Kernel Dev Tells Linus Torvalds To Stop Using Abusive Language 1501
darthcamaro writes "The Linux Kernel Development Mailing List can be a hostile place for anyone. Now Intel developer Sarah Sharp is taking a stand and she wants the LKML to become a more civil place. Quoting her first message: 'Seriously, guys? Is this what we need in order to get improve -stable? Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation and violence. Ingo Molnar and Linus are advocating for verbal abuse. ... Violence, whether it be physical intimidation, verbal threats or verbal abuse is not acceptable. Keep it professional on the mailing lists.'"
The entire thread is worth a read, but Linus isn't buying it: "Because if you want me to 'act professional', I can tell you that I'm
not interested. I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The
same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to
buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and
backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because
THAT is what 'acting professionally' results in: people resort to all
kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their
normal urges in unnatural ways.'
He also offered cookies in exchange for joining the dark side. An earlier reply by Linus further explains why he thinks it is OK to be mean: most of the time, he's only yelling at people who should know better (cultivating a crew of lead developers bound to him by Stockholm Syndrome?).
polite - yet cutting and informative (Score:5, Informative)
The English have mastered delivering withering insults very politely. Simply being polite does not make you "nice". Is it more "professional" to wrap your disdain for an idea in language that is courteous on the surface? Maybe. Is the emperor going to change? Unlikely.
Re:This just in (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Political Correctness has no place in Kernel De (Score:5, Informative)
What some people call "political correctness," others call "having some fucking consideration for people other than themselves."
Re:Political Correctness has no place in Kernel De (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What about new talent? (Score:5, Informative)
Some of the high visibility mainline projects may be more prone to intolerance and abuse of, for want of a better phrase, newbie errors. You could try dipping your toes in the water in one of the useful if unglamorous projects that might be less harrowing. There are various orphan projects out there, others that get little attention, and some potentially useful but incomplete ones as well. Then there are projects designed for the newcomer. You might want to take a look at this:
KernelJanitors [kernelnewbies.org]
Re:Political Correctness has no place in Kernel De (Score:5, Informative)
I think (2) is something people often miss. If you're a n00b who posts something stupid on LKML, you are not going to get massive old-school-Usenet-style flames. When heated LKML arguments make it to Slashdot, it's almost always a case where both sides are actually reasonably known, like the maintainers of two different Linux subsystems having strong disagreements over direction. You don't find Linus flaming a college kid, both because that would be unnecessarily mean, and because it wouldn't be worth his time to write out long heated posts just to rebut n00bs.
Re:Political Correctness has no place in Kernel De (Score:2, Informative)
People talk that way at the office, it's just not openly aired.
If anyone spoke to another person in our office the way Linus does, he'd be taking his teeth home in a paper sack.
Linus has the protection of the intarwebz to prevent him from suffering the natural consequences of treating people the way he does.
Linus, in his own words, on why he is blunt (Score:5, Informative)
Linus talking about this very thing in a talk at Aalt University in Helsinki (video: 02:50 minutes). [youtube.com]
FYI, the entire video here (video, 01:03:57 hours). [youtube.com]
Re:Victim Card (Score:5, Informative)
This isn't about a woman. This is about someone new coming along and being surprised that the mailing list isn't even remotely like normal corporate politeness. The attitudes before this new person arrived are what's toxic, the difference is that the old timers have built up an immunity to the toxins so that they don't notice it anymore. Nothing at all in this feels like someone played a victim card.
The catch is that you can be stuck in both worlds. You're required at your corporate job to treat coworkers with respect but at the same time your job requires you to interact with a group that doesn't work that way and that you actually find distasteful. You can't back out of either world without serious drawbacks (ie, losing your job).
I think there's some false dichotomy from Linus here. He seems to split it up into either acting that way he does or else it becomes lying and backstabbing, because that's what he thinks "acting professionally" means. Ie, either he wears a bathrobe or else he has to wear a tie.
The backlash here from Linus is not because she's a woman and poeple should stop bringing that card into it. The backlash is because of the anti-corporate attitudes on that mailing list, they want to keep their fun club fun instead of having it be professional.
Re:Linus is just a mean old asshole... (Score:5, Informative)
From one of the more recent things he engaged his primary flame-cannon over, the person he aimed it at did screw up pretty badly and for no apparent reason (I mean, seriously, submitting code that you don't know if it works and you admit is probably not necessary? Don't do that).
So no, I don't think he's a dick for the sake of being a dick - he's a dick because people shouldn't be submitting things that are broken and that kind of person deserves to be told off.
As the main target for said outburst, it was definitely an epic f*ckup on my part. When I got the email, I pretty much chuckled and then said I need to do some damage control. I was not in any way offended. Linus later said:
For example, my latest cursing explosion was for the x86 maintainers, and it comes from the fact that I *know* they know to do better. The x86 tip pulls have generally been through way more testing than most other pulls I get (not just compiling, but even booting randconfigs etc). So when an x86 pull request comes in that clearly missed that expected level of quality, I go to town.
That is part of why I don't get offended when Linus curses at me.
Re:Linus management technique works (Score:4, Informative)
Let's get some perspective (Score:5, Informative)
Let's see what horrible thing Linus said to set this off:
On Fri, 12 Jul 2013 08:22:27 -0700, Linus wrote:
Greg, the reason you get a lot of stable patches seems to be that you make it easy to act as a door-mat. Clearly at least some people say "I know this patch isn't important enough to send to Linus, but I know Greg will silently accept it after the fact, so I'll just wait and mark it for stable".
You may need to learn to shout at people.
not someone new (Score:5, Informative)
Sarah Sharp is not a new person on LKML. She's the USB3 host controller maintainer. She's been there for a while, and she totally overreacted. Linus' original message was a tongue-in-cheek one talking about Greg Kroah-Hartman (who is a fairly large guy while Linus is not):
"Have you guys *seen* Greg? The guy is a freakish giant. He *should* scare you. He might squish you without ever even noticing."
Sarah's reaction was, "Seriously, guys? Is this what we need in order to get improve -stable? Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation and violence..."
Anyone who takes Linus' comments as a serious suggestion needs their head examined. It was *clearly* meant as a joke.
Re:Political Correctness has no place in Kernel De (Score:5, Informative)
Yours is not a fair statement. She’s been contributing to the Linux kernel for (as far as I can tell after a quick Google) 5 years or more. She’s not ‘attempting to join [the] community’; she’s already part of the community.
And she’s attempting to change it from within. Nothing, ipso facto, wrong with that.
30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks: Sarah Sharp [linux.com] <<-- describes her involvement with kernel in 2007.