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Linus wants to keep this tone and considers it important. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/linus-torvalds-defends-his-right-to-shame-linux

by Argorak 12y ago

Linus wants to keep this tone and considers it important. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/linus-torvalds-defends-his-right-to-shame-linux-kernel-developers/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/linus-...

chippy 12y ago
>Torvalds doesn't want a "code of conduct," saying that "venting of frustrations and anger is actually necessary, and trying to come up with some ‘code of conduct’ that says that people should be ‘respectful’ and ‘polite’ is just so much crap and bullshit.” This is interesting when one compares it with other projects such as Django which have gone the whole other way in addressing modern views of how to approach diversity, gender issues, conduct etc.
- watwut 12y ago
  Arent diversity and gender issues orthogonal to this? You can have room full of diverse women, man, blacks, whites, young, old swearing a lot. You can have young-white-male-only group talking nicely to each other (while still being exclusive club rejecting anyone else).
  - Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
    They tend to be correlated though don't they and there's often a common root of "I don't care who you are, take me as I am, it's your problem".
  - Intermernet 12y ago
    Yes they're completely orthogonal. Linus (seemingly) doesn't care about a person's race, creed, gender, or sexual preference. He cares that they are breaking Linux (https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75), spreading misinformation about Linux (http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/linus-torvalds-remove-rdrand-from-dev-random-4/responses/9066 http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/linus-torvalds-remove-...), releasing software that breaks Linux (GCC 4.9.0), or being generally, and consistantly anti open-source (http://youtu.be/iYWzMvlj2RQ http://youtu.be/iYWzMvlj2RQ)
    - Argorak 12y ago
      Yes, but he does not care about the persons he attacks not being equipped with such good verbal weaponry as he is.
      - Intermernet 12y ago
        English is not, as far as I know, Linus's first language. I presume that any "verbal weaponry" he possesses is adopted and adapted from the "greater developer lexicon" (I just made that up) he absorbed through years of mailing-list / IRC exposure. Yes, good debaters shouldn't resort to emotionally laden language, but the best debaters just ignore it in the first place.
        Argorak 12y ago
        Yes, but he is very proficient at it, which I wouldn't expect of most people. English also isn't my first language and I avoid such discussions, because I don't feel equipped for them.
        dalke 12y ago
        Children in Finland start learning Engish in primary school, and Torvalds has lived in the US for the last 17 years, so I think you greatly over-emphasize mailing-list/IRC exposure. What you said about "the best debaters just ignore it in the first place" is incorrect. Debates are meant to convince others, so the debater must take the listeners into account. If the listeners can be swayed by the opponent's emotionally laden language - and we are all human - then the debater must not ignore it. The obvious responses are to use emotionally laden language in kind, or to call out the opponent for dressing bad logic behind good clothing.
  - diversitypolice 12y ago
    There is something of linguistic importance going on here with respect to diversity. If you hear a group of people casually swearing on the street, it's clear that you are absolutely not welcome to join in with them, unless you already have extremely close cultural connections to that group (or you want to have a physical fight). Language like this creates an in-group (who are comfortable with this scenario) and an out-group (who are uncomfortable). I would suggest that Linus is doing this deliberately, and there may be some advantage to that - he wants to work only with an in-group of people who are passionate and rigorous as he is, and harshly exclude everyone who doesn't fit this mould. It is acceptable for him to exclude some false negatives if it successfully excludes people who are inappropriate for the work. In doing that, it's not a coincidence that the in-group is mainly straight white males (closely similar to Linus) and the out-group is everyone else.
