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This has nothing to do with Linus... feel free to ignore. A few years ago, oh hell looks like more than a decade ago, I was working with a brand new project ma

by x1 14y ago

This has nothing to do with Linus... feel free to ignore. A few years ago, oh hell looks like more than a decade ago, I was working with a brand new project manager. This guy was pretty fresh, saw the world "manager" and got all glossy eye'd. He walked around the office "cracking the whip" and liked to make statements such as "I'm not here to make friends" and "I'm here to get these projects done". Do you think, if this was ProjectManagerNews instead of HackerNews this person would be idolized? Would be held in high regard? Would other ProjectManagers stick up for him? What if he led a successful project or two? Would that validate his decision to act that way? ...more importantly: Would you want to work for him? Is success a solid defense on being an asshole? I'm perfectly happy to sit down and discuss a problem but I've got not time for assholes, tempers, or rockstars for that matter.

pavanky 14y ago
What if the manager was managing 2000 people instead of 20 ? Would you want him to sit down and discuss the problems with each and every one of them ? In traditional companies there are heirarchies and such to avoid a single person being in charge of so many underlings. In open source arena, there are parctically no hierarchies and the communication can be initiated by anyone contributing to the project. Sometimes it gets repetitive, sometimes it is not relavent. Sometimes you have to be an asshole to make the other person to do a bit of self censoring.
- nakkiel 14y ago
  In this case, what you really mean is that the Open Source model is broken. Perhaps he should spend time fixing it instead of bashing innocents? I don't think the Open Source model is broken. I actually don't think the Open Source model is any different from a "traditional company". Reputation is used were titles were but in the end, when someone with either says something, people just follow or disagree and leave. Linus is clearly having a case of XKCD #386 (aka. Someone is wrong on the Internet). There's no excuse for being bored of repeating the same thing and loosing temper. It's still loosing temper. He could as well stay silent after expressing his opinion once. It actually sounds pretty stupid to imagine Linus replying to each email disagreeing to express his opinion. Some people are talking about the fact that he is opinionated. I don't think so. Theo de Raadt is opinionated. Linus is referred to as "the leader with no personality" in several BSD circles and I can't help but seeing each of his "famous emails" as an attempt at building

by x1 14y ago

pavanky 14y ago

What if the manager was managing 2000 people instead of 20 ? Would you want him to sit down and discuss the problems with each and every one of them ? In traditional companies there are heirarchies and such to avoid a single person being in charge of so many underlings. In open source arena, there are parctically no hierarchies and the communication can be initiated by anyone contributing to the project. Sometimes it gets repetitive, sometimes it is not relavent. Sometimes you have to be an asshole to make the other person to do a bit of self censoring.

nakkiel 14y ago
In this case, what you really mean is that the Open Source model is broken. Perhaps he should spend time fixing it instead of bashing innocents? I don't think the Open Source model is broken. I actually don't think the Open Source model is any different from a "traditional company". Reputation is used were titles were but in the end, when someone with either says something, people just follow or disagree and leave. Linus is clearly having a case of XKCD #386 (aka. Someone is wrong on the Internet). There's no excuse for being bored of repeating the same thing and loosing temper. It's still loosing temper. He could as well stay silent after expressing his opinion once. It actually sounds pretty stupid to imagine Linus replying to each email disagreeing to express his opinion. Some people are talking about the fact that he is opinionated. I don't think so. Theo de Raadt is opinionated. Linus is referred to as "the leader with no personality" in several BSD circles and I can't help but seeing each of his "famous emails" as an attempt at building