#524

Post by marmot777 » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 1:38 AM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #510

jakeinspace wrote: post #257

Linus is stubborn, persistent, and unyielding to what he sees as bullshit. These I believe are all very valuable qualities for the head of a massive software project, and may be part of the reason as to why Linux is where it is today. However, Linus is also a bit of an asshole, turning technical criticism into personal seemingly personal attacks. I believe those 2 sets of qualities are separable, but I would guess it…

I don't think it has to be 1D. What I think reality is can be plotted in 2D: abrasive | | effective------+-------ineffective | | kind You're claiming is (and the common trope is) the actual distribution is in fact a straight line with a -1 slope (y=-x). I think there's a general possibility that the distribution is focused around the y=-x here, but there are outliers (imagine the line blurred out) with some wings esc…

Yes.

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#525

Post by lgleason » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 1:39 AM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #490

JoshTriplett wrote: post #106

The other huge news here, both for Linux and for numerous other communities trying to make similar changes: The most recent commit, right before the release, deletes Linux's "Code of Conflict" and replaces it with a real Code of Conduct, the Contributor Covenant. https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin... https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/code-of-condu... Quoting the commit message:…

Was there a public discussion that led to this change? The 'Contributor Covenant' contains this line: > Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting which is essentially a carte blanche for any actions based on 'violation of the code of conduct', especially with the inclusion of public spaces in it's scope. We've seen it being (ab)used many times recently in open-source p…

Every good thing must come to an end. Sounds like linux is going to go down this path and the industry and innovation will suffer as a result of this. They've been gunning for Linus for a long time. My guess is that they got some dirt on him.

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#526

Post by Fordrus » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 1:39 AM UTC

damnyou wrote: post #466

eloff wrote: post #458

Agreeableness in general is negatively correlated with career success. Have you noticed that Fortune 500 CEOs tend to be extremely disagreeable, to the point of psychopathy in some cases. At the risk of sticking my neck out, it's also one of the many reasons for the gender pay gap, woman are more agreeable than men. And you have to be somewhat disagreeable to stand up for yourself and demand a raise (or quit and seek…

What if, and this might blow your mind, we tweak things so that agreeableness is rewarded more? Society is constructed too adversarially for my tastes. More collaboration would be better.

There isn’t some function we can feed a different argument here to value agreeableness more highly though. I generally agree, but that more collaboration would be good isn’t so much the question - the question is HOW these tweaks can be done.

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#527

Post by FuckOffNeemo » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 1:39 AM UTC

coffeemug wrote: post #176

serf wrote: post #142

I'm probably going to be alone in saying so, but I always enjoyed Linus and his attitude. (to me) it made him appear honest and dedicated to (his own) goals, and I always felt like that was respectable. (mostly) whenever he was proven technically wrong about how to do something he would concede to the technically better solution, and if he didn't do so he gave reasons for his conclusion. in other words : his technica…

Same. Linus always called a spade a spade, and I always respected that. In a culture where the Overton window has shrunk considerably and people habitually hide their thoughts, I think this kind of attitude is more important, not less. People give up ability to say certain things in the name of inclusion, and then lose ability to think those things in the first place. I'll take an asshole over a pushover any day, and…

"A man who says a spade is a spade is only fit to wield one" - I can't recall who this quote is from but it had a profound impact on my how I conduct myself.

Or: "A hammer is no more or less honest than a scalpel."

I had the same sense of reality as Linus is having now, fortunately I was only 26 when it was brought to my attention.

Previously I took pride in calling a spade a spade. I was abrupt, people actually praised me in this behavior before I realised it was holding me back. To be specific, some close friends who were in Senior positions to me gave me a reality check.

My behavior was not genetic, it was nurture and not nature. The Finish brash is not too far from the Northern English brashness.

