8 ms·

One thing that jumps at me is how childish and rude Linus is in his response. I think at that time he was 23 years old, so an adult. As a piece of advice to yo

One thing that jumps at me is how childish and rude Linus is in his response. I think at that time he was 23 years old, so an adult. As a piece of advice to young people, try not to be rude and accept criticism with grace, as the Internet has a long memory and you'll probably not be respected enough for your achievements to be tolerated, like Linus is.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
Well... Tannenbaum is pretty brick-headed, too. "This is the one right way, and you aren't doing it that way, so you are by definition wrong" is not a good way to begin the conversation. Add in "I'm the authority", and you have someone who is completely undisposed to listen to anything said by someone holding another position.
skwirl 8y ago
To add to this - I have watched the industry over the last decade gradually become more conscious of and less tolerant of "accomplished" assholes. The behavior is still endemic but it feels like we are on the verge of a major shift in attitude in the wake of #MeToo. Over the last year companies, charities, clubs, and other organizations were finally willing to (forced to) deal with toxic behavior and are finding that they can survive just fine without the supposed "rock stars" that were fired and the toxic environments they fostered. So even if you are a Linus Torvalds, it may only be a matter of time before you find yourself sidelined. I will be surprised if Linus's career ends on his own terms.
- pdonis 8y ago
  You're leaving out a key point: Linux is not a company and Linus's "career" does not depend on a company. It depends on enough individual people choosing to work on Linux to keep it technically competitive. I have not seen any sign of Linux suffering technically because people who could make valuable contributions are not doing so.
tehlike 8y ago
Linus is still rude or rather, blunt. To be honest, though, i prefer blunt over fluff or politically correct way. Way more informative.
- jpfed 8y ago
  This is a common sentiment, but I disagree. In technical discussions, rudeness and informativeness are orthogonal. There is some information that is not polite to convey (such as information about someone else's personal/physical characteristics) but that information isn't relevant to technical discussions. Sometimes there is a choice as to how rudely one wants to convey a particular fact, but that is indeed a choice that reflects more upon one's desire for politeness or rudeness than it does any actual constraint on the transmission of factual information.
  - jimmy1 8y ago
    Rudeness is inferred or "felt" by the other party, and really worrying about peoples feelings or emotions is like worrying about which direction the wind is going to blow today because emotions have the ability to be extremely irrational. Perceiving something as "rude" ultimately comes down to the individual who is being told the information as interpreting it as rude. In this case, anything can be viewed as "rude" under the right microscope -- in fact Linus has brought up this very point multiple times in a sort of a "individual liberty" light. If you take feelings out of it and focus on the information -- Linus is either right or wrong. Something either sucks or it does not suck, for example. We can talk about how he might be wrong -- maybe it doesn't suck here's point x y and z refuting his a b c on why foo system suck. You can certainly choose not to converse with Linus, just like I choose not to converse with overtly politically correct people who may take offense / report little thing, I personally don't have time to worry about if what I said "might" come off as a certain way and really I wouldn't want to be in that situation anyways -- It is exhausting to always have to editorialize what you are going to say in today's hyper-sensititve-filter-bubble-one-worldview monocultures.
    - pofilat 8y ago
esturk 8y ago
But Linus is still respected. Maybe not by you and some others but by a lot of people. There's no such thing as unanimous respect.
- teamhappy 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure people respect him despite being rude, not because of it.
  - pofilat 8y ago
    A lot people appreciate that Linus is a role model for their own desire to be disrespectful to their peers.
  - geezerjay 8y ago
    > I'm pretty sure people respect him despite being rude, not because of it. What you misrepresent as being "rude", which insinuates that it has no positive effect on the outcome, is actually being direct and to the point regarding technical decisions. People whining about rudeness to try to put aside the context, meaning and results, demonstrate that they either miss the point or intentionally run away from it. The fact is that his communication style is a reflection of his leadership strategy which resulted in the world's most successfull operating system project in history. Trying to downplay the main causes and consequences because they feel their feeling might not be pampered is a tremendous injustice to the man and his achievements.
    - elygre 8y ago
      No. Some of it is just rude. No "being direct and to the point regarding technical decisions". "How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?"
      - geezerjay 8y ago
        > No. Some of it is just rude. If you make it your point to intentionally ignore context and cherry-pick the hell out of the man's decades-long archive of public emails... Well, I guess you can find something that twiddles your feelings. But, again, you need to ignore the context, his work, his achievements, and everything he built, helped build, and continuously work on building. But hey, let's focus on your feelings.
some_account 8y ago
Actually people in general could stop being so sensitive to everything that is a tiny bit different.
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  I think generally people are only sensitive to people who are not mutually respectful.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    A lot of "sensitive" people are not very respectful of others. From my observation it's often a very asymmetric relationship.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    I find sugar coating to be highly insulting. In my experience, such people are more often secretly disrespectful and less careful with the truth.
    - JustSomeNobody 8y ago
      Note that I said nothing about sugar coating. Those were words you chose. Edit: Interesting. I initially wrote, "Please note..." but then decided to be blunt and leave off the Please. I guess I was, um, too blunt.
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        Interesting. I made no accusation against you. Is your comment, in fact, completely straightforward?
isu 8y ago
Tannenbaum isn't much better, he uses his credentials and authority to argue, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority. Linus has nothing behind him, just his/community work which is now my OS in production. It's very interesting to read the thread today. Does anybody fly rockets with Minix at the end of the day?
maxlybbert 8y ago
I expect more from Tannenbaum. The initial email subject is hard to take as anything other than an insult, and statements like “you would get an F in my class” really only say “I have some authority, and if I can’t make a coherent argument, I’ll still lord it over you.” I wonder how many students saw that exchange and thought “I really need to get into his class.” I think the discussion would have gone much smoother if the professor made some effort to get his message across without the unnecessary sniping. He could have simply started with “I understand Torvalds used my book, so I find it interesting—and maybe a little perplexing—that Linux has such a wildly different design from what I presented.”

