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If not for this guy - we wouldn't have Linux. I'd much rather work with honest person that can tell me how he really feels then nice spoken liars.

mosselman 8y ago
So you are either a truthful asshole or a kind liar? There are no people who are kind and honest?
- temporary904 8y ago
  In the era of victimhood and "microaggressions" honesty does hurt people's feelings apparently. But we all know all that has nothing to do with honesty, it's about political control, in and outside a informal community. Open source is defacto an easy target since most projects don't have real organizations. The people who pull these stunts in the open source world have no power of persuasion in private businesses, they can't impose their dubious code of conducts,contributor covenants and other "post-meritocracy" manifesto there.
- caf 8y ago
  I don't know, but the idioms of the "white lie" and "polite fiction" certainly imply some connection between impoliteness and truth-telling, don't they?
  - Nasrudith 8y ago
    Expectations of politeness generally involve letting people have their happy delusions if they aren't harming anyone. For instance for someone whose son went MIA in Vietnam and holds hopes that he will return one day telling them "He probably either died and his corpse was forgotten or in the off chance he is alive went AWOL with some peasant girl after getting fed up with the war and lives in fear that he will be found out.". Even if statistically it is 100% true that would be staggeringly rude to say to them.
  - catfish123 8y ago
    So what? There are also non benevolent lies and polite truth.
    - caf 8y ago
      We just call those "lies" and "truth", and that shows us nothing because it was never in doubt that truth and politeness are often not in conflict. On the other hand the idioms identified point to a long-standing understanding that sometimes, they are in conflict; a corollary of which is that one who always chooses complete honesty has likely failed to be polite from time to time, and one who is unfailingly polite has, like the curate describing his egg, likely given less than the total truth. Most of us tend towards the politeness side of the tradeoff - we might, for example, describe a potential process failure when a more honest appraisal is that carelessness was the root cause.
  - mosselman 8y ago
    So what? What I am saying is that there must be other possibilities. Even 1 person who is kind and honest would be enough to render what I said correct. I was reacting to @stemc43 who said "I'd rather work with...". Why wouldn't you rather work with kind and honest people? If you are picking your ideal scenario already anyway why not pick the positive version instead of the negative one?
- Iem6gaoc 8y ago
  Maybe there are, but those are two distinct (although not necessarily orthogonal) metrics and thus the overlap where you get to maximize both tends to be much smaller. In other words there may be much fewer people who are truthful, kind and technically skilled at the same time. If kindness were constant among people we wouldn't say that some people are different. If kindness is trainable and important, why is it not taught in schools?
tylermac1 8y ago
If you think that nice people can't tell you how they really feel without being abusive then you're delusional.
- bufferoverflow 8y ago
  But he is clearly telling everyone he isn't nice.
ijpoijpoihpiuoh 8y ago
Well, he told you how he really felt in this article. So I guess you should be OK or even happy with the new CoC, right?
matthewmacleod 8y ago
That’s essentially a cliché false dichotomy. Wouldn’t it be even nicer to work with someone who can express how they feel in a constructive and helpful manner?
- rooam-dev 8y ago
  Sometimes "constructive" requires more effort, which for an engineer could mean "overhead". Especially if communication is text based (email, chat, etc.), it's more difficult to express your emotions. My imho of course.
  - simias 8y ago
    As far as I can tell Linus's feedback is almost always constructive in that it generally points out precisely why he thinks something should or shouldn't that way. The problem is that he sometimes splices personal attacks and uses an overly aggressive tone which doesn't really help anything. I can somewhat justify using a very corrosive tone if you're not in a place of power and you want to be sure that you're not ignored (I'm not a fan of it but pragmatically it sometimes gets the job done). However it's clearly not the case here, he has the power to reject any contribution he doesn't fancy. And his developer clout is huge enough that he'd still be heard if he criticized third party projects he doesn't maintain. From a purely pragmatic point of view I don't see what his corrosive tone gets him. Actually I can easily see what it cost him, some devs have resigned from their maintainer position in the Linux kernel and probably many more who gave up contributing at all because they were worried they were going to be shot in flight.
    - eropple 8y ago
      You are highlighting the false dichotomy that a lot of folks in this thread--and, if I'm being frank, not for good, decent, or ethical reasons--are piling in on. You can do something that makes people upset without being an asshole. It's really that simple. "No, I won't merge this pull request because of X, Y, and Z." Somebody's probably not going to be happy. But you have not needed to stoop to insulting them. You have not been an asshole. You have done your job, you have kept whatever level of high technical quality you care about. But you have not been an asshole. It is not hard to do both, and if you are but-forring Linus's decision to maybe be less of an asshole it's probably look-in-the-mirror time.
zerr 8y ago
Honest != a*hole. Politeness and respect != lie.
ken 8y ago
True, we might all be running BSD today instead. Thousands of kernel developers might have spent the past couple decades improving FreeBSD instead. Would that be worse? Why? Do you think other free operating systems are full of "nice spoken liars"? It's not like Linux is the only game in town.

