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Torvalds seems to be a real bully. And it hurts me to see all these responses justifying his behaviour, as if this is the way it must be. Just look at this mes

by jakobe 13y ago

Torvalds seems to be a real bully. And it hurts me to see all these responses justifying his behaviour, as if this is the way it must be. Just look at this message: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1TUvG3J3JHkJ:marc.info/%3Fl%3Dlinux-kernel%26m%3D135628421403144%26w%3D2+http://marc.info/%3Fl%3Dlinux-kernel%26m%3D135628421403144%26w%3D2&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=at http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1TUvG3J... There is no justification for this kind of behaviour. If anybody else behaved this way, they would be sent to a psychiatrist. But apparently since it's Linus Torvalds, he's just being a little "harsh" and that's necessary to get his point across.

vacri 13y ago
Another example of "he's not being polite, why can't be be polite, now I'm going to call him names", in this case, saying that he's mentally disturbed. Why is it that so many people demanding politeness of Torvalds can't live by their own rules? Perhaps what Torvalds is saying is true, that people will find ways around the 'false rules'.
- jakobe 13y ago
  I did not mean to call Torvalds names. Apparently I wasn't careful enough in my wording. I meant to express my frustration how the community often accepts socially inacceptable behaviour from accomplished people. When "normal" people fall into a rage, we tell them to learn coping with their anger. If they keep yelling angrily at people, we might even suggest they see a psychiatrist. Not as an insult, but because we sincerely believe that they could maybe learn some coping strategies to get along better with other people. But for some people the rules are different. When someone complains that Steve Jobs verbally abused his employees, or when someone complains that Linus Torvalds uses unnecessary profanity, a lot of people start to justify this behaviour. They claim it is necessary for their success, etc.
  - vacri 13y ago
    Torvalds is not 'falling into a rage', he's venting, and doing it in a controlled manner, as a ton of people do. He also doesn't 'keep yelling angrily' - it only appears that way because the only comments of his that get publicised are the fruity ones. I remember one of this 'Linus Swore!' threads on HN a while back, linking to a comment of Torvalds' that had little in it but anger... presented out of context. I went back and had a look, and it was in a bug thread where it was around comment 120. Up to that point, most of his comments (about 10% of the thread) were informative and trying to explain the issue to the recipient of his eventual ire, who obstinately refused to give way. That Torvalds had spent a dozen patient comments was not advertised... only the one with his final anger. This is why these threads fire passion in me despite not being a kernel dev myself, because there is clear and constant misrepresentation of who he is and how he operates.
    - jakobe 13y ago
      You are right, I don't know much about Torvalds. He might be a very patient person most of his life. Like any public figure, he is probably badly misrepresented on the web. But what makes me sad is that when he does snap, there's a large number of people who come and justify his behaviour. People don't say "You are misrepresenting him!". People say "He gave so much to us. He has the right to behave this way."
      - jdbernard 13y ago
        A lot of people use the "he's given so much" defense as a reaction to how widely it seems to be published out of context. This seems especially when they appreciate the culture that created the kernel but have not been following the discussion themselves. There is some feeling that this painfully honest abrasiveness is part of what makes the whole distributed contribution culture work so well and that if we do not defend this uniqueness it will give way to the same watered-down politics you find in so many corporate and even open source projects. Which is kind of silly because Linus isn't going to change. He has made that much clear.
  - scotty79 13y ago
    You can't be careful enough unless you abstain from saying what you mean. I think that's the whole point of this Linusgate. You think Linus is mental. You can't massage it out to be non derogatory unless you give up the content.
  - metaphorm 13y ago
