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People are less creative when they feel disrespected. If you're running a military or places like UPS, where your work value can be boiled down to time and moti

People are less creative when they feel disrespected. If you're running a military or places like UPS, where your work value can be boiled down to time and motion studies, it makes a ton of sense to break down people's sense of self: they are being asked to become machines, after all. Torvald's recent screed on Management via perkele, where rudeness is encouraged, interestingly, was born from his time serving in the Finnish military. Could Linux be even better if he dropped this mentality? Maybe. He insists that by being rude you stop tacit political behavior which would undermine technical excellence. But this seems contradictory. Management by perkele is by definition a form of tacit politics. Torvalds position: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ017D_JOPY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ017D_JOPY Other points of interest: https://hbr.org/2013/01/the-high-cost-of-rudeness-at-w/ https://hbr.org/2013/01/the-high-cost-of-rudeness-at-w/ https://hbr.org/2013/01/the-price-of-incivility https://hbr.org/2013/01/the-price-of-incivility

jerf 11y ago
The Linux project is probably not the best place to look for this sort of thing. It's huge. It's completely plausible that a project big enough to have multiple layers may have different optimal levels of politeness in those different layers. It's also plausible that larger projects may simply not be able to function with total politeness, as they face threats that smaller projects can only dream of facing. Even if you've only followed the kernel development via HN over the years, you've heard of any number of instances of someone who has a very strong opinion about where the kernel should go, and basically can only be fended off with a flamethrower. Sometimes the fault lies not in the person wielding the flamethrower, but in the person who would not be dissuaded by anything less. (That's a general comment, not about any specific controversy.) It's also possible that Linus' attitude is a complete disaster, that the only reason the project is successful is a major case of right-place-at-the-right-time, and in the parallel universe where Linus is a perfectly polite person Linux is much farther along. Again, my real point is that the outlier projects may not be the best places to look, because they intrinsically live in environments very unlike the environments most open source projects live in.
- nickbauman 11y ago
  I think your point is valid (and I agree). However, your argument is not what Linus himself has emphasized. He emphasizes that his abrasiveness comes from the idea that people must earn respect. Which is more than just wrong, it's completely idiotic. If life were about earning respect, what are you supposed to do if people disrespect you? Aren't we right back to marching from Selma to Montgomery?
  - x0x0 11y ago
    The civil rights movement, in which people wished to, eg, not be lynched vs mean words on the internet. Below you compare similar mean words to actual terrorists fresh from murdering hundreds of people in Russia and France, not to mention random civilians stuck inside their territory. Good analogies.
    - zardo 11y ago
      Civil rights is about a lot more than just not being murdered.
  - kazinator 11y ago
    It occurs to me that you might be touching on the difference between "earn respect" and "earn freedom from disrespect". Also, the need to distinguish what different respects mean. There is respect as a person, versus respect as a knowledgeable kernel developer. (They are not always easy to separate. If someone keeps pushing their bad development ideas even though they have been thoroughly debunked, just because of their ego, I think my respect for them as a person will drop somewhat not only as a developer.) Still, the default toward some new person should be: basic respect as a person, neutral as a developer. I think that this is the case in the OSS project model; but then where it breaks down is that if the latter respect tanks, then the former does also. I.e. you're a good person if you're a good hacker (in particular one with mostly the same opinions as me), otherwise you're non grata scum.
    - nickbauman 11y ago
mreiland 11y ago
That's a caricature of his actual position, please be more honest than that. edit: Here's another video that does a better job of conveying his reasons for being the way he is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&t=35m41s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&t=35m41s He's also been on record as saying multiple times that a lot of it is because he comes from a culture that's much more abrasive than US.
- nickbauman 11y ago
  It's not a caricature if it's his own words. His culture? What a lame excuse. Daesh has a much more abrasive culture than the US. Does that make Daesh culture OK? Where do we draw the line?
  - simoncion 11y ago
    > His culture? What a lame excuse. You can reductio ad absurd. most positions to make them seem silly, but the cultural variation argument is a very valid one. Most Germans I've talked to about the topic are somewhere between bemused and horrified about many aspects of US culture. Here's a sampling: * We have -comparatively- a very high burden of proof for slander/libel. * We do not require internet publications to have a byline positively identifying the author. * We do not make it a crime to fail to register with The State every time we change home addresses. * We permit -comparatively- incompetent people to operate motor vehicles. I gather that USians are not infrequently similarly affected by German attitudes towards free speech restrictions, public sexuality, credentialism, anti-gun-ownership hysteria and the like. There are a wide variety of cultures -bringing an even wider notion of what "proper" behavior looks like- even amongst people who live in the same country. Surely you're sufficiently worldly to understand that. :)
  - pygy_ 11y ago
    Godwin's law strikes again. You lose :-)
  - ciupicri 11y ago
    Politeness is also culture dependent. What is polite in a culture might be impolite in another one.
taurath 11y ago
Sounds in line with my experience of open source interfaces and GUIs. Generally technically deep and absolutely uncreative and unintuitive to the right-brain. They are services created to have a featurelist with only a passing regard to aesthetics, and even less thought towards usability. They always answer well to "well does it do x", but almost never positive to "how does it feel to use?".
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
segmondy 11y ago
People are less creative when they feel disrespected? Wow, okay. I beg to differ, I have seem people get more creative when disrespected because they feel they have something to prove and are competitive. There is no right or wrong way. We live in a very sensitive society. It is very easy to offend people by asking them to do their work these days.

