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Linus and Pull Requests (2012)
- neatze 6y agoWho is Joseph ?
- fermienrico 6y agoCurious - why do people get offended by Torvalds? If you know anything about the guy, his rants are a caricature. It's like going for a Tarantino movie and expecting no violence. You're going to get violence. And, it's going to be excessive, over-the-top, ridiculously offensive that there is no other explanation than to treat it as comedy. Any other attempt to explain Linus is flapping wings in a vaccuum. If I was on the receiving end of it, I would play along.
- ivraatiems 6y agoNo, this is like going to Quentin Tarantino and saying "hey Quentin, here's that work you need for your film, which I did for free," and him screaming at you for not doing your free work exactly how he wanted. Linus has often been a dick. Being offended at being abused for asking a question or doing a relatively normal thing is reasonable. (He's gotten better, recently, because even he acknowledges it's harmed the project.)
- fermienrico 6y agoPeople still work with him and he is successful. From what I can see (I've never dealt with Linux community), people that work with him know what to ignore and what to listen to. Moreover, I guess I have a different way to deal with offensive people even if they were serious - to ignore and scoff it off. I would never feel "offended" ever. Offense is taken and it is a choice. That's how I operate but your mileage may vary.
- nonotreally 6y agoI agree with this. Just ignore him. Use him for what he's good at. The guy is good a computers. He's less good a humans. Act accordingly.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ben0x539 6y ago> People still work with him That's part of the problem. A bunch of people effectively didn't have a choice but to put up with this sort of communication style because their job required them to interact with the Linux community. > Offense is taken and it is a choice. This is a meaningless platitude. Whether you take offense or not, sometimes the most productive response is to tell someone their behavior is counterproductive, instead of stoically shrugging it off.
- fermienrico 6y agoThis is the surefire way to create conflict where there could have been a peaceful resolution. Learning to tolerate and ignore is a blessing IMO. If it gets excessive and affect's people's lives, jobs, personal threats, yes - that's not excusable. It turns out when you ignore people, they get the point. You don't need to bark back at dogs. Keep your head up, mind your own business and move on.
- ben0x539 6y agoNot acknowledging it when someone's causing problems under the banner of "taking offense is a choice" is definitely a surefire way to make problems worse, too.
- inimino 6y agoNobody is doing free work for Linus. People including Linus are doing work on Linux which everyone is allowed to use for free. And which most people on Earth have benefitted from, directly or indirectly, to at least some extent. Not getting paid for your work does not automatically entitle you to see your work used, or to ignore the standards put in place by those who would use it. And yes, if everyone in Hollywood tried to contribute to every Tarantino movie, and showed up and didn't follow instructions, he'd probably yell at some folks too.
- phist_mcgee 6y agoBut what purpose does that antagonism serve? I fundamentally reject the way linus treats people, and I think him hiding behind his maintainer position is even more petty. A lord of his kingdom, rude and sarcastic to everyone who comes and visits. I will never accept someone as hostile as he is in my workplace, and I think the only way he gets away with it, is by surrounding himself with other people who express themselves just as indecorously as himself. What a shame.
- andrewzah 6y agoReminder that Linus is part of the reason you and I have a job in the first place. How many people contribute to the linux kernel? Let’s see how quickly you get jaded after dealing with people refusing to read basic instructions. Also, reminder that not every contributor is desirable. Linus has a specific vision and criteria for his project. It’s true he could use kinder language, but I imagine he gets fed up having to deal with this sort of stuff over -decades-.
- phist_mcgee 6y agoJaded is not an excuse for abuse. That's like a parent saying that their children's bad behaviour is an excuse to abuse them. It is not ok to treat people that way, and no amount of being fed up justifies it. Also I do not accept the idea that my job exists because of him, so I have to have deference. Again, this is an abusive way to look at things, and puts people on pedestals that they deserve respect, but we do not deserve it in turn.
- andrewzah 6y agoI said part of the reason, not the sole reason. His projects have had immeasurable impact on computing, and it’s arrogant to dismiss that because you don’t like how he conducts himself. He can definitely do better regarding his language, that I agree with. But this specific instance isn’t even against the contributor but against GitHub. “they deserve respect, but we do not deserve it in turn” Nobody deserves respect. You may be referring to basic decency towards each other. He earned respect with his work and maintainership over the years and decades. Abusive language towards contributors is not appropriate, but that doesn’t mean they -deserve- respect either. The first step to becoming respected is learning to RTFM and submit patches according to how a project expects them. And for basically every rant of his I’ve seen, it was directed at someone who 100% should’ve known better, not random new submitters.
