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The man wrote git for use on the Linux kernel. Trying to argue with him about how to use git with respect to your tiny patch to the Linux kernel seems... like m

The man wrote git for use on the Linux kernel. Trying to argue with him about how to use git with respect to your tiny patch to the Linux kernel seems... like missing the point on a great many things. The rules for submitting kernel patches are laid out in great detail. Do you really thing arguing with the gatekeeper is going to change anything?

vibrunazo 14y ago
On the very least, knowing his reasons is very informative.
kylemaxwell 14y ago
In that vein, when somebody tells Linus: "You might have fun raging on the internet, but I think your goals would be better served if..." He rightly responds: "Umm. I think I've been able to reach my goals on the internet better than most people." I believe in civility and courtesy in many areas, and Linus doesn't phrase things exactly as I would. But then, I don't have his responsibility or experiences, either - and while people can disagree about whether he expresses his thoughts in a polite manner, he certainly does so in a clear one.
- eta_carinae 14y ago
  > I believe in civility and courtesy in many areas, and Linus doesn't phrase things exactly as I would. And a few messages down, he proceeds to say "You are a moron". Not exactly a role model of civility.
  - pdw 14y ago
    But that was in response to some "Joseph", presumably one of "dozens of troll comments" that got deleted shortly after.
  - boreacrat 14y ago
    That was in response to pirtlj commented on pull request 17 on torvalds/linux a day ago I did not realizes that Linus' shit does not stink. Thanks for clearing that up...
- pimeys 14y ago
  It's kind of Finnish way of expressing things. We might say "jos sä teet tän näin, voisit vetää ittes hirteen" (if you do it like this, you might want to hang yourself) without actually meaning it literally. We have less PC compared to many other countries and I still find it refreshing while living outside of the country.
  - antirez 14y ago
    tell me what "PC" means or go hang yourself.
    - pimeys 14y ago
      Political correctness. Mostly comes from USA, but exists also in other countries. Like in Germany people have lots of PC for Jewish people.
      - antirez 14y ago
        Thanks, I don't like PC too much either, seems like hypocrisy most of the time. We also in Italy have little of it. I mean, instead of PC one should make sure to treat everybody in a fair way, but even if somebody is in a minority of some kind, if he/she does silly things, it is offensive to don't respond to it (possibly in a rough way) in the same way you would reply to everybody else.
      - slowpoke 14y ago
        >Like in Germany people have lots of PC for Jewish people. Which is probably also the best example of why PC is dumb. For example, it's hard to criticize Israel in German politics. At best, you'll be looked at in funny ways, at the worst you'll be accused of being a nazi.
        pimeys 14y ago
        There are good things in the anti nazi movement. People still remember and they don't want it to happen again. Still I don't understand why you can't criticize the politics of Israel in Germany. Even my Israeli friends do it.
- antirez 14y ago
  The problem is that many times you can't have one thing without another. What I mean is that what Linus accomplished is also fruit of his character, you need character and be opinionated to do "git" for instance. Or even to make the Linux kernel the success and good piece of software it is, with many contributions: what separates a big software project to become a mess is character. And the side effect is that he gets bored to listen at stuff that he thinks are silly. But see it from a different perspective, Linus is really, culturally an hacker, and not an academia professor. He is out there on github writing flames, arguing with people that have a github account completely clean and never wrote possibly a line of code at all. Exposing himself in the process to insults and so forth. I really admire him.
  - irahul 14y ago
    > He is out there on github writing flames, arguing with people that have a github account completely clean and never wrote possibly a line of code at all. Exposing himself in the process to insults and so forth. I never understood why do people who have completely clean github accounts feel the need to preach to someone who has been programming for a long, long time and is the major force behind two of very significant, technically hard piece of software. This won't be the first time this has happened. In the "Linux on C++" thread, someone comes in and says "I am surprised you wrote git in C. Don't tell me C++ is bad. That's bullshit. Clearly I know more about this than you do". Or even the Eric Raymonds' post about "Curse of the gifted" - he comes out of nowhere and starts calling Linux names. The fact that other developers didn't even bother responding to his bullshit made me happy.
jasonwatkinspdx 14y ago
I think people are arguing for two reasons: 1.) Linus is being a bully. There's a difference between speaking your mind openly and using rhetorical force to invalidate contrary views. 2.) The kernel requirements can be whatever those who control the kernel demand. That's just common sense. Making the leap to declaring that only one text wrapping approach is objectively correct is delusional. If Linus simply said "The github pull request interface makes it impossible to follow the kernel commit guidelines, and we are not open to reconsidering those guidelines" there'd be no argument.
- ash 14y ago
  I don't think his goal is to have no arguments. His goal seems to be "fix this issue, god damn it!" And amusing rant can help bring attention to the issue (note tomayko comment in the original thread). I don't know about you, but the rant is entertaining to me.
  - trafficlight 14y ago
    My take from that message is he doesn't care if they fix it or not, but rather he won't be doing pull requests in it's current state.
    - ash 14y ago
      Linus certainly cares. Otherwise he wouldn't tell github about it: > I've told github people about my concerns, they didn't think they mattered, so I gave up. Feel free to make a bugreport to github.
- ozataman 14y ago
  IMO, the reason Linus is where he is today as an icon and at least some part of the reason we have a rock solid Linux to use across all our commercial and non-commercial projects is because Linus has strong opinions about how things should be. Somehow, I don't know or have read about that many (if any) world-changing people, who also happen to be "so nice and understanding of others opinions" or "agrees to disagree". I'm sorry, but there are indeed few ways to design a BMW and many ways to design a glob of metal that can't even move.

