Torvalds: I Made Community-Building Mistakes With Linux 387
electronic convict writes In a Q&A at LinuxCon Europe, Linux creator Linus Torvalds — no stranger to strong language and blunt opinions — acknowledged a "metric sh*#load" of interpersonal mistakes that unnecessarily antagonized others within the Linux community. In response to Intel's Dirk Hohndel, who asked him which decision he regretted most over the past 23 years, Torvalds replied: "From a technical standpoint, no single decision has ever been that important... The problems tend to be around alienating users or developers and I'm pretty good at that. I use strong language. But again there's not a single instance I'd like to fix. There's a metric sh*#load of those." It's probably not a coincidence that Torvalds said this just a few weeks after critics like Lennart Poettering started drawing attention to the abusive nature of some commentary within the open-source community. Poettering explicitly called out Torvalds for some of his most intemperate remarks and described open source as "quite a sick place to be in." Still, Torvalds doesn't sound like he's about to start making an apology tour. "One of the reasons we have this culture of strong language, that admittedly many people find off-putting, is that when it comes to technical people with strong opinions and with a strong drive to do something technically superior, you end up having these opinions show up as sometimes pretty strong language," he said. "On the Internet, nobody can hear you being subtle."
The language in the old west (Score:4, Interesting)
was not so nice, either. As the newly occupied lands matured, so did language and behavior. This frontier is no different.
Re:The language in the old west (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there's a difference between using strong language on a person who demonstrably done something you don't agree with, versus death threats, continuous abuse, stalking or directing said vitriol against large groups people only related by race, gender, etc.
The wild west had a lot of advantages over "civilization", you did not have to suffer fools.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The language in the old west (Score:5, Funny)
Linus uses death threats?
Oh, you should hear the way he talks to a slow compiler...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The language in the old west (Score:5, Funny)
Well no shit, you stupid human some-sex fuck!
Hasn't anyone read Twain etc? (Score:4, Interesting)
Really? Where do you think a lot of fools went? It especially applies to gold rush situations all over the planet that century and not just the "wild west".
Re: (Score:3)
"Civilization" means being able to make death threats from the comfort of mom's basement, without fear of any serious retribution. Yes it's illegal and I have seen someone charged with a crime for it, but it ended up being a slap on the wrist. I'm not sure how "civilized" that is really.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Re: (Score:2)
Everybody, everyday, is saying "fuck", but somehow, your society has decided it should not be uttered...
The fact that profanity is taboo is the whole point. It it was acceptable, then people that want to shock or rebel, would have to move on to new words. People that use "fuck" in casual conversation are just ruining the word for the rest of us, that only use it for occasional emphasis, or, of course, its literal meaning.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup. Those fuckers.
Re:The language in the old west (Score:5, Interesting)
Everybody, everyday, is saying "fuck", but somehow, your society has decided it should not be uttered...
Not everyone. I decided to eliminate certain words from my speech because that's not who I want to be seen as, someone who is, even accidentally, foul-mouthed. It took me a week.
One of my sisters thinks it's stupid. She asked "So, do you tell people you're taking the dog out for a poo?" "No, I'm taking him out for a walk." "So you never swear?" "There's no need to." "Do you know how childish that makes you sound?" And yet she criticizes another sister for sounding like someone with Tourette's.
One good side effect is that on the rare occasions where I still am aggravated to the point where I want to swear, the habit of not swearing now acts like a "pause" button would act for sending emails that you later wish you hadn't sent. It forces me to look at my own reactions, and respond in (hopefully) a more helpful fashion.
People who have known me for a few years have remarked that they are impressed that, no matter the situation, I don't swear. They wish they could "keep their cool" the same way. Why not give it a try?
Re:The language in the old west (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The language in the old west (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a binary swear/never swear option. When I swear I try to reserve it for times when it really adds something to what I am saying. Usually it's for emphasis or comedy. Swearing all the time is just kinda lazy and makes it less effective.
Re: (Score:3)
How absolutely pointless. Words are just words. Sounds made by a human mouth, to which we've attached a meaning for the purpose of communication. They don't hurt anyone in and of themselves. Making an arbitrary division of words into "swear words" and "not swear words" and then not saying one category is ridiculous.
