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What makes you think Linus would be more effective if he used a different tone? That seems like a tough argument to win given how tremendously effective he is.

What makes you think Linus would be more effective if he used a different tone? That seems like a tough argument to win given how tremendously effective he is. It doesn't seem like an exaggeration to me to say that Linux is the most successful opensource project of all time and among the best managed of all time in terms of the number of use cases it's managed to address over time and the number of people who have contributed. Not, I will grant, in terms of number of people whose feelings have been hurt. But I fail to see the evidence that Linux would actually be better off if Linus behaved differently. If we had good Linus and bad Linus we could A/B test, but sadly, we don't. We just have the one Linus, and he's been more effective than anyone in opensource over the last 20+ years. So it seems a lot more likely to me that his behavior is part of that effectiveness, not in opposition to it.

skummetmaelk 8y ago
He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard!
- phs318u 8y ago
  I know you're being lighthearted here but that kind of thinking is actually another form of "appeal to authority". FWIW, having not looked at any of his LKML rants for years, he seems to have mellowed out a bit in this one.
BryantD 8y ago
This assumes consistency of tone over time. It'd be interesting to get some data on how his approach has varied over those 20 years. It'd also be difficult, since this is a somewhat subjective measurement, but perhaps a PPP (profanity per paragraph) metric.
- jarfil 8y ago
  Linus used to be much more polite... until some developer attempted suicide after discovering, too late, that their patches were not going to be merged. Since then he's much more direct, and his SPP (suicide per paragraph) metric is much better.
gkya 8y ago
You have it reversed. The only thing that makes his behaviour slightly bearable to others is his effectiveness. Otherwise the community would've dumped him right away. Not like there's any reason not to, except for his technical knowledge. This is kind-of a survivorship bias example.
- gerdesj 8y ago
  Cripes. He's not the first opinionated, yet strangely effective Engineer the world has ever seen and will not be the last either. I personally happen to like his approach in general but as I'm sure you are aware: "You can please some of the people most of the time and most of the people some of the time but this aphorism sounds a bit tired these days"
  - gkya 8y ago
    I don't really think this is about pleasing people or not. More about self respect. I for one would have to be way too drunk to pun on a shitshow like this in public, also when there's no apparent reason. But well that problem belongs to those who work with him, so I don't care. All I wanted to say is that because he gets away with it, it does not mean that us the halflings will too, so that's not a good advice to somebody thinking of participating in the general open source sphere.
    - sliken 8y ago
      Dunno, whenever I dig into one of the "shitshows" I find I mostly agree with it. I'd say a decent fraction of the ones that make hacker news are some form of "Don't break userspace". He obviously feels it's quite important, and there's been several cases of failed perception (like the gnome folks breaking userspace "like linux does"). Sometimes it's worth being a bit over the top so that the entire community you are working with gets the message loud and clear. Seems like other communities (like bsd, gnome, debian, etc), often have extensive documentation, policies, and best practices... which are often ignored because every developer doesn't keep 100% of the best practices in mind at all times. I suspect a big part of why user space is broken so rarely in Linux is exactly because Linus has made such a big deal about it in the past.

skummetmaelk 8y ago

He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard!

phs318u 8y ago
I know you're being lighthearted here but that kind of thinking is actually another form of "appeal to authority". FWIW, having not looked at any of his LKML rants for years, he seems to have mellowed out a bit in this one.

BryantD 8y ago

This assumes consistency of tone over time. It'd be interesting to get some data on how his approach has varied over those 20 years. It'd also be difficult, since this is a somewhat subjective measurement, but perhaps a PPP (profanity per paragraph) metric.

jarfil 8y ago
Linus used to be much more polite... until some developer attempted suicide after discovering, too late, that their patches were not going to be merged. Since then he's much more direct, and his SPP (suicide per paragraph) metric is much better.

gkya 8y ago

You have it reversed. The only thing that makes his behaviour slightly bearable to others is his effectiveness. Otherwise the community would've dumped him right away. Not like there's any reason not to, except for his technical knowledge. This is kind-of a survivorship bias example.

gerdesj 8y ago
Cripes. He's not the first opinionated, yet strangely effective Engineer the world has ever seen and will not be the last either. I personally happen to like his approach in general but as I'm sure you are aware: "You can please some of the people most of the time and most of the people some of the time but this aphorism sounds a bit tired these days"
- gkya 8y ago
  I don't really think this is about pleasing people or not. More about self respect. I for one would have to be way too drunk to pun on a shitshow like this in public, also when there's no apparent reason. But well that problem belongs to those who work with him, so I don't care. All I wanted to say is that because he gets away with it, it does not mean that us the halflings will too, so that's not a good advice to somebody thinking of participating in the general open source sphere.
  - sliken 8y ago
    Dunno, whenever I dig into one of the "shitshows" I find I mostly agree with it. I'd say a decent fraction of the ones that make hacker news are some form of "Don't break userspace". He obviously feels it's quite important, and there's been several cases of failed perception (like the gnome folks breaking userspace "like linux does"). Sometimes it's worth being a bit over the top so that the entire community you are working with gets the message loud and clear. Seems like other communities (like bsd, gnome, debian, etc), often have extensive documentation, policies, and best practices... which are often ignored because every developer doesn't keep 100% of the best practices in mind at all times. I suspect a big part of why user space is broken so rarely in Linux is exactly because Linus has made such a big deal about it in the past.