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She could've presented her critique without turning it into a gender issue: >I won't be the nice girl anymore.
She is not making it into a gender issue. That statement is just the same as if it was a guy making a stand and wrote: I won't be the nice guy anymore.
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> People are pretending that his horrible behavior is acceptable just because they don't want to get on his bad side. Or maybe they're just willing to accept the occasional insult from a guy they respect, admire, and who has done so much good for them. Kinda like how people forgive Bill Clinton for lying to them about his private shenanigans because he was a damn good president overall.
Or maybe, just maybe you can be a smart, contributing person without being a raging douche bag.
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Sarah Sharp is part of the people who "write linux" - she's the xHCI driver maintainer at Intel.
if alan cox couldn't get linus to change, how the hell does she think she will? i honestly don't get it.
When Linus refuses to change, which he has and will continue to do, I'm not sure what the next step is to squash his sometimes impolite manner. Surely you can't ban Linus from the LKML or convince the Linux Foundation to remove him. For better or worse, Linus and his rants are here to stay. This #kernelhackers #abuse thing is entertaining to watch, but nobody should seriously expect a change here.
I suppose it's FOSS, so people who agree with Sarah's position could form their own separate fork and mailing list. More likely though is that every time Linus posts another rant about how poor of a job somebody did, they'll reply with some kind of shaming of his impoliteness, which Linus will simply ignore and nothing will change.
This is my position: Words are just a way to express something we want to communicate, and their meaning must be considered within the context they are expressed. When Linus says something like "This piece-of-shit commit is marked for stable, but you clearly never even test-compiled it, did you?" https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/13/132 , he clearly has an insane reaction to something that at the end isn't nothing more th…
Considering the he "despises being nice" because "that's just how he is", and can't express what he actually wants to say even though he was able to fucking create Linux, then I think he simply fulfills the cliché of the one-sided nerd: good with machines, bad with people, to the point of wanting people to be like machines. I can sympathize with that to a degree, but not really. Just because I share the sickness does…
About "despises being nice" this seem to me just a trait of an egocentric personality, which is fairly common in our individualist society between overachiever people (Steve Jobs is a classic example). I don't mean it is a pleasant behaviour, but frankly as citizen of a west country I'm used to it.
She could've presented her critique without turning it into a gender issue: >I won't be the nice girl anymore.
This is also pretty telling: > Snort . Perhaps we haven't interacted very often, but I have never seen you be nice in person at KS. Well, there was that one time you came to me and very quietly explained you had a problem with your USB 3.0 ports, but you came off as "scared to talk to a girl kernel developer" more than "I'm trying to be polite". While verbal abuse is not acceptable, neither is the male-shaming langua…
1) I hear plenty of foul and seemingly abusive language happen between friends. Are the examples given seem more abusive because we assume the parties are merely acquaintances? I also didn't take the time to follow the e-mail threads to see how the conversation started.
2) I remember once when I was 17 or 18, I heard someone swearing through a sentence (that should have been a good point in the conversation) and immediately thought they were a dullard. Then I realized that people might have the same perception of me and I quit swearing almost immediately. It doesn't really matter whether you find the curse words acceptable, the reality is that I can still verbally abuse someone using perfect grammar and "tenpenny" words. If the banter is not good-natured banter, how do you define verbal abuse?
3) Are Linus' responses to these e-mails simply indicative of the passion that's also let him lead the creation and fostering of Linux over the last 20 years? Would someone without that passion (whether using foul language or not) have succeeded in such a broad endeavor?
4) Are the supposed victims of the described abuse speaking out about this? I would assume that if they were truly offended, they would have told at least a few people, but I haven't seen any indication that they were offended. Linux isn't some dictatorial regime - have people "left the empire" (quit kernel development) because of this behavior?
5) Are the threads containing harsh criticisms balanced by e-mails pointing out how brilliantly someone solved an issue? It's more acceptable to rant about a mistake if you also rave over something extraordinary.
6) Has Linus ever lambasted himself publicly over his own mistakes? I tend to think any code I wrote over six months ago is pretty crappy (it's a perfectionist thing).
I can't condone verbal abuse, though I've seen similar abuse in person and in a professional environment, but I also can't say this is abuse without knowing the complete context. I tend to think personal attacks are out of place, but commentary on the technology can be as pleasant or harsh as necessary.
Linus: If you happen to read this, first I'd like to thank you for the work you've done. In some ways, I've grown my career as a side-effect of your work. Second, I'd like to say that following the mailing list would in fact be more pleasurable if the place didn't feel like walking through a ghetto.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or maybe, just maybe you can be a smart, contributing person without being a raging douche bag.
Wait, you accuse him for impoliteness but excuse yourself for calling him a 'douchebag'?
I don't excuse myself for calling him that. I'm neither smart nor polite.
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I can understand not always having time to explain why something is a bad idea when you're working on very high profile code. I think Rusty's right: you can be unequivocally harsh with the code, but not swear at or call people morons.
Even if you don't have time to explain, "This is a bad/dangerous idea" is enough to get the point across, without resorting to swear words (on the other hand "I would prefer that" is clearly not much of an incentive to change things) or being rude ("or go away" is definitely rude in my book).
Angry words are a waste of time!
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Linus just says that he doesn't want to "act professional". Remember that he may still feel that it is a hobby for him to work on Linux. He started it in his spare time and, even if he is technically payed to work on it by the Linux Foundation, he has the right to do whatever he wants with this project, including still considering it is a hobby. Would you like someone to tell you how you should speek with your friend…
Until my current job almost all my open source work was in my volunteer free time as well. Whether his fellow contributors are coworkers, friends, or just strangers who happen to know how to program, the abuse isn't acceptable.
But I don't try to impose my standards, or any work place standard, upon others.
Why do you think there is any abuse?
If you see 2 guys in the street, one insulting the other one, how do you know there is any abuse?
Couldn't they be very good friends that have been talking to each other like that since years? In this case, is there any abuse?