Sentences, on the other hand can and do cause offence and harm. Because they give words context. The offence in sentences doesn't come down to the individual words used, but the meaning of the id
Re: (Score:3)
One of your better decisions.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Srsly? My 19-year-old niece swears like a sailor. I've seen no evidence that Kids These Days swear less than we did. But we're not talking about swearing. We're talking about saying things that would get the shit beaten out of you if you said them to one of your beloved manly men face to face. Torvalds would be a bloody spot on the pavement if he said some of the things he's said to people to some guy in a bar.
So let's not pretend that that kind of behavior is socially acceptable. It's not, and t
Re: (Score:2)
In the wild west you would have got shot for saying the things Torvalds has said. And unfortunately, this is a mouth-only apology. The way he worded it makes it clear he's not serious. More's the pity.
Re: (Score:2)
That's right. You guess. And no, I'm not fantasizing.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
open source is hardly "the frontier" anymore. It's pretty well established.
On the Internet, nobody can hear you being subtle. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's going in my quotes file.
Re: (Score:2)
That's going in my quotes file.
What?
Re: (Score:3)
LT LP (Score:5, Insightful)
Linus does not claim victimhood and speaks with humility. Can you think of how this sets him apart from another noted developer?
Re:LT LP (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Er, if you ignore things like lack of a stable driver API then sure. Lots of users would have loved one of those.
But Linus encounters fewer problems like that because he has little in the way of vision for what desktop Linux should be. His job is to make a UNIX kernel along the same lines they were being designed 30 years ago. He is largely judged by how tightly he replicates a long-dusty commercial design. Desktop Linux on the other hand has no such luxuries because old commercial UNIX was never a force on
Re:LT LP (Score:4, Funny)
Has it been working so far? (Score:5, Interesting)
At the end of the day, he created and manages the largest open source project ever. More than 20 years on, it is still going strong. I am not about to find faults with his management style. People have been free to fork it and run with it. Nobody has done that. Perhaps a little bit of screaming every now and then is needed for this job.
He gave us Linux and he gave us git. Maybe we should stop nitpicking and say thank you for once.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is that too many people can't understand the difference between "strong language" and "personal attacks" so the much of the community has this culture of speaking in an abusive and condescending manner under the justification that "that's how Linus speaks to people".
Even on the occasion that he does slip in a few personal attacks every now and then he is the dictator of the most widely used open source project around so it is tolerable, when this trickles down to other contributors and they take
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Most popular, yes. Largest? Not by a long shot. As some folks are all-too-happy to remind folks, Linux is "just the kernel".
Re: (Score:3)
The linux kernel. It's in your desktops, in your web servers, in your cell phones, in your cars, in your televisions, in your game systems, in your embedded devices... if it were to suddenly go away, the landscape of modern technology would drastically change.
Sure, Linus is harsh with his words. So is a drill instructor. I would say that both have equally important jobs. Sure, when developing the kernel, nobody's life is at stak
Re:Has it been working so far? (Score:4, Insightful)
Web servers and cell phones, yes. The rest, not so much.
Realistically almost no one runs Linux on their desktop. Even Unix sysadmins lean heavily to Windows (or Mac). Windows with cygwin makes a more effective Unix workstation for most all uses than does Linux.
The embedded realm (including TVs) is dominated by BSD, for license reasons if nothing else. That's if they want/need a heavy weight OS; Most embedded systems either have no OS or a small real time OS.
The only game system that runs Linux is Steam Box.
And last but certainly not least, if Linux fell off the face of the Earth today, very little would change tomorrow. The BSDs are a drop in replacement for 99.9% of Linux use cases. And frankly, would do the job better: Linux is popular despite merit, not because of it.
Re: (Score:3)
At the end of the day, he created and manages the largest open source project ever. More than 20 years on, it is still going strong. I am not about to find faults with his management style. People have been free to fork it and run with it. Nobody has done that. Perhaps a little bit of screaming every now and then is needed for this job.
He gave us Linux and he gave us git. Maybe we should stop nitpicking and say thank you for once.
The fact it's been a success doesn't mean it's been as successful as it could have been, nor does it mean it will continue to succeed in the future. The key to maintaining a successful project is to continually evaluate it. The current culture may work great, or it may be driving talented devs away from both the kernel and other projects that have followed its lead.
No one is doubting Linus' contributions, but that doesn't mean things can be even better.
Re: (Score:2)
People have been free to fork it and run with it. Nobody has done that.
Seriously? Forking is practically how git works, and there are lots of people running kernels with patches that aren't in mainline. Practically every distribution does this. And every embedded hardware shop.
