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I see a lot of confirmation bias in these kinds of threads. Because Linux is a success, it must be because of Linus's particular brand of being a jerk, for the

I see a lot of confirmation bias in these kinds of threads. Because Linux is a success, it must be because of Linus's particular brand of being a jerk, for the same reason that Apple is a success because Steve Jobs was a jerk. That is, an effective leader must be a jerk. But there are lots of other companies that are successful where people don't act like jackasses. For example, Google culture is anti-jackass, Googley means not being a dickhead. If you have a problem, explain what's wrong calmly and coherently, it's more efficient. Simply telling someone that they, or their code, is a piece of shit is not likely to be as efficient. IBM is another, when I worked at T.J. Watson, people were very civil. Civility is not about being "fake" or "politically correct", it's about being able to communicate your position by reason instead of by emotion, by shouting, by abuse, by reptilian brain. Linus gets a lot of leeway because of his work on Linux, and we will forever be thankful for that. But I don't believe good works earns you a pass from criticism of behavior. The founders of the United States are forever thanked for the Constitution, but that doesn't let them off for being slaveholders. I expect there will be some reflexive downvoting on this for criticizing the prophet, but honestly, Linus makes geeks look bad socially. Say what you will about Richard Stallman, there are lots of things he says I disagree with, but he says them with integrity and positivism and love, and not with angry denouncements.

