Linus On Diversity and Niceness In Open Source 361
An anonymous reader writes "Linus Torvalds has sent a lengthy statement to Ars Technica responding to statements he made in a conference in New Zealand. One of his classic comments in NZ was: "I'm not a nice person, and I don't care about you. I care about the technology and the kernel — that's what's important to me." On diversity, he said that "the most important part of open source is that people are allowed to do what they are good at" and "all that stuff is just details and not really important." Now he writes: "What I wanted to say — and clearly must have done very badly — is that one of the great things about open source is exactly the fact that different people are so different", and that "I don't know where you happen to be based, but this 'you have to be nice' seems to be very popular in the US," calling the concept of being nice an "ideology"."
Linus is right (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, no, but I've noticed that the suckups who post with that headline always get modded up.
And I don't care about you personally, I'm an asshole and just want the results.
Re: Linus is right (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:No, Microsoft sucks, but Red Hat may be worse. (Score:5, Insightful)
Red Hat is likely to destroy Linux as we know it. That is something even Microsoft could not do.
I am a bit surprised that so many Linux do not understand how systemd is a scam that Red Hat is using to monopolize Linux.
I'm really surprised at how many of you act like luddites and want to control what others do.
If Linux is destroyd by all the systemd retards running across your lawn, you know exactly what the answer is. It's the same thing that people like you have been telling anyone with a complaint."
It's open source. If there is a problem - fix it.
In your world, the true believes in exactly how Linux muist be, should be able to rise, phoenix-like from the ashes, when systemd causes linux to utterly fail, by writing new and better operating systems the way that Linux must be.
You sound like people bitching about when they took lead out of gasoline, to make a car analogy. Going to destroy cars, going to have to do valve jobs at 50 thousand miles, it's not broken, don't fix it.
Yeah, I know - I just don't understand, right? At some point, that is the wrong answer.
Civility shouldn't have borders (Score:4, Interesting)
I use Linux everyday and have for a decade. I'm very glad for what Linus and the rest of the open source community have done for software and computing.
That said, Linux folks can be real assholes and there is no good reason for it. This is less of a problem as the community grows, but it clearly still exists.
People who are part of a society should always be civil to each other. Else we are all just closer to the apes from which we came than we think we are.
Re:Civility shouldn't have borders (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure what he meant exactly by not being nice. He seems okay until someone pisses him off with some bullshit. I believe he's just talking about not taking shit off of people. I'm nice to people who don't try to bullshit me but once they do I get down and dirty with them. This seems to me from what I have observed to be the same attitude Linus has. I get tired of putting up with people's crap and I'm sure that in his position he sees a lot more of it.
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I think that's exactly what he means - once someone starts obstructing a project there's not much point being nice to them and let them stay in the way instead of making it clear that they should get out of the way.
I saw a lot of it myself back when I was an engineer, before the internet became a big thing with lots of job opportunities:
A: That weld is out of spec and has a very large number
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There are often very good reasons to not be nice. The adage "Nice guys finish last" proves itself much more often than not.
Being civil = far less results.
As Psychiatrist Cate Milton (Mira Sorvino [wikipedia.org]) said in the House [wikipedia.org] episode, Frozen [wikipedia.org] - one of my favorites:
Indiscriminate niceness is overrated.
Re:Civility shouldn't have borders (Score:5, Interesting)
The adage "Nice guys finish last" proves itself much more often than not. Being civil = far less results.
The quote you cite comes from a paraphrase of former baseball manager Leo Durocher [wikipedia.org], and is intended to be understood in a sports context. Sports is a zero-sum game: somebody wins and somebody loses, and there are no points for character. The rest of life is not necessarily like that.
While "nice guys finish last" is often extrapolated (dubiously) to areas like dating, or is sometimes put in the mouth of realpolitik advocates like Niccolo Machiavelli or Henry Kissinger, it was never meant to be a general descriptor of how to get along in life. Some bosses - like Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, or pre-mellowing Bill Gates were legendary assholes and still got great results out of their employees. There are other people who manage their employees with a gentler hand and play to their strengths, and get good results too. Your mileage may vary as to which is the best approach, but I certainly know which environment I would thrive in and which one would make me quit the first day.
Sometimes even if all you care about is the end result you may find that the end result would have been better if you had viewed the road getting there as being full of unique persons and not interchangeable tools. If you just aren't good at dealing with people, then fine, don't try to make yourself that type of leader/manager. But just remember that - to fight adage with adage - "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."
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"While "nice guys finish last" is often extrapolated (dubiously) to areas like dating"
There's another adage that outdates this one: "all's fair in love and war" and, in Cervantes' words "Love and war are all one . . . It is lawful to use sleights and stratagems to . . . attain the wished end."
