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Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

lore.kernel.org

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

#691

Post by mirimir »

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…

That's my impression from what I've read. But I have no personal experience, so ...

What's really cool here is that I think he's basically acknowledging that, and declaring his commitment to transformation. Recursion can be very useful :)

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

#692

Post by hyperpallium »

djsumdog wrote: post #671
hyperpallium wrote: post #574

> get some assistance on how to understand people’s emotions and respond appropriately > like the time ... I needed to write a little tool called "git". I need ... to fix some issues in my tooling and workflow. Hopefully we'll get another world-wide revolution out of this.

I dunno. I think git's success is less around Torvald's developing it and more about companies like Github finding ways to capitalize on it. They kinda made a Freshmeat/freecode that included the code repository, without being as shitty as Source Forge.

there was great excitement and adoption before github

famous linus talk at google 2007 https://youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8#

github founded 2008 https://wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub

git's distributed nature was revolutionary. Although not the first (BitKeeper for one preceded it), it has a mind-numbingly simple design, of distributed data by content addressing (data named by its hash, so it has the same name whereever it is).

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

#693

Post by cscurmudgeon »

jmmcd wrote: post #584
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newton was much more humble. Shoulders of giants and all.

Newton wasn't so humble! He said that, but only as part of a deliberate insult to one of his rivals, who was short.

At least he was capable of clever insults.

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

#695

Post by int_19h »

jlawson wrote: post #623
int_19h wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untravelled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty," "meaningless," or "dishonest," and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too we…

Heinlein wrote "honorifics and formal politeness". I interpret this as things like saying "please", "thank you", and other straightforward ritualistic decorative words - not as actually changing what you're actually saying to avoid hurting feelings. There's a big difference between reformatting the message and changing the message.

What's described in the comment I responded to is exactly "reformatting the message" - you still communicate the same thing, ultimately, just in a way that allows the person on the receiving end to save face.

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

#696

Post by noufalibrahim »

ggreer wrote: post #600
coffeemug wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it isn't. For example in today's environment when someone suggests something stupid, it is no longer acceptable to say "this seems stupid to me" because it might hurt someone's feelings. So instead you walk it back and say things diplomatically (which is a tiny form of a white lie). Then people reply to your diplomatic statement with another diplomatic statement, and pretty soon nobody is saying the thing t…

I totally agree with this. I actually quit my job at Red Hat because of the culture of non-criticism. I kept getting in trouble for pushing back against stupid decisions, even though I never insulted a single person. For example: When the design team added 10MB of web fonts to the app, I said something like, "Users don't care whether the font is Open Sans or Arial. They care whether things load quickly and don't re-f…

A related point that occurred to me about the convenant which Torvalds has included is the "Scope" section. It looks like it leaves most of the details to the project maintainer which I suppose is a good thing. However, an explicit statement about where the whole thing doesn't apply would be useful.

If a person has a political or other opinion and is very strident about it in every sphere (twitter, personal blog, facebook etc.) outside of the project, the convenant should explicitly allow this. That way, it sounds more like a "this is our house and these are the rules you should follow if you want to enter" vs. "you should be a certain kind of person in all aspects of your life to be allowed in here". The latter has too much overreach IMHO.

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

#698

Post by komali2 »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #610
floatingatoll wrote: post #416

I'm known at work for being That Guy who will point out the elephant the room and discuss it face-on, but I invested decades into empathy work so that people now respect me for doing so rather than hate me. I'm glad to see Linus considering an investment in empathy, and I don't feel it will negatively impact his forthrightness long-term — the best of all possible outcomes.

Have you read the book "Crucial Conversations"? It covers exactly how to have conversations about tough topics.

That and "how to win friends and influence people" are solid. Should be taught in highschool imo.

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

#699

Post by pc2g4d »

"Hell freezes over"

Honestly this is potentially one of the most monumental events in Open Source. To have Linus himself say it's not okay to treat people like garbage, and seek actual help in correcting his behavior, will set such a wonderful precedent if he follows through properly. I admire someone who can do things one way for nearly thirty years, and then say, Hey guys, I was wrong.

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