For people not really involved, what does it mean? Is this just an apology out of daily discussions or is anything going to change for Linux development?
It means there's going to be a penis everywhere you thought there was a vagina.
Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
761–770 of 1001 posts
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#762Nice apology. As someone who hasn't been following can someone give a bit of a background. What was the bad behavior exactly? And why is he needed at every summit? That sounds like a bus factor.
SJWs want to control everything.
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#763In principle these CoCs look great. In practice they are abused tools to hunt people SJWs don’t like. And they don’t like a lot of people.
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#764Good on him for doing what's right for his community. It takes a lot to own up to a mistake and work on doing better. It takes more to do that when there's a pile of them.
Yeah. People who can't decide what gender they want to be are always ahead of the curve.
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#765Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely. A big part of the problem with many projects, or even companies, is that leadership is too soft and so you end up surrounded by incompetent individuals who either through delusion, or Dunning Kruger, have difficulty assessing their own ability. This results in incredibly inefficient and 'noisy' (as in signal:noise ratio) working environments. 'Hard' leadership gets rid of the slack and is willing to tell…
There are plenty of examples of great leaders who were direct, driven, and hard, yet still treated people with respect. It's not an easy trick to pull of, which is why people like Steve Jobs just said fuck it.
Could you post a few examples?
Woz seems like a nice guy and Warren Buffet likewise. Both seems to have worked in small teams.
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#766Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is anyone really rallied to the cause by Linus himself? I think the product is the only real draw. With the exception of a select few that simply want to work with someone as high profile and legendary as Linus.
Personally, and maybe I’m in the minority when thinking this, but I can’t stand working with polite people. They not only slow down the progress of a project by often causing unneeded busywork, from simply not halting bad ideas, they often slow my learning progress down by not telling me I’m wrong. If you see something stupid, call it out. If I’m doing something stupid or say something wrong, call me out! There’s obv…
Are we not perhaps mistaking political correctness and politeness?
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#767Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the particular CEO doesn't matter that much Business history & Jack Welch disagree with you. Individual project success is incredibly nuanced and individuals - even in 10k+ orgs - can have massive impacts. Trying to pretend that outliers don't massively influence company success is naive, and MBA programs study these individuals because they are the exception and not the rule. There's a reason we have Madison Squar…
Consider how few "genius CEOs'" reputations have survived their attempts to take over failing companies and turn them around.
What do "genius CEOs" have to do with anything? Most successful CEOs were only responsible for a single business. Multiple successes don't change what Gates, Ellison, Knight et el. accomplished because they only did it once. Plenty of instances of people that failed plenty before eventually succeeded elsewhere (Ray Kroc).
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#768It is very interesting how dichotomic Linus' traits are beeing discussed here. Many seem to think that him beeing an asshole at times correlates with communicating clearly – then the opposite is quickly constructed: kind, polite, but not saying what is needed, robbing everyone of their time, beating around the bush..
As a (film) director I work with both with a technical crew and rather non-technical actors. As you can imagine good communication and leadership is key to make something as complex as a movie work on multiple layers. But you don't necessarily have to be aware of how your communication effects people to be a good leader (as Linus stated he wasn't), but it certainly helps to make your communication more intentional and less erratic. Film directors can pull the strings of their actors while beeing assholes, real friends or a cold professionals – but all of them have to be aware of the effect it is having on the actors – otherwise they are just shooting darts into the fog monte-carlo-style.
You can't just force someone to deliver peak performance. You also can't just convince them rationally, even if they have a huge incentive. It is your job to get them into a place where they A)can deliver their best and B) they also _want_ to deliver their best. If they are mentally stuck it is your job to show them the possibilities, if they are head-in-the-clouds it is you job to ground them back to earth, while still leaving them freedom.
How to achieve effective communication like this depends mostly on the situation, the constellation between sender and receiver and last but not least on the character of the individual.
Someone who overestimates themselves all the time, but can't deliver and destroys work of their team might need a different treatment, than somebody who really gives their best and accidentally fucked up. Psychologically speaking, some might be more receptive to public communication (where there is more than one person listening) and others want/need a one-on-one.
Effective communication is, when you can push everybody over their boundaries, using the language they need and in the end they should feel like they wanted all of this themselves.
This won't give you that infamous aura, but it will get the job done faster, better, using less words and in in an ideal case everybody will thank you, because they learned a lot.
One cannot not communicate. That is why it is important to make communication intentional. Read Paul Watzlawick's Five Axioms of communication, if you didn't already: http://www.wanterfall.com/Communication-Watzlawick%27s-Axiom...
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#769Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. What is no longer acceptable is to personally insult a developer for breaking things, poorly designing an API/implementation, etc. By "personally insult" I mean call someone names, curse at them, sarcastically suggest they should have been a…
> call someone names, curse at them, sarcastically suggest they should have been aborted, and many other such tactics. That's a positive change. But it also ought to be possible to say "this is a dumb idea" or to engage in friendly ribbing when someone does something dumb. These are good, healthy mechanisms in normal groups of people. Eliminate all teasing, and everyone is friendly on the outside and bitter and resen…
I completely agree.
Calling an idea dumb is candid, I'd consider it a breath of fresh air from corporate speak. I left my prior position for similar concerns, specifically 'Architects' who I'd called out (and rather abruptly so) when they quoted AWS as being 'not redundant and only have one DataCentre'.
We're not talking a conversation from 10 years ago either. This was June last year!
Comments or statements like that need to be shouted out of the room.
I feel there's a finesse to be drawn and understood here.
If some one states, AWS is single site and no one else in the room challenges the stupidity of the claim. Some one ought to. That guys/girl is a fucking idiot.
But some one who perhaps needs to be coaxed or massaged into a different angle because their code base will grow 90% in size? Depending on the context that might be for the best. Or it might not be.
Coming back to my earlier analogy. Hammers and scalpels are both honest. Different tools for different needs.
Re: Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off
#770Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
He should only be angry at those who should know better. He often is set off by randos who only want to contribute. So 2D is still too simple. It is like a horseshoe, one can be so abusive that the project fails because of it.
Can you give one or two examples of him being "set off by randos who only want to contribute"? I can't say I remember that at all.