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> Linus goes nuclear. And while his reasoning is sound, his argumentation cycles between threats, bad-faith arguments, and just plain old yelling. In my opinio
by shepardrtc 4y ago
> Linus goes nuclear. And while his reasoning is sound, his argumentation cycles between threats, bad-faith arguments, and just plain old yelling.
In my opinion, in the software world, there is a large number of people who are very convinced of their own correctness. When they do something wrong or are simply mistaken, a gentle correction doesn't work. Linus is probably used to dealing with these people. I'm not saying the person he was replying to was necessarily doing that, but after a while you have an automatic response.
The beauty and horror of OSS is that anyone can contribute. Having someone scream "WTF are you doing???" every once in a while isn't a bad thing. It's not nice to hear that being directed at you, but sometimes in life it is necessary.
- mwcampbell 4y agoIn light of this comment, one thing that makes me nervous about leading my own open-source project is that there might not be anyone who is willing to scream "WTF are you doing???" at me when I make a bad design decision.
- acjohnson55 4y agoDo you not have faith in yourself to receive feedback on your design if someone provided it in a less aggressive way?
- Ar-Curunir 4y ago> In my opinion, in the software world, there is a large number of people who are very convinced of their own correctness. When they do something wrong or are simply mistaken, a gentle correction doesn't work. Too bad there was no around to do that to Linus; maybe he'd finally realize that being an asshole is generally not a correct response.
- mustache_kimono 4y agoI think this is generally correct. The argument is "Linux is extraordinarily successful" but I think the counter is just as powerful "How many great features have not been implemented, because people have avoided working on the kernel or simply burnt out?"