Of course these people usually merge new changes from the mainline kernel periodically. So maybe that doesn't count for your definition of "fork".
Re:Has it been working so far? (Score:5, Funny)
and he gave us git
And for that I will never forgive him.
Re: (Score:2)
Can you please save your systemd frustrations for posting on soylentnews [soylentnews.org]? We don't quite have enough of those yet.
I don't think you can put much blame about systemd on Linus. At least the first search I made on "linus torvalds systemd" was an article reporting a somewhat annoyed comment [softpedia.com] by Linus regarding the inability of systemd developers to fix their own bugs.
Re:Git is an example of Linus Torvalds at his wors (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet we use it, because it's that effective If you can make a better git than git, I'm sure we'll all eventually move to it. But right now your armchair-quarterbacking.
You strike me as the kind of person that also considers all men latent rapists.
So what I think you're saying is that Linus should have iterated on git privately, indefinitely, until it meets your standard of done-ness?
I dunno, he hasn't gotten divorced yet, he's living a stable life, enjoys what he does, and is making a very positive contribution to society. Exactly what about him do you think is so in need of fixing that we should attend to that rather than, for example, find more time reading to our own kids?
Please warn us when you know its ISBN.
No it's not. In no way have you demonstrated that we have a moral or practical obligation to consider your statements. In fact, the only reason I'm writing about them at all is because I felt you needed an intervention, not Linux.
Re: (Score:3)
Effectively, Git is abusive. It drags every user through a steep learning curve.
You strike me as the kind of person that also considers all men latent rapists.
Wow, you're really an asshole. Because someone had an argument you didn't like, you conflated them with someone else you didn't like, in a way that let you work rape into the conversation.
Re: (Score:2)
Git started out as a quick hack to respond to criticism of linux using BitKeeper. He fixed that "bug." Torvald's goal in creating git was to get off BitKeeper, not to develop an SCM as his main project.
Since this is open-source, and you think the documentation is poor, why don't you fix it?
Or you could fork it and make something simpler to use.
For example, he could recognize when his anger is caused by not getting enough caring in childhood, and not think that events in the present caused his anger, when events in the present only made him aware of his anger.
Now you're talking like a useless git. Do you have ANY proof that he didn't get enough caring in childhood, or do you just go around slandering people's paren
Re: (Score:3)
Since this is open-source, and you think the documentation is poor, why don't you fix it?
Good job falling back on the old "Well why don't you just fix it yourself then, smarty man" argument. Congratulations, you are an example of the hostile community we're talking about.
Re: (Score:3)
Since this is open-source, and you think the documentation is poor, why don't you fix it?
You don't need to be a baker to know the bread is stale.
No, but if you don't like stale bread and you don't want to shop elsewhere, you can either bake your own or continue to eat the stale bread.
Can't bake? Well, you can always learn, or sponsor someone else to bake for you. Same as open source, and how large portions of the competitive economy work. If you're not satisfied with a product, switch suppliers.
1. If you're not satisfied with a product, switch suppliers.
2. No alternative suppliers? Congratulations, you've discovered a market niche you can
Re:Git is an example of Linus Torvalds at his wors (Score:4, Informative)
If we care about him, and we should, we must help him become more socially capable. For example, he could recognize when his anger is caused by not getting enough caring in childhood,
Who the FLYING FUCK are you to determine that? What gives you the right to judge the way someone else goes about their interactions? To decide that they are in need of you help?
This sort of bullshit moral superior armslength personal judgement makes me So Fucking Angry. You don't know him. You are not his therapist. You have no right to tell someone you do not know how they are in need of your help.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm glad that there is a virtual lynch mob around willing to shout down bad ideas. Some things are just bad ideas. They are very well understood as to why they are bad ideas. Yet people proceed (and kid themselves) despite of a lot of sound reasoning and appeals to first principles.
Past a certain point you have to turn the volume up to 11 just to get dissent to register to some people.
I'm not convinced (Score:5, Interesting)
"One of the reasons we have this culture of strong language, that admittedly many people find off-putting, is that when it comes to technical people with strong opinions and with a strong drive to do something technically superior, you end up having these opinions show up as sometimes pretty strong language," he said. "On the Internet, nobody can hear you being subtle."
Excuses, excuses. One can easily be heard and still be professional if he wants to. Linux alone is so cool and influential that the leader of the project will certainly get noticed even without peppering everything with insults and cursing.
