4 ms·

>I find it distressing that you are complaining about new users of your code, and then you keep bringing up these kinds of complete garbage arguments. Honestly,

by 1970-01-01 2y ago

>I find it distressing that you are complaining about new users of your code, and then you keep bringing up these kinds of complete garbage arguments. Honestly, what you have been doing is basically saying "as a DMA maintainer I control what the DMA code is used for". And that is not how any of this works. I appreciate that his anger is still there, its just worded differently, in a more modern (softer) attack. Is this still how we control developers in 2025? Yes! Deal with it or go fork it yourself. The day this goes away is the day Linux begins to die a death of 1,000,000 cuts in code quality.

WithinReason 2y ago
*Deal with it or go fork (it) yourself
philistine 2y ago
I've never seen anyone talk about Linus' bilingualism concerning his anger issues. I'm bilingual, and sound much harsher and mean in English than in my native tongue. Could that be an element of the problem?
- perching_aix 2y ago
  Could be, but having seen a couple of his crashouts, I don't really feel like buying that. According to his Wikipedia page, he's also been living in the States for about 25 years, and been a citizen for 15. If he couldn't achieve appropriate mastery of the English language with so much time spent collaborating with others using it essentially exclusively, and having lived for decades in a country where it is the native everyday language, I'd find that legitimately more impressive than the opposite.
  - idkfasayer 2y ago
    [dead]
  - stavros 2y ago
    This isn't mastery of the English language, he's mastered it fine. This is mastery of American working culture, which is optional. The reason why he grates Americans so much is because he's direct about his feedback, which Americans take as anger. To me (a Greek), what he says is fine. He never gets personal, he talks about the arguments/points/issues, not the person. "complete garbage arguments" is a judgement of the arguments, not of the person, and it's fine to tell someone their arguments are garbage, if that's what you think about them. Americans/Canadians/the English will interpret that as anger, but, in other cultures, it's just voicing one's opinion.
    - perching_aix 2y ago
      Well I'll be damned then, cause (old example that came my way) ... > Key, I'm f*cking tired of the fact that you don't fix problems in the code *you* write, so that the kernel then has to work around the problems you cause. ... this is getting personal, this is being knowingly crass, this is universally offensive (albeit fairly mild), and I have extremely serious doubts that in Greek being told that people are fucking tired of your behavior is "just voicing one's opinion". You also have to appreciate that this is from an email. You don't type out an email like this and hit send without being really quite content with it. I cannot personally imagine sending an email (or even a text message) like this to anyone at work, for example, and there have been times where they definitely would have deserved this and then some. There are communities and workplaces where this type of communication is the norm, yes, and it used to be especially common in the past (and from what I know, still often is in blue collar jobs). This is true both in and outside of America. I'm not from America, I'm from Central-Europe. I know what being "direct and upfront" is like, and this is not that. This is just being a twat. Language like this is never productive or acceptable in any culture, and it's not some American mind-virus spreading around the world that made people figure they can and should afford to have standards regarding their interactions with one another. If anything, the trendy bit here is the opposite, where people seem to make a sport out of mischaracterizing being crass as saying hard truths. Just like how cynicism is often mistaken as intellectualism, this is also utterly misguided, and Linus is being washed of his personal faults out of respect, not because he's not at fault in reality.
- eddieroger 2y ago
  That's a good point, and I'm surprised it doesn't come up more often. Not just the language itself, but use of it - how many of us read it in the light of American values taught through English and things like not cursing or lack of being direct, where Linus has just always communicated that way, and there's no ego or kindness at play. He shares what he sees and thinks as directly as he sees it and moves on, and that itself doesn't necessarily mean anger.
- Muromec 2y ago
  That could be, but could be other way around. I would swear much, much more in my native language compared to English. You never know, maybe Linus always tuned it down.
- palmotea 2y ago
  > I've never seen anyone talk about Linus' bilingualism concerning his anger issues. I'm bilingual, and sound much harsher and mean in English than in my native tongue. Could that be an element of the problem? Kinda relevant: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/magazine/native-language-loss.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/magazine/native-language-...: > My own introduction to speaking French as an adult was less joyous. After reaching out to sources for a different article for this magazine with little success, I showed the unanswered emails to a friend. She gently informed me that I had been yelling at everyone I hoped to interview. > Compared with English, French is slower, more formal, less direct. The language requires a kind of politeness that, translated literally, sounds subservient, even passive-aggressive. I started collecting the stock phrases that I needed to indicate polite interaction. “I would entreat you, dear Madam ...” “Please accept, dear sir, the assurances of my highest esteem.” It had always seemed that French made my face more drawn and serious, as if all my energy were concentrated into the precision of certain vowels. English forced my lips to widen into a smile.
hagbard_c 2y ago
It probably takes a person with a direct approach to bullshit to keep a free software kernel/OS project on track. Linus Torvalds for Linux, Theo de Raadt for OpenBSD, both known for their lack of tolerance for bullshit, both heading projects which managed to stay on their respective tracks for decades. In medicine 'gentle healers make stinky wounds' and the same is true for software development.