jerf 11y ago

The Linux project is probably not the best place to look for this sort of thing. It's huge. It's completely plausible that a project big enough to have multiple layers may have different optimal levels of politeness in those different layers. It's also plausible that larger projects may simply not be able to function with total politeness, as they face threats that smaller projects can only dream of facing. Even if you've only followed the kernel development via HN over the years, you've heard of any number of instances of someone who has a very strong opinion about where the kernel should go, and basically can only be fended off with a flamethrower. Sometimes the fault lies not in the person wielding the flamethrower, but in the person who would not be dissuaded by anything less. (That's a general comment, not about any specific controversy.) It's also possible that Linus' attitude is a complete disaster, that the only reason the project is successful is a major case of right-place-at-the-right-time, and in the parallel universe where Linus is a perfectly polite person Linux is much farther along. Again, my real point is that the outlier projects may not be the best places to look, because they intrinsically live in environments very unlike the environments most open source projects live in.

nickbauman 11y ago
I think your point is valid (and I agree). However, your argument is not what Linus himself has emphasized. He emphasizes that his abrasiveness comes from the idea that people must earn respect. Which is more than just wrong, it's completely idiotic. If life were about earning respect, what are you supposed to do if people disrespect you? Aren't we right back to marching from Selma to Montgomery?
- x0x0 11y ago
  The civil rights movement, in which people wished to, eg, not be lynched vs mean words on the internet. Below you compare similar mean words to actual terrorists fresh from murdering hundreds of people in Russia and France, not to mention random civilians stuck inside their territory. Good analogies.
  - zardo 11y ago
    Civil rights is about a lot more than just not being murdered.
- kazinator 11y ago
  It occurs to me that you might be touching on the difference between "earn respect" and "earn freedom from disrespect". Also, the need to distinguish what different respects mean. There is respect as a person, versus respect as a knowledgeable kernel developer. (They are not always easy to separate. If someone keeps pushing their bad development ideas even though they have been thoroughly debunked, just because of their ego, I think my respect for them as a person will drop somewhat not only as a developer.) Still, the default toward some new person should be: basic respect as a person, neutral as a developer. I think that this is the case in the OSS project model; but then where it breaks down is that if the latter respect tanks, then the former does also. I.e. you're a good person if you're a good hacker (in particular one with mostly the same opinions as me), otherwise you're non grata scum.
  - nickbauman 11y ago

mreiland 11y ago

That's a caricature of his actual position, please be more honest than that. edit: Here's another video that does a better job of conveying his reasons for being the way he is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&t=35m41s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&t=35m41s He's also been on record as saying multiple times that a lot of it is because he comes from a culture that's much more abrasive than US.

nickbauman 11y ago
It's not a caricature if it's his own words. His culture? What a lame excuse. Daesh has a much more abrasive culture than the US. Does that make Daesh culture OK? Where do we draw the line?
- simoncion 11y ago
  > His culture? What a lame excuse. You can reductio ad absurd. most positions to make them seem silly, but the cultural variation argument is a very valid one. Most Germans I've talked to about the topic are somewhere between bemused and horrified about many aspects of US culture. Here's a sampling: * We have -comparatively- a very high burden of proof for slander/libel. * We do not require internet publications to have a byline positively identifying the author. * We do not make it a crime to fail to register with The State every time we change home addresses. * We permit -comparatively- incompetent people to operate motor vehicles. I gather that USians are not infrequently similarly affected by German attitudes towards free speech restrictions, public sexuality, credentialism, anti-gun-ownership hysteria and the like. There are a wide variety of cultures -bringing an even wider notion of what "proper" behavior looks like- even amongst people who live in the same country. Surely you're sufficiently worldly to understand that. :)
- pygy_ 11y ago
  Godwin's law strikes again. You lose :-)
- ciupicri 11y ago
  Politeness is also culture dependent. What is polite in a culture might be impolite in another one.

taurath 11y ago

Sounds in line with my experience of open source interfaces and GUIs. Generally technically deep and absolutely uncreative and unintuitive to the right-brain. They are services created to have a featurelist with only a passing regard to aesthetics, and even less thought towards usability. They always answer well to "well does it do x", but almost never positive to "how does it feel to use?".

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

segmondy 11y ago

People are less creative when they feel disrespected? Wow, okay. I beg to differ, I have seem people get more creative when disrespected because they feel they have something to prove and are competitive. There is no right or wrong way. We live in a very sensitive society. It is very easy to offend people by asking them to do their work these days.