    you just don't get it. you're still stuck on the notion of "socially inacceptable behaviour". the whole point here is that the standard by which you judge "socially acceptable" is broken and detrimental to the community. Linus behavior is socially acceptable. He is honest, passionate, says what he means, and most importantly, he is forgiving and doesn't hold grudges. The type of behavior that Linus is railing against here is the politically correct culture of insipid office politics, forced politeness, and concealing the true meaning of communications in order to make the communication a more effective tool of political manipulation. this encourages duplicity, causes people to become disengaged from the work and obsessed with their political relationship to their coworkers, and it breeds long lasting unacknowledged and unforgiven grudges. its a horror show. but you consider it "socially acceptable" because it matches your standard of politeness for some reason.
    - justin66 13y ago
      > this encourages duplicity, causes people to become disengaged from the work and obsessed with their political relationship to their coworkers, and it breeds long lasting unacknowledged and unforgiven grudges. Does anyone familiar with it think the Linux kernel development community has successfully avoided all that? Not Linus himself, but the community he leads and whose norms he helps set?
    - olalonde 13y ago
      This is a false dichotomy. There's a happy middle ground between being rude and playing insipid office politics. It's called politeness and doesn't have to make communications less effective or less honest.
      - metaphorm 13y ago
        its not a false dichotomy. sometimes tone IS content. if a person did something that you consider to be such a bad error that you wish them to hear your deep concern/annoyance then it is correct to be "rude", or rather to use harsh language and avoid sugar coating. Linus exemplifies this style of communication.
  - Quarrelsome 13y ago
    > I did not mean to call Torvalds names. Apparently I wasn't careful enough in my wording. _This_ is the problem. We're all engineers here, right? We appreciate that swearing in such a fashion is a concrete implementation of an abstract concept. The abstract concept of scorn or vehement disagreement. It just so happens your implementation was a little off before: "Apparently I wasn't careful enough in my wording" ... but even if you tidy it up, its still the same abstract. This post more or less proves his entire point. I can wander around in a professional capacity and utterly slaughter people with fancy sounding words because my implementation of scorn is _very_ sly when I'm in enterprise. Yours is IDENTICAL. > socially inacceptable > fall into a rage > yelling angrily > see a psychiatrist > Not as an insult > learn some coping strategies > get along better with other people That is all 100% unadulterated scorn. It's incredibly, incredibly personally _offensive_..... but your implementation is sly so it's acceptable in a "professional" environment. Personally I prefer Linus's implementation as its more straight-forward and its easier to see what he's thinking making it more clear how he feels if one were to work together with him.
return0 13y ago
He says he's angry in that message. Seemingly he'd rather lash out than be passive aggressive. If it was such a big deal, people would have forked the kernel under new leadership.
estebank 13y ago
I remember that thread. You have a senior kernel committer breaking userspace and then turning around and laying the blame on the userspace application when it broke. In Linus' email I see cursing, and an ass chewing for all to see. The thing is, the kernel mailing list being in the open makes it so we see conversations like this, but they should be seen as the equivalent of a private conversation, because that's what they really are.
- jakobe 13y ago
  I find verbal abuse in private just as inacceptable as in public.
  - estebank 13y ago
    I don't see that as abuse. I've lived with abusive people. They slowly but surely try to destroy you mentally, not through cussing, but in other ways that might even seem friendly at first. Being told what you did was moronic is very different to being told you are a moron. Linus is rude, not abusive. There is a difference.
  - Quarrelsome 13y ago
    Well you're going to find it hard to work with particular kinds of people then. Do you consider it a problem with _their_ attitude? ;)
glogla 13y ago
This email makes me wonder if Linus just likes hurting people.
bagacrap 13y ago
There is actually a ton of helpful feedback in that email in between the verbal lashings. I don't think he's trying to hurt this guy's feelings as much as he's trying to emphasize the importance of his point, which seems to be a tenet of the Linux kernel development philosophy.
Quarrelsome 13y ago
I don't think you get it. The premise of his attitude is that you've shat on his carpet. He wants to express his most wholesome distaste for the previous post this person made (breaking user space and then blaming user space). If someone shits on your carpet you don't make then a cup of tea, clean it up for them and ask them how their day was, you do _this_. It's effective communication. If you perform this text in a "professional" manner then you will completely lose the correct tone of the message, which is: DON'T FUCKING DO THAT. Psychiatrist? Bully? He's not punching this person in the face he's teaching them a very hard lesson on the correct attitude of a kernal maintainer.
