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We do not break userspace (2012)
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- santoshalper 1y agoI'm really impressed by how Mauro handles himself in the face of a huge man-baby temper tantrum.
- add-mobius 1y agoLinus is not a man-baby. He’s an actual man. This is what a man looks like- he stands up for users and the integrity of the product with force, even at the risk of being called man-baby by someone over a decade later.
- sschnei8 1y agoYou can “stand up for users and the integrity of the product” without telling someone to SHUT THE FUCK UP
- _101 1y agoYou’re generalizing expectations for an average human and trying to apply it to an human with extraordinary responsibilities. It takes an incredibly strong hand to lead a team whose product is the operating system of most of the Internet. Do you think Jobs, Bezos, or Gates would say, “Hey guy. I respect you, man, and you write great code. I think we should work together to solve this. Are you cool with that? Maybe we can grab a latte.” No, they didn’t do that shit. Pretending you’re their HR manager and get to tell them what’s acceptable doesn’t make you equal or better than them. People have faults, but you can’t get on your high horse picking on them when you’re using their shit everyday.
- komali2 1y agoThis is a toxic masculinity form of mythology that ignores reams of historical evidence of effective ways of leading people. If you want a good bibliography, check out the sources of any Dale Carnegie book. He went through letters, journals, biographies, and writings of leaders as far back as the ancient Greeks. His conclusion is the opposite of the one you're making here. The best leaders lift people up, not shout people down. Others here discuss absurdities like drill instructors. None of us work on a battlefield, none of us are in life or death situations here. We're talking about leading people in labor. It's basically a solved problem, but for some reason people keep needing to debate the effectiveness of "tough love" approaches. It baffles me.
- dzhiurgis 1y ago> None of us work on a battlefield Startups are absolutely like battlefields. Maybe even worse since you can't die.
- exe34 1y agoGet real! On a battlefield, if you stop fighting you get shot. In a startup, if you stop fighting you can go and start a new life.
- komali2 1y agoPlease, please be saying this ironically. If not I say this out of genuine concern for a fellow forum member: never say this to anyone in real life, you'll be mocked relentlessly. Give a friend a pack of firecrackers and tell him to pop one off directly next to your ear randomly for a week. See if it feels anything like even your worse day at a startup. Combat is so traumatic you can see the physiological changes in people's brains.
- dzhiurgis 1y agoThis was obviously a satire...
- dolebirchwood 1y agoThere is a tendency among conflict-avoidant people to lionize "keeping cool" as a moral virtue. This strategy of putting passionate (yet justifiable) anger to shame ensures there is minimal rocking of the boat, thereby allowing all aboard to sit peacefully with smiles on their faces as the ship sinks due to their own negligence and dereliction.
- komali2 1y agoDo you believe conflict resolution requires telling someone to "shut the fuck up" in all caps and then insult their abilities as an engineer? Do you believe this is the most effective method of conflict resolution that doesn't involve "rolling over?" Personally I think Dale Carnegie cracked that nut nearly a century ago and had the research of many great figures in history to back it up. If you haven't read "How to Win Friends," spoilers: he never suggests screaming someone out of a room.
- itsthecourier 1y agoSHUT THE DUCK UP, KOMALI /s
- dolebirchwood 1y agoDo you believe Linus was interested in "winning a friend" in that conversation?
- komali2 1y agoI agree that the book's title is a bit old fashioned. The other half of the title is "...and Influence People," though. Surely Linus is interested in influencing people, effectively? Surely he's interested in being an effective leader? I'll answer for you: yes, he is, and also yes he believes this screaming version of him was wrong to be so cruel and abrasive: https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/16/167 https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/16/167 If Linus is trying to grow out of the emotional outburst version of himself I don't understand why people continue to try to defend it. The man himself now believes it's the wrong way to be.
- komali2 1y agoThis is interesting to me because usually the attitude on this forum is that emotions get in the way of rational behavior and thought. Of course we're all different people but I've noticed that trend. The more Spock, the better, at least in technical fields and debate. Yet that goes away as soon as it becomes time to defend Linus Torvalds. Then it's "actually his emotional outbursts are rational and necessary." I hate to say it but I've always wondered how different the attitude towards Linus would be if everything about him and his history was the same, except, he was a woman. If your gut reaction is to defend him because he's so clearly a once in a generation engineer and very smart, remember, the even more experienced and wise version of him has disavowed this earlier, emotional outburst version of him: https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/16/167 https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/16/167 Why defend behavior that he himself has agreed is indefensible?
- _101 1y agoI’d defend the hell out of Linus as a woman.
