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Professionalism? Torvalds is a teenager with too much privileges.

• watwut 12y ago
  Professionals come in various shapes. Torvalds is not the most polite man in the worlds, far from that. However, he achieved a lot, whether because or despite of it. So, yeah he reserve respect and deserve to be called professional. Although not to be called "the most polite man".
• dasil003 12y ago
  Torvalds has earned his privileges as much as any developer alive or dead. In fact, if his abstract power ranks up there with Fortune 500 CEOs and national leaders, I'd say he deserves his privileges more than most of them as well.
  • gkya 12y ago
    It'd be better if he knew some manners though. I can't believe the amount of people who will most selflessly throw themselves between Linus and criticisms.
    • nitrogen 12y ago
      It'd be better if he knew some manners though. At some point arguing over manners is like arguing what serialization format is best; it's just another way of exchanging information.
    • sjwright 12y ago
      Sure, I'd love to see Linus be more civilized in his criticisms. As it happens, nobody is perfect and I think Linus's imperfections are laughably trivial compared to many other people's.
    • watwut 12y ago
      Some of us have worked for corporation where all problems were sugar coated in nicely sounding phrases. They got hidden so nobodies feelings are hurt and criticized person did not even recognized there is a problem with his work. The whole system becomes dysfunctional in its own right.
      • boomlinde 12y ago
        There is a difference between sugar coating and showing a basic level of respect. Clearly expressing valid criticism without resorting to vitriolic language is something most people will have to work on, but as you say, it's very important for a functioning workplace.
      • gkya 12y ago
        So, if we can't work in sublime subtlety, we better become savage barbarians, as if “balance“ was hostile to civilisation. To not insult and to not swear is not to speak in “sugar-coated phrases“.
      • jnbiche 12y ago
        And some of us have worked for businesses where everyone is so busy being aggressive and showing how much of an alpha male they are that nothing gets done and all the customers are scared off. Not to mention potential employees. Whether or not Linus admits it, the same thing is happening with the kernel (wrt to contributors, the "employees" of an open source project). I know system developers who could make valuable contributions to the kernel but who refuse to work in that kind of atmosphere. And I can hardly blame them.
    • spacemanmatt 12y ago
      It's not a matter of manners. Breaking out the strong language is a clear way to separate the technicality from the opinion. People respond to taboo words differently than mundane ones.
  • boomlinde 12y ago
    I don't think that any of his accomplishments justify the kind of privilege he is exercising here.
    • Intermernet 12y ago
      Exactly what privilege is he excercising here? He's stated that GCC 4.9.0 is doing some "seriously crazy shit" as a response to a bug report on the Linux kernel mailing list. He at no point has insulted the GCC developers, the submitter of the bug, or anyone else who regularly reads the LKML. I'm not sure why you see defending the Linux kernel code against a problem in GCC 4.9.0 (with exact examples of why GCC is breaking the standards) is exercising any privileges, other than those granted by being the creator of Linux. I personally think that Linux, Git and recently, Subsurface definitely justify his behaviour here. If you want to argue with him, send him an email. He'll be glad to reply. Otherwise, don't complain about his behaviour on HN. It's the internet equivalent of talking about people behind their back.
      • gkya 12y ago
        It's not about whatever privileges he has, but his aptness for possession of those: I claim that he is not a good leader for Linux, acting irresponsibly, humiliatingly, and inconsiderately. He acts like a dictator, spewing derogatory and impolite phrases around, and people he targets do not have any chance to defend themselves as an army of people volunteer to defend him with childish arguments almost immediately, as if they were organised. A project this crucial to our communities functioning cannot be lead and represented by Torvalds, I say. And this shaves 15 karma off of my HN account -- not that I care the slightest but -- as if it was spamming or whatever, and not a criticism of an important figure in tech world.
        • vezzy-fnord 12y ago
          Actually, the people he targets do have a chance to defend themselves. What many neglect to mention is that he doesn't blow up at everybody, but only at respected developers (kernel or otherwise) who he expects to know better. Torvalds' management is one of the major reasons for Linux being successful, and sane. Look at the contemporary Linux userspace: it's in an absolute state of chaos, constant reinvention, poorly documented and composed of all sorts of brittle and baroque libraries.
• sjwright 12y ago
  If he was designing a video game, your assessment would be viable. As it happens though, Torvalds writes code that makes half the world function reliably; some would say his exceptionally direct attitude has served him well in this endeavor.
  • gkya 12y ago
    > Torvalds writes code that makes half the world function reliably He does what?
    • newaccountfool 12y ago
      He writes code that helps most of the servers running important code function, lets remove linux totally from the computing environment and you wouldn't even get a DNS request through let alone a webpage returned.
      • kgabis 12y ago
        He doesn't write code, but manages people who do.
        • newaccountfool 12y ago
          He used to, he wrote the initial. That's like saying Bill Gates never built Microsoft.
      • kgabis 12y ago
        He doesn't write code, but manages people who do.