  - Gracana 12y ago
    It takes a certain type of person who has the grown a sense of technical entitlement and the necessary confidence to believe they're right and that they belong, even when Linus is making up a dozen colorful insults for the things they've done. That certain type of person could be anyone, but there is a strong bias towards those who can find role models that resemble themselves, those who were encouraged and had the resources to get into tech at a young age, etc.
  - rsynnott 12y ago
    I think this is actually a fairly common case. Take a hard-left political movement; generally quite diverse (in particular, socialist movements tend to have very high representation of women) and yet also very shout-y and argumentative. The opposite also happens; a common complaint of highly reactionary commentators is that people aren't responding 'civilly' to their regressive nonsense about the threat posed by the gays or how women's' place is in the home or whatever, but are instead using rude words and personal attacks.
- mirsadm 12y ago
  His reasons are bullshit. I don't care how frustrated you are, learn to control your emotions. Its very much possible to be direct without being an ass. Probably more effective too.
  - levosmetalo 12y ago
    > His reasons are bullshit. And there we go, talking shit about someone talking shit, all while complaining the when someone else talks shit it is not acceptable. > I don't care how frustrated you are, learn to control your emotions. Its very much possible to be direct without being an ass. Probably more effective too. Well, apply the same logic to yourself before requiring it from someone else.
  - robotresearcher 12y ago
    Intentional irony?
notacoward 12y ago
It might be fine for Linus to adopt such a tone, because he knows enough to moderate it up and down according to circumstances. It makes him more expressive. Note that the bug in question really does indicate some serious mistakes in the compiler, with serious consequences, and along with the invective he provides plenty of information. The problem is that hundreds of other kernel developers imitate his most severe tones all the time without such technical detail and even for technical issues where Linus himself wouldn't express disdain that strongly. That lack of "dynamic range" makes them less expressive, so nobody can tell when they're expressing justifiable concern/outrage and when they're just being dicks out of habit. It's like the second amendment of developer communication. That sort of verbal weaponry should be available, but its use still needs to be justified.
- eps 12y ago
  > hundreds of other kernel developers imitate his most severe tones all the time You are making this up. If you don't, then you should have no problem producing a handful of examples, because 100s of dev doing this all the time will have LKML and other places overflowing with them.
  - notacoward 12y ago
    Fortunately, I don't have to spend part of my vacation wading into that cesspit to satisfy your faux-curiosity. Others have already done so. The canonical example, of course, is Sarah Sharp. http://sarah.thesharps.us/2013/07/15/no-more-verbal-abuse/ http://sarah.thesharps.us/2013/07/15/no-more-verbal-abuse/ https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/15/329 https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/15/329 There are also plenty of examples here. http://fortunes.cat-v.org/kernelnewbies/ http://fortunes.cat-v.org/kernelnewbies/ Just look for "crap" or "s--t" or "idiot" or "Viro". Note especially that these are presented as humor, i.e. approvingly and not necessarily showing the worst examples that are just mean without even the saving grace of being slightly funny. This is not an illusion, not a new or unremarked-upon phenomenon. You're the one making things up when you act as though some reasonable person might believe otherwise.
    - 12y ago

