6 ms·

Linus Torvalds Explodes at Red Hat Developer

95 points by recoiledsnake 14y ago

recoiledsnake 14y ago
>Guys, this is not a dick-sucking contest. If you want to parse PE binaries, go right ahead. If Red Hat wants to deep-throat Microsoft, that's your issue. I wonder what would've happened if he was addressing a female kernel developer. Would he have toned it down or would it have been the same? On one hand I like the straightforward talk without beating around the bush, but on another, taking it down a notch or two and getting the same idea across more diplomatically seems to be the better answer.
- rplnt 14y ago
  I wonder what the reaction from the community would be. Probably not very good... which is bad since the meaning of those words, in this context, is clear. And it's not really offensive, although there are more polite forms of course.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - ohkine 14y ago
    You don't think it's offensive that sexual acts traditionally associated with women are considered inherently derogatory?
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    > "And it's not really offensive" Wait, someone using crude, derogatory language to describe someone else is not offensive? Describing your opponent as wanting to deep-throat a competitor is merely impolite now? How socially clueless are we around here? I'm so very sick and tired of the apologists here. Our industry is known for prima donnas who are constantly at each others throats, with no semblance of civility whatsoever. We are the only industry I've ever seen where we take pride in being callous, insensitive, and deliberately terrible to each other. All under the guise of "not playing by The Man's rules".
    - rplnt 14y ago
      He wasn't describing anyone, just their actions. And it's perfectly clear what it means.
- lotsofcows 14y ago
  God yes, never use swear words around the little ladies. It makes them blush or cry.
- alan_cx 14y ago
  Beating round the bush? Should hope not. Sexual violence if ever I've heard it...
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    I can't tell if you are serious or not, but "beating around the bush" refers to the practice of trying to scare birds out of bushes so that they can be shot by hunters.
meaty 14y ago
I would have probably done the same under the circumstances. The solution was a crock of shit. You can only take so much.
jwmoz 14y ago
Riveting stuff.
pavel_lishin 14y ago
I find it weird that "dick" was obscured more than "fucking" was.
- jhdevos 14y ago
  In the original, Linus had already obscured "fucking", but not "dick". Perhaps the automated obscenity filter just didn't pick up the "f*cking".
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
nirvana 14y ago
Frankly, I think Linus Torvalds may be the next Steve Jobs. This is very Jobsian. He knows what's right, and he's dressing down people who also knew what was right but did the wrong thing anyway. People act as if Jobs was a tyrant badmouthing random innocent people. He wasn't. He was actually pretty genial most of the time. What would set him off was not when someone made an error, but when someone did the wrong thing and they knew it was wrong at the time, but did it anyway. Jobs was the keeper of the flame of "do the right thing" (my phrase for it) which always involved the right thing for the customer (which is why Apple doesn't follow trends, and rather than make netbooks made the iPad, a superior customer experience.) Linus is doing the same thing here. For Torvalds the customer is a different customer, both linux users but a lot of developers and the open source community at large. But he's keeping the flame as he sees it, and history indicates he's pretty accurate. As to another commentators wondering if this would happened if the submitter was female, it really shouldn't matter. I'd like to think that Linus reacted to the error, not the person. It's true that taking it down a notch or two and being more diplomatic is appropriate, almost all the time. It's clear that Torvalds is this way almost all the time, which is why he has such a lovable teddy-bear image, for the most part. The power of blowing up on someone is not when you're doing it, but in the knowledge that there is shit up with you will not put. That's the power. Also, there's nothing really that gender specific in what he said. Both men and women could engage in hypothetical "dick sucking contests". Frankly, the average female engineer I've known is tougher than the average male engineer I've known (who tend to be a bit on the wimpy side, while the women tend to be a bit less wimpy than average for people.) But that's just my experience, and consequently anecdotal. The point being that I don't really believe that female engineers are desperate for people to protect them, and that most of the "software development is So Sexist!" people are non-engineers looking for an excuse to be outraged. Some evidence: all the hate towards "brogrammer" stuff, which it is painfully obvious to everyone inside the industry is an inside joke lampooning male programmers by contrasting those pasty nerds with the tanned jock stereotype that beat them up in high school. To act like "brogrammers" are perpetuating a male sexist culture is to, in the most profound way possible, not get the joke! However, there is sexism... and the reaction from the sexists would be much different if he had been addressing a female. But that's not sexism on Linus's part- in this hypothetical he was saying the same thing in both cases. But if he'd said it to a female, the knee jerk sexists who want to see sexism everywhere (except in themselves) would have reacted quite differently.
