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I feel like anyone who says "Linus was harsh but fair" never really read much of what Linus said. Many of his attacks, especially long ago, were quite vitrioli
by staticassertion 8y ago
I feel like anyone who says "Linus was harsh but fair" never really read much of what Linus said.
Many of his attacks, especially long ago, were quite vitriolic and very much not technical. Oftentimes they weren't rants, just flat out insults, short and mean (I remember, in particular, posts directed towards PaX). They weren't productive, there wasn't a brash technical take buried in them - they were just insults.
Many people seem to just remember snippets of his more popular, more recent rants, which sometimes have some technical take in there at the least, but also, in my opinion, cross well over the line into personal attacks.
Glad he's owning up to the fact that he has some serious social baggage to deal with. I don't foresee the linux kernel community changing much in the near term though.
- Klover 8y agoIt might be worth noting that the people who do say he’s harsh but fair are people who actually comment on his rants. When I see another on HN I scroll past it, because I’m not interested in the sensation. I can’t imagine I’m the only one. Then there are people who do see his rants as a model, or who do like the sensation and do like the spice. Those people are far more likely to discuss it, repeat it, mimick it or indeed condone it.
- stephengillie 8y agoSteve Jobs did it better.
- the_clarence 8y agoPeople keep saying things like that but no one is linking to threads we can read
- staticassertion 8y agoWell they're decades-old mailing list threads. I don't exactly have them in my back pocket.
- angry_octet 8y agoI never understood the vitriol, because he could have just said they weren't up to spec. And when people don't fix bugs, just suspend taking their patches and say that. In the case of PaX, there is definitely a conflict between the later commercial concept (pay to receive these patches to a GPL2 product) and the integration of security features in a comprehensible way in mainline. Brad Spengler is right that big corporations use his work for no recompense (gotta love the cancer that is Oracle), but tbh many of the patches are hard to grok. And Linus had a ridiculous 'security bugs are just bugs' attitude, opposed to the additional complexity added in some patches. I think many of the mitigation techniques are painful and have ramifications on many other areas -- but the larger redesign just wasn't being done. And they are both ascerbic individuals. I thought his rants directed at Kees Cook were worse. He is allowed to reject everything insufficiently tested, so why doesn't he just do that? Anyway, Kees was a model of restraint.