WithinReason 2y ago

*Deal with it or go fork (it) yourself

philistine 2y ago

I've never seen anyone talk about Linus' bilingualism concerning his anger issues. I'm bilingual, and sound much harsher and mean in English than in my native tongue. Could that be an element of the problem?

perching_aix 2y ago
Could be, but having seen a couple of his crashouts, I don't really feel like buying that. According to his Wikipedia page, he's also been living in the States for about 25 years, and been a citizen for 15. If he couldn't achieve appropriate mastery of the English language with so much time spent collaborating with others using it essentially exclusively, and having lived for decades in a country where it is the native everyday language, I'd find that legitimately more impressive than the opposite.
- idkfasayer 2y ago
  [dead]
- stavros 2y ago
  This isn't mastery of the English language, he's mastered it fine. This is mastery of American working culture, which is optional. The reason why he grates Americans so much is because he's direct about his feedback, which Americans take as anger. To me (a Greek), what he says is fine. He never gets personal, he talks about the arguments/points/issues, not the person. "complete garbage arguments" is a judgement of the arguments, not of the person, and it's fine to tell someone their arguments are garbage, if that's what you think about them. Americans/Canadians/the English will interpret that as anger, but, in other cultures, it's just voicing one's opinion.
  - perching_aix 2y ago
    Well I'll be damned then, cause (old example that came my way) ... > Key, I'm f*cking tired of the fact that you don't fix problems in the code *you* write, so that the kernel then has to work around the problems you cause. ... this is getting personal, this is being knowingly crass, this is universally offensive (albeit fairly mild), and I have extremely serious doubts that in Greek being told that people are fucking tired of your behavior is "just voicing one's opinion". You also have to appreciate that this is from an email. You don't type out an email like this and hit send without being really quite content with it. I cannot personally imagine sending an email (or even a text message) like this to anyone at work, for example, and there have been times where they definitely would have deserved this and then some. There are communities and workplaces where this type of communication is the norm, yes, and it used to be especially common in the past (and from what I know, still often is in blue collar jobs). This is true both in and outside of America. I'm not from America, I'm from Central-Europe. I know what being "direct and upfront" is like, and this is not that. This is just being a twat. Language like this is never productive or acceptable in any culture, and it's not some American mind-virus spreading around the world that made people figure they can and should afford to have standards regarding their interactions with one another. If anything, the trendy bit here is the opposite, where people seem to make a sport out of mischaracterizing being crass as saying hard truths. Just like how cynicism is often mistaken as intellectualism, this is also utterly misguided, and Linus is being washed of his personal faults out of respect, not because he's not at fault in reality.
eddieroger 2y ago
That's a good point, and I'm surprised it doesn't come up more often. Not just the language itself, but use of it - how many of us read it in the light of American values taught through English and things like not cursing or lack of being direct, where Linus has just always communicated that way, and there's no ego or kindness at play. He shares what he sees and thinks as directly as he sees it and moves on, and that itself doesn't necessarily mean anger.
Muromec 2y ago
That could be, but could be other way around. I would swear much, much more in my native language compared to English. You never know, maybe Linus always tuned it down.
palmotea 2y ago
> I've never seen anyone talk about Linus' bilingualism concerning his anger issues. I'm bilingual, and sound much harsher and mean in English than in my native tongue. Could that be an element of the problem? Kinda relevant: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/magazine/native-language-loss.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/magazine/native-language-...: > My own introduction to speaking French as an adult was less joyous. After reaching out to sources for a different article for this magazine with little success, I showed the unanswered emails to a friend. She gently informed me that I had been yelling at everyone I hoped to interview. > Compared with English, French is slower, more formal, less direct. The language requires a kind of politeness that, translated literally, sounds subservient, even passive-aggressive. I started collecting the stock phrases that I needed to indicate polite interaction. “I would entreat you, dear Madam ...” “Please accept, dear sir, the assurances of my highest esteem.” It had always seemed that French made my face more drawn and serious, as if all my energy were concentrated into the precision of certain vowels. English forced my lips to widen into a smile.

hagbard_c 2y ago

It probably takes a person with a direct approach to bullshit to keep a free software kernel/OS project on track. Linus Torvalds for Linux, Theo de Raadt for OpenBSD, both known for their lack of tolerance for bullshit, both heading projects which managed to stay on their respective tracks for decades. In medicine 'gentle healers make stinky wounds' and the same is true for software development.