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Some food for thought: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3004387/it-management/how-bad-a-boss-is-linus-torvalds.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/300

by YCode 10y ago

Some food for thought: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3004387/it-management/how-bad-a-boss-is-linus-torvalds.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/3004387/it-management/h... "I’m not a nice person, and I don’t care about you. I care about the technology and the kernel — that’s what’s important to me."

Noseshine 10y ago
See what I already wrote. This is like marketing research - what do you believe, what people tell you or the data about what they actually do? Because the data say what I already wrote. So you might as well interpret this as "Linus is a very humble guy" and have better support from the data. Or, alternatively, you can believe that a really mean person who doesn't care about others and behaves badly still managed to hold the kernel developers together. Sure, a single or even a few discontent developers can't easily fork the kernel - but if there would really have been a problem even a tenth as large as claimed by some (and I've never seen any of them actually having had any personal contact with Linus) they would long ago have forked. See node.js/io.js, OpenOffice, and other prominent examples for what happens when developers are not satisfied with the project's leadership.
- YCode 10y ago
  I don't understand what this has to do with refuting the original claim: > Ultimately I think Linus's contributions to Software are pantheon, but he should not be looked to for imitation or lessons. His lessons for success are detrimental to the vast majority of software engineers. You're not supplying any examples others can learn from or benefit from imitating, you're just asserting they must exist.
  - Noseshine 10y ago
    Uhm... this is again backwards. I'm not making any claims - I'm responding to others who do. And I did (still) provide evidence: The Linux kernel project itself. Instead of individual anecdotes or some carefully selected email or sentences taken out of context I point to the whole project as the final outcome measurement. See what I wrote?

by YCode 10y ago

Noseshine 10y ago

See what I already wrote. This is like marketing research - what do you believe, what people tell you or the data about what they actually do? Because the data say what I already wrote. So you might as well interpret this as "Linus is a very humble guy" and have better support from the data. Or, alternatively, you can believe that a really mean person who doesn't care about others and behaves badly still managed to hold the kernel developers together. Sure, a single or even a few discontent developers can't easily fork the kernel - but if there would really have been a problem even a tenth as large as claimed by some (and I've never seen any of them actually having had any personal contact with Linus) they would long ago have forked. See node.js/io.js, OpenOffice, and other prominent examples for what happens when developers are not satisfied with the project's leadership.

YCode 10y ago
I don't understand what this has to do with refuting the original claim: > Ultimately I think Linus's contributions to Software are pantheon, but he should not be looked to for imitation or lessons. His lessons for success are detrimental to the vast majority of software engineers. You're not supplying any examples others can learn from or benefit from imitating, you're just asserting they must exist.
- Noseshine 10y ago
  Uhm... this is again backwards. I'm not making any claims - I'm responding to others who do. And I did (still) provide evidence: The Linux kernel project itself. Instead of individual anecdotes or some carefully selected email or sentences taken out of context I point to the whole project as the final outcome measurement. See what I wrote?