seivan 13y ago
Could you enlighten me, what did Stallman write about Jobs again?
- loser777 13y ago
  "As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, 'I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone.' Nobody deserves to have to die – not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing." Clearly, that was an angry denouncement... /sarcasm
  - seivan 13y ago
    No, it was passive aggressive bullshit, hidden in eloquent crap. The very thing Linus tries to avoid.
    - cromwellian 13y ago
      Seemed to be pretty obvious truth to me. Steve Jobs has created an ecosystem that is far more locked down than the 1984 he envisioned in the original Mac Ad. He has ushered in an era of computing in which the general purpose device is giving way to a device where you don't even control what content you can put on it. We used to think that DRM on desktop PCs was bad, but for mobile devices it's 10x worse. Now, see how I just explained the issue with Steve Jobs, instead of saying "He was a piece of shit who passed of Woz's work as his own, lied to him about money, denied paternity of his daughter, verbally abused employees and kept them in a state of fear, maintained an 'enemy list' of journalists, .....!" That's inflammatory rhetoric, and not relevant. The only thing that is relevant is the sea change in DRM'ed computing platforms have been popularized and his role in them, which is what Stallman was alluding too -- the effects of his leadership.
- cromwellian 13y ago
  "As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die -- not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing." And? I mean, it's tasteless right after his death, but is it equivalence to personal attack and intimation? Is the world black and white, and if someone says even one negative thing, then it's a full equivalence? You can delete the Stallman reference, and the point still stands.
dmix 13y ago
Just like Linus said, some people work better with certain types of people. If you are a highly sensitive person then working with Steve Jobs/Linus/Bill Gates [1] is probably not going to go well. The question might be that because Jobs/Linus/Gates are in positions of power and management, should they have to adjust their personality when working with other people? I'm not convinced that should be the case. Choosing to work with someone is largely voluntary. [1] http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/No-Bull-Bill-Gates-blunt-legacy-1277370.php http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/No-Bull-Bill-Gates...
- narrator 13y ago
  The big difference between Linux and Jobs/Bill Gates is that people working on Linux are not employees. They are more like friends at a dinner party. The host can be a jerk to his party guests when they say something the host finds disagreeable and as long as it is personal opinion and doesn't come to blows the offended guest can just leave in a huff and have their own party where the host is not invited.
  - inafield 13y ago
    The only problem with this perspective is that Linus is kind of the only show in town where it regards the Linux kernel. You can't just leave and have your own party without the host because the host has a monopoly on this particular party. Sure, you can fork the kernel, but good luck with that!
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      As much as anything can be forked, the Linux kernel can be forked. The only barrier to forking is the fact that most kernel developers are not bothered by Linus. Which raises the question of why we should want a fork if nobody wants a fork...
      - inafield 13y ago
        Narrator's comment, to which I was responding, implied that some might want a fork because the host is a 'bad' host. The other barrier is the effort required to compete with what is currently the most used Linux kernel base. It's not like forking OpenOffice, KDevelop, or Eclipse where you can compete as an alternative on top of a standard OS. It's replacing the basis of the OS that everything else is written to work for.
chipsy 13y ago
I have to agree with the "Linus isn't perfect" assessment. What's got him this far is in the results - much of his abuse is accompanied with "this is bad for userland" and a specific indication of where the patch went wrong. But criticism of developers is apparently too difficult for him. He doesn't distiguish between "this code is bad" and "YOUR code is bad" - indeed, he seems to enjoy pinning the perp and assuming they are an idiot and not just ignorant.
Taranis 13y ago
"I see a lot of confirmation bias in these kinds of threads." and I see yet again, another apologist for the herd mindset.
- cromwellian 13y ago
  Enlighten me, what is the herd mindset? Was Mr Spock on Star Trek or Data "part of a herd mindset", because they didn't engage in verbal insults on the crew when they disagreed?
  - Taranis 13y ago
    Let's not beat around the bush. This is exactly the type of insidious tripe that wants to make everyone the same, that wants to live in a gingerbread world where they hold hands and sing Kumbayah. We tell kids in school and adults to "be themselves and be an individual", yet, your way of thinking wants to remove any individuality and homogenize them so every one is polite and considerate of everyone else's garbage opinion as if they all had equal weight, They do not. Telling people they are doing something dumb, even in harsh terms can be useful, as it will drive the point home. That's not to say be mean, but, be direct and upfront.
    - cromwellian 13y ago
      Oh that's right, not wanting people to be jerks is tantamount for wanting _Harrison Bergeron_. This slippery slope argument is garbage and YOU are a piece of shit for advocating it! You must watch Fox news and are a devotee of "shock jock" radio that tickles your reptilian brain and amps up the right neurotransmitters in the risk reward system to crave impolite and rude behavior! (I hope I drove home the point with that bogus rant that individuality-through-angry-shouting doesn't elevate the debate at all, it just incentivizes the other party to become even more recalcitrant and unreasonable) Hot tempers and passionate are not the problem. Strongly worded rebuttals are not a problem. Direct ad hominem attacks are just unnecessary. You can be strong and aggressive without telling people to "SHUT THE FUCK UP" Trust me, being a dick isn't only way to be adversarial.
kazagistar 13y ago
While Linus should not be saying that all civility and political correctness are fake, I think there is a valid point to be made. For many people, such things ARE fake, and they prefer environments without it. The key idea, though, is that both are viable options. There is nothing inherently superior about "I think this patch could use work" vs "This patch is garbage", outside of emotional response, and to some people, the first is actually worse, for the reasons he stated. And just as it would be out of place for someone in google to state "You ought to be expressing your code reviews with less weasel words and more profanity to be more honest", it is wholly out of place for someone to come in to the linux kernel mailing lists and demand everyone stop swearing as much to be more "professional". They think your communication sucks because it is indirect and dishonest. You think their communication sucks because it is vulgar and excessive. Maybe the best solution is to understand that in a different culture, similar ideas may be expressed differently, and be tolerant of these cultural and personal differences?
- cromwellian 13y ago
  How about "This patch has the following problems...." which would be much more conducive to getting the person to fix them, rather than provoking a flame war. I've been online since the 80s, and I have seen this attitude over and over, that somehow, SHOUTING and INSULTS are "just part of the process" of engineering culture, and if "you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen" It's really an excuse for people, in many cases with ego problems, to justify behavior that most people find distasteful. It's no wonder many people are turned off from STEM fields where this kind of "alpha male" behavior is wide spread. We need more Vulcan and less Klingon, especially in fields where people consider themselves intellectually superior, more educated, and supposedly, more rational.
  - dobbsbob 13y ago
    "more vulcan less klingon" i think bones would disagree. I also don't think Neelix GNU operating system would be any good, it would just keep reaffirming sloppy development until everything fell apart because those people shouldve been dumped at the first habitable planet.
akkartik 13y ago
The linux kernel is a far less dysfunctional social setup than any of the other places you mentioned (even though it's older than some of them), and I weakly suspect it's partly because of Linus's modus operandi. People notice his swearing but not who he attacks. My observation has been that he's exquisitely careful about picking his targets, always picking people who've been in the group for a while, and never attacking a noob. This sets an extremely egalitarian tone for the group: nobody is immune, and anybody can be questioned on their actions. (I'm a lot less sanguine than him, though, about the effect this confrontational ethos has on the participation of women in the group.)
- jlgreco 13y ago
  He's attacked noobs before (I specifically recall one case on the git mailing lists) but I've never seen him attack a noob who wasn't trolling and already flinging mud themselves.
microtherion 13y ago
Ah yes, this is just brimming with positivism and love: http://edward.oconnor.cx/2005/04/rms http://edward.oconnor.cx/2005/04/rms
zeteo 13y ago
> Because Linux is a success, it must be because of Linus's particular brand of being a jerk [...] If you have a problem, explain what's wrong calmly and coherently, it's more efficient. Simply telling someone that they, or their code, is a piece of shit is not likely to be as efficient. You're setting up quite a straw man there by making it look as though Linus's first reply to things he doesn't like is "this is a piece of shit". In fact, if you go through these threads, in almost every case there is an escalation where he explains his reasoning first, in detail and repeatedly. When someone really doesn't get it, he will indeed escalate to foul language. Is that a bad thing? I don't think so. Unlike established corporations, the Linux community doesn't have options like subtly threatening to fire someone.
- anon1385 13y ago
  >You're setting up quite a straw man there by making it look as though Linus's first reply to things he doesn't like is "this is a piece of shit". In fact, if you go through these threads, in almost every case there is an escalation where he explains his reasoning first, in detail and repeatedly Yes it's true, his first responds isn't "this is a piece of shit". It's "YOU are a piece of shit". Here is the C++ rant: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57643/focus=57918 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57643... As far as I can see, that was his first post to that thread. He said his target was "full of bullshit", then proceeded into a rant about how C++ programmers are so bad he wants to deliberately keep them off his projects by pissing them off. I think it's a good example because there are plenty of criticisms of C++ one could make but Linus does a terrible job of putting forward those criticisms. He seems to be so blinded with rage that he can barely form a coherent argument. Additionally, as far as I can tell the people involved here were not old timer core git contributors, they were new people making an honest attempt to contribute, so the argument being put about that he only targets old hands who have a thick skin isn't true.
  - shrughes 13y ago
    He didn't write that blinded with rage. He carefully crafted a work of literature. The person he responded to was one of those sociopath fact-assumptors that make every online conversation difficult.