dustin 14y ago
Not exactly political, but the man has a point. Better explanation here linked from Slashdot here (the actual mailing list site is down.) http://www.muktware.com/5276/linus-torvalds-secure-boot-supporters-not-dick-sucking-contest http://www.muktware.com/5276/linus-torvalds-secure-boot-supp...
jonascopenhagen 14y ago
> Linus said what most free software user feel and wanted to say from the very beginning but neither had the strength or conviction, that Linus has So it takes strength and conviction to be rude and condescending? I'd say it takes strength to remain polite in a heated argument. I'm not impressed with Torvalds' attitude.
- dguaraglia 14y ago
  Linus is one of the nicest people you'll ever see. He's just a massive troll/flamethrower when it comes to online discussions. He acknowledges so himself. I don't mind it, Linux is his baby and if you don't like interacting with him you can just fork it and go your own way. Nothing stopping you. I think nobody takes Linus's insults at face value anymore. I'd actually laugh my ass off if I was a kernel developer and got told off by Linus.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    There is a problem that flaming is seen as normal, acceptable behaviour in some communities. People see Torvalds doing it, they see de Raadt doing it, they see a bunch of people doing it, and so they think it's okay to do it in their email list. This increases developer churn and burnout, and that's not something that OpenSource can afford. I think it's a shame if young people are learning how to collaborate with others from these broken models, rather than learning effective skills. Especially if inter-personal skills are more likely to be weak in the dev community. Having said all that, I kind of agree that it's okay for someone to be an arse on their own pet project. If it becomes unbearable people could just fork it split and the project.
miga 14y ago
Indeed the kind of argument is inappropriate to say the least. Information content below 4bit in a whole message?
msvan 14y ago
Well it certainly gets him some celebrity, as if he were in need of any more. It seems Linus Torvalds lashes out on someone every month, and it's probably not an attitude that makes people want to cooperate with him. Or are they used to it by now?
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  From seeing the results of the flames it appears most people are used to it now, which I can't decide is completely horrific or not.
mixedbit 14y ago
Can anyone explain or share a link explaining what was a high level purpose of the RedHat patch? (besides winning the contest, because I understand there was no such thing)
- praptak 14y ago
  "The high-level view is this: Microsoft wants to ensure that nobody can run unapproved software on their home computers. As a first step toward this nightmare, they bullied computer makers into shipping a bootloader signature system that could potentially prevent people from running GNU/Linux. Red Hat, a multibillion dollar GNU/Linux distributor, decided to play along and got a special signing key from Microsoft. Linus apparently does not want to play along (and I commend him for it)." Taken right from the comments on the linked article: http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3492573&cid=43002783 http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3492573&cid=43...
wyck 14y ago
Kernel drama, will this be on TMZ? It elicits the same emotional knee-jerk response, just don't.
fareesh 14y ago
"People who are offended should be offended." -Linus Torvalds
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
dhruvmittal 14y ago
He's right, but Red Hat isn't necessarily wrong. Red Hat's doing what's right for their consumers, but Linus is speaking about what's right for the ecosystem. They're different groups/people with different priorities. While I tend to side with Linus on this, I see the values of Red Hat coming up with a working solution, even if it is catering to Microsoft. I'd love to see something in userland and I don't see why the kernel team needs to concern itself with what vendors want to trust. Leave that to Red Hat and Canonical. Regarding his words: I honestly don't know why I'm still surprised when he does/says things like this, and I still don't know how I feel about it. The way he instantly reaches for his bag of obscenities seems a bit childish, but he does more often than not get his point across. I have to wonder if he uses such language so often because he knows tech news is going to report on it when they might not if he were to gently rebuke a kernel dev? It should be noted that after his rant at Nvidia (http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/17/3092829/linus-torvalds-fuck-you-nvidia http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/17/3092829/linus-torvalds-fuc...), Nvidia driver support became a hotly discussed topic and very soon became significantly better. In that regard, Linus seems to get things done and for that, I commend him. On the other hand, he tends to curse and complain a lot on his g+. It's fairly likely that's just all him.
gnosis 14y ago
...and people get on Stallman's case for being antisocial and offensive.
pupppet 14y ago
He may be right but that doesn't mean he doesn't sound like some 14 year old douchebag on his XBOX.
samuel1604 14y ago
does mjg still work fo rh I tought he went to openstack?

