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No, Linus has a way of seeing straight through bullshit to the heart of the matter. You may not like that how he expresses himself, but a part of that is makin

No, Linus has a way of seeing straight through bullshit to the heart of the matter. You may not like that how he expresses himself, but a part of that is making it very clear where the bullshit is. For example, his take on security bug prioritization. His argument is that all bugs have potential security ramifications in the kernel, therefore calling something a security bug is not useful, it's just a bug. "Security people" want special treatment of their reports and he refused to give it to them.

solardev 4y ago
I don't doubt that Linus is a genius. What I wonder if he's driving away other potentially valuable contributors (not myself, but other geniuses) with his tone. It's not like Linux never has security vulnerabilities, and if he's actively driving people away with his hostility... what happens when someone actually catches a mistake of his but doesn't want to deal with reporting it to him because he's so thorny? What happens when he decides to retire or dies? Is Linux going to fragment into petty warlordism because the only core contributors who managed to thrive in that atmosphere were equally tough-skinned and vicious? It reminds me of dictators' empires that collapse after the strongman goes away, unless another strongman can immediately take over and consolidate power. I'm not saying that he needs to be all nice and accommodating and accept crap PRs all over the place, but there are ways of gentling correcting people and encouraging them to fix mistakes while not driving them away altogether. Some of those might've turned out to be valuable contributors with some coaching, rather than being turned off altogether. Now I wonder how much of the abysmal adoption of Linux on the desktop is because of hostile attitudes like that. Could Linux have altogether obliterated Windows and macOS if it had a more welcoming, inclusive community that took different perspectives and user needs into account? Maybe they never wanted that, preferring a clear kernel/userspace separation? I dunno. Of course Linux is super valuable on servers and in embedded devices, but how much of its greater potential was limited by the arrogance and hostility of one man? shrug On the other hand, look at more "community-driven" FOSS efforts that inevitably fragment and diverge from their original core mission... the modern Web is a mess (looking at you, ECMAscript), Mozilla has its tentacles everywhere while Firefox goes down the gutter, Wikipedia was taken over by a cabal of elite admins that care more about power than users, the BSDs are mostly niche now... maybe there IS an argument to be made for a strongman, dictatorial vision? Just food for thought.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  We already know what would happen, there are other projects that are more in-line with what you want and _NONE_ of them are nearly as successful. So, while your thought experiment is probably fun, we already have the answer to it.
fegu 4y ago
I agree he is a genius in this regard, seeing the core of an issue clearly. I also think the world tolerates more from brilliant people, and this is why you in some workplaces have primadonnas. But look at some of the things Torvalds says, it is just ...intolerable. He once asked someone if he was dropped on the head as a baby because he had a suggestion that went against Torvalds'.

solardev 4y ago

I don't doubt that Linus is a genius. What I wonder if he's driving away other potentially valuable contributors (not myself, but other geniuses) with his tone. It's not like Linux never has security vulnerabilities, and if he's actively driving people away with his hostility... what happens when someone actually catches a mistake of his but doesn't want to deal with reporting it to him because he's so thorny? What happens when he decides to retire or dies? Is Linux going to fragment into petty warlordism because the only core contributors who managed to thrive in that atmosphere were equally tough-skinned and vicious? It reminds me of dictators' empires that collapse after the strongman goes away, unless another strongman can immediately take over and consolidate power. I'm not saying that he needs to be all nice and accommodating and accept crap PRs all over the place, but there are ways of gentling correcting people and encouraging them to fix mistakes while not driving them away altogether. Some of those might've turned out to be valuable contributors with some coaching, rather than being turned off altogether. Now I wonder how much of the abysmal adoption of Linux on the desktop is because of hostile attitudes like that. Could Linux have altogether obliterated Windows and macOS if it had a more welcoming, inclusive community that took different perspectives and user needs into account? Maybe they never wanted that, preferring a clear kernel/userspace separation? I dunno. Of course Linux is super valuable on servers and in embedded devices, but how much of its greater potential was limited by the arrogance and hostility of one man? shrug On the other hand, look at more "community-driven" FOSS efforts that inevitably fragment and diverge from their original core mission... the modern Web is a mess (looking at you, ECMAscript), Mozilla has its tentacles everywhere while Firefox goes down the gutter, Wikipedia was taken over by a cabal of elite admins that care more about power than users, the BSDs are mostly niche now... maybe there IS an argument to be made for a strongman, dictatorial vision? Just food for thought.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
We already know what would happen, there are other projects that are more in-line with what you want and _NONE_ of them are nearly as successful. So, while your thought experiment is probably fun, we already have the answer to it.

fegu 4y ago

I agree he is a genius in this regard, seeing the core of an issue clearly. I also think the world tolerates more from brilliant people, and this is why you in some workplaces have primadonnas. But look at some of the things Torvalds says, it is just ...intolerable. He once asked someone if he was dropped on the head as a baby because he had a suggestion that went against Torvalds'.