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> Not only spot, but also invests the energy in calling it out and explaining it. Which is why FOSS is so important. Can you imagine a world where Linux was cl

> Not only spot, but also invests the energy in calling it out and explaining it. Which is why FOSS is so important. Can you imagine a world where Linux was closed source? You’d never have any insight into security patches, or these discussions.

mrmondo 9y ago
Exactly, I’d love to see the state and flux of the Meltdown and Spectre patches for the various Windows kernels.
joelthelion 9y ago
> FOSS is so important FOSS is nice, but it's not a silver bullet. In this case I think Linus is largely to thank. Things will be a lot harder if he decides to retire.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  A silver bullet is having one smart guy at the top who doesn't care how much pressure you exert on getting something into the codebase, or how much man-hours were spent (sunk cost fallacy). I think in a lot of "corporate" projects (not-open source) there's much less of that and the software is designed by commission, with the lead developer(s) quickly no longer having much of an influence on the code itself, being drawn away into meetings and such. Maybe I'm projecting.
  - mrmondo 9y ago
    It’s an ideological situation to say the least... but it’s also what we have right know and god damn I’m thankful for it’s beautiful rarity.
  - joelthelion 9y ago
    > A silver bullet is having one smart guy at the top who doesn't care how much pressure you exert on getting something into the codebase, Well if Linus goes too far, Google and a couple other big corporate contributors could team up and fork Linux, and it would be very hard for the open project to compete. I think the fact that Linus is so good is a big part of what makes the whole thing hold together.
    - subway 9y ago
      They could, and they often do (Android and ChromeOS effectively run forked kernels). At the end of the day though, they always wanna rebase against that sweet sweet mainline quality.
      - carlmr 9y ago
        It's simple, the stack of hacks they produced in the meantime at some point becomes a tall tower prone to fall over.
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    I think this is dead on. I think at Microsoft that guy was Dave Cutler. Most of the really well designed stuff seems to have him at the helm - NT4.0, bits of XP, Win2k, Windows Server 2003 and then Azure. I have a suspicion that Satya's rise to CEOdom via Azure's success could be attributed to him too.
    - EamonnMR 9y ago
      If you're a Cutler fan you may enjoy Showstopper[1], an account of the creation of NT. 1: https://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Microsoft/dp/0029356717 https://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Mic...
      - azinman2 9y ago
        Thanks for the rec, looks interesting.
        trentnelson 9y ago
        It's a great book. Motivated me to switch industries and relocate to Seattle as an NT kernel programmer.
  - alxlaz 9y ago
    This may be true, but FOSS does not magically make it happen. Many FOSS projects are led or dominated by large companies today; the development may happen in the open, but it is as "corporate" as it gets, and no bullshit calling occurs (or if it does, it is quickly silenced with EWONTFIX & co.)
    - hajile 9y ago
      That's only partially true. When you only have one corporations interests, things get shady very quickly. When you have multiple, competing corporations, they have a vested interest in keeping their competitors honest. It would be very rare indeed to find something that every company wanted to downplay at the same time. Spectre and meltdown are a great example of this. Sure, ARM, Intel, and (to a lesser extent) AMD may want to downplay these things, but Google did not, so it became a big deal anyway.
    - vog 9y ago
      > This may be true, but FOSS does not magically make it happen So what? Nobody said that. This is a strawman. Of course FOSS is not sufficient. Look at any homework-style GitHub repo. Nobody disputes that. All that is said is that FOSS is necessary to achieve this level of quality.
  - katastic 9y ago
    Which is funny because that's the opposite of what progressives are telling us. That meritocracy is meaningless (and bigoted) and it's more important to have diversity than a leader. Likewise, there are countless articles about how Linus Torvalds is a "jerk" because he doesn't temper his words and ends up offending people with thin skins. I don't care about anyone's ideology. I'll I care about is results. And Linus has proven his yields results.
  - khana 9y ago
    Well by all means don't 'speculate'.
  - snambi 9y ago
    We may be we can train an MBA to do Linus's job? ;)
- vog 9y ago
  So you demote FOSS from "important" to "nice" just because it isn't a silver bullet? (which does not exist, anyway) That doesn't make any sense. This is a strawman argument. Nobody ever said that FOSS is a silver bullet, not even FSFE, FSF, or Stallman himself.
- acct1771 9y ago
  This is as good a place to ask the question nobody likes to discuss, but is important to never forget - what do we do when the bus hits Linus?
  - sethrin 9y ago
    I believe Greg Kroah-Hartman is the designated successor.
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
In most other FOSS projects people would be afraid to be that frank when referring to Intel's behavior though.
- josteink 9y ago
  You also have the case of SJWs and Internet lynch mob’s being a real life threats to your project, your personal privacy and potentially your employment if you don’t show yourself to be “tolerant” enough in your communication. Calling genuine shit out as such can literally land you in a shitstorm if the person receiving message is of wrong color or sexualual orientation, etc, and decides to make that the point of the story he passes along.
  - awakeasleep 9y ago
    Wow I didn’t think of that but what if a woman wrote the code in that patch? Linus would be making her feel unwelcome.
    - xxs 9y ago
      There are prior examples of his writing style offending a lady who turned to actually had a pretty potty mount, herself, as well.
      - dvanduzer 9y ago
        As long as a person doesn't pretend they've never been cruel to another person, it isn't hypocritical to call for more kindness. There is also a huge difference between using salty language to emphasize when something is massively complicated versus emphasis when calling someone a huge idiot. As far as this particular Torvalds screed goes, it strikes me as measured for him. He is very clear about what he wants more of and what he wants less of. It's the code that is garbage, and he doesn't get overly personal other than to chide Woodhouse for glossing over the quality of Woodhouse's own contributions. edit: ahh right, "mis-designed by morons" which is pretty inflammatory, and he should do better than that. I suspect he is trying to provoke someone at Intel into explaining their intent. Insult their intelligence, and they'll reveal something about their (possibly sinister) motive.
Spooky23 9y ago
Worse still, imagine a world where there was no Linux, and Oracle/Sun happened?
- peapicker 9y ago
  Ironically, Sun might have not had to sell themselves to Oracle, and the world's server's might be running on SPARC chips that are immune to these issues. Linux is what allowed Intel to get its biggest foothold into the UNIX server market.
  - dboreham 9y ago
    This is true, but if there hadn't been Linux there would have been something else to fill this niche (runs on commodity PC hardware, zero license cost). Sparc/Solaris wouldn't have continued to rule. Intel would have found some other workable solution.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      Indeed. For one there was the 386BSD lawsuit, for another there was HURD. Torvalds himself has stated that if HURD had been usable at the time, he would not have bothered working on Linux. Honestly, back when Linux started getting momentum, RMS' GNU/Linux argument had merit. Most of the stuff people where running on top of Linux, never mind using to develop Linux, came from the GNU project.
    - peapicker 9y ago
      True. And we'd have the same issues with this processor family now... Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and loved FreeBSD back when it was more easy to choose... But I do think the 'free UNIX' movement has had unintended consequences like the demise of Sun, and perhaps now also this exposing of a failure in what was a desktop class chip architecture that was elevated to server usage. Everything has a cost is all I'm saying.
  - PopsiclePete 9y ago
    >Ironically, Sun might have not had to sell themselves to Oracle, and the world's server's might be running on SPARC chips that are immune to these issues. Solaris, with the exceptions of a few bright stars like DTrace and ZFS, always seemed like a POS to me, compared to linux. Especially as a work-station. Sun went full retard with Java everywhere right before they went under and I have a feeling the Solaris Desktop experience, and by extension the UNIX desktop experience, would be something from my worst nightmares, something to make wish for Windows Vista.