- grosswait 1y agoSeconded. Makes no difference
- komali2 1y agoWell great, you two are good people. I recommend searching through the mailing list and forums for when Sarah (now Sage) Sharp was recommending a code of conduct and pushing back on people for being brutes. Many were opining along the lines of Sharp was just a girl that couldn't take the heat, was trying to make the FOSS world all fluffy rainbows etc. Strong evidence that girl Linus wouldn't haven't had the same amount of success and his emotional outbursts would have been seen very differently by the community, despite us three staunch defenders. Linus' whole come to Jesus and apology was kicked off by that and the code of conduct saga, which was predicated on the fact that 98% of kernel developers were men. I think we can agree it'd be naive, despite us three not being misogynists, to believe that the community wouldn't construe girl Linus' outbursts as hysterical?
- JuniperMesos 1y agoThis is obviously a famous "Linus gets mad" moment. Honestly, I think Linus' comments, while intemperate, were not super-unreasonable, and I think the amount of flak he got for this was unfair. It's better in some sense if you can express anger at a collaborator for making a bad technical decision that makes things harder for other people without telling them SHUT THE FUCK UP, but that kind of emotion is also pretty natural when you're working on something that you passionately care about. If I had made this kind of error in kernel code, and gotten yelled at by Linus about it, I would've felt appropriately chastised (as Mauro appears to have here), and wouldn't have held it against Linus.
- overgard 1y agoWhen I first read this, back in 2012, I thought Linus' was kind of a dick for being so insulting about it. With more experience I have more empathy for Linus' though -- sometimes developers will get hell bent on getting their PR through no matter how bad it is, and you almost have to be mean in order to get through to them. If you just pick at specific issues instead of saying "This is all bad, start again", sometimes you just waste a lot of time. Also, to be fair I don't think I would know about this "We Do Not Break Userspace" rule if this hadn't been so famous at the time.
- wahern 1y ago"Running a successful open source project is just Good Will Hunting in reverse, where you start out as a respected genius and end up being a janitor who gets into fights." Credit: https://web.archive.org/web/20200909035546/https://diff.substack.com/p/working-in-public-and-the-economics https://web.archive.org/web/20200909035546/https://diff.subs...
- ksec 1y ago>With more experience I have more empathy for Linus' though I am glad the pendulum is ( slowly ) swinging back.
- mparnisari 1y agoI guess his comment is acceptable because this is OSS and it's not like he can get fired over it. In a past employer I've left a PR comment with a much less aggressive tone, and the PR author messaged me saying "your message is unprofessional". Granted, it wasn't my best moment, I had snapped. But if I wrote something like what Linus wrote, i'd be insta-fired.
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- lacidar67 1y agoI recently had a coworker reach out to my tech lead to tell me that my very clearly noted DRAFT PR was "not collaborative". Dawg that's the entire point of git...
- loeg 1y agoIt's not really acceptable, and he's since been persuaded to make some strides towards more moderate tone.
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- adonovan 1y agoI saw this at the time, but reading it again now what struck me is how coolly his correspondent responded, without escalation, hurt, or resistance; and no-one else chimed in to confront the attitude. In other words, this kind of aggression was acceptable. It's a real sign of how things have changed--for the better. As you say, Linus has since made strides, and it's not as if he was the only one; I used to do it too (if not nearly as egregiously) until various people I respected called me out for it. Now I shudder to recall what passed for normal 20 years ago.
- jaimex2 1y agothe only reply to that is 'that is your opinion' Offence is taken, not given.
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- arscan 1y agoSay what you will about the language, but I’ve come to appreciate how important it is to stick up for your users/customers, which is what Linus is doing here. It’s not ok to inconvenience them without an extraordinarily good reason to do so, and it absolutely is not ok to blame them. I’m sure my reaction to this was different when I first read it many years ago. But now, I can strongly relate to the feeling behind these words.
- xpressvideoz 1y ago> Btw, why pulseaudio is even trying to access a V4L2 control? I would expect an audio application to take care of its own audio business, and to not try to access other random Kernel APIs. > In other words, only an application that handles video should be using those controls, and as far as I know, pulseaudio is not a such application. Or are it trying to do world domination? Mauro's first response does seem a bit defensive, and reads like an attempt to justify his actions. It even feels a bit like an accusation against PulseAudio. I didn't know the exact context at the time, but now that I read the entire email, I think I'm getting why Linus was triggered.
- sitzkrieg 1y agovery funny considering linux userspace is the most fragile thing imaginable
- ethan_smith 1y agoThe Linux userspace ABI has actually been remarkably stable for decades - that's why containers, ancient binaries, and compatibility layers like Wine work so reliably despite kernel changes underneath.
- sitzkrieg 1y agowhen was the last time you tried running a binary that was compiled against an ancient glibc?
- FreakLegion 1y agoAll the time, where ancient is, say, 15+ years old. I can't remember ever having an issue with it, unlike the reverse [1]. Even if there were issues, though, glibc's symbol versioning is a different beast than the Linux ABI. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31963255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31963255