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Curious - 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 expe

Curious - 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 ago
No, 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 ago
  People 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 ago
    I 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 ago
      This 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 ago
        Not 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 ago
  Nobody 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 ago
But 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 ago
  Reminder 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 ago
    Jaded 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 ago
      I 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 ago
  Did 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 ago
    If 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 ago
      Trying 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 ago
Torvalds 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 ago
Torvalds 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.

ivraatiems 6y ago

No, 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 ago
People 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    This 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 ago
      Not 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 ago
Nobody 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 ago

But 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 ago
Reminder 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 ago
  Jaded 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 ago
    I 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 ago
Did 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 ago
  If 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 ago
    Trying 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 ago

Torvalds 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 ago

Torvalds 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.