95 points by recoiledsnake 14y ago

>Guys, this is not a dick-sucking contest. If you want to parse PE binaries, go right ahead. If Red Hat wants to deep-throat Microsoft, that's your issue. I wonder what would've happened if he was addressing a female kernel developer. Would he have toned it down or would it have been the same? On one hand I like the straightforward talk without beating around the bush, but on another, taking it down a notch or two and getting the same idea across more diplomatically seems to be the better answer.

rplnt 14y ago
I wonder what the reaction from the community would be. Probably not very good... which is bad since the meaning of those words, in this context, is clear. And it's not really offensive, although there are more polite forms of course.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- ohkine 14y ago
  You don't think it's offensive that sexual acts traditionally associated with women are considered inherently derogatory?
- potatolicious 14y ago
  > "And it's not really offensive" Wait, someone using crude, derogatory language to describe someone else is not offensive? Describing your opponent as wanting to deep-throat a competitor is merely impolite now? How socially clueless are we around here? I'm so very sick and tired of the apologists here. Our industry is known for prima donnas who are constantly at each others throats, with no semblance of civility whatsoever. We are the only industry I've ever seen where we take pride in being callous, insensitive, and deliberately terrible to each other. All under the guise of "not playing by The Man's rules".
  - rplnt 14y ago
    He wasn't describing anyone, just their actions. And it's perfectly clear what it means.
lotsofcows 14y ago
God yes, never use swear words around the little ladies. It makes them blush or cry.
alan_cx 14y ago
Beating round the bush? Should hope not. Sexual violence if ever I've heard it...
- jlgreco 14y ago
  I can't tell if you are serious or not, but "beating around the bush" refers to the practice of trying to scare birds out of bushes so that they can be shot by hunters.

meaty 14y ago

I would have probably done the same under the circumstances. The solution was a crock of shit. You can only take so much.

jwmoz 14y ago

Riveting stuff.

pavel_lishin 14y ago

I find it weird that "dick" was obscured more than "fucking" was.

jhdevos 14y ago
In the original, Linus had already obscured "fucking", but not "dick". Perhaps the automated obscenity filter just didn't pick up the "f*cking".
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

nirvana 14y ago

Frankly, I think Linus Torvalds may be the next Steve Jobs. This is very Jobsian. He knows what's right, and he's dressing down people who also knew what was right but did the wrong thing anyway. People act as if Jobs was a tyrant badmouthing random innocent people. He wasn't. He was actually pretty genial most of the time. What would set him off was not when someone made an error, but when someone did the wrong thing and they knew it was wrong at the time, but did it anyway. Jobs was the keeper of the flame of "do the right thing" (my phrase for it) which always involved the right thing for the customer (which is why Apple doesn't follow trends, and rather than make netbooks made the iPad, a superior customer experience.) Linus is doing the same thing here. For Torvalds the customer is a different customer, both linux users but a lot of developers and the open source community at large. But he's keeping the flame as he sees it, and history indicates he's pretty accurate. As to another commentators wondering if this would happened if the submitter was female, it really shouldn't matter. I'd like to think that Linus reacted to the error, not the person. It's true that taking it down a notch or two and being more diplomatic is appropriate, almost all the time. It's clear that Torvalds is this way almost all the time, which is why he has such a lovable teddy-bear image, for the most part. The power of blowing up on someone is not when you're doing it, but in the knowledge that there is shit up with you will not put. That's the power. Also, there's nothing really that gender specific in what he said. Both men and women could engage in hypothetical "dick sucking contests". Frankly, the average female engineer I've known is tougher than the average male engineer I've known (who tend to be a bit on the wimpy side, while the women tend to be a bit less wimpy than average for people.) But that's just my experience, and consequently anecdotal. The point being that I don't really believe that female engineers are desperate for people to protect them, and that most of the "software development is So Sexist!" people are non-engineers looking for an excuse to be outraged. Some evidence: all the hate towards "brogrammer" stuff, which it is painfully obvious to everyone inside the industry is an inside joke lampooning male programmers by contrasting those pasty nerds with the tanned jock stereotype that beat them up in high school. To act like "brogrammers" are perpetuating a male sexist culture is to, in the most profound way possible, not get the joke! However, there is sexism... and the reaction from the sexists would be much different if he had been addressing a female. But that's not sexism on Linus's part- in this hypothetical he was saying the same thing in both cases. But if he'd said it to a female, the knee jerk sexists who want to see sexism everywhere (except in themselves) would have reacted quite differently.

