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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."
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Torvalds: I Made Community-Building Mistakes With Linux

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  • by stox ( 131684 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @05:38PM (#48163923) Homepage

    was not so nice, either. As the newly occupied lands matured, so did language and behavior. This frontier is no different.

    • by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @05:56PM (#48164081)

      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, Troll)

      by x0ra ( 1249540 )
      do you mean over today's hypocrite society utterly sanitize language. Everybody, everyday, is saying "fuck", but somehow, your society has decided it should not be uttered... What a despicable world... At least, back then, people had balls, not like today's overly feminized man...
      • 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.

        • by mellon ( 7048 )

          Yup. Those fuckers.

        • by BarbaraHudson ( 3785311 ) <barbara.jane.hud ... minus physicist> on Thursday October 16, 2014 @07:01PM (#48164741) Journal

          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?

          • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 16, 2014 @08:47PM (#48165503)
            Well why the fuck not?
          • 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

      • by mellon ( 7048 )

        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

    • by mellon ( 7048 )

      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.

    • by kuzb ( 724081 )

      open source is hardly "the frontier" anymore. It's pretty well established.

  • by Spazmania ( 174582 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @05:39PM (#48163935) Homepage

    That's going in my quotes file.

    • That's going in my quotes file.

      What?

  • LT LP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 16, 2014 @05:42PM (#48163963)

    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)

      by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @05:46PM (#48163995)
      Also doesn't charge ahead with full-bore stupid against half the user and developer base's advice.
      • 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

  • by linuxguy ( 98493 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @05:49PM (#48164019) Homepage

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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)

      by Zenin ( 266666 )

      "...he created and manages the largest open source project ever."

      Most popular, yes. Largest? Not by a long shot. As some folks are all-too-happy to remind folks, Linux is "just the kernel".

      • Perhaps "largest" isn't the right word. Perhaps "furthest reaching" is better.

        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
        • by Zenin ( 266666 ) on Friday October 17, 2014 @07:46AM (#48167827) Homepage

          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.

          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.

    • 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.

    • 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".

    • by Yunzil ( 181064 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @07:22PM (#48164911) Homepage

      and he gave us git

      And for that I will never forgive him.

  • I'm not convinced (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jones_supa ( 887896 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @05:51PM (#48164035)

    "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.

    • by Rinikusu ( 28164 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @06:14PM (#48164241)

      Go fuck yourself.

      • by Nemyst ( 1383049 )
        How's that "culture of strong language" working out for ya bud?
        • Re:I'm not convinced (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Lisias ( 447563 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @09:29PM (#48165721) Homepage Journal

          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.

    • 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?

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        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.

    • "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)

      by Anonymous Coward

      sudo apt-get remove libncurses

    • 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.

    • by msobkow ( 48369 )

      Berating the stupid is being "professional" in my books.

      Molllycoddling the incompetent just leads them to think they're better than they are.

  • by Ynot_82 ( 1023749 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @05:54PM (#48164061)

    ...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?

  • No One Can Hear You Being Subtle? ok....please post the actual "strong" words he used. and no ni33er, or C**t, or AssHat.
  • 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

    • 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.

      • by x0ra ( 1249540 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @06:20PM (#48164313)
        If you are referring to Linus' 'Guys, this is not a d*#@-sucking contest. If you want to parse PE binaries, go right ahead. If Red Hat wants to deep-throat Microsoft, that's *your* issue.' from http://linux-beta.slashdot.org... [slashdot.org], then it is a fully technical criticize of Red Hat policy choices. I don't see anything personal in that. If you have any other quote, please provide information on their context.
    • by Shados ( 741919 )

      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.

      • by x0ra ( 1249540 )
        I tried this approach. I was nothing but continuously stepped on. I have never been given more respect than after I started to stand my ground and be arrogant. Go figure. The society does not seem to actually work as you would like. If Linus was never arrogant with anybody, Linux would not be as successful as it is now. Linus and Pottering are no different than De Raadt or Stallman.
        • by Shados ( 741919 )

          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

    • by mellon ( 7048 )

      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.

      • by dbIII ( 701233 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @09:48PM (#48165791)
        Get some older relatives to tell you some stories of when they were growing up without sanitising them and you'll learn how wrong you are. You've likely missed the boat for 1914, but I managed to talk to some relatives about it a few decades ago. What you read about days gone past has been cleaned up and is not an accurate indication of how people spoke, and we are furthur hampered by talkies corresponding with the rise of a moral crusade aimed at Hollywood which gives very distorted view of the 1930s etc from film and recordings.
    • by Nemyst ( 1383049 )

      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.

  • by segedunum ( 883035 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @05:58PM (#48164091)
    Ironically, Poettering's rant only served to highlight the issues and interpersonal problems he was rather than Linus or anyone else.
  • by 0xdeadbeef ( 28836 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @06:17PM (#48164269) Homepage Journal

    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!

    • 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...

    • 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.

      • by hduff ( 570443 )

        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.

    • would Jobs still be alive if he weren't an asshole to whom no one could tell anything?

  • language != abuse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by diamondmagic ( 877411 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @06:18PM (#48164277) Homepage

    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.

    • by jopsen ( 885607 )

      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 :)

    • 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

      • 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

  • by Vellmont ( 569020 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @06:24PM (#48164349) Homepage

    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)

  • 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

  • O_DIRECT (Score:3, Funny)

    by Smallpond ( 221300 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @06:43PM (#48164545) Homepage Journal

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 16, 2014 @08:22PM (#48165355)

      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, 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.

  • You can offend in human language, and you can offend in computer language. What does Poettering want, a nanny?

  • by Todd Knarr ( 15451 ) on Thursday October 16, 2014 @08:18PM (#48165325) Homepage

    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.

  • by l3v1 ( 787564 ) on Friday October 17, 2014 @02:16AM (#48166693)
    Never having been involved in Linux development, but following it since the early days, I always had the feeling that without Linus' strong leadership - including sometimes strong language - Linux would've been derailed and forgotten years ago. He is right in many aspects, including the need for a strong hand in some cases in the FOSS world, especially when you're developing something as important as the Linux kernel. Such an important piece of tech/sw can't be rapidly and consistently improved with constant debates about directions. Of course, Linus' leadership might not be the best possible, but I think a lot of us is willing to accept his sometimes strong language and style given the results he produced over the years. The end doesn't always justify the means, but in this case I think it does.
  • by dltaylor ( 7510 ) on Friday October 17, 2014 @03:54AM (#48166949)

    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.

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