claudius 13y ago
Which part of his behaviour in this email is unacceptable in particular? Let’s look at it: > Mauro, SHUT THE FUCK UP! Okay, so he tells Mauro to stop talking because he apparently thinks that what Mauro was saying is wrong. To make very sure that what he wrote is read, he puts in fancy caps and some light swearing, which, however, is not directed at anyone in particular. A more polite version of this would have been ‘No.’, but I don’t see any bullying/abuse. > It's a bug alright - in the kernel. How long have you been a maintainer? And you still haven't learnt the first rule of kernel maintenance? It appears that this guy violated some rather important rule of kernel development which he should have known given his experience. Again, no name-calling or directed swearing whatsoever, however. Again, a more polite version could be ‘We don’t break userspace, and you know that.’, which doesn’t look particularly different to me. > If a change results in user programs breaking, it's a bug in the kernel. We never EVER blame the user programs. How hard can this be to understand? I would wager the guess that similar problems pop up from time to time and Linus is getting tired of seeing them all the time, hence his question. Again, no name-calling at all, also no abuse, but a (justified, though maybe slightly aggressive) question. > [technical details] > Shut up, Mauro. And I don't _ever_ want to hear that kind of obvious garbage and idiocy from a kernel maintainer again. Seriously. Again, no name-calling of the maintainer, but only an assessment of what he wrote, which, to Linus, appears very wrong. Again, more politely, this would have been ‘No.’ > […] And you've shown yourself to not be competent in this issue This is the first personal ‘attack’, however, it is still only aimed at the competence rather than person, and if the above holds true, is yet again entirely justified. Is this the line with which you had a problem? Linus then goes on to explain again why this particular idea was ‘TOTAL CRAP’, with some more colourful adjectives regarding the patch. Again, no abuse. > The fact that you then try to make excuses for breaking user space, and blaming some external program that used to work, is just shameful. It's not how we work. This could be interpreted as somewhat personal, though it likely only means ‘I expected better and am disappointed in you’. > Fix your f*cking "compliance tool", because it is obviously broken. And fix your approach to kernel programming. Note that the ‘fucking’ is for the ‘compliance tool’, which apparently is broken; the comment regarding kernel programming is again directed at their competence rather than person, so I don’t see any particular abuse there, either. The remaining question is then, why didn’t Linus just write something along the lines of ‘No. / Don’t break userspace. / No. / No.’? Likely because then someone would have called him out on not going into details or because they got the same email regarding three small mistakes and a question and now don’t know whether this issue is a similar ‘small mistake’ or something more problematic.
gregd 13y ago
I tend to try to live by The Four Agreements: Be Impeccable With Your Words Don't Take Anything Personally Don't Make Assumptions Always Do Your Best This is from an excellent book called, "The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom" by Don Ruiz. We could all do with a lot more of number two, don't take anything personally.
- gdulli 13y ago
  "We could all do with a lot more of number two, don't take anything personally." This is really a Postel's Law situation. Yes, your life will be improved if you can receive bad behavior and not take it personally. But it would be a shitty world to live in if this burden was only on recipients. The only robust way to maintain a worthwhile society is to expect, in the general case, that adults will have control of their impulses. Enabling this kind of behavior from celebrities is a loophole we might try harder to close, but fortunately, most of us don't have to deal with celebrities. I can't control what kinds of behavior that others will tolerate, and I won't lose sleep over the existence of name-calling among adults in the world, but there's no way I'd keep a job where I was treated that way, let alone continue to volunteer my time in that situation.
  - gregd 13y ago
    Well I agree with you based on the 2nd agreement only. But really what I should have said was we could see a LOT more use of the FOUR agreements out of everyone. Being impeccable with your word takes the "burden" off of the recipient, which of course is the first agreement.
    - gdulli 13y ago
      Ah. I might have misread the emphasis on that one point.