- cobraetor 6y ago> Curious - why do people get offended by Torvalds? Same reason why people get offended by replacing Git branch "master" to "main" or "blacklist" to "blocklist". No reasonable person particularly enjoys the increasing denigration of meritocracy and infiltration of woke neoracism into their sphere. https://newdiscourses.com/ https://newdiscourses.com/
- meowface 6y agoDid you really have to shoehorn all that into a discussion about Torvalds's notoriously heated communication style and advertise some random left-criticism blog to boot?
- cobraetor 6y agoIf you can't connect all of this to the larger pattern of Woke propaganda in America, then I don't know what to tell you. Look up Christopher F. Rufo just for one example and how this propaganda is taking roots in schools and universities to brainwash the next generation of Americans.
- meowface 6y agoTrying to tie this into every possible situation, no matter how tangentially related, seems a lot more like propaganda, brainwashing, and FUD than anything going on in this scenario. Developers - many of whom are probably not "woke" - have been calling Torvalds a dick for decades.
- staticassertion 6y agoTorvalds solved low hanging fruit problems (reimplementing a version control system with a permissive license, implementing a toy OS with a permissive license) when computer science and programming were niche skills, and for that he's become a highly paid celebrity with a cult following that forgives him for anything. It's so embarrassing to see people celebrate abuse years after the fact, I honestly cringe at these threads. I pity people who relish the idea of being attacked by someone they respect and I wish we could all just move past this dumb hero worship culture. P.S. please add a (2012) to the topic, this is NINE years old who cares.
- ben0x539 6y agoTorvalds ca. 2012, via callous and hyperbolically insulting comments, makes people feel bad to get what he wants. We can argue about whether he gets to do that because his job is very important, or because we also want what he wants (eg high quality commit messages), or because people shouldn't interact with Linux if they can't deal with that, or whether it's an effective way to get what he wants, but at the end of the day the mechanism is still making people feel bad. I think the negative effect that has or could be reasonably expected to have on the subjects of his comments is enormous and fundamentally unjustifiable in the context of running an open source project or a community. I sort of get it when it's aimed at an adversarial higher-order entity like NVidia (or Github for not letting you turn off pull requests on your repos), but absolutely not with human beings, no matter how frustrating it is to have to work with people who aren't fluent in your processes. I think we should try to be kinder than that, and I don't think being kinder would have stopped Torvalds from getting useful patches out of contributors.
- andrewzah 6y agoI don’t think Linus is being unreasonable here. He has specific standards he expects. It’s true that his language could be more polite, but what he expects is not a secret.
- dmart 6y agoThis was an interesting comment thread, and honestly you have to hand it to Linus for continuing to respond and expand on his viewpoints in a pretty level-headed way. Also, I was reading through it on a phone, which brought to light an interesting point regarding the hard line-wrapping discussion that occurs further on down the thread: when you hard-wrap your lines, you're also defining a minimum line width, under which lines break in awful jagged ways. I can understand the rationale for hard-wrapping in commit messages, but it drives me up a wall when people use it in things like email or Markdown documents.
- bigyikes 6y agoWas he level-headed? Talking like that at work might get me fired. It would be better if he just ignored the PR instead of making a scene. Maybe I’m just sensitive
- shakna 6y ago> Was he level-headed? Talking like that at work might get me fired. In my experience, this is very much a cultural thing. The way Linus talks is the usual way that people talk at most of the workplaces I've been at over the years in Australia. However, we're not exactly known as a sensitive people. If something is crap, we call it crap. It isn't generally taken personally. It isn't seen as overly aggressive. If someone is failing to get a point, they will get called an idiot, but people will continue to explain. It isn't seen as a personal attack, just normal frustration. However, when dealing with other national backgrounds, we're also expected to adapt our behaviour. The number of times I get a 'yes' answer from Asia that absolutely does not mean 'yes' is probably in the high double figures per day. Americans tend to expect the "compliment sandwhich" when you need to point out a flaw in their work, and will take it personally if you say that they've chosen the wrong approach. There's less of a divorce between the work and the person.
- phist_mcgee 6y agoI will respectfully disagree with you. I am Australian, and have worked in many workplaces across white and blue collar jobs. What you are describing is an attitude that is fast falling out of favour, and in my mind has died in the last ten years. We do not have a culture of brutal honetsy, and I think that this is a good thing. That honesty may be refreshing to you, but there are many people in the workplace who do not communicate that way, and can be hurt or marginalised by that kind of manner. You are perpetuating a myth of the straight shooting hard working everyman who calls it how he sees it. This is not the Australia I inhabit, and working with many foreign born individuals, along with different genders has proven to me that this strategy only perpetuates power imbalances among men. Linus' behaviour would be a fireable offence in my last few workplaces, and I have worked in finance, in government, and in consulting. I think you need to think a little more broadly about your idea of whether people will just 'suck it up and get on with it' attitude, and ask yourself if there are people you are hurting along the way.
