5 ms·

Linus Torvalds breaks into a childish tantrum of (edit: correction: swearing rants are technically coherent), public swearing at people whenever anyone anywhere

by dom0 9y ago

Linus Torvalds breaks into a childish tantrum of (edit: correction: swearing rants are technically coherent), public swearing at people whenever anyone anywhere in Linux kernel development breaks any userspace app. As a consequence, userspace regressions are rare. (Might contain traces of hyperbole—still; Linus' behaviour is largely unacceptable nonetheless)

wtallis 9y ago
Linus is very well known for his rants, but you've definitely mischaracterized them. He's seldom incoherent, and the ones that are vulgar enough to make for juicy sensationalized "news" are only ever directed at contributors who are experienced enough to know better than to break userspace or something badly wrong like that. His more level-headed corrections of well-meaning inexperienced developers don't make the news.
- dom0 9y ago
  "only ever directed at contributors who are experienced enough". That's not strictly true, see e.g. https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2017-February/133837.html https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2017-Februa...
  - saghm 9y ago
    Props to Daniel for defending the contributor, as I'm guessing they wouldn't feel comfortable arguing back with Linus.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      To me it reads like redirecting blame to the contributor by appearing to "defend" him. Linus was obviously replying (and chastising) the person who sent him the code, and who was supposed to review it beforehand, not the original author.
      - dullgiulio 9y ago
        https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2017-February/133794.html https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2017-Februa... Yep, that's right: "I'm upset, because I expect better quality control. In fact, I expect some qualitty[sic] control."
      - saghm 9y ago
        Ah, I guess I should have read the previous emails that led up Daniel's response
  - wtallis 9y ago
    I'm not seeing where the ire was directed at anybody new. The two messages Linus sent were in reply to a pull request from Dave Airlie, a very high-level and extremely experienced developer. Daniel Vetter tried to chastise Linus for chewing out some new contributor named Noralf, but it appears that the real problem is that the problems with Noralf's code went unfixed by intermediaries like Vetter and Airlie and made it all the way to Linus. The kernel shouldn't let bad code into the tree just because the author is inexperienced. Subsystem maintainers are supposed to be a very thorough filter, so that the patches reaching Linus are up to standard. When bad code makes it to Linus, it's his job to complain about it. And based on that thread, it looks like he was complaining about it, and was not directing the complaints at the original author but at the people who were responsible for reviewing and testing the code.
cmurf 9y ago
Please, the rants are most definitely completely coherent.
- KGIII 9y ago
  M code isn't up to snuff, but I still check the mailing lists - just to see his rage manifest. As near as I can tell, you're mostly okay so long as you don't break userspace. Mostly... They are a beautiful thing. People may not like it, but the efficacy is beyond doubt.
__jal 9y ago
You might not like his method of cat-herding, but historically, it has worked pretty well. That summarizes the way I feel about them. It is a time-tested leadership method to make an example out of a hapless mistake-maker to keep the rest of the herd in line. And it isn't like that sort of thing doesn't happen in the corporate world; it is just that corporate dressings down (down-dressings?) don't happen on public mailing lists. Not my preferred tactic, but in the odd world of Linux kernel development, it certainly works.
- jancsika 9y ago
  I think Linus' method of communication is unnecessarily coarse and sometimes abusive. I also think that the scant, ineffectual pushback against his unprofessionalism-- especially when considering the fame and size of the Linux community-- serves to emphasize the much greater significance of his "don't break userspace" dogma. "Don't break userspace" keeps developers from rationalizing regressions as a necessary step in the service of progress. "Don't break userspace" allows little players to leverage Linux without worrying about a big player making problems (purposely or not) for their use case. "Don't break userspace" keeps big players from leveraging usage statistics as a weapon against little players. "Don't break userspace" has probably streamlined development discussion during every tenuous period in Linux' history by taking a class of bikeshedding off the table. "Don't break userspace" neutralizes paranoiacs who would otherwise conclude that fixing a broken interface was really just an excuse for [insert three letter government agency here] to [insert insidious plan here]. "Don't break userspace" essentially disarms the entire Linux community and provides a path to a surprisingly fast development cycle. If you think I'm exaggerating, look at the outrage against systemd where the (development community) rhetoric isn't nearly as coarse or abusive. Or even look at the discussion on the SVG list around Chromium deprecating the awful SMIL interface (which was never even in IE or Edge and never will be). You would have thought Google was was suspending habeus corpus for all the rhetoric around that decision. That is how important "don't break userspace" is to a healthy, functioning development model. Have only that and a license like the GPLv2 and you can apparently choose the least professional communication style-- littered with cursewords and personal insults-- and still maintain one of the most successful open source communities in the world.