by Argorak 12y ago

chippy 12y ago

>Torvalds doesn't want a "code of conduct," saying that "venting of frustrations and anger is actually necessary, and trying to come up with some ‘code of conduct’ that says that people should be ‘respectful’ and ‘polite’ is just so much crap and bullshit.” This is interesting when one compares it with other projects such as Django which have gone the whole other way in addressing modern views of how to approach diversity, gender issues, conduct etc.

watwut 12y ago
Arent diversity and gender issues orthogonal to this? You can have room full of diverse women, man, blacks, whites, young, old swearing a lot. You can have young-white-male-only group talking nicely to each other (while still being exclusive club rejecting anyone else).
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  They tend to be correlated though don't they and there's often a common root of "I don't care who you are, take me as I am, it's your problem".
- Intermernet 12y ago
  Yes they're completely orthogonal. Linus (seemingly) doesn't care about a person's race, creed, gender, or sexual preference. He cares that they are breaking Linux (https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75), spreading misinformation about Linux (http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/linus-torvalds-remove-rdrand-from-dev-random-4/responses/9066 http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/linus-torvalds-remove-...), releasing software that breaks Linux (GCC 4.9.0), or being generally, and consistantly anti open-source (http://youtu.be/iYWzMvlj2RQ http://youtu.be/iYWzMvlj2RQ)
  - Argorak 12y ago
    Yes, but he does not care about the persons he attacks not being equipped with such good verbal weaponry as he is.
    - Intermernet 12y ago
      English is not, as far as I know, Linus's first language. I presume that any "verbal weaponry" he possesses is adopted and adapted from the "greater developer lexicon" (I just made that up) he absorbed through years of mailing-list / IRC exposure. Yes, good debaters shouldn't resort to emotionally laden language, but the best debaters just ignore it in the first place.
      - Argorak 12y ago
        Yes, but he is very proficient at it, which I wouldn't expect of most people. English also isn't my first language and I avoid such discussions, because I don't feel equipped for them.
      - dalke 12y ago
        Children in Finland start learning Engish in primary school, and Torvalds has lived in the US for the last 17 years, so I think you greatly over-emphasize mailing-list/IRC exposure. What you said about "the best debaters just ignore it in the first place" is incorrect. Debates are meant to convince others, so the debater must take the listeners into account. If the listeners can be swayed by the opponent's emotionally laden language - and we are all human - then the debater must not ignore it. The obvious responses are to use emotionally laden language in kind, or to call out the opponent for dressing bad logic behind good clothing.
- diversitypolice 12y ago
  There is something of linguistic importance going on here with respect to diversity. If you hear a group of people casually swearing on the street, it's clear that you are absolutely not welcome to join in with them, unless you already have extremely close cultural connections to that group (or you want to have a physical fight). Language like this creates an in-group (who are comfortable with this scenario) and an out-group (who are uncomfortable). I would suggest that Linus is doing this deliberately, and there may be some advantage to that - he wants to work only with an in-group of people who are passionate and rigorous as he is, and harshly exclude everyone who doesn't fit this mould. It is acceptable for him to exclude some false negatives if it successfully excludes people who are inappropriate for the work. In doing that, it's not a coincidence that the in-group is mainly straight white males (closely similar to Linus) and the out-group is everyone else.
- Gracana 12y ago
  It takes a certain type of person who has the grown a sense of technical entitlement and the necessary confidence to believe they're right and that they belong, even when Linus is making up a dozen colorful insults for the things they've done. That certain type of person could be anyone, but there is a strong bias towards those who can find role models that resemble themselves, those who were encouraged and had the resources to get into tech at a young age, etc.
- rsynnott 12y ago
  I think this is actually a fairly common case. Take a hard-left political movement; generally quite diverse (in particular, socialist movements tend to have very high representation of women) and yet also very shout-y and argumentative. The opposite also happens; a common complaint of highly reactionary commentators is that people aren't responding 'civilly' to their regressive nonsense about the threat posed by the gays or how women's' place is in the home or whatever, but are instead using rude words and personal attacks.
mirsadm 12y ago
His reasons are bullshit. I don't care how frustrated you are, learn to control your emotions. Its very much possible to be direct without being an ass. Probably more effective too.
- levosmetalo 12y ago
  > His reasons are bullshit. And there we go, talking shit about someone talking shit, all while complaining the when someone else talks shit it is not acceptable. > I don't care how frustrated you are, learn to control your emotions. Its very much possible to be direct without being an ass. Probably more effective too. Well, apply the same logic to yourself before requiring it from someone else.
- robotresearcher 12y ago
  Intentional irony?

notacoward 12y ago

It might be fine for Linus to adopt such a tone, because he knows enough to moderate it up and down according to circumstances. It makes him more expressive. Note that the bug in question really does indicate some serious mistakes in the compiler, with serious consequences, and along with the invective he provides plenty of information. The problem is that hundreds of other kernel developers imitate his most severe tones all the time without such technical detail and even for technical issues where Linus himself wouldn't express disdain that strongly. That lack of "dynamic range" makes them less expressive, so nobody can tell when they're expressing justifiable concern/outrage and when they're just being dicks out of habit. It's like the second amendment of developer communication. That sort of verbal weaponry should be available, but its use still needs to be justified.

eps 12y ago
> hundreds of other kernel developers imitate his most severe tones all the time You are making this up. If you don't, then you should have no problem producing a handful of examples, because 100s of dev doing this all the time will have LKML and other places overflowing with them.
- notacoward 12y ago
  Fortunately, I don't have to spend part of my vacation wading into that cesspit to satisfy your faux-curiosity. Others have already done so. The canonical example, of course, is Sarah Sharp. http://sarah.thesharps.us/2013/07/15/no-more-verbal-abuse/ http://sarah.thesharps.us/2013/07/15/no-more-verbal-abuse/ https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/15/329 https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/15/329 There are also plenty of examples here. http://fortunes.cat-v.org/kernelnewbies/ http://fortunes.cat-v.org/kernelnewbies/ Just look for "crap" or "s--t" or "idiot" or "Viro". Note especially that these are presented as humor, i.e. approvingly and not necessarily showing the worst examples that are just mean without even the saving grace of being slightly funny. This is not an illusion, not a new or unremarked-upon phenomenon. You're the one making things up when you act as though some reasonable person might believe otherwise.
  - 12y ago