Re:I'm not convinced (Score:5, Funny)
Go fuck yourself.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I'm not convinced (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, it works well for me.
I spent 4 months trying to be polite and respectful - only to see my project going through the tubes.
It was only when I got pissed off and, literally, attacked verbally some (well deserved, by the way) key people that things started to get done.
I yelled, I cursed, I became blatantly offensive - including, sadly, some other people that didn't deserved (neither had the temper to hold it).
However, now I have control over the project. Things are getting done, deliverables are getting delivered. And my only other real regret (besides yelling to whom didn't deserved it) is that I took too long to get mad. One month earlier, and I would had managed to deliver the project on the proper due date (and got some more sleeping nights).
If you are really committed into delivering good products, the decision about how you behave doesn't belongs to you anymore: you will do what you have to do to get shit done.
Swearing is not much of a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
There are much worse things than swearing and being offensive, especially if soneone deserves it.
Getting results is what's critical. Being nice is a nice to have, but ultimately less important. In other words I'll take competent assholes who get things done over impotent nice guys. And competent assholes tend to stop acting like assholes when you earn their respect.
On the other hand, I would be reluctant to work with an asshole who's being an asshole without a good reason just because he likes hurting people. That is wrong. But this is now what we are talking about here- I never heard Linus being like that.
--Coder
Re: (Score:3)
One can easily be heard and still be professional if he wants to.
Have you had much luck with that approach in a major open source software project?
Re: (Score:3)
Guido manages. I'm not sure about Larry Wall, but I suspect so. Walter Bright manages.
Different people have different management styles. Linus' style *is* rather abrasive at times, but he gets the job done. (As do Guido and Walter Bright. Perl, however, seems to have stagnated.)
P.S.: I'm not a user of Perl, so someone more familiar with the community may well correct my opinions as an outside observer.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't know about Libre Office, but Firebox would behefit from a few more people telling certain devs how truly awful they've done this past year. It's bad. So bad.
Re: (Score:2)
"One of the reasons we have this culture of strong language, that admittedly many people find off-putting, is that when it comes to technical people with strong opinions and with a strong drive to do something technically superior, you end up having these opinions show up as sometimes pretty strong language," he said. "On the Internet, nobody can hear you being subtle."
Excuses, excuses. One can easily be heard and still be professional if he wants to. Linux alone is so cool and influential that the leader of the project will certainly get noticed even without peppering everything with insults and cursing.
Could it be different is a really interesting question, mostly because it's impossible to answer. Big projects that span decades are the result of thousands of decisions, perhaps hundreds of thousands of interactions. Linus has found a certain style that appears to work for him and the team closest to him so I won't say it's wrong, but if his style were different would he have attracted different people to that inner circle, and would those people have been more effective or less? Can't say.
What's interest
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
sudo apt-get remove libncurses
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, but sometimes, colorful language accents a point. And sometimes, it makes people laugh. Linus uses it to do both, often at the same time.
Linus is a fairly eloquent writer. The imagery his descriptions evoke are always sharp and to the point. If he uses colorful language, it's often warranted in the context of the discussion. Said language only appears egregious when taken out of context.
Re: (Score:3)
Berating the stupid is being "professional" in my books.
Molllycoddling the incompetent just leads them to think they're better than they are.
Maybe I imagined it... (Score:5, Interesting)
...but isn't the reason Linus tends to be blunt due to an experience early in Linux's existence?
Someone came in with a big, grand idea and asked if this is something Linux needed.
Linus replied with something meant to be taken as a polite NAK.
Guy didn't get the subtle hint, and proceeded to go off and spend x months developing feature.
Came back with patches and had the whole thing rejected.
Guy left saying he was so depressed he may commit suicide.
Since then, Linus has been up-front and directly.
Can't remember who, what, where or when
Anyone?
Re:Maybe I imagined it... (Score:5, Informative)
He talks about it in this video, a couple of minutes after the time selected (35:46 into the video). [youtube.com]
details, details (Score:2)
Society hypocrisy.... (Score:2)
Is it that the language used is too harsh, or that today's society is just too much censored and purged from any form of negativity ? Creating thin-skinned irresponsible generations.
It's pretty much impossible in a tech company to have an opinion, not have to excuse oneself about having this opinion, and have a long and brilliant career in the company. Sometimes, this translate into worthless technical discussion where nobody is giving any counter argument. Those followers are generally also those getting p
Re: (Score:2)
You imply that Linus's comments are technical attacks and not personal attacks. Far from the case. He likes to say things like referring to other developers sucking c***. That's a personal attack, not a technical one. Next time a coworker proposes a solution that you think lacks technical merit, tell him he sucks c*** and see how productive that discussion is.
