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"Torvalds, via e-mail, says De Raadt is “difficult” and declined to comment further." https://www.forbes.com/2005/06/16/linux-bsd-unix-cz_dl_0616theo/ https://

"Torvalds, via e-mail, says De Raadt is “difficult” and declined to comment further." https://www.forbes.com/2005/06/16/linux-bsd-unix-cz_dl_0616theo/ https://www.forbes.com/2005/06/16/linux-bsd-unix-cz_dl_0616t... Imagine being so hard you're labelled as "difficult" by no other but Linus Torvalds

TylerE 3mo ago
I mean, Torvalds has called basically every person on earth an asshole at some point, hasn’t he? He’s the opposite of being sparing with critisicism, and frankly has historically often used his bully pulpit to do it.
- metoobruh 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - ryanmcbride 3mo ago
    Personally I believe being an asshole to people is doing something wrong.
  - tverbeure 3mo ago
    There are many extremely competent engineers who can’t deal with the idea of exposing themselves to public humiliation. That’s especially true in today’s environment where these kind of bully rants have become a spectacle for outsiders. Just google the name of the person who was the subject to one of Linus’ rants about a year ago. Despite being a very accomplished figure in the RISC-V world, top results for his name are links to Linus calling him an idiot. That’s a mark he will have for life. I would die of embarrassment. It’s perfectly possible to critique without being a bully. What Theo and Linus are doing wrong is scaring away a large pool of potential contributors who don’t want to take that risk.
    - lstodd 3mo ago
      [dead]
    - metoobruh 3mo ago
      > It’s perfectly possible to critique without being a bully. Yep. And it's perfectly possible to accept being called stupid, if you truly did do something boneheaded. It's not a permanent scar that ruins the rest of your life, as you seem to believe. > What Theo and Linus are doing wrong is scaring away a large pool of potential contributors who don’t want to take that risk. Good riddance.
      - ryanmcbride 3mo ago
        You're stupid.
      - tverbeure 3mo ago
        Looks like I got tricked into replying to a 1 day old AI bot account.
  - MajorTakeaway 3mo ago
    [flagged]
    - tverbeure 3mo ago
      > I don't classify thin skinned snowflakes who do stupid things that get them screamed at by Linus, and then are butthurt about it for years, as being "extremely competent." There is no reason to believe that there is a causation between being a “thin skinned snowflake” and being incompetent. That said, it doesn’t surprise me at all that some kind of people would make that assumption.
- pdpi 3mo ago
  My read on Torvalds is that, coming from him, "asshole" is a much lesser criticism than "difficult".
sidkshatriya 3mo ago
Thanks for sharing the forbes link. From the link: "De Raadt says BSD could have become the world's most popular open source operating system, except that a lawsuit over BSD scared away developers, who went off to work on Linux and stayed there even after BSD was deemed legal." There is some truth to that. And who knows where BSDs might have been if the lawsuit never happened. However, I think Linux has always has and till today has better leadership, and management compared to OpenBSD. I also think GPLv2 was another good that happened to Linux. It just creates an irresistible force to contribute back. With *BSD, a company might contribute back or it may not.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- scythe 3mo ago
  It's hard to blame OpenBSD's management when there are three other BSDs. You didn't have to work with Theo de Raadt to work on BSD. But while the lawsuit may have been the catalyst, the game was really over when GNOME took off. BSD was sort of an equal target under KDE, but GNOME prioritized Linux pretty hard and had a lot of fans. At that point pretty much everyone making interesting desktop stuff went to Linux and never looked back. Which is not solely a license issue; you can definitely release GPL software for FreeBSD, but the "license war" culture (to the extent it really existed) may have been an issue. And I guess I do think that FreeBSD had a saner organization pattern than the sort of haphazard ecosystem of projects that grew up around GNU and Linux. Maybe the chaos was necessary for growth, but it still seems to be a hurdle for new Linux users in the current day.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - em-bee 3mo ago
    i think what the chaos did was enable more individual contributors. you didn't have to join the BSD team to get a core OS tool accepted into the system. anyone could just mix and match the tools and apps they liked. it's not that BSD prevented that but that they just didn't invite it. you can create your own spin of a distribution and if it gets enough users and contributors it gets accepted as an official version. there is even a debian variant using a BSD kernel. try making a official BSD spin using GNU coreutils.

