7 ms·

> an uncommon failure of leadership for Torvalds Exactly the point. IMHO the one and only thing that made Linux successful as a project is Linus' strong leader

by artyom 2y ago

> an uncommon failure of leadership for Torvalds Exactly the point. IMHO the one and only thing that made Linux successful as a project is Linus' strong leadership - which has been criticized ad-nauseam over the years; yet it's the only thing that yields results. So in the specific instances (like this one) where he's not decisively, unequivocally, and even harshly saying "yes" or "no" to something, the community shows a very clear incapability of reaching a decision. Reminds me of a similar scenario that happened years ago with GVR stepping down as BDFL for Python - just after a tiresome and wasteful fight with the community's opinions. "Community" is just a very naive ideal for me. There's a finite number of people that can do the job, and even a more finite number of people that can make a decision and stand by it.

pipes 2y ago
[flagged]
- sevg 2y ago
  You seem to be implying that he had nothing to apologise for, and that abusive behavior is an acceptable part of strong leadership. It’s sad that this even needs to be called out.
  - artyom 2y ago
    Except you have no authority to call that out, and we're not forced by law to agree with you. In my opinion Linus was never abusive or disrespectful - just blunt and direct. Unfortunately, there seems to exist people (like me) that would prefer such individuals instead of nice empty words just in case someone gets offended.
    - dafelst 2y ago
      Are you serious? Linus has a long history of being abusive, it is no secret. He has gotten better for sure in recent years, but especially in the earlier days he would fairly regularly insult people, tell them to kill themselves because it would make the world a better place, and more.
      - olddustytrail 2y ago
        [flagged]
    - exe34 2y ago
      could you give some examples of "nice empty words"?
    - sevg 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - artyom 2y ago
        I agree, engaging in further conversation would be futile.
    - hulitu 2y ago
      > In my opinion Linus was never abusive or disrespectful - just blunt and direct. The way he spoke with Alan Cox was "not apropiate".
      - alexey-salmin 2y ago
        Not appropriate for what exactly?
    - wiseowise 2y ago
      Seriously? I’m a huge fan of Linus, but you have to be delusional to not find his rants abusive or disrespectful.
      - artyom 2y ago
        Seriously. And I say this because apparently every comment on this thread has to be on either side, with no actions being considered counterbalance whatsoever. So given that I have to pick a side, yep, seriously.
      - account42 2y ago
        Not as disrespectful as calling those who don't agree with you "delusional".
        wiseowise 2y ago
        Of course not. https://github.com/corollari/linusrants https://github.com/corollari/linusrants
  - alexey-salmin 2y ago
    Can you explain in simple terms why a person cannot reply abusively (whatever that means) if he so desires? You're not obliged to interact with him, it's a free choice to join or to quit the lkml.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - jodrellblank 2y ago
      https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/30/hard_to_find_linux_maintainers_says_torvalds/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/30/hard_to_find_linux_ma... One of the main issues Torvalds says the kernel has is not being able to find maintainers. People don’t want to be abused while volunteering could be part of that. Another possibility is that he gets paid over a million dollars a year by an employer, who will have some concerns over legal risks, reputation, etc.
      - alexey-salmin 2y ago
        Perhaps, but if Linus would rather see the mainline kernel development dwindle than compromise his way of managing people and code, he's still well within his rights. As for his relationship with his employer — they both have the freedom to terminate it when their interests do not align anymore. I genuinely struggle to understand where all the high expectations come from. Somehow people think that an open source project leader is obliged to be kind and polite and humble and understanding. None of these obligations exist as far as I can tell.
        jodrellblank 2y ago
        Do you genuinely think an employer ordering an employee "don't tell people to kill themselves" is "high expectations"? This is tragedy of the commons stuff, everyone is sitting quietly on the commons in a shared space, respecting the other people, and you drive your modified pickup truck through the middle rolling coal and blaring dance music and jeering "if you don't like it you can always move to another city" as if toning it down a bit is unreasonable but telling people to uproot their entire lives is reasonable. > "Somehow people think that an open source project leader is obliged to be kind and polite" Everybody is obliged to be kind and polite[1], that's one of the foundational parts of society - saying please and thank you, 'don't stare', consider the effect of your actions on other people - is kindergarten teachings; we all live in a shared space, and politeness is the grease that smoothes all the interactions between different peoples. In any other situation, if a person has some power, authority or influence over people who can't leave or won't leave, and they immediately turn to abusing them just because they can, we would say that was bad. If a husband abuses a wife who can't leave, if a manager abuses employees who won't quit, if a religious leader abuses devotees, if a child abuses a pet, if a teacher abuses students, if a government mistreats illegal immigrants, we (society, possibly the legal system) would object quite strongly. Why does invoking the words "open source" excuse anyone from these expectations as if 'leading an open source project' makes someone above everyone else and outside the normal expected behaviours? It is also a thing that you can't separate "don't scream abuse at people" with whining "why do I have to be polite?" as if those are the only two options, there's quite a range of rude responses which are not abusive - saying the code sucks, saying 'I wont read all that' - and there are polite responses which are blunt and not saccharine - saying 'I have the decision making authority and do not want to do it that way.', 'nope, PR rejected, do not try again', 'I am not taking PRs of any kind, I do not want to'. Aside from that, as mentioned, this is not just any open source - he's a paid employee, this is not him sharing his work on his own server with the scope of him being rude or abusive limited to a few people; this is a hugely important worldwide system. The Linux Foundation is funded by companies who use Linux such as Amazon and Google. They employ people who work on the Linux kernel and have to be subscribed to lkml to do their jobs. The Linux Foundation benefits from the work they do and the changes they upstream. The companies donating money have shareholders and expectations of the companies they work with and charities they donate to. And presumably they have some ability to lean on their donations to ask for favours. All this happens under US employment laws and regulations on several sides. This presenting it as a trivial "if you don't like it, leave" is a deliberate and bad-faith oversimplification. It's the race to "person who cares less wins, and I'm a cynical nihilist so I care about nothing, hah!". [1] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboards-and-other-anomalies https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...