I've had my ego checked on a few occasions and I've changed my tact accordingly when I realised it wasn't a win/lose or a zero sum game. It's about working together. I shouldn't escalate to a combative state so eagerly. The above quote resonated with me when it highlighted I need to better at communicating. 'Disagree and commit' is one such method that I've been trying to practice. Anothe

I'm glad he's been given a reality check, though I hope it doesn't take anything away from his matter of fact way of speaking. He doesn't need to sink to ab hominem based attacks to get his point accross.

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#528

Post by femto » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 1:40 AM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #476

jakeinspace wrote: post #257

Linus is stubborn, persistent, and unyielding to what he sees as bullshit. These I believe are all very valuable qualities for the head of a massive software project, and may be part of the reason as to why Linux is where it is today. However, Linus is also a bit of an asshole, turning technical criticism into personal seemingly personal attacks. I believe those 2 sets of qualities are separable, but I would guess it…

I'd bet people tend to cluster onto the line separating "agreeable and lax" and "rude but firm" (as a sweeping generality) Consider this: A third category of people who are able to accomplish their goals by rallying others to their cause. They are essentially imposing their will on others, but are able to do it in a way that is not "rude." This is called charisma. - "Agreeable and lax"... you allow them to paint the…

> this does not necessarily imply dishonesty or trickery. arguably, the most charismatic people might be those that are true believers

Not ruling out that a true believer might have deceived themselves! (It's turtles all the way down when trying to answer that about yourself.)

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#529

Post by danso » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 1:41 AM UTC

gedy wrote: post #292

jerrysievert wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why write tests? why improve ux or ui? why help with documentation? > I mean if you can't contribute code why simply mess around with things like the Code of Conduct. there are many more parts to a community, even a community of developers, than just contributing code.

> there are many more parts to a community, even a community of developers, than just contributing code. True, but OSS and business software development is frequently short-handed in people who can actually make the software, not the planners, organizers, etc. The political debate gets polarizing because many of the "makers" think it's a lack of skill, and the other side comes across as blaming the maker's attitudes/…

> but OSS and business software development is frequently short-handed in people who can actually make the software

But you're begging the question here. I'm not the parent commenter, but it is not self-evident that the programmers/developers are the main class of "people who can actually make the software", not even in a literal sense, since software is not just its lines of code, anymore than hardware development is factory assembly.

For example, in "business software development", there are product managers and other business-facing people who have input on and make decisions, for better or worse, about software development. How is a programmer's contributions to making the software more significant than those of their product/business colleagues', if the latter have failed to cultivate paying customers?

Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

#530

Post by microcolonel » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 1:41 AM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #495

microcolonel wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is that the "Collaborating" sector is the wrong goal for the Linux kernel. Linus Torvalds is uniquely qualified to be concerned about matters concerning the kernel; if his interlocutors "win" too much on their side of the "win/win", every user loses. The public embarrassment of lazy and dishonest actors, especially those who are paid to collaborate, is an effective tool for maintaining order and stan…

The public embarrassment of lazy and dishonest actors, especially those who are paid to collaborate, is an effective tool for maintaining order and standards on behalf of the quality of the product, and provided nobody gets hurt permanently at the end of the day, it is easily justified. Can you explain why you feel rants and insults are necessary to maintain high technical standards? Literally nobody is asking Linus…

> Can you explain why you feel rants and insults are necessary to maintain high technical standards?

It is possible that they are not truly "necessary", but they are one often-effective way to discourage disruptive/unproductive behaviour. Linus ultimately should not be asked to review changesets he will be far from willing to merge; and for him there are only so many hours in the day. It is, as a practical matter, necessary to communicate that there is a cost to wasting his time with work that somebody should have known was substandard, and it is important that that cost is borne primarily by the originator of that substandard work (i.e. it needs to suck more for the committer to waste Linus' time than it sucks for Linus to spend time responding).

It is a high-risk, unappealing technique, but we should be careful not to impose alternatives which fail to meet the same criteria at least to some extent.