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

Well... Tannenbaum is pretty brick-headed, too. "This is the one right way, and you aren't doing it that way, so you are by definition wrong" is not a good way to begin the conversation. Add in "I'm the authority", and you have someone who is completely undisposed to listen to anything said by someone holding another position.

skwirl 8y ago

To add to this - I have watched the industry over the last decade gradually become more conscious of and less tolerant of "accomplished" assholes. The behavior is still endemic but it feels like we are on the verge of a major shift in attitude in the wake of #MeToo. Over the last year companies, charities, clubs, and other organizations were finally willing to (forced to) deal with toxic behavior and are finding that they can survive just fine without the supposed "rock stars" that were fired and the toxic environments they fostered. So even if you are a Linus Torvalds, it may only be a matter of time before you find yourself sidelined. I will be surprised if Linus's career ends on his own terms.

pdonis 8y ago
You're leaving out a key point: Linux is not a company and Linus's "career" does not depend on a company. It depends on enough individual people choosing to work on Linux to keep it technically competitive. I have not seen any sign of Linux suffering technically because people who could make valuable contributions are not doing so.

tehlike 8y ago

Linus is still rude or rather, blunt. To be honest, though, i prefer blunt over fluff or politically correct way. Way more informative.

jpfed 8y ago
This is a common sentiment, but I disagree. In technical discussions, rudeness and informativeness are orthogonal. There is some information that is not polite to convey (such as information about someone else's personal/physical characteristics) but that information isn't relevant to technical discussions. Sometimes there is a choice as to how rudely one wants to convey a particular fact, but that is indeed a choice that reflects more upon one's desire for politeness or rudeness than it does any actual constraint on the transmission of factual information.
- jimmy1 8y ago
  Rudeness is inferred or "felt" by the other party, and really worrying about peoples feelings or emotions is like worrying about which direction the wind is going to blow today because emotions have the ability to be extremely irrational. Perceiving something as "rude" ultimately comes down to the individual who is being told the information as interpreting it as rude. In this case, anything can be viewed as "rude" under the right microscope -- in fact Linus has brought up this very point multiple times in a sort of a "individual liberty" light. If you take feelings out of it and focus on the information -- Linus is either right or wrong. Something either sucks or it does not suck, for example. We can talk about how he might be wrong -- maybe it doesn't suck here's point x y and z refuting his a b c on why foo system suck. You can certainly choose not to converse with Linus, just like I choose not to converse with overtly politically correct people who may take offense / report little thing, I personally don't have time to worry about if what I said "might" come off as a certain way and really I wouldn't want to be in that situation anyways -- It is exhausting to always have to editorialize what you are going to say in today's hyper-sensititve-filter-bubble-one-worldview monocultures.
  - pofilat 8y ago

esturk 8y ago

But Linus is still respected. Maybe not by you and some others but by a lot of people. There's no such thing as unanimous respect.

teamhappy 8y ago
I'm pretty sure people respect him despite being rude, not because of it.
- pofilat 8y ago
  A lot people appreciate that Linus is a role model for their own desire to be disrespectful to their peers.
- geezerjay 8y ago
  > I'm pretty sure people respect him despite being rude, not because of it. What you misrepresent as being "rude", which insinuates that it has no positive effect on the outcome, is actually being direct and to the point regarding technical decisions. People whining about rudeness to try to put aside the context, meaning and results, demonstrate that they either miss the point or intentionally run away from it. The fact is that his communication style is a reflection of his leadership strategy which resulted in the world's most successfull operating system project in history. Trying to downplay the main causes and consequences because they feel their feeling might not be pampered is a tremendous injustice to the man and his achievements.
  - elygre 8y ago
    No. Some of it is just rude. No "being direct and to the point regarding technical decisions". "How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?"
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      > No. Some of it is just rude. If you make it your point to intentionally ignore context and cherry-pick the hell out of the man's decades-long archive of public emails... Well, I guess you can find something that twiddles your feelings. But, again, you need to ignore the context, his work, his achievements, and everything he built, helped build, and continuously work on building. But hey, let's focus on your feelings.

some_account 8y ago

Actually people in general could stop being so sensitive to everything that is a tiny bit different.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago
I think generally people are only sensitive to people who are not mutually respectful.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  A lot of "sensitive" people are not very respectful of others. From my observation it's often a very asymmetric relationship.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  I find sugar coating to be highly insulting. In my experience, such people are more often secretly disrespectful and less careful with the truth.
  - JustSomeNobody 8y ago
    Note that I said nothing about sugar coating. Those were words you chose. Edit: Interesting. I initially wrote, "Please note..." but then decided to be blunt and leave off the Please. I guess I was, um, too blunt.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      Interesting. I made no accusation against you. Is your comment, in fact, completely straightforward?

isu 8y ago

Tannenbaum isn't much better, he uses his credentials and authority to argue, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority. Linus has nothing behind him, just his/community work which is now my OS in production. It's very interesting to read the thread today. Does anybody fly rockets with Minix at the end of the day?

maxlybbert 8y ago

I expect more from Tannenbaum. The initial email subject is hard to take as anything other than an insult, and statements like “you would get an F in my class” really only say “I have some authority, and if I can’t make a coherent argument, I’ll still lord it over you.” I wonder how many students saw that exchange and thought “I really need to get into his class.” I think the discussion would have gone much smoother if the professor made some effort to get his message across without the unnecessary sniping. He could have simply started with “I understand Torvalds used my book, so I find it interesting—and maybe a little perplexing—that Linux has such a wildly different design from what I presented.”