dustin 14y ago

Not exactly political, but the man has a point. Better explanation here linked from Slashdot here (the actual mailing list site is down.) http://www.muktware.com/5276/linus-torvalds-secure-boot-supporters-not-dick-sucking-contest http://www.muktware.com/5276/linus-torvalds-secure-boot-supp...

jonascopenhagen 14y ago

> Linus said what most free software user feel and wanted to say from the very beginning but neither had the strength or conviction, that Linus has So it takes strength and conviction to be rude and condescending? I'd say it takes strength to remain polite in a heated argument. I'm not impressed with Torvalds' attitude.

dguaraglia 14y ago
Linus is one of the nicest people you'll ever see. He's just a massive troll/flamethrower when it comes to online discussions. He acknowledges so himself. I don't mind it, Linux is his baby and if you don't like interacting with him you can just fork it and go your own way. Nothing stopping you. I think nobody takes Linus's insults at face value anymore. I'd actually laugh my ass off if I was a kernel developer and got told off by Linus.
- DanBC 14y ago
  There is a problem that flaming is seen as normal, acceptable behaviour in some communities. People see Torvalds doing it, they see de Raadt doing it, they see a bunch of people doing it, and so they think it's okay to do it in their email list. This increases developer churn and burnout, and that's not something that OpenSource can afford. I think it's a shame if young people are learning how to collaborate with others from these broken models, rather than learning effective skills. Especially if inter-personal skills are more likely to be weak in the dev community. Having said all that, I kind of agree that it's okay for someone to be an arse on their own pet project. If it becomes unbearable people could just fork it split and the project.

miga 14y ago

Indeed the kind of argument is inappropriate to say the least. Information content below 4bit in a whole message?

msvan 14y ago

Well it certainly gets him some celebrity, as if he were in need of any more. It seems Linus Torvalds lashes out on someone every month, and it's probably not an attitude that makes people want to cooperate with him. Or are they used to it by now?

nicholassmith 14y ago
From seeing the results of the flames it appears most people are used to it now, which I can't decide is completely horrific or not.

mixedbit 14y ago

Can anyone explain or share a link explaining what was a high level purpose of the RedHat patch? (besides winning the contest, because I understand there was no such thing)

praptak 14y ago
"The high-level view is this: Microsoft wants to ensure that nobody can run unapproved software on their home computers. As a first step toward this nightmare, they bullied computer makers into shipping a bootloader signature system that could potentially prevent people from running GNU/Linux. Red Hat, a multibillion dollar GNU/Linux distributor, decided to play along and got a special signing key from Microsoft. Linus apparently does not want to play along (and I commend him for it)." Taken right from the comments on the linked article: http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3492573&cid=43002783 http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3492573&cid=43...

wyck 14y ago

Kernel drama, will this be on TMZ? It elicits the same emotional knee-jerk response, just don't.

fareesh 14y ago

"People who are offended should be offended." -Linus Torvalds

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

dhruvmittal 14y ago

He's right, but Red Hat isn't necessarily wrong. Red Hat's doing what's right for their consumers, but Linus is speaking about what's right for the ecosystem. They're different groups/people with different priorities. While I tend to side with Linus on this, I see the values of Red Hat coming up with a working solution, even if it is catering to Microsoft. I'd love to see something in userland and I don't see why the kernel team needs to concern itself with what vendors want to trust. Leave that to Red Hat and Canonical. Regarding his words: I honestly don't know why I'm still surprised when he does/says things like this, and I still don't know how I feel about it. The way he instantly reaches for his bag of obscenities seems a bit childish, but he does more often than not get his point across. I have to wonder if he uses such language so often because he knows tech news is going to report on it when they might not if he were to gently rebuke a kernel dev? It should be noted that after his rant at Nvidia (http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/17/3092829/linus-torvalds-fuck-you-nvidia http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/17/3092829/linus-torvalds-fuc...), Nvidia driver support became a hotly discussed topic and very soon became significantly better. In that regard, Linus seems to get things done and for that, I commend him. On the other hand, he tends to curse and complain a lot on his g+. It's fairly likely that's just all him.

gnosis 14y ago

...and people get on Stallman's case for being antisocial and offensive.

pupppet 14y ago

He may be right but that doesn't mean he doesn't sound like some 14 year old douchebag on his XBOX.

samuel1604 14y ago

does mjg still work fo rh I tought he went to openstack?