- artyom 2y ago
  Yep, that happened. "Forced to apologize" essentially describes it. A quick sweep through recent messages in LKML shows that there's a healthy return to form for him, maybe with less curse words, but as succinct and impactful as it should be nonetheless.
- tjohns 2y ago
  Some of Linus's past messages came across as needlessly aggressive and insulting. There really was no practical reason for that and just served to alienate contributors, and it came across as unprofessional. You can be a strong, opinionated leader and still be kind (or at least neutral) to the people you're working with. A good leader is someone who can deliver hard messages while still keeping your team inspired. It doesn't do any good if the people working under you feel like trash. It's the difference between telling a contributor "you're an f**ing idiot" vs "this code isn't up to standards, try again". Same message, but completely different impact on your team.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    > A good leader is someone who can deliver hard messages while still keeping your team inspired. Do you have examples of this? The only "good" leaders that are strong and opinionated I can think of always comes across as leans towards being an asshole. > Same message, but completely different impact on your team. Let's change it from "you're a fucking idiot" to "this code is fucking trash". It's not insulting to the specific person, but it definitely gets the point across that the code is no good and much less ambiguous to "it's not up to standards".
    - tjohns 2y ago
      A few public ones off the top of my head: Satya Nadella (Microsoft) and Ed Catmull (Pixar) are both folks who I consider to be strongly opinionated and effective leaders but who don't come across as jerks. I'm not sure how "this code is not up to standards, try again" is ambiguous? That seems pretty direct to me. Ultimately it's about showing empathy. Especially when you're dealing with employees who are struggling with anxiety, impostor syndrome, or burnout - all of which seem to be overrepresented in tech.
  - account42 2y ago
    Using business-approved language doesn't actually make your message more friendly. It's not line Linus was prone to using flowery prose against random novices - the rant he's known for were mostly addressed at senior maintainers who really should have known better.
- anaisbetts 2y ago
  Bad faith arguments like this don't really belong on HN. Please represent the substance of your argument accurately rather than debating this inaccurate strawman argument.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - account42 2y ago
    You disagreeing with an argument does not mean it was made in bad faith (or is without merit for that matter).
raverbashing 2y ago
Agree The more I hear about "community" the more I roll my eyes It can be great at doing the work but it is awful at setting direction, evolving with the times and focusing on what's important Going by another story on the front page, I have my long list of criticism about systemd but the "get things done" attitude needed to be commended
- broodbucket 2y ago
  What an absolutely awful statement about one of the most successful community projects ever. Direction usually comes from the community and the maintainers just steer it. Little in the kernel comes from maintainers saying "let's do X" and community members implementing it
  - raverbashing 2y ago
    See how slow Wayland progress has been for an example of my grudges with that model of development
    - WesolyKubeczek 2y ago
      Almost two decades later, for unexplicable reasons, every new client not piggybacking on an eatablished toolkit or a new toolkit/compositor struggles with clipboard support, I shit you not.
  - SXX 2y ago
    > Little in the kernel comes from maintainers saying "let's do X" and community members implementing it Maintainers do steer direction of development though. A lot comes from maintainer saying "we are not accepting XYZ". Today we only have proper open source GPU drivers because people like David Airlie who stand for their principle against likes of Nvidia and AMD.
- chikere232 2y ago
  Perhaps you could fork the kernel and start a better community?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
KennyBlanken 2y ago
> IMHO the one and only thing that made Linux successful as a project is Linus' strong leadership - which has been criticized ad-nauseam over the years; yet it's the only thing that yields results. I wear garlic every day and have yet to be attacked by a vampire; clearly this is due to the garlic! Tang/ballpoint pens/velcro never would have been invented if it weren't for the Apollo program. etc.
- themerone 2y ago
  All of those inventions were invented at least a couple years before the Apollo program.
deepsun 2y ago
No, you get it backwards. Open source community folks despise any commands, the moment Linus orders free folks like you to do something will be the moment his leadership ends.
ksec 2y ago
>"Community" is just a very naive ideal for me. I guess you are safe to say this now. But from 2014 to 2024, open source is not about code licensing but about the Community.
- artyom 2y ago
  [flagged]
CRConrad 2y ago
> IMHO the one and only thing that made Linux successful as a project is Linus' strong leadership Naah, I don't think that's the only thing that did it. It was that, and the fact that people dared rely on it -- dared trust it to stick around, and to stay a single thing in stead of splintering up. And the thing that made it Open Source that stays Open Source -- that made it, in fact, Free Software -- is the license. The two things that made Linux successful as a project are Linus' strong leadership and the GPL. Just look at BSD: It had the backing of a whole darn university near Silicon Valley, not a single student somewhere North of The Wall. It had a head start by several years. And it had name recognition far beyond its home country[1]. And look where it is now: There are (at least?) three of them, and even together they're a marginal phenomenon among operating systems. I think that's because of the too-permissive BSD license. ___ [1]: The first I heard of "Open Systems" was well before I got into working with computers for a living, as a student at another university in the Frozen North in the late 1980s. My fiend and neighbour, a computer student, raved about how cool Unix was: "And you can even get it for free! It's called BSD!"