mrmondo 9y ago

Exactly, I’d love to see the state and flux of the Meltdown and Spectre patches for the various Windows kernels.

joelthelion 9y ago

> FOSS is so important FOSS is nice, but it's not a silver bullet. In this case I think Linus is largely to thank. Things will be a lot harder if he decides to retire.

Cthulhu_ 9y ago
A silver bullet is having one smart guy at the top who doesn't care how much pressure you exert on getting something into the codebase, or how much man-hours were spent (sunk cost fallacy). I think in a lot of "corporate" projects (not-open source) there's much less of that and the software is designed by commission, with the lead developer(s) quickly no longer having much of an influence on the code itself, being drawn away into meetings and such. Maybe I'm projecting.
- mrmondo 9y ago
  It’s an ideological situation to say the least... but it’s also what we have right know and god damn I’m thankful for it’s beautiful rarity.
- joelthelion 9y ago
  > A silver bullet is having one smart guy at the top who doesn't care how much pressure you exert on getting something into the codebase, Well if Linus goes too far, Google and a couple other big corporate contributors could team up and fork Linux, and it would be very hard for the open project to compete. I think the fact that Linus is so good is a big part of what makes the whole thing hold together.
  - subway 9y ago
    They could, and they often do (Android and ChromeOS effectively run forked kernels). At the end of the day though, they always wanna rebase against that sweet sweet mainline quality.
    - carlmr 9y ago
      It's simple, the stack of hacks they produced in the meantime at some point becomes a tall tower prone to fall over.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  I think this is dead on. I think at Microsoft that guy was Dave Cutler. Most of the really well designed stuff seems to have him at the helm - NT4.0, bits of XP, Win2k, Windows Server 2003 and then Azure. I have a suspicion that Satya's rise to CEOdom via Azure's success could be attributed to him too.
  - EamonnMR 9y ago
    If you're a Cutler fan you may enjoy Showstopper[1], an account of the creation of NT. 1: https://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Microsoft/dp/0029356717 https://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Mic...
    - azinman2 9y ago
      Thanks for the rec, looks interesting.
      - trentnelson 9y ago
        It's a great book. Motivated me to switch industries and relocate to Seattle as an NT kernel programmer.
- alxlaz 9y ago
  This may be true, but FOSS does not magically make it happen. Many FOSS projects are led or dominated by large companies today; the development may happen in the open, but it is as "corporate" as it gets, and no bullshit calling occurs (or if it does, it is quickly silenced with EWONTFIX & co.)
  - hajile 9y ago
    That's only partially true. When you only have one corporations interests, things get shady very quickly. When you have multiple, competing corporations, they have a vested interest in keeping their competitors honest. It would be very rare indeed to find something that every company wanted to downplay at the same time. Spectre and meltdown are a great example of this. Sure, ARM, Intel, and (to a lesser extent) AMD may want to downplay these things, but Google did not, so it became a big deal anyway.
  - vog 9y ago
    > This may be true, but FOSS does not magically make it happen So what? Nobody said that. This is a strawman. Of course FOSS is not sufficient. Look at any homework-style GitHub repo. Nobody disputes that. All that is said is that FOSS is necessary to achieve this level of quality.
- katastic 9y ago
  Which is funny because that's the opposite of what progressives are telling us. That meritocracy is meaningless (and bigoted) and it's more important to have diversity than a leader. Likewise, there are countless articles about how Linus Torvalds is a "jerk" because he doesn't temper his words and ends up offending people with thin skins. I don't care about anyone's ideology. I'll I care about is results. And Linus has proven his yields results.
- khana 9y ago
  Well by all means don't 'speculate'.
- snambi 9y ago
  We may be we can train an MBA to do Linus's job? ;)
vog 9y ago
So you demote FOSS from "important" to "nice" just because it isn't a silver bullet? (which does not exist, anyway) That doesn't make any sense. This is a strawman argument. Nobody ever said that FOSS is a silver bullet, not even FSFE, FSF, or Stallman himself.
acct1771 9y ago
This is as good a place to ask the question nobody likes to discuss, but is important to never forget - what do we do when the bus hits Linus?
- sethrin 9y ago
  I believe Greg Kroah-Hartman is the designated successor.