vibrunazo 14y ago

On the very least, knowing his reasons is very informative.

kylemaxwell 14y ago

In that vein, when somebody tells Linus: "You might have fun raging on the internet, but I think your goals would be better served if..." He rightly responds: "Umm. I think I've been able to reach my goals on the internet better than most people." I believe in civility and courtesy in many areas, and Linus doesn't phrase things exactly as I would. But then, I don't have his responsibility or experiences, either - and while people can disagree about whether he expresses his thoughts in a polite manner, he certainly does so in a clear one.

eta_carinae 14y ago
> I believe in civility and courtesy in many areas, and Linus doesn't phrase things exactly as I would. And a few messages down, he proceeds to say "You are a moron". Not exactly a role model of civility.
- pdw 14y ago
  But that was in response to some "Joseph", presumably one of "dozens of troll comments" that got deleted shortly after.
- boreacrat 14y ago
  That was in response to pirtlj commented on pull request 17 on torvalds/linux a day ago I did not realizes that Linus' shit does not stink. Thanks for clearing that up...
pimeys 14y ago
It's kind of Finnish way of expressing things. We might say "jos sä teet tän näin, voisit vetää ittes hirteen" (if you do it like this, you might want to hang yourself) without actually meaning it literally. We have less PC compared to many other countries and I still find it refreshing while living outside of the country.
- antirez 14y ago
  tell me what "PC" means or go hang yourself.
  - pimeys 14y ago
    Political correctness. Mostly comes from USA, but exists also in other countries. Like in Germany people have lots of PC for Jewish people.
    - antirez 14y ago
      Thanks, I don't like PC too much either, seems like hypocrisy most of the time. We also in Italy have little of it. I mean, instead of PC one should make sure to treat everybody in a fair way, but even if somebody is in a minority of some kind, if he/she does silly things, it is offensive to don't respond to it (possibly in a rough way) in the same way you would reply to everybody else.
    - slowpoke 14y ago
      >Like in Germany people have lots of PC for Jewish people. Which is probably also the best example of why PC is dumb. For example, it's hard to criticize Israel in German politics. At best, you'll be looked at in funny ways, at the worst you'll be accused of being a nazi.
      - pimeys 14y ago
        There are good things in the anti nazi movement. People still remember and they don't want it to happen again. Still I don't understand why you can't criticize the politics of Israel in Germany. Even my Israeli friends do it.
antirez 14y ago
The problem is that many times you can't have one thing without another. What I mean is that what Linus accomplished is also fruit of his character, you need character and be opinionated to do "git" for instance. Or even to make the Linux kernel the success and good piece of software it is, with many contributions: what separates a big software project to become a mess is character. And the side effect is that he gets bored to listen at stuff that he thinks are silly. But see it from a different perspective, Linus is really, culturally an hacker, and not an academia professor. He is out there on github writing flames, arguing with people that have a github account completely clean and never wrote possibly a line of code at all. Exposing himself in the process to insults and so forth. I really admire him.
- irahul 14y ago
  > He is out there on github writing flames, arguing with people that have a github account completely clean and never wrote possibly a line of code at all. Exposing himself in the process to insults and so forth. I never understood why do people who have completely clean github accounts feel the need to preach to someone who has been programming for a long, long time and is the major force behind two of very significant, technically hard piece of software. This won't be the first time this has happened. In the "Linux on C++" thread, someone comes in and says "I am surprised you wrote git in C. Don't tell me C++ is bad. That's bullshit. Clearly I know more about this than you do". Or even the Eric Raymonds' post about "Curse of the gifted" - he comes out of nowhere and starts calling Linux names. The fact that other developers didn't even bother responding to his bullshit made me happy.

jasonwatkinspdx 14y ago

I think people are arguing for two reasons: 1.) Linus is being a bully. There's a difference between speaking your mind openly and using rhetorical force to invalidate contrary views. 2.) The kernel requirements can be whatever those who control the kernel demand. That's just common sense. Making the leap to declaring that only one text wrapping approach is objectively correct is delusional. If Linus simply said "The github pull request interface makes it impossible to follow the kernel commit guidelines, and we are not open to reconsidering those guidelines" there'd be no argument.

ash 14y ago
I don't think his goal is to have no arguments. His goal seems to be "fix this issue, god damn it!" And amusing rant can help bring attention to the issue (note tomayko comment in the original thread). I don't know about you, but the rant is entertaining to me.
- trafficlight 14y ago
  My take from that message is he doesn't care if they fix it or not, but rather he won't be doing pull requests in it's current state.
  - ash 14y ago
    Linus certainly cares. Otherwise he wouldn't tell github about it: > I've told github people about my concerns, they didn't think they mattered, so I gave up. Feel free to make a bugreport to github.
ozataman 14y ago
IMO, the reason Linus is where he is today as an icon and at least some part of the reason we have a rock solid Linux to use across all our commercial and non-commercial projects is because Linus has strong opinions about how things should be. Somehow, I don't know or have read about that many (if any) world-changing people, who also happen to be "so nice and understanding of others opinions" or "agrees to disagree". I'm sorry, but there are indeed few ways to design a BMW and many ways to design a glob of metal that can't even move.