by artyom 2y ago

pipes 2y ago

[flagged]

sevg 2y ago
You seem to be implying that he had nothing to apologise for, and that abusive behavior is an acceptable part of strong leadership. It’s sad that this even needs to be called out.
- artyom 2y ago
  Except you have no authority to call that out, and we're not forced by law to agree with you. In my opinion Linus was never abusive or disrespectful - just blunt and direct. Unfortunately, there seems to exist people (like me) that would prefer such individuals instead of nice empty words just in case someone gets offended.
  - dafelst 2y ago
    Are you serious? Linus has a long history of being abusive, it is no secret. He has gotten better for sure in recent years, but especially in the earlier days he would fairly regularly insult people, tell them to kill themselves because it would make the world a better place, and more.
    - olddustytrail 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - exe34 2y ago
    could you give some examples of "nice empty words"?
  - sevg 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - artyom 2y ago
      I agree, engaging in further conversation would be futile.
  - hulitu 2y ago
    > In my opinion Linus was never abusive or disrespectful - just blunt and direct. The way he spoke with Alan Cox was "not apropiate".
    - alexey-salmin 2y ago
      Not appropriate for what exactly?
  - wiseowise 2y ago
    Seriously? I’m a huge fan of Linus, but you have to be delusional to not find his rants abusive or disrespectful.
    - artyom 2y ago
      Seriously. And I say this because apparently every comment on this thread has to be on either side, with no actions being considered counterbalance whatsoever. So given that I have to pick a side, yep, seriously.
    - account42 2y ago
      Not as disrespectful as calling those who don't agree with you "delusional".
      - wiseowise 2y ago
        Of course not. https://github.com/corollari/linusrants https://github.com/corollari/linusrants
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
  Can you explain in simple terms why a person cannot reply abusively (whatever that means) if he so desires? You're not obliged to interact with him, it's a free choice to join or to quit the lkml.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - jodrellblank 2y ago
    https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/30/hard_to_find_linux_maintainers_says_torvalds/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/30/hard_to_find_linux_ma... One of the main issues Torvalds says the kernel has is not being able to find maintainers. People don’t want to be abused while volunteering could be part of that. Another possibility is that he gets paid over a million dollars a year by an employer, who will have some concerns over legal risks, reputation, etc.
    - alexey-salmin 2y ago
      Perhaps, but if Linus would rather see the mainline kernel development dwindle than compromise his way of managing people and code, he's still well within his rights. As for his relationship with his employer — they both have the freedom to terminate it when their interests do not align anymore. I genuinely struggle to understand where all the high expectations come from. Somehow people think that an open source project leader is obliged to be kind and polite and humble and understanding. None of these obligations exist as far as I can tell.
      - jodrellblank 2y ago
        Do you genuinely think an employer ordering an employee "don't tell people to kill themselves" is "high expectations"? This is tragedy of the commons stuff, everyone is sitting quietly on the commons in a shared space, respecting the other people, and you drive your modified pickup truck through the middle rolling coal and blaring dance music and jeering "if you don't like it you can always move to another city" as if toning it down a bit is unreasonable but telling people to uproot their entire lives is reasonable. > "Somehow people think that an open source project leader is obliged to be kind and polite" Everybody is obliged to be kind and polite[1], that's one of the foundational parts of society - saying please and thank you, 'don't stare', consider the effect of your actions on other people - is kindergarten teachings; we all live in a shared space, and politeness is the grease that smoothes all the interactions between different peoples. In any other situation, if a person has some power, authority or influence over people who can't leave or won't leave, and they immediately turn to abusing them just because they can, we would say that was bad. If a husband abuses a wife who can't leave, if a manager abuses employees who won't quit, if a religious leader abuses devotees, if a child