TylerE 3mo ago

I mean, Torvalds has called basically every person on earth an asshole at some point, hasn’t he? He’s the opposite of being sparing with critisicism, and frankly has historically often used his bully pulpit to do it.

metoobruh 3mo ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- ryanmcbride 3mo ago
  Personally I believe being an asshole to people is doing something wrong.
- tverbeure 3mo ago
  There are many extremely competent engineers who can’t deal with the idea of exposing themselves to public humiliation. That’s especially true in today’s environment where these kind of bully rants have become a spectacle for outsiders. Just google the name of the person who was the subject to one of Linus’ rants about a year ago. Despite being a very accomplished figure in the RISC-V world, top results for his name are links to Linus calling him an idiot. That’s a mark he will have for life. I would die of embarrassment. It’s perfectly possible to critique without being a bully. What Theo and Linus are doing wrong is scaring away a large pool of potential contributors who don’t want to take that risk.
  - lstodd 3mo ago
    [dead]
  - metoobruh 3mo ago
    > It’s perfectly possible to critique without being a bully. Yep. And it's perfectly possible to accept being called stupid, if you truly did do something boneheaded. It's not a permanent scar that ruins the rest of your life, as you seem to believe. > What Theo and Linus are doing wrong is scaring away a large pool of potential contributors who don’t want to take that risk. Good riddance.
    - ryanmcbride 3mo ago
      You're stupid.
    - tverbeure 3mo ago
      Looks like I got tricked into replying to a 1 day old AI bot account.
- MajorTakeaway 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - tverbeure 3mo ago
    > I don't classify thin skinned snowflakes who do stupid things that get them screamed at by Linus, and then are butthurt about it for years, as being "extremely competent." There is no reason to believe that there is a causation between being a “thin skinned snowflake” and being incompetent. That said, it doesn’t surprise me at all that some kind of people would make that assumption.
pdpi 3mo ago
My read on Torvalds is that, coming from him, "asshole" is a much lesser criticism than "difficult".

sidkshatriya 3mo ago

Thanks for sharing the forbes link. From the link: "De Raadt says BSD could have become the world's most popular open source operating system, except that a lawsuit over BSD scared away developers, who went off to work on Linux and stayed there even after BSD was deemed legal." There is some truth to that. And who knows where BSDs might have been if the lawsuit never happened. However, I think Linux has always has and till today has better leadership, and management compared to OpenBSD. I also think GPLv2 was another good that happened to Linux. It just creates an irresistible force to contribute back. With *BSD, a company might contribute back or it may not.

deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
scythe 3mo ago
It's hard to blame OpenBSD's management when there are three other BSDs. You didn't have to work with Theo de Raadt to work on BSD. But while the lawsuit may have been the catalyst, the game was really over when GNOME took off. BSD was sort of an equal target under KDE, but GNOME prioritized Linux pretty hard and had a lot of fans. At that point pretty much everyone making interesting desktop stuff went to Linux and never looked back. Which is not solely a license issue; you can definitely release GPL software for FreeBSD, but the "license war" culture (to the extent it really existed) may have been an issue. And I guess I do think that FreeBSD had a saner organization pattern than the sort of haphazard ecosystem of projects that grew up around GNU and Linux. Maybe the chaos was necessary for growth, but it still seems to be a hurdle for new Linux users in the current day.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- em-bee 3mo ago
  i think what the chaos did was enable more individual contributors. you didn't have to join the BSD team to get a core OS tool accepted into the system. anyone could just mix and match the tools and apps they liked. it's not that BSD prevented that but that they just didn't invite it. you can create your own spin of a distribution and if it gets enough users and contributors it gets accepted as an official version. there is even a debian variant using a BSD kernel. try making a official BSD spin using GNU coreutils.