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The choice here is not to be 'brutal honest' vs 'professional liar'. The choice here is between a 'honest civil discussion' and a 'crazy shout fest'. Linus is

• malandrew 11y ago
  I'd say his opinion about software quality was heard far louder and far clearer here than if he had been polite. The rants are newsworthy events. A polite message would not have been picked up by the Register and other news sources. His tone helped magnify his message. The people who hate the tone will self exclude themselves from kernel development. The people indifferent to the tone will focus on the underlying message, and if that underlying message appeals to them, then they will be attracted to kernel development. And those people in turn will defend high quality code commits when they encounter them.
  • st3fan 11y ago
    > The rants are newsworthy events. A polite message would not have been picked up by the Register and other news sources. His tone helped magnify his message. You are wrong. Because the message that was in the media was about Linus being a jerk. The actual useful discussion, about the usage of compiler features in the kernel, got completely lost. Linus has a lot of weight in the Linux community, obviously. He does not need to yell and scream like a little child to get his concerns known. He does not need to elevate a rant to a level where media picks it up. All he needs to do is say in polite words that he does not want this kind of magic in the kernel sources. That would be respectful and professional.