abuses a pet, if a teacher abuses students, if a government mistreats illegal immigrants, we (society, possibly the legal system) would object quite strongly. Why does invoking the words "open source" excuse anyone from these expectations as if 'leading an open source project' makes someone above everyone else and outside the normal expected behaviours? It is also a thing that you can't separate "don't scream abuse at people" with whining "why do I have to be polite?" as if those are the only two options, there's quite a range of rude responses which are not abusive - saying the code sucks, saying 'I wont read all that' - and there are polite responses which are blunt and not saccharine - saying 'I have the decision making authority and do not want to do it that way.', 'nope, PR rejected, do not try again', 'I am not taking PRs of any kind, I do not want to'. Aside from that, as mentioned, this is not just any open source - he's a paid employee, this is not him sharing his work on his own server with the scope of him being rude or abusive limited to a few people; this is a hugely important worldwide system. The Linux Foundation is funded by companies who use Linux such as Amazon and Google. They employ people who work on the Linux kernel and have to be subscribed to lkml to do their jobs. The Linux Foundation benefits from the work they do and the changes they upstream. The companies donating money have shareholders and expectations of the companies they work with and charities they donate to. And presumably they have some ability to lean on their donations to ask for favours. All this happens under US employment laws and regulations on several sides. This presenting it as a trivial "if you don't like it, leave" is a deliberate and bad-faith oversimplification. It's the race to "person who cares less wins, and I'm a cynical nihilist so I care about nothing, hah!". [1] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboards-and-other-anomalies https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...
artyom 2y ago
Yep, that happened. "Forced to apologize" essentially describes it. A quick sweep through recent messages in LKML shows that there's a healthy return to form for him, maybe with less curse words, but as succinct and impactful as it should be nonetheless.
tjohns 2y ago
Some of Linus's past messages came across as needlessly aggressive and insulting. There really was no practical reason for that and just served to alienate contributors, and it came across as unprofessional. You can be a strong, opinionated leader and still be kind (or at least neutral) to the people you're working with. A good leader is someone who can deliver hard messages while still keeping your team inspired. It doesn't do any good if the people working under you feel like trash. It's the difference between telling a contributor "you're an f**ing idiot" vs "this code isn't up to standards, try again". Same message, but completely different impact on your team.
- dylan604 2y ago
  > A good leader is someone who can deliver hard messages while still keeping your team inspired. Do you have examples of this? The only "good" leaders that are strong and opinionated I can think of always comes across as leans towards being an asshole. > Same message, but completely different impact on your team. Let's change it from "you're a fucking idiot" to "this code is fucking trash". It's not insulting to the specific person, but it definitely gets the point across that the code is no good and much less ambiguous to "it's not up to standards".
  - tjohns 2y ago
    A few public ones off the top of my head: Satya Nadella (Microsoft) and Ed Catmull (Pixar) are both folks who I consider to be strongly opinionated and effective leaders but who don't come across as jerks. I'm not sure how "this code is not up to standards, try again" is ambiguous? That seems pretty direct to me. Ultimately it's about showing empathy. Especially when you're dealing with employees who are struggling with anxiety, impostor syndrome, or burnout - all of which seem to be overrepresented in tech.
- account42 2y ago
  Using business-approved language doesn't actually make your message more friendly. It's not line Linus was prone to using flowery prose against random novices - the rant he's known for were mostly addressed at senior maintainers who really should have known better.
anaisbetts 2y ago
Bad faith arguments like this don't really belong on HN. Please represent the substance of your argument accurately rather than debating this inaccurate strawman argument.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- account42 2y ago
  You disagreeing with an argument does not mean it was made in bad faith (or is without merit for that matter).