by jakobe 13y ago

vacri 13y ago

Another example of "he's not being polite, why can't be be polite, now I'm going to call him names", in this case, saying that he's mentally disturbed. Why is it that so many people demanding politeness of Torvalds can't live by their own rules? Perhaps what Torvalds is saying is true, that people will find ways around the 'false rules'.

jakobe 13y ago
I did not mean to call Torvalds names. Apparently I wasn't careful enough in my wording. I meant to express my frustration how the community often accepts socially inacceptable behaviour from accomplished people. When "normal" people fall into a rage, we tell them to learn coping with their anger. If they keep yelling angrily at people, we might even suggest they see a psychiatrist. Not as an insult, but because we sincerely believe that they could maybe learn some coping strategies to get along better with other people. But for some people the rules are different. When someone complains that Steve Jobs verbally abused his employees, or when someone complains that Linus Torvalds uses unnecessary profanity, a lot of people start to justify this behaviour. They claim it is necessary for their success, etc.
- vacri 13y ago
  Torvalds is not 'falling into a rage', he's venting, and doing it in a controlled manner, as a ton of people do. He also doesn't 'keep yelling angrily' - it only appears that way because the only comments of his that get publicised are the fruity ones. I remember one of this 'Linus Swore!' threads on HN a while back, linking to a comment of Torvalds' that had little in it but anger... presented out of context. I went back and had a look, and it was in a bug thread where it was around comment 120. Up to that point, most of his comments (about 10% of the thread) were informative and trying to explain the issue to the recipient of his eventual ire, who obstinately refused to give way. That Torvalds had spent a dozen patient comments was not advertised... only the one with his final anger. This is why these threads fire passion in me despite not being a kernel dev myself, because there is clear and constant misrepresentation of who he is and how he operates.
  - jakobe 13y ago
    You are right, I don't know much about Torvalds. He might be a very patient person most of his life. Like any public figure, he is probably badly misrepresented on the web. But what makes me sad is that when he does snap, there's a large number of people who come and justify his behaviour. People don't say "You are misrepresenting him!". People say "He gave so much to us. He has the right to behave this way."
    - jdbernard 13y ago
      A lot of people use the "he's given so much" defense as a reaction to how widely it seems to be published out of context. This seems especially when they appreciate the culture that created the kernel but have not been following the discussion themselves. There is some feeling that this painfully honest abrasiveness is part of what makes the whole distributed contribution culture work so well and that if we do not defend this uniqueness it will give way to the same watered-down politics you find in so many corporate and even open source projects. Which is kind of silly because Linus isn't going to change. He has made that much clear.
- scotty79 13y ago
  You can't be careful enough unless you abstain from saying what you mean. I think that's the whole point of this Linusgate. You think Linus is mental. You can't massage it out to be non derogatory unless you give up the content.
- metaphorm 13y ago
  you just don't get it. you're still stuck on the notion of "socially inacceptable behaviour". the whole point here is that the standard by which you judge "socially acceptable" is broken and detrimental to the community. Linus behavior is socially acceptable. He is honest, passionate, says what he means, and most importantly, he is forgiving and doesn't hold grudges. The type of behavior that Linus is railing against here is the politically correct culture of insipid office politics, forced politeness, and concealing the true meaning of communications in order to make the communication a more effective tool of political manipulation. this encourages duplicity, causes people to become disengaged from the work and obsessed with their political relationship to their coworkers, and it breeds long lasting unacknowledged and unforgiven grudges. its a horror show. but you consider it "socially acceptable" because it matches your standard of politeness for some reason.
  - justin66 13y ago
    > this encourages duplicity, causes people to become disengaged from the work and obsessed with their political relationship to their coworkers, and it breeds long lasting unacknowledged and unforgiven grudges. Does anyone familiar with it think the Linux kernel development community has successfully avoided all that? Not Linus himself, but the community he leads and whose norms he helps set?
  - olalonde 13y ago
    This is a false dichotomy. There's a happy middle ground between being rude and playing insipid office politics. It's called politeness and doesn't have to make communications less effective or less honest.
    - metaphorm 13y ago
      its not a false dichotomy. sometimes tone IS content. if a person did something that you consider to be such a bad error that you wish them to hear your deep concern/annoyance then it is correct to be "rude", or rather to use harsh language and avoid sugar coating. Linus exemplifies this style of communication.
- Quarrelsome 13y ago
  > I did not mean to call Torvalds names. Apparently I wasn't careful enough in my wording. _This_ is the problem. We're all engineers here, right? We appreciate that swearing in such a fashion is a concrete implementation of an abstract concept. The abstract concept of scorn or vehement disagreement. It just so happens your implementation was a little off before: "Apparently I wasn't careful enough in my wording" ... but even if you tidy it up, its still the same abstract. This post more or less proves his entire point. I can wander around in a professional capacity and utterly slaughter people with fancy sounding words because my implementation of scorn is _very_ sly when I'm in enterprise. Yours is IDENTICAL. > socially inacceptable > fall into a rage > yelling angrily > see a psychiatrist > Not as an insult > learn some coping strategies > get along better with other people That is all 100% unadulterated scorn. It's incredibly, incredibly personally _offensive_..... but your implementation is sly so it's acceptable in a "professional" environment. Personally I prefer Linus's implementation as its more straight-forward and its easier to see what he's thinking making it more clear how he feels if one were to work together with him.

return0 13y ago

He says he's angry in that message. Seemingly he'd rather lash out than be passive aggressive. If it was such a big deal, people would have forked the kernel under new leadership.

estebank 13y ago

I remember that thread. You have a senior kernel committer breaking userspace and then turning around and laying the blame on the userspace application when it broke. In Linus' email I see cursing, and an ass chewing for all to see. The thing is, the kernel mailing list being in the open makes it so we see conversations like this, but they should be seen as the equivalent of a private conversation, because that's what they really are.

jakobe 13y ago
I find verbal abuse in private just as inacceptable as in public.
- estebank 13y ago
  I don't see that as abuse. I've lived with abusive people. They slowly but surely try to destroy you mentally, not through cussing, but in other ways that might even seem friendly at first. Being told what you did was moronic is very different to being told you are a moron. Linus is rude, not abusive. There is a difference.
- Quarrelsome 13y ago
  Well you're going to find it hard to work with particular kinds of people then. Do you consider it a problem with _their_ attitude? ;)

glogla 13y ago

This email makes me wonder if Linus just likes hurting people.

bagacrap 13y ago

There is actually a ton of helpful feedback in that email in between the verbal lashings. I don't think he's trying to hurt this guy's feelings as much as he's trying to emphasize the importance of his point, which seems to be a tenet of the Linux kernel development philosophy.

