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"Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

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Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#81

Post by Dewie »

doe88 wrote: post #53

For all its flaws I must credit the various open source codes I've come to study along the years for all I know in CS. Long term, it's more important than degrees and schools. For instance I vividly remember how hard for me it was to learn and code in Objective-C for iOS back in 2009, at this time there was only few related open source projects available to study and learn how good UI were implemented and such, it wa…

> Also for instance one thing I consider great about Rust, not only Rust is open source but better its compiler and standard libraries are developed in Rust and thus you just have to read them to learn from probably the most skilled Rust developpers so far.

Last I saw, reading the compiler wasn't recommended (by someone) since the code is apparently old and not idiomatic.

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#82

Post by nilved »

I read this article and was very confused about how somebody could create an open source project that lead to actual death threads. Then I googled Lennart Poettering and it all made sense. PulseAudio and systemd make for a particularly wretched resume: Poettering is probably responsible for more frustration to Linux users than anybody else right now. Not that I'm not going to condone online harassment or blame the victim, but I am a little happy that this harassment is based on technical merits instead of appearance or sexual orientation as is normally the case.

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#83

Post by [deleted] »

Someone1234 wrote: post #77
[deleted] wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

I'm confused, did he force you or anyone else to utilise his "crap?" If it is "crap" why are you using it? And what's more why are you UPSET that you're voluntarily using his contributions? What you just said literally makes zero sense to me... Also he hasn't (according to him nor Wikipedia) contributed to the Linux kernel, yet you moved kernels to avoid his "crap." Makes zero sense. The Linux kernel isn't one of his…

[deleted]

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#84

Post by pekk »

chris_wot wrote: post #9
freehunter wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a real shame because it's really true and really needs to be addressed. We've had these conversations about gamers, about startups, about tech in general, but when it comes to Linux (and related open source projects) it's somehow impossible to talk about. The community just isn't friendly and isn't inclusive, and that bad behavior goes far enough as to shut down any talk of the bad behavior.

I don't know about anyone else, but when I read Linus write: "Of course, I'd also suggest that whoever was the genius who thought it was a good idea to read things ONE F✦CKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte should be retroactively aborted. Who the f*ck does idiotic things like that? How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?" https://lkml.or…

Not to excuse this, but this involved a person with a Finnish name who specifically CC'd Linus complaining about a perceived regression when doing things a wrong way. Note that there is even a phrase about a Finnish phenomenon, "management by perkele," referring to a militaristic managing style which steamrolls dissent with a lot of profanity.

Therefore, I doubt that a random person on LKML that wasn't CC'ing Linus to complain about the bad performance of doing things wrong would draw random fire from Linus about his ability to suck a tit.

Meanwhile, Steve Jobs was a total asshole to many people, including family, and this has been approved in his hagiography as a condition for his incredible inventions which revolutionized all mankind. If that is true for Apple then presumably it is also true for Linux?

Or maybe we should be more uniform in criticizing for people being assholes, rather than singling out Open Source with an implicit double standard.

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#85

Post by kenjackson »

tomp wrote: post #46
chris_wot wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about anyone else, but when I read Linus write: "Of course, I'd also suggest that whoever was the genius who thought it was a good idea to read things ONE F✦CKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte should be retroactively aborted. Who the f*ck does idiotic things like that? How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?" https://lkml.or…

On the other hand, I don't consider this bad. Sure, it's offensive, but he has quite a good reason to be upset - reading one byte at a time will be really slow. Could he say it in a better way? Obviously. Could you interpret his words in a less literal way? Obviously. I don't know Linus, but he seems a good, selfless guy, with the best intentions at heart. If he's not politically correct, who the fuck cares? Sometime…

For most people the difference between being a complete jerk and a normal guy is simply what they say.

Would you tolerate a manager who talked to you this way? I wouldn't. Not even Linus. And then I'd point out all the pretty crappy code Linus had checked in.

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#86

Post by thegeomaster »

rdtsc wrote: post #50

> By many he [Linus] is a considered a role model, but he is quite a bad one. I give Linus a pass. Given the success of the project and the size of the team, I would rather have a foul mouthed Linus than perhaps no kernel and no Linux. It is not a positive characteristic. I wish he wasn't as abrasive but that is his personality. What I feel Poettering is doing here is a bit of a "well on technical merits Linus was ri…

>It is not a positive characteristic. I wish he wasn't as abrasive but that is his personality.

You can't just say this. I mean, where do you put the limit? Imagine if we let all kinds of aggressive and violent behavior slip on the account of "eccentric personality". I enjoy reading Linus's rants as much as the next guy, but it makes you wonder how the other person feels. And "grow a thick skin" isn't good advice, because if something doesn't bother you doesn't mean it can't bother someone else. For example, I've long ago grown out of taking stuff on the Internet personally. But I remember how it was, and I would often be very close to just giving up on doing whatever I was being hated for. (In fact, I can bet that happened at least once.)

