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When 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' t

When 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...
- sedatk 1y ago
  404
  - wahern 1y ago
    Somehow I dropped the trailing 's'. Edited.
    - sedatk 1y ago
      Thanks! :)
- chamomeal 1y ago
  That is one of the best quotes I’ve ever heard lmao
ksec 1y ago
>With more experience I have more empathy for Linus' though I am glad the pendulum is ( slowly ) swinging back.
andrewflnr 1y ago
You don't need to be "mean" to make clear that a PR is fundamentally flawed. You can literally say, "the entire approach here is unacceptable, and we won't merge it or anything like it." No profanity, no personal insults, not even picking at ancillary details, just facts.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- overgard 1y ago
  I think there's a lot of people that would find saying "the entire approach here is unacceptable" to be "mean" though. But I generally agree with your point of not making it a personal insult.
- linusforthewin 1y ago
  There are different management techniques. Some focus purely on the thalamus and some engage the amygdala. For example, maybe you work as a program coordinator in a liberal arts college, then you may target the thalamus- the center of logical reasoning. You explain to professors how the program you’re responsible for will advance some goal that seems logical though no one feels emotional about it. Or maybe you’re a drill sergeant whose job it is to ensure that when soldiers are under duress in war, your barked commands and insults will be burned into their amygdala, their emotion center that handles fight or flight immediate responses and related fast and deep emotional memories, so that they will respond as trained instead of forgetting everything that was learned and running away, because that may not be as effective. Logic doesn’t play into decisions under duress. Linus may have later decided that hurting others was not as helpful, but he wasn’t being a bad leader when he did and said what he felt he needed to at the time. Sometimes it takes a little tough love to make things happen. Even Jesus had to overturn some tables.
- anal_reactor 1y ago
  I have learned that number one rule of working in a corporation is "do not offend people". You can explain away a major delay. You can explain away an incident. You can explain away a project not being delivered at all. You can explain away all and any failure, but if you offend someone, you have a big problem. People's egos are extremely fragile, and it makes zero sense to risk even tiniest chance of conflict, unless your very job is at stake. Seeing someone value a serious project higher than random guy's personal feelings is extremely refreshing. > But you don't need to be mean You don't need to be nice either
ants_everywhere 1y ago
Sometimes being a parent is like this too. But I think the "don't break user space" rule would be more effective if it was very clearly stated and you could point to a doc that made it obvious to the committer that it was against policy. Linus seems to have a strong internal sense of what the policy means, and he heaps on Monty Python style verbal abuse to get his point across. But while that's good at indicating how angry it is, it's not clear to me that it's the most effective way of reducing violations of the rule.
mycall 1y ago
The main problem with "we don't break userspace" is that all general statements are false at some point. As what point is some specific instance considered by everyone incorrect that it doesn't get fixed? This is a strawman arg since I know it is simple enough to create new interfaces to bypass old problematic approaches and Linux is full of evolution.

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...

sedatk 1y ago
404
- wahern 1y ago
  Somehow I dropped the trailing 's'. Edited.
  - sedatk 1y ago
    Thanks! :)
chamomeal 1y ago
That is one of the best quotes I’ve ever heard lmao

ksec 1y ago

>With more experience I have more empathy for Linus' though I am glad the pendulum is ( slowly ) swinging back.

andrewflnr 1y ago

You don't need to be "mean" to make clear that a PR is fundamentally flawed. You can literally say, "the entire approach here is unacceptable, and we won't merge it or anything like it." No profanity, no personal insults, not even picking at ancillary details, just facts.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
overgard 1y ago
I think there's a lot of people that would find saying "the entire approach here is unacceptable" to be "mean" though. But I generally agree with your point of not making it a personal insult.
linusforthewin 1y ago
There are different management techniques. Some focus purely on the thalamus and some engage the amygdala. For example, maybe you work as a program coordinator in a liberal arts college, then you may target the thalamus- the center of logical reasoning. You explain to professors how the program you’re responsible for will advance some goal that seems logical though no one feels emotional about it. Or maybe you’re a drill sergeant whose job it is to ensure that when soldiers are under duress in war, your barked commands and insults will be burned into their amygdala, their emotion center that handles fight or flight immediate responses and related fast and deep emotional memories, so that they will respond as trained instead of forgetting everything that was learned and running away, because that may not be as effective. Logic doesn’t play into decisions under duress. Linus may have later decided that hurting others was not as helpful, but he wasn’t being a bad leader when he did and said what he felt he needed to at the time. Sometimes it takes a little tough love to make things happen. Even Jesus had to overturn some tables.
anal_reactor 1y ago
I have learned that number one rule of working in a corporation is "do not offend people". You can explain away a major delay. You can explain away an incident. You can explain away a project not being delivered at all. You can explain away all and any failure, but if you offend someone, you have a big problem. People's egos are extremely fragile, and it makes zero sense to risk even tiniest chance of conflict, unless your very job is at stake. Seeing someone value a serious project higher than random guy's personal feelings is extremely refreshing. > But you don't need to be mean You don't need to be nice either

ants_everywhere 1y ago

Sometimes being a parent is like this too. But I think the "don't break user space" rule would be more effective if it was very clearly stated and you could point to a doc that made it obvious to the committer that it was against policy. Linus seems to have a strong internal sense of what the policy means, and he heaps on Monty Python style verbal abuse to get his point across. But while that's good at indicating how angry it is, it's not clear to me that it's the most effective way of reducing violations of the rule.

mycall 1y ago

The main problem with "we don't break userspace" is that all general statements are false at some point. As what point is some specific instance considered by everyone incorrect that it doesn't get fixed? This is a strawman arg since I know it is simple enough to create new interfaces to bypass old problematic approaches and Linux is full of evolution.