Re:Society hypocrisy.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say growing a thicker skin is probably as important as having enough self control and creativity to get your point across without using extra words that don't add a whole lot to the discussion.
ie: if your neighbors above your apartment are too loud, you should get used to dealing with noise, but they ALSO shouldn't have their sound system at max.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Its a balance. The important part is knowing when and how to be assertive. Being an arrogant asshat is a variation of that for sure, and it will work to some extent, but the important part is that you're assertive, not that you act like a 9 years old who just learnt "bad" words.
If you know your stuff, you assert that you know your stuff, and can make coherent arguments, you'll get somewhere.
Take any of Linus' more famous mailing list arguments where he rips someone to shred, remove the "offensive" words, an
Re:Society hypocrisy.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
It's that the language used is too harsh. A hundred years ago that kind of language would have gotten you shot. The sense in which our society is gentler is that nobody has gone gunning for Linus yet. Personally, I think that's a good thing, but it's no excuse for him to behave that way. It's totally possible to express disagreement without shrieking.
What you read has been cleaned up (Score:5, Informative)
Try reading the examples (Score:3)
Try reading the examples and come back when you find some to show he's "routinely" insulting the person instead of what the person has done - I don't misunderstand, you are misrepresenting. People a century ago were not somehow more stupid than us and more likely to misunderstand and take personal affront for something indirect (such as your patronising putdown of myself based on something that does not appear to be true).
Re: (Score:2)
Is it that the language used is too harsh, or that today's society is just too much censored and purged from any form of negativity ? Creating thin-skinned irresponsible generations.
It's pretty much impossible in a tech company to have an opinion, not have to excuse oneself about having this opinion, and have a long and brilliant career in the company. Sometimes, this translate into worthless technical discussion where nobody is giving any counter argument. Those followers are generally also those getting promoted, but also the most incompetent. I might represent an utter minority, but I'm only giving negative feedback. What I'm being asked is to provide a technical analysis, not to be friend with my boss. It would seem that people are unable to be honest with one another.
I fully understand Linus' comment, it is sad to have to antagonize people and community, but on the other side, if you comply to every whim, you're not aiming for excellence, and stay mediocre. Compromise is the worst. While it is sad to see people unable to differentiate between a technical and personal attack, and the other way, some person making personal attack from technical point, we might just have to live with it.
All in all, I prefer to have enemies, and be true to my principle, rather than only have friends and keep compromising on my value.
Your post sounds like one giant false dilemma. You can be true to your principles without insulting or bashing people. You can have an opinion and express it firmly without rubbing it in the face of your colleagues until their skin bleeds. You can have disagreements without resorting to name-calling. You can do your work while being polite.
Also, "thin-skinned irresponsible generations"? Spoken like an old geezer alright.
Poettering Was Funny (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitch-ass whiners got their feelings hurt (Score:4, Insightful)
Would Apple be where it is if Jobs wasn't an asshole?
Do you think Linux would still be a success if Linus wasn't there to keep dumbasses from accumulating more political clout than technical competence and steering it toward ruin?
I bet we'd all be using Hurd now, we'd have a colony on Mars, and there'd be peace in the Middle East. Nothing promotes innovation faster than living in a hugbox that respects all opinions!
Re: (Score:2)
Would Apple be where it is if Jobs wasn't an asshole?
I'd like to point out that Jobs wasn't just that... He also paid *really* well for success from the people that worked directly for him. As long as you stayed on his good side anyway...
Re: (Score:2)
Would Apple be where it is if Jobs wasn't an asshole?
Do you think Linux would still be a success if Linus wasn't there to keep dumbasses from accumulating more political clout than technical competence and steering it toward ruin?
Being a fuckhead like Jobs or Torvalds is ONE way of enforcing order. But it's not the only way. It's probbably the most obvious and easy though. But no, I don't agree that Jobs and Torvalds have to be shitheads for Apple and Linux to succeed.
Re: (Score:2)
Being a fuckhead like Jobs or Torvalds is ONE way of enforcing order. But it's not the only way. It's probbably the most obvious and easy though. But no, I don't agree that Jobs and Torvalds have to be shitheads for Apple and Linux to succeed.