seivan 13y ago

Could you enlighten me, what did Stallman write about Jobs again?

loser777 13y ago
"As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, 'I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone.' Nobody deserves to have to die – not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing." Clearly, that was an angry denouncement... /sarcasm
- seivan 13y ago
  No, it was passive aggressive bullshit, hidden in eloquent crap. The very thing Linus tries to avoid.
  - cromwellian 13y ago
    Seemed to be pretty obvious truth to me. Steve Jobs has created an ecosystem that is far more locked down than the 1984 he envisioned in the original Mac Ad. He has ushered in an era of computing in which the general purpose device is giving way to a device where you don't even control what content you can put on it. We used to think that DRM on desktop PCs was bad, but for mobile devices it's 10x worse. Now, see how I just explained the issue with Steve Jobs, instead of saying "He was a piece of shit who passed of Woz's work as his own, lied to him about money, denied paternity of his daughter, verbally abused employees and kept them in a state of fear, maintained an 'enemy list' of journalists, .....!" That's inflammatory rhetoric, and not relevant. The only thing that is relevant is the sea change in DRM'ed computing platforms have been popularized and his role in them, which is what Stallman was alluding too -- the effects of his leadership.
cromwellian 13y ago
"As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die -- not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing." And? I mean, it's tasteless right after his death, but is it equivalence to personal attack and intimation? Is the world black and white, and if someone says even one negative thing, then it's a full equivalence? You can delete the Stallman reference, and the point still stands.