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago

In most other FOSS projects people would be afraid to be that frank when referring to Intel's behavior though.

josteink 9y ago
You also have the case of SJWs and Internet lynch mob’s being a real life threats to your project, your personal privacy and potentially your employment if you don’t show yourself to be “tolerant” enough in your communication. Calling genuine shit out as such can literally land you in a shitstorm if the person receiving message is of wrong color or sexualual orientation, etc, and decides to make that the point of the story he passes along.
- awakeasleep 9y ago
  Wow I didn’t think of that but what if a woman wrote the code in that patch? Linus would be making her feel unwelcome.
  - xxs 9y ago
    There are prior examples of his writing style offending a lady who turned to actually had a pretty potty mount, herself, as well.
    - dvanduzer 9y ago
      As long as a person doesn't pretend they've never been cruel to another person, it isn't hypocritical to call for more kindness. There is also a huge difference between using salty language to emphasize when something is massively complicated versus emphasis when calling someone a huge idiot. As far as this particular Torvalds screed goes, it strikes me as measured for him. He is very clear about what he wants more of and what he wants less of. It's the code that is garbage, and he doesn't get overly personal other than to chide Woodhouse for glossing over the quality of Woodhouse's own contributions. edit: ahh right, "mis-designed by morons" which is pretty inflammatory, and he should do better than that. I suspect he is trying to provoke someone at Intel into explaining their intent. Insult their intelligence, and they'll reveal something about their (possibly sinister) motive.

Spooky23 9y ago

Worse still, imagine a world where there was no Linux, and Oracle/Sun happened?

peapicker 9y ago
Ironically, Sun might have not had to sell themselves to Oracle, and the world's server's might be running on SPARC chips that are immune to these issues. Linux is what allowed Intel to get its biggest foothold into the UNIX server market.
- dboreham 9y ago
  This is true, but if there hadn't been Linux there would have been something else to fill this niche (runs on commodity PC hardware, zero license cost). Sparc/Solaris wouldn't have continued to rule. Intel would have found some other workable solution.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Indeed. For one there was the 386BSD lawsuit, for another there was HURD. Torvalds himself has stated that if HURD had been usable at the time, he would not have bothered working on Linux. Honestly, back when Linux started getting momentum, RMS' GNU/Linux argument had merit. Most of the stuff people where running on top of Linux, never mind using to develop Linux, came from the GNU project.
  - peapicker 9y ago
    True. And we'd have the same issues with this processor family now... Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and loved FreeBSD back when it was more easy to choose... But I do think the 'free UNIX' movement has had unintended consequences like the demise of Sun, and perhaps now also this exposing of a failure in what was a desktop class chip architecture that was elevated to server usage. Everything has a cost is all I'm saying.
- PopsiclePete 9y ago
  >Ironically, Sun might have not had to sell themselves to Oracle, and the world's server's might be running on SPARC chips that are immune to these issues. Solaris, with the exceptions of a few bright stars like DTrace and ZFS, always seemed like a POS to me, compared to linux. Especially as a work-station. Sun went full retard with Java everywhere right before they went under and I have a feeling the Solaris Desktop experience, and by extension the UNIX desktop experience, would be something from my worst nightmares, something to make wish for Windows Vista.