- ben0x539 6y agoI'm a bit amused that Torvalds is complaining about people submitting non-line-wrapped commit messages even though they look awful when displayed by git because they use a different tool to author them, while submitting line-wrapped comments even though they look awful on the github web interface with proportional fonts because he submits them by email. But of course, it's his repo and he gets to apply whatever style suits him best.
- danielsht 6y agoReasonable people can disagree on things like formatting, features, or the superiority of one interface/product over another... all fair game. And Linus’ contributions give him an enormous amount of credibility and leeway to have it his way. But when you treat people with such disrespect (ex. By calling them a moron), you lose all credibility and respect in my book. There should be no excuse for treating people with disrespect no matter who you are or what your contributions have been. I’m not surprised given his reputation, but I’m still incredibly disappointed
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- drenvuk 6y agoYou sound like a middle manager to me. The people at the bottom or top don't worry about this crap and will call a spade a spade.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nojvek 6y agoYou just tried to label someone. You must be an X. His/her concerns are valid. We should never have to resort to name shaming people as “morons”. That doesn’t make people feel included. You can be both a competent human being, and an empathetic one.
- drenvuk 6y agoThey're only valid concerns if you're in the part of the chain that needs to be empathetic in the first place. That's the point I'm trying to make. His point of view is not representative of Torvald's, mine or possibly many others.
- azhenley 6y agoIs this still true of GitHub's pull requests? Does Linus still not use them?
- ben0x539 6y agoHe does not, look at the graveyard that is https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclose... The Linux kernel uses a development process that is very disjoint from common contemporary open-source practice, and easy to get wrong with modern tools that aren't specifically configured. It's indubitably a very effective process for their purposes but of course as an outsider I pretty much only ever hear about it when someone has a hard time with it...
- klyrs 6y agoNeeds a (2012)? But why surface this 9-year-old drama? The whole thread is a nothingburger
- alexmingoia 6y agoHard line wraps are moronic, just like spaces for tabs. It’s an abuse of the newline character, which is meant to represent a new line, not word wrapping. It also destroys the information of where actual newlines are placed. There’s no way to automatically strip out the newlines meant for word wrapping, while leaving newlines meant for new lines. To use your words Linus: You’re a moron!
- dmart 6y agoIn the general case, I agree (with the first part of your comment.) But Linus makes a valid case for wrapping at the time of text entry instead of display: they want to wrap to 72 characters except in certain, specific cases, like when you have lines of output that should be represented verbatim. Now, if you're using something like Markdown, this is no problem: triple-backtick the code block and let the rest of the regular text wrap automatically. But since kernel commit messages are strictly plain text only, that's not an option.
- alexmingoia 6y agoI disagree. There’s no valid use case. Users can word wrap lines at any width they want, easily.
- ben0x539 6y agoThe way that line wrapping works out between github and regular git is a shame, because apart from that, since markdown tries to emulate plaintext conventions, it's not hard at all to write commit messages that look good both as plaintext and as markdown. (In this case, use the "original" markdown code block syntax of indenting with a tab or four spaces instead of using backticks.)
- nfoz 6y ago> It’s an abuse of the newline character, which is meant to represent a new line I also disagree with hard line wraps, but I wouldn't use this justification. There isn't really such thing as a newline character. From ASCII we have line-feed and carriage-return characters intended for typewriters. There are conventions for how to interpret these as hard line-breaks in text, but they vary by platform. But even once you've picked how to represent your "new line" character -- does it denote a "line separator" (windows), or just a "line ending" (linux)? There's no real answer; just convention. (The difference often shows up when you consider whether you should leave one after the last line at the end of the document.) We can't often look at ASCII or much of Unicode and ask "what is the meaning of this character" as if there's some canonical truth. IMO
- trollian 6y agoThe worst thing about Linus is that he's usually right.
- mrbadideas 6y agoThis is a prime example of the white supremacy that runs rampant in the American technology culture. A white man is allowed to emotionally abuse people because of his privilege's. This type of behavior perpetuates a toxic white masculine culture that makes it impossible to create safe spaces for BIPOC in technology.
- ben0x539 6y agoI mean, this is not even a particularly good troll.
- KirillPanov 6y agoTo whoever [flagged] this submission: which HN rule does it violate?
- jangid 6y agoI recall the "Linux is obsolete" thread. After a long time I read something like that.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- thiht 6y ago> [Github's] diffstat is also deficient and useless. How so? How are the ones of Linux pull requests better?