mosselman 8y ago

So you are either a truthful asshole or a kind liar? There are no people who are kind and honest?

temporary904 8y ago
In the era of victimhood and "microaggressions" honesty does hurt people's feelings apparently. But we all know all that has nothing to do with honesty, it's about political control, in and outside a informal community. Open source is defacto an easy target since most projects don't have real organizations. The people who pull these stunts in the open source world have no power of persuasion in private businesses, they can't impose their dubious code of conducts,contributor covenants and other "post-meritocracy" manifesto there.
caf 8y ago
I don't know, but the idioms of the "white lie" and "polite fiction" certainly imply some connection between impoliteness and truth-telling, don't they?
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Expectations of politeness generally involve letting people have their happy delusions if they aren't harming anyone. For instance for someone whose son went MIA in Vietnam and holds hopes that he will return one day telling them "He probably either died and his corpse was forgotten or in the off chance he is alive went AWOL with some peasant girl after getting fed up with the war and lives in fear that he will be found out.". Even if statistically it is 100% true that would be staggeringly rude to say to them.
- catfish123 8y ago
  So what? There are also non benevolent lies and polite truth.
  - caf 8y ago
    We just call those "lies" and "truth", and that shows us nothing because it was never in doubt that truth and politeness are often not in conflict. On the other hand the idioms identified point to a long-standing understanding that sometimes, they are in conflict; a corollary of which is that one who always chooses complete honesty has likely failed to be polite from time to time, and one who is unfailingly polite has, like the curate describing his egg, likely given less than the total truth. Most of us tend towards the politeness side of the tradeoff - we might, for example, describe a potential process failure when a more honest appraisal is that carelessness was the root cause.
- mosselman 8y ago
  So what? What I am saying is that there must be other possibilities. Even 1 person who is kind and honest would be enough to render what I said correct. I was reacting to @stemc43 who said "I'd rather work with...". Why wouldn't you rather work with kind and honest people? If you are picking your ideal scenario already anyway why not pick the positive version instead of the negative one?
Iem6gaoc 8y ago
Maybe there are, but those are two distinct (although not necessarily orthogonal) metrics and thus the overlap where you get to maximize both tends to be much smaller. In other words there may be much fewer people who are truthful, kind and technically skilled at the same time. If kindness were constant among people we wouldn't say that some people are different. If kindness is trainable and important, why is it not taught in schools?

tylermac1 8y ago

If you think that nice people can't tell you how they really feel without being abusive then you're delusional.

bufferoverflow 8y ago
But he is clearly telling everyone he isn't nice.

ijpoijpoihpiuoh 8y ago

Well, he told you how he really felt in this article. So I guess you should be OK or even happy with the new CoC, right?

matthewmacleod 8y ago

That’s essentially a cliché false dichotomy. Wouldn’t it be even nicer to work with someone who can express how they feel in a constructive and helpful manner?

rooam-dev 8y ago
Sometimes "constructive" requires more effort, which for an engineer could mean "overhead". Especially if communication is text based (email, chat, etc.), it's more difficult to express your emotions. My imho of course.
- simias 8y ago
  As far as I can tell Linus's feedback is almost always constructive in that it generally points out precisely why he thinks something should or shouldn't that way. The problem is that he sometimes splices personal attacks and uses an overly aggressive tone which doesn't really help anything. I can somewhat justify using a very corrosive tone if you're not in a place of power and you want to be sure that you're not ignored (I'm not a fan of it but pragmatically it sometimes gets the job done). However it's clearly not the case here, he has the power to reject any contribution he doesn't fancy. And his developer clout is huge enough that he'd still be heard if he criticized third party projects he doesn't maintain. From a purely pragmatic point of view I don't see what his corrosive tone gets him. Actually I can easily see what it cost him, some devs have resigned from their maintainer position in the Linux kernel and probably many more who gave up contributing at all because they were worried they were going to be shot in flight.
  - eropple 8y ago
    You are highlighting the false dichotomy that a lot of folks in this thread--and, if I'm being frank, not for good, decent, or ethical reasons--are piling in on. You can do something that makes people upset without being an asshole. It's really that simple. "No, I won't merge this pull request because of X, Y, and Z." Somebody's probably not going to be happy. But you have not needed to stoop to insulting them. You have not been an asshole. You have done your job, you have kept whatever level of high technical quality you care about. But you have not been an asshole. It is not hard to do both, and if you are but-forring Linus's decision to maybe be less of an asshole it's probably look-in-the-mirror time.

zerr 8y ago

Honest != a*hole. Politeness and respect != lie.

ken 8y ago

True, we might all be running BSD today instead. Thousands of kernel developers might have spent the past couple decades improving FreeBSD instead. Would that be worse? Why? Do you think other free operating systems are full of "nice spoken liars"? It's not like Linux is the only game in town.