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Because, as the comment says, he is wrong. He may be technically correct in his assessment of the quality of the patches (I lack the necessary knowledge to eve
by mathw 9y ago
Because, as the comment says, he is wrong.
He may be technically correct in his assessment of the quality of the patches (I lack the necessary knowledge to even begin to assess it), but he does not go about explaining this in a sensible manner. He has never fostered a collaborative, inclusive atmosphere around the kernel.
If anybody at my workplace talked to a collaborator in that way they'd be in a chat with their manager minutes later, and if they persisted they'd be in a chat with HR.
For all that has been accomplished with the Linux kernel - and these achievements are huge and numerous and extremely impressive - I do wonder how much better things might have been if Linus was capable of criticising something without calling anybody a moron, swearing or throwing things.
What was in that email that needed that kind of language and tone? What could not have been said with a simple "I will not accept these patches" followed by a calm and dispassionate assessment of his issues with them? There's such an assessment in there somewhere, he's clearly thought it through, but one has to wade through the vitriol in order to get there. This is inefficient as well as hostile to contributors.
And these are people the community depends on for support, so we can run Linux on their products.
- nodja 9y agoMost of Torvalds emails are not like this. In fact most of them are like you say, he explains his thoughts in a sensible manner. It's just when people play with fire that the lid comes of and makes the headlines. A sensible mail discussing the details of some obscure technicality doesn't make HN frontpage.
- rtpg 9y agoEven if it's just once a month... I think very few teams would be able to deal with a co-worker with such violent outbursts. Ok he's mad. We all get mad. I've never said someone should have been aborted, no matter how mad I get. He has, over a ... A diff. Perhaps he has some difficulties, like some of us do. Has he ever acknowledged his attitude in any way?
- nodja 9y ago> Has he ever acknowledged his attitude in any way? Yes. > I don't know where you happen to be based, but this 'you have to be nice' seems to be very popular in the US. > The same way we have developers and marketing people and legal people who speak different languages, I think we can have some developers who are used to—and prefer—a more confrontational style, and still also have people who don't, > Maybe it's just because I like arguing," Torvalds added. "I'm just not a huge believer in politeness and sensitivity being preferable over bluntly letting people know your feelings. But I also understand that other people are driven away by cursing and crass language when it all gets a bit too carried away. Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/01/linus-torvalds-responds-to-ars-about-diversity-niceness-in-open-source/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/01/linus...
- treis 9y agoCalling people morons isn't being confrontational. It's being an asshole.
- hutzlibu 9y agoDepends. If people are morons, you can call them like that and not be an asshole, just honest. Don't know about this case, though ...
- rtpg 9y agoEven being right, you can still be a jerk. Though being wrong and a jerk is definitely worse in a sense, personally I think that attitudes that qualify you as being a jerk only marginally help you in being honest. The basic idea is that even if someone is a moron, calling them a moron isn't really.... doing much. Very little information, and a lot of rudeness. Telling them that their patch isn't mergable has more info and less raw rudeness IMO
- sjwright 9y agoThat's your opinion. Others would say the greater asshole is one who refuses to confront morons with their own moronic behaviour. That person is denying the moron opportunity to self-reflect and improve themselves. And before you interject, I would also assert that numbing the confrontation with "civility" also nullifies the effect.
- ksec 9y agoI think that is important to note as well. His email normally gets the attention when he is pissed off. But the majority of them aren't. It shows how angry he is, and how he is upset with the issues. While this could be avoided in a real world scenario, I would have bet if your manager feel something strongly about, they would have went rampant as well. And this is especially in remote working, words are hard to get feeling across without putting some "adjectives" into it.
- sjwright 9y agoI vehemently disagree for one very straightforward reason: this matter is far too important to prioritise civility over outcomes. This particular matter needs sunlight, and Torvalds' response is giving it a lot of sunlight. An "inclusive atmosphere" is irrelevant. Pointless. I'd personally say it's counter-productive. There's no scenario where Torvalds' response is going to result in Intel abandoning the Linux ecosystem. The engineers at Intel can now go back to their managers and say "okay, we tried cutting corners and it didn't work."