I think that Jobs and Torvalds confuse deference for respect. Both are components of successful leadership styles.
They also might know the difference, but just not care.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
would Jobs still be alive if he weren't an asshole to whom no one could tell anything?
language != abuse (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope it's not just me, I don't really have a problem with the strong language or pointed critique. Linus only really employs it for smart people who should know better, and will actually engage in conversation, and he's typically constructive. And funny.
The asshats are the people like Pottering, GNOME, and certain figures editing the HTML spec who don't give a damn about users, authors, and/or developers. The people who can't possibly imagine any use-case outside themselves or their company.
They're the maintainers in Open Source who close your bug reports without any questions because they can't imagine how your use case could possibly be relevant to them. Come on guys, at least ask a question if you don't understand the bug report/feature request.
Re: (Score:3)
Come on guys, at least ask a question if you don't understand the bug report/feature request.
Also when you close bugs you sometimes just hope it went a away with time... When I do this, arguably smaller projects, I try to close with a "Reopen if still relevant" comment... But sometimes forget.
:)
Managing bugs is a lot of work... Sometimes it's calls for a non-perfect solution... Also a bug thread can grow so big that reading up on it is hard. I see quite often people mixing 3-4 issues into one... Just google for something about NetworkerManager gnome-shell and password dialog
Re: (Score:3)
This. Absolutely this.
Though in the case of GNOME if you know about the development team and how depressingly under-funded and under-staffed they are I can understand. Case in point is GNOME Terminal - transparency was removed and bug report was immediately closed. The thing was the whole back end to Terminal was re-written and re-implementing transparency (it's "working" in edge right now btw.) was a super low priority issue compared to other more major issues. They certainly could have won some sympathy b
Re: (Score:3)
In the parts of the W3C I work in, they're awfully nice and very responsive. They communicate, consensus is a requirement for moving forward (with provisions for voting if and only if there's an impasse - I've never seen it used), and follow-ups will be made several weeks after you make an objection to verify the resolution stayed resolved. Some of the most helpful companies I've worked with recently have been, to my surprise, IBM, Adobe, PayPal, and Oracle (that is to say, their representatives are interes
Why is shitload spelled sh*#load? (Score:5, Insightful)
We all know the word is shitload. We all know Linus is swearing, and he didn't bleep himself. This is an adult website, not a child website. So can we please have an honest depiction of what's actually said rather than some silly characters replacing the full spelling of the word like this is a cartoon? FCC rules don't apply to slashdot, that's radio and TV.
I'll never understand this weird deception people have that if you miss-spell fuck as f*ck, shit as sh-T, cocksucker as c*cksu**er, piss as p*ss, motherfucker as motherf*cker, cunt as c*nt, and tits as t*ts, you're someone "not swearing". Uhh.. yeah. (My regards to the late George Carlin)
Re:Why is shitload spelled sh*#load? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought metric for shitload was fecogram.
Re:Why is shitload spelled sh*#load? (Score:5, Insightful)
Vellmont - it isn't that we aren't all adults (or pretend to be adults) - it is the various filtering software of the places we may be reading from might flag the whole site (or at least the content we are trying to look at) as inappropriate for our location if it is riddled with the uncensored versions of what is considered profanity. That is the main reason you see the self-censoring of messages.
samzenpus and electronic_convict two fuckwits (Score:2)
Do you pay any attention to what is going on around you? Poettering wasn't calling out Linus he was calling out critics of shittyd ... that is systemd
Re: samzenpus and electronic_convict two fuckwits (Score:5, Funny)
Re: samzenpus and electronic_convict two fuckwits (Score:5, Insightful)
Megalomania. Poettering wants Poetterix, and since he cannot be the lead kernel person, he tries to make some kind of "wrapper" around the kernel with systemd. That person is possibly the worst that could have happened to Linux.
O_DIRECT (Score:3, Funny)
I was looking to improve some I/O performance by using aligned buffers and O_DIRECT and ran across this tirade from Torvalds:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2002/5/1... [lkml.org]
"The thing that has always disturbed me about O_DIRECT is that the whole
interface is just stupid, and was probably designed by a deranged monkey
on some serious mind-controlling substances"
Re:O_DIRECT (Score:5, Informative)
Way to go with the selective quote there, Ace. Here, let me be so kind as to include the footnote you left out of your quote:
[*] In other words, it's an Oracleism.
Let's also provide some context, shall we?