dmix 13y ago

Just like Linus said, some people work better with certain types of people. If you are a highly sensitive person then working with Steve Jobs/Linus/Bill Gates [1] is probably not going to go well. The question might be that because Jobs/Linus/Gates are in positions of power and management, should they have to adjust their personality when working with other people? I'm not convinced that should be the case. Choosing to work with someone is largely voluntary. [1] http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/No-Bull-Bill-Gates-blunt-legacy-1277370.php http://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/No-Bull-Bill-Gates...

narrator 13y ago
The big difference between Linux and Jobs/Bill Gates is that people working on Linux are not employees. They are more like friends at a dinner party. The host can be a jerk to his party guests when they say something the host finds disagreeable and as long as it is personal opinion and doesn't come to blows the offended guest can just leave in a huff and have their own party where the host is not invited.
- inafield 13y ago
  The only problem with this perspective is that Linus is kind of the only show in town where it regards the Linux kernel. You can't just leave and have your own party without the host because the host has a monopoly on this particular party. Sure, you can fork the kernel, but good luck with that!
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    As much as anything can be forked, the Linux kernel can be forked. The only barrier to forking is the fact that most kernel developers are not bothered by Linus. Which raises the question of why we should want a fork if nobody wants a fork...
    - inafield 13y ago
      Narrator's comment, to which I was responding, implied that some might want a fork because the host is a 'bad' host. The other barrier is the effort required to compete with what is currently the most used Linux kernel base. It's not like forking OpenOffice, KDevelop, or Eclipse where you can compete as an alternative on top of a standard OS. It's replacing the basis of the OS that everything else is written to work for.

chipsy 13y ago

I have to agree with the "Linus isn't perfect" assessment. What's got him this far is in the results - much of his abuse is accompanied with "this is bad for userland" and a specific indication of where the patch went wrong. But criticism of developers is apparently too difficult for him. He doesn't distiguish between "this code is bad" and "YOUR code is bad" - indeed, he seems to enjoy pinning the perp and assuming they are an idiot and not just ignorant.

Taranis 13y ago

"I see a lot of confirmation bias in these kinds of threads." and I see yet again, another apologist for the herd mindset.

cromwellian 13y ago
Enlighten me, what is the herd mindset? Was Mr Spock on Star Trek or Data "part of a herd mindset", because they didn't engage in verbal insults on the crew when they disagreed?
- Taranis 13y ago
  Let's not beat around the bush. This is exactly the type of insidious tripe that wants to make everyone the same, that wants to live in a gingerbread world where they hold hands and sing Kumbayah. We tell kids in school and adults to "be themselves and be an individual", yet, your way of thinking wants to remove any individuality and homogenize them so every one is polite and considerate of everyone else's garbage opinion as if they all had equal weight, They do not. Telling people they are doing something dumb, even in harsh terms can be useful, as it will drive the point home. That's not to say be mean, but, be direct and upfront.
  - cromwellian 13y ago
    Oh that's right, not wanting people to be jerks is tantamount for wanting _Harrison Bergeron_. This slippery slope argument is garbage and YOU are a piece of shit for advocating it! You must watch Fox news and are a devotee of "shock jock" radio that tickles your reptilian brain and amps up the right neurotransmitters in the risk reward system to crave impolite and rude behavior! (I hope I drove home the point with that bogus rant that individuality-through-angry-shouting doesn't elevate the debate at all, it just incentivizes the other party to become even more recalcitrant and unreasonable) Hot tempers and passionate are not the problem. Strongly worded rebuttals are not a problem. Direct ad hominem attacks are just unnecessary. You can be strong and aggressive without telling people to "SHUT THE FUCK UP" Trust me, being a dick isn't only way to be adversarial.

