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I'd rather have people express how they feel directly instead of "professionally" backstab or marginalize me. And the military doesn't breed "aggressiveness" o

I'd rather have people express how they feel directly instead of "professionally" backstab or marginalize me. And the military doesn't breed "aggressiveness" outside of specific services and roles that require it. It does demand an inordinate "attention to detail" due to the fact lives are on the line, whether that be on ships, planes or just normal activities. This "attention to detail" is also seen among other professions, but seldom in software outside of NASA/avionics/medical/etc... Linus has laid out guidelines and expectations which while demanding, can be followed. If you can't test your code nor follow a checklist, then maybe you shouldn't submit patches to him. It's the military equivalent of passing barracks/quarters inspections, it should be elementary for professionals.

mpyne 13y ago
> I'd rather have people express how they feel directly instead of "professionally" backstab or marginalize me. Don't make it a strawman, as if the only alternative to treating each others like assholes is to be passive-aggressive backstabbers. Even the military has those, the Navy calls them SWOs :P. Even Linus doesn't make that claim directly, instead he says that the other cultures you might try to enforce lead eventually to the culture of PC passive-aggressive backstabbing, not that those are the only two options. I do agree that the Linux kernel has a much higher need for attention to detail than many other user-space projects. But I don't think every such detail-oriented project necessarily requires this type of culture. How is the environment developing SQLite, or Postgres? And even if we say detail-oriented projects need alpha personalities to enforce these checklists, where does that leave the majority of open-source development?