Here's the entire message:
Date Sat, 11 May 2002 11:04:45 -0700 (PDT)
From Linus Torvalds
Subject Re: O_DIRECT performance impact on 2.4.18 (was: Re: [PATCH] 2.5.14 IDE 56)
On Fri, 10 May 2002, Gerrit Huizenga wrote:
> In message , > : Li
> nus Torvalds writes:
> >
> > For O_DIRECT to be a win, you need to make it asynchronous.
>
> O_DIRECT is especially useful for applications which maintain their
> own cache, e.g. a database. And adding Async to it is an even bigger
> bonus (another Oracleism we did in PTX).
The thing that has always disturbed me about O_DIRECT is that the whole
interface is just stupid, and was probably designed by a deranged monkey
on some serious mind-controlling substances [*].
It's simply not very pretty, and it doesn't perform very well either
because of the bad interfaces (where synchronocity of read/write is part
of it, but the inherent page-table-walking is another issue).
I bet you could get _better_ performance more cleanly by splitting up the
actual IO generation and the "user-space mapping" thing sanely. For
example, if you want to do an O_DIRECT read into a buffer, there is no
reason why it shouldn't be done in two phases:
(1) readahead: allocate pages, and start the IO asynchronously
(2) mmap the file with a MAP_UNCACHED flag, which causes read-faults to
"steal" the page from the page cache and make it private to the
mapping on page faults.
If you split it up like that, you can do much more interesting things than
O_DIRECT can do (ie the above is inherently asynchronous - we'll wait only
for IO to complete when the page is actually faulted in).
For O_DIRECT writes, you split it the other way around:
(1) mmwrite() takes the pages in the memory area, and moves them into the
page cache, removing the page from the page table (and only copies
if existing pages already exist)
(2) fdatasync_area(fd, offset, len)
Again, the above is likely to be a lot more efficient _and_ can do things
that O_DIRECT only dreams on.
With my suggested _sane_ interface, I can do a noncached file copy that
should be "perfect" even in the face of memory pressure by simply doing
addr = mmap( .. MAP_UNCACHED .. src .. )
mwrite(dst, addr, len);
which does true zero-copy (and, since mwrite removes it from the page
table anyway, you can actually avoid even the TLB overhead trivially: if
mwrite notices that the page isn't mapped, it will just take it directly
from the page cache).
Sadly, database people don't seem to have any understanding of good taste,
and various OS people end up usually just saying "Yes, Mr Oracle, I'll
open up any orifice I have for your pleasure".
Linus
[*] In other words, it's an Oracleism.
Linus is good naturedly criticizing the interface as too database centric (Oraclesim). He's not calling out anyone, or maligning them.
I can't code, . . . (Score:2)
I can't code, but I can submit bug reports containing useful and valid information that is useful in fixing bugs. But in doing so, I've occasionally encountered a few asshats. I just move on to other projects that appreciate the feedback. Let those people wallow in their own inflated sense of self-importance.
Offense takes many shapes (Score:2)
You can offend in human language, and you can offend in computer language. What does Poettering want, a nanny?
Linus vs. most of management (Score:5, Insightful)
As a software developer, frankly I'd rather deal with Linus or someone like him than most of the management I've had to deal with at my jobs. At least with Linus you know exactly where he stands and exactly where you stand with him, and why. When he calls something "stupid", he's usually very clear about his reasons for thinking it's stupid. I can deal with that. I can argue my position with him because I know what his position and his reasoning is. And he won't take my arguing with him personally, or even particularly badly as long as I can trot out facts and hard numbers to back up my positions and counter his. Better that than management that won't tell you what they want, won't say what they mean and try to deny their own decisions in the face of copies of their own e-mails and memos.
strong language (Score:3)
still rather have Linus than not, or anyone else (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been using Linux for a VERY long time (like AMD K5 PR100 long), and have done kernel development at a few jobs over the years, and have a few minor edits in the repository. I've always appreciated Linus' forthrightness. He's had some strong differences with equally competent developers over the years, but in both the LKML and private correspondence, those comments and disagreements have been upfront and honest. When one of my edits was sent back for rework, the comments were not only honest, but constructive, and exposure to Linus' and his senior collaborators' comments have made me a better developer.
I know it sounds a bit "fanboy", but Linus isn't the only project "owner" out there I really respect, he's just the subject of this thread.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You will note that the censored phrase is "metric sh*#load". That's because the US still uses imperial f*$ktons.
Re: (Score:3)