by dom0 9y ago

wtallis 9y ago

Linus is very well known for his rants, but you've definitely mischaracterized them. He's seldom incoherent, and the ones that are vulgar enough to make for juicy sensationalized "news" are only ever directed at contributors who are experienced enough to know better than to break userspace or something badly wrong like that. His more level-headed corrections of well-meaning inexperienced developers don't make the news.

dom0 9y ago
"only ever directed at contributors who are experienced enough". That's not strictly true, see e.g. https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2017-February/133837.html https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2017-Februa...
- saghm 9y ago
  Props to Daniel for defending the contributor, as I'm guessing they wouldn't feel comfortable arguing back with Linus.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    To me it reads like redirecting blame to the contributor by appearing to "defend" him. Linus was obviously replying (and chastising) the person who sent him the code, and who was supposed to review it beforehand, not the original author.
    - dullgiulio 9y ago
      https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2017-February/133794.html https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2017-Februa... Yep, that's right: "I'm upset, because I expect better quality control. In fact, I expect some qualitty[sic] control."
    - saghm 9y ago
      Ah, I guess I should have read the previous emails that led up Daniel's response
- wtallis 9y ago
  I'm not seeing where the ire was directed at anybody new. The two messages Linus sent were in reply to a pull request from Dave Airlie, a very high-level and extremely experienced developer. Daniel Vetter tried to chastise Linus for chewing out some new contributor named Noralf, but it appears that the real problem is that the problems with Noralf's code went unfixed by intermediaries like Vetter and Airlie and made it all the way to Linus. The kernel shouldn't let bad code into the tree just because the author is inexperienced. Subsystem maintainers are supposed to be a very thorough filter, so that the patches reaching Linus are up to standard. When bad code makes it to Linus, it's his job to complain about it. And based on that thread, it looks like he was complaining about it, and was not directing the complaints at the original author but at the people who were responsible for reviewing and testing the code.

cmurf 9y ago

Please, the rants are most definitely completely coherent.

KGIII 9y ago
M code isn't up to snuff, but I still check the mailing lists - just to see his rage manifest. As near as I can tell, you're mostly okay so long as you don't break userspace. Mostly... They are a beautiful thing. People may not like it, but the efficacy is beyond doubt.

__jal 9y ago

You might not like his method of cat-herding, but historically, it has worked pretty well. That summarizes the way I feel about them. It is a time-tested leadership method to make an example out of a hapless mistake-maker to keep the rest of the herd in line. And it isn't like that sort of thing doesn't happen in the corporate world; it is just that corporate dressings down (down-dressings?) don't happen on public mailing lists. Not my preferred tactic, but in the odd world of Linux kernel development, it certainly works.

jancsika 9y ago
I think Linus' method of communication is unnecessarily coarse and sometimes abusive. I also think that the scant, ineffectual pushback against his unprofessionalism-- especially when considering the fame and size of the Linux community-- serves to emphasize the much greater significance of his "don't break userspace" dogma. "Don't break userspace" keeps developers from rationalizing regressions as a necessary step in the service of progress. "Don't break userspace" allows little players to leverage Linux without worrying about a big player making problems (purposely or not) for their use case. "Don't break userspace" keeps big players from leveraging usage statistics as a weapon against little players. "Don't break userspace" has probably streamlined development discussion during every tenuous period in Linux' history by taking a class of bikeshedding off the table. "Don't break userspace" neutralizes paranoiacs who would otherwise conclude that fixing a broken interface was really just an excuse for [insert three letter government agency here] to [insert insidious plan here]. "Don't break userspace" essentially disarms the entire Linux community and provides a path to a surprisingly fast development cycle. If you think I'm exaggerating, look at the outrage against systemd where the (development community) rhetoric isn't nearly as coarse or abusive. Or even look at the discussion on the SVG list around Chromium deprecating the awful SMIL interface (which was never even in IE or Edge and never will be). You would have thought Google was was suspending habeus corpus for all the rhetoric around that decision. That is how important "don't break userspace" is to a healthy, functioning development model. Have only that and a license like the GPLv2 and you can apparently choose the least professional communication style-- littered with cursewords and personal insults-- and still maintain one of the most successful open source communities in the world.