raverbashing 2y ago

Agree The more I hear about "community" the more I roll my eyes It can be great at doing the work but it is awful at setting direction, evolving with the times and focusing on what's important Going by another story on the front page, I have my long list of criticism about systemd but the "get things done" attitude needed to be commended

broodbucket 2y ago
What an absolutely awful statement about one of the most successful community projects ever. Direction usually comes from the community and the maintainers just steer it. Little in the kernel comes from maintainers saying "let's do X" and community members implementing it
- raverbashing 2y ago
  See how slow Wayland progress has been for an example of my grudges with that model of development
  - WesolyKubeczek 2y ago
    Almost two decades later, for unexplicable reasons, every new client not piggybacking on an eatablished toolkit or a new toolkit/compositor struggles with clipboard support, I shit you not.
- SXX 2y ago
  > Little in the kernel comes from maintainers saying "let's do X" and community members implementing it Maintainers do steer direction of development though. A lot comes from maintainer saying "we are not accepting XYZ". Today we only have proper open source GPU drivers because people like David Airlie who stand for their principle against likes of Nvidia and AMD.
chikere232 2y ago
Perhaps you could fork the kernel and start a better community?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

KennyBlanken 2y ago

> IMHO the one and only thing that made Linux successful as a project is Linus' strong leadership - which has been criticized ad-nauseam over the years; yet it's the only thing that yields results. I wear garlic every day and have yet to be attacked by a vampire; clearly this is due to the garlic! Tang/ballpoint pens/velcro never would have been invented if it weren't for the Apollo program. etc.

themerone 2y ago
All of those inventions were invented at least a couple years before the Apollo program.

deepsun 2y ago

No, you get it backwards. Open source community folks despise any commands, the moment Linus orders free folks like you to do something will be the moment his leadership ends.

ksec 2y ago

>"Community" is just a very naive ideal for me. I guess you are safe to say this now. But from 2014 to 2024, open source is not about code licensing but about the Community.

artyom 2y ago
[flagged]

CRConrad 2y ago

> IMHO the one and only thing that made Linux successful as a project is Linus' strong leadership Naah, I don't think that's the only thing that did it. It was that, and the fact that people dared rely on it -- dared trust it to stick around, and to stay a single thing in stead of splintering up. And the thing that made it Open Source that stays Open Source -- that made it, in fact, Free Software -- is the license. The two things that made Linux successful as a project are Linus' strong leadership and the GPL. Just look at BSD: It had the backing of a whole darn university near Silicon Valley, not a single student somewhere North of The Wall. It had a head start by several years. And it had name recognition far beyond its home country[1]. And look where it is now: There are (at least?) three of them, and even together they're a marginal phenomenon among operating systems. I think that's because of the too-permissive BSD license. ___ [1]: The first I heard of "Open Systems" was well before I got into working with computers for a living, as a student at another university in the Frozen North in the late 1980s. My fiend and neighbour, a computer student, raved about how cool Unix was: "And you can even get it for free! It's called BSD!"