Quarrelsome 13y ago

I don't think you get it. The premise of his attitude is that you've shat on his carpet. He wants to express his most wholesome distaste for the previous post this person made (breaking user space and then blaming user space). If someone shits on your carpet you don't make then a cup of tea, clean it up for them and ask them how their day was, you do _this_. It's effective communication. If you perform this text in a "professional" manner then you will completely lose the correct tone of the message, which is: DON'T FUCKING DO THAT. Psychiatrist? Bully? He's not punching this person in the face he's teaching them a very hard lesson on the correct attitude of a kernal maintainer.

claudius 13y ago

Which part of his behaviour in this email is unacceptable in particular? Let’s look at it: > Mauro, SHUT THE FUCK UP! Okay, so he tells Mauro to stop talking because he apparently thinks that what Mauro was saying is wrong. To make very sure that what he wrote is read, he puts in fancy caps and some light swearing, which, however, is not directed at anyone in particular. A more polite version of this would have been ‘No.’, but I don’t see any bullying/abuse. > It's a bug alright - in the kernel. How long have you been a maintainer? And you still haven't learnt the first rule of kernel maintenance? It appears that this guy violated some rather important rule of kernel development which he should have known given his experience. Again, no name-calling or directed swearing whatsoever, however. Again, a more polite version could be ‘We don’t break userspace, and you know that.’, which doesn’t look particularly different to me. > If a change results in user programs breaking, it's a bug in the kernel. We never EVER blame the user programs. How hard can this be to understand? I would wager the guess that similar problems pop up from time to time and Linus is getting tired of seeing them all the time, hence his question. Again, no name-calling at all, also no abuse, but a (justified, though maybe slightly aggressive) question. > [technical details] > Shut up, Mauro. And I don't _ever_ want to hear that kind of obvious garbage and idiocy from a kernel maintainer again. Seriously. Again, no name-calling of the maintainer, but only an assessment of what he wrote, which, to Linus, appears very wrong. Again, more politely, this would have been ‘No.’ > […] And you've shown yourself to not be competent in this issue This is the first personal ‘attack’, however, it is still only aimed at the competence rather than person, and if the above holds true, is yet again entirely justified. Is this the line with which you had a problem? Linus then goes on to explain again why this particular idea was ‘TOTAL CRAP’, with some more colourful adjectives regarding the patch. Again, no abuse. > The fact that you then try to make excuses for breaking user space, and blaming some external program that used to work, is just shameful. It's not how we work. This could be interpreted as somewhat personal, though it likely only means ‘I expected better and am disappointed in you’. > Fix your f*cking "compliance tool", because it is obviously broken. And fix your approach to kernel programming. Note that the ‘fucking’ is for the ‘compliance tool’, which apparently is broken; the comment regarding kernel programming is again directed at their competence rather than person, so I don’t see any particular abuse there, either. The remaining question is then, why didn’t Linus just write something along the lines of ‘No. / Don’t break userspace. / No. / No.’? Likely because then someone would have called him out on not going into details or because they got the same email regarding three small mistakes and a question and now don’t know whether this issue is a similar ‘small mistake’ or something more problematic.

gregd 13y ago

I tend to try to live by The Four Agreements: Be Impeccable With Your Words Don't Take Anything Personally Don't Make Assumptions Always Do Your Best This is from an excellent book called, "The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom" by Don Ruiz. We could all do with a lot more of number two, don't take anything personally.

gdulli 13y ago
"We could all do with a lot more of number two, don't take anything personally." This is really a Postel's Law situation. Yes, your life will be improved if you can receive bad behavior and not take it personally. But it would be a shitty world to live in if this burden was only on recipients. The only robust way to maintain a worthwhile society is to expect, in the general case, that adults will have control of their impulses. Enabling this kind of behavior from celebrities is a loophole we might try harder to close, but fortunately, most of us don't have to deal with celebrities. I can't control what kinds of behavior that others will tolerate, and I won't lose sleep over the existence of name-calling among adults in the world, but there's no way I'd keep a job where I was treated that way, let alone continue to volunteer my time in that situation.
- gregd 13y ago
  Well I agree with you based on the 2nd agreement only. But really what I should have said was we could see a LOT more use of the FOUR agreements out of everyone. Being impeccable with your word takes the "burden" off of the recipient, which of course is the first agreement.
  - gdulli 13y ago
    Ah. I might have misread the emphasis on that one point.