kazagistar 13y ago

While Linus should not be saying that all civility and political correctness are fake, I think there is a valid point to be made. For many people, such things ARE fake, and they prefer environments without it. The key idea, though, is that both are viable options. There is nothing inherently superior about "I think this patch could use work" vs "This patch is garbage", outside of emotional response, and to some people, the first is actually worse, for the reasons he stated. And just as it would be out of place for someone in google to state "You ought to be expressing your code reviews with less weasel words and more profanity to be more honest", it is wholly out of place for someone to come in to the linux kernel mailing lists and demand everyone stop swearing as much to be more "professional". They think your communication sucks because it is indirect and dishonest. You think their communication sucks because it is vulgar and excessive. Maybe the best solution is to understand that in a different culture, similar ideas may be expressed differently, and be tolerant of these cultural and personal differences?

cromwellian 13y ago
How about "This patch has the following problems...." which would be much more conducive to getting the person to fix them, rather than provoking a flame war. I've been online since the 80s, and I have seen this attitude over and over, that somehow, SHOUTING and INSULTS are "just part of the process" of engineering culture, and if "you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen" It's really an excuse for people, in many cases with ego problems, to justify behavior that most people find distasteful. It's no wonder many people are turned off from STEM fields where this kind of "alpha male" behavior is wide spread. We need more Vulcan and less Klingon, especially in fields where people consider themselves intellectually superior, more educated, and supposedly, more rational.
- dobbsbob 13y ago
  "more vulcan less klingon" i think bones would disagree. I also don't think Neelix GNU operating system would be any good, it would just keep reaffirming sloppy development until everything fell apart because those people shouldve been dumped at the first habitable planet.

akkartik 13y ago

The linux kernel is a far less dysfunctional social setup than any of the other places you mentioned (even though it's older than some of them), and I weakly suspect it's partly because of Linus's modus operandi. People notice his swearing but not who he attacks. My observation has been that he's exquisitely careful about picking his targets, always picking people who've been in the group for a while, and never attacking a noob. This sets an extremely egalitarian tone for the group: nobody is immune, and anybody can be questioned on their actions. (I'm a lot less sanguine than him, though, about the effect this confrontational ethos has on the participation of women in the group.)

jlgreco 13y ago
He's attacked noobs before (I specifically recall one case on the git mailing lists) but I've never seen him attack a noob who wasn't trolling and already flinging mud themselves.

microtherion 13y ago

Ah yes, this is just brimming with positivism and love: http://edward.oconnor.cx/2005/04/rms http://edward.oconnor.cx/2005/04/rms

zeteo 13y ago

> Because Linux is a success, it must be because of Linus's particular brand of being a jerk [...] If you have a problem, explain what's wrong calmly and coherently, it's more efficient. Simply telling someone that they, or their code, is a piece of shit is not likely to be as efficient. You're setting up quite a straw man there by making it look as though Linus's first reply to things he doesn't like is "this is a piece of shit". In fact, if you go through these threads, in almost every case there is an escalation where he explains his reasoning first, in detail and repeatedly. When someone really doesn't get it, he will indeed escalate to foul language. Is that a bad thing? I don't think so. Unlike established corporations, the Linux community doesn't have options like subtly threatening to fire someone.

anon1385 13y ago
>You're setting up quite a straw man there by making it look as though Linus's first reply to things he doesn't like is "this is a piece of shit". In fact, if you go through these threads, in almost every case there is an escalation where he explains his reasoning first, in detail and repeatedly Yes it's true, his first responds isn't "this is a piece of shit". It's "YOU are a piece of shit". Here is the C++ rant: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57643/focus=57918 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57643... As far as I can see, that was his first post to that thread. He said his target was "full of bullshit", then proceeded into a rant about how C++ programmers are so bad he wants to deliberately keep them off his projects by pissing them off. I think it's a good example because there are plenty of criticisms of C++ one could make but Linus does a terrible job of putting forward those criticisms. He seems to be so blinded with rage that he can barely form a coherent argument. Additionally, as far as I can tell the people involved here were not old timer core git contributors, they were new people making an honest attempt to contribute, so the argument being put about that he only targets old hands who have a thick skin isn't true.
- shrughes 13y ago
  He didn't write that blinded with rage. He carefully crafted a work of literature. The person he responded to was one of those sociopath fact-assumptors that make every online conversation difficult.