There is some norm of decency you have to follow when talking to someone you don't know. It's how you show that you can accept others' opinion and argumentation, and sometimes accept you weren't right. I have a hard time imagining Linus Torvalds admitting that he was wrong about something he ranted about. (If you know of any examples, I'd love to see them.) And that's not a good thing. Either he's never made a mistake, or he doesn't want to admit it. I'm willing to bet Linus has god complex issues, and instead of recognizing it as something that needs to be toned down, he just embraced it and amplified it. Some people will still say that it's cool, sure, but I, for one, would like to see him be a tad more humble. Even when you've achieved as much as he did, you can very much be wrong about stuff. That's, in fact, by definition of the human being :)

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#87

Post by lallysingh »

kazinator wrote: post #68
mike_hearn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet in general has problems with this, but I suspect it's much worse in the open source world where unmoderated forums are standard. If you look at the moderation tools available in something like mailman, they're very poor. It's just not been a priority for technical discussion forums at all. And the social convention is to leave forums largely unmoderated anyway, so it's easy to get into a downward spiral…

You cannot moderate mailing lists because they are not centralized. When you hit "reply all" in a mailing list, the replies go directly to everyone who is on the To: or Cc: list. The list robot is just one of those parties. And of course, private replies are possible that the list robot doesn't even see. Some lists try to fix this by abusing Reply-to: to try to steer discussion replies to the list address, but that i…

What's wrong with changing Reply-To?

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#88

Post by xroche »

chris_wot wrote: post #2

Yeah, this was discussed about an hour ago, and it hit the flame filter pretty fast. I'd suggest that it won't last very long on the front page. Incidentally, I find it very sad that we can't discuss this on HN. What has happened to Lennart, and the behaviour of Linus Torvalds as a bully, is probably something decent to talk about. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8414859

You need to understand one thing: you are wrong.

Linus Torvalds is not a bully. He's in charge of one of the biggest and most successful project out there. And this project is open-source, and anyone can contribute to it. Anyone. Even your cat. Imagine the Windows codebase being opened to anyone, with anyone being able to suggest fixes and send patches, or ask questions, or make suggestions.

You do not want any idiot to commit insane things. You need to have some barriers. And these barriers are related to technical skills.

You have to understand that the alternative to "Linus is mean" is "Linus let a fucking patch enter the kernel, and it broke millions of machines around the world, causing millions of dollars worth of damage". Every single line committed in the kernel must be carefully checked, and if you lack the skills, just go away, because it will (1) spoil the precious kernel maintainers time and more importantly (2) do damages to millions of users.

So I am personally very glad Linus is "abrasive", because when someone screw up, he makes it perfectly clear, and this is totally appropriate considering how critical the linux kernel is nowadays.

And yes, if you want to live in a politically correct, nice, cheerful project, this is not the project you need to work for.

[Having said that, I do not think Linus has ever been dishonest (such as refusing a patch only because he did not like its author, unlike some C-library guy), which is precisely the reason why his abrasiveness is perfectly fine to me]

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#89

Post by vidarh »

chris_wot wrote: post #9
freehunter wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a real shame because it's really true and really needs to be addressed. We've had these conversations about gamers, about startups, about tech in general, but when it comes to Linux (and related open source projects) it's somehow impossible to talk about. The community just isn't friendly and isn't inclusive, and that bad behavior goes far enough as to shut down any talk of the bad behavior.

I don't know about anyone else, but when I read Linus write: "Of course, I'd also suggest that whoever was the genius who thought it was a good idea to read things ONE F✦CKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte should be retroactively aborted. Who the f*ck does idiotic things like that? How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?" https://lkml.or…

> (p.s. the irony of posting such an offensive post by starring out the u in fuck... does he not see the irony?)

Linus is fully capable of writing "fuck", as evidenced by e.g. [1]. If he stars it out, assume it is a stylistic choice for that particular message.

> then I don't think I'd ever contribute to the LKML.

If you can't handle a message like that, then perhaps it's just as well. Note the context (though I can appreciate it may not matter to you, and that you simply won't contribute regardless of it):

A senior developer who have repeatedly made Linus exasperated by submitting code that Linus have had massive issues with, up to and including unacceptable levels of breakage, appears to have written code so idiotic that it should not even have occurred to him. 1 byte reads with sys-calls is a beginner mistake. Kay was/is not a beginner. He also had at that point had repeated complaints from Linus about the quality of his code, and showed no sign of listening.

This conflict eventually culminated in Linus making it clear he'd had enough, and will no longer merge code from Kay until he cleans up his act [2]

While I don't think I'd be as caustic as Linus, I can totally understand the level of exasperation that saga must have caused him given the series of issues in question. And at the point of this outburst, nothing appears to have worked: the stream of crap had kept on coming.

[1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75

[2] https://plus.google.com/u/0/111049168280159033135/posts/Kd57...

Re: "Open Source is awful in many ways, and people should be aware of this"

#90

Post by DogeDogeDoge »

never cared who is behind a nick on the other side of the cable, if he is white,black,yellow,green or pink. But i like the banter and sometimes people are cursing at others not because of gender, race or any other factor but because of emotions. If PC will get over everything soon it will be not acceptable to say anything. Is this the internet we all fought for ? In internet it doesn't matter who you are.
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