"Some bosses - like Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, or pre-mellowing Bill Gates were legendary assholes and still got great results out of their employees. There are other people who manage their employees with a gentler h
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Whoosh
Stupid Americans (Score:5, Funny)
What a ridiculous idea...you're on an internet forum, and you're not swearing at each other? Thanks a lot George W Bush!
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Blame the NSA, the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory [penny-arcade.com] clearly says Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total fuckwad.
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No no.....he's the messiah! Well, actually he is just another in a long, long line of lying ass politicians.
Where's this desire for "nice" coming from? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a polite Canadian, and worked much of my career for a "california cowboy company". We were never nice.
In many cases, what probably was meant as tongue-in-cheek comments came across poorly to Canadians and British, sometimes even as assholery or prejudice. I wouldn't expect "nicey nice" from my colleagues or my American cousins, and I'm quite surprised to see people in the US asking for it!
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I'm quite surprised to see people in the US asking for it!
I'm not. The USA is drifting farther away from being a meritocracy. More emphasis is placed upon achievement in social circles than professionally with STEM skills. "Nice" is a codeword for displaying the proper deference for people who may not have the technical skills to do a job but have been placed in charge (or see themselves as social leaders) of a group.
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There is more to life than STEM.
Often I wish the E stood for English, usually that thought occurs when I am reading status reports and documentation from Engineers.
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There is more to life than STEM.
Often I wish the E stood for English, usually that thought occurs when I am reading status reports and documentation from Engineers.
How about "STEEM" (with an extra E for English)?
Or to be more culture neutral - "STELM" (with L for Language)?
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How about "STEEM" (with an extra E for English)?
You should learn about the STEAM (with an 'A') movement. The idea is to add Art + Design to the equation, so that STEM is transformed into STEAM.
The idea makes sense to me, but I also see that there is an advantage of leaving the 'A' out of STEM -- having 'art' in the acronym would make it more obvious that the plutocrafts' real goal with STEM is to turn all the workers into starving artists.
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Or to be more culture neutral - "STELM" (with L for Language)?
How about SMELT, since it allows us to extract metal (in the form of productive results) from ore (in the form of people)?
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Often I wish the E stood for English, usually that thought occurs when I am reading status reports and documentation from Engineers.
If you're having difficulty communicating with Engineers and part of your job is reading their status reports and documentation, I'd argue that the problem is on your side.
Their job is to do engineering well. Your job sounds like translating between their attempt to translate technical nuances into stuff that upper management can understand. Perhaps you need to spend more time learning more about what they do.
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I want to know what is nice.
In short if people don't like you, no matter how good the technology they won't use it. They will accept the idea of inferior technology in order to get better support or at least not feel belittled. Technology suppose to help, if dealing with the expert makes you feel bad then it won't help.
However there is being nice and then there is being a pushover or a yes man. There are ways you can correct people and insure that they are not going to get screwed over.
How many good devel
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I'm a polite Canadian
There's another kind?
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Linus and Martin Luther King are in agreement (Score:4, Funny)
Linus:
I care about the technology and the kernel
Martin Luther King:
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their kernel
.
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Martin Luther King:
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their kernel
.
Hey, hey, HEY! Careful there. You might just get sued for copyright infringement by King's estate.
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Poor Dr. King... he never dreamed his children would actually be judged on the quantity and pettiness of their lawsuits.
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But hey, he got a holiday named after him! A day when...black kids stay home from school...
(all kids, but still...)
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That should read "........the quality of their code"
Being nice is why business is a clusterfsck (Score:4, Insightful)
You have to be nice in business in the US because the principals have money and generally no knowledge of technology.
They are a class (which we most assuredly do have as much as they deny it) that doesn't want, or have to know details and will most assuredly terminate you if give them cause to have to think. Cause would be butthurtedness for not lionizing their brilliance at being self made (it's tough when you come from the "middle class", which is what anybody who knows somebody with more money thinks they are). To them, wealth is how you judge intelligence. If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? You're just a peon if you have to beg for scraps (a.k.a. be an employee)
Thing is they are only capable of thinking about money and believe "the customer" (them) "is always right".
The only workaround is to have enough knowledge for them to exploit while being part of an organization small enough where nobody is really readily expendable.
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While talking to some good friends from the USA (current and former colleagues), I found this out:
- When Person A comes to you and asks for your opinion/feedback on person X (which they are considering hiring), you are not allowed to say person X sucks. At most, you can refrain from commenting. Reason? Person X might sue you. In Romania (where I live), person A actually expects you to be honest and nobody's suing you for saying person X sucks.
IMO this would make it a lot harder to hire someone based on info
Tangentially: "Smile or Die" USA & microkernel (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] "Acclaimed journalist, author and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich explores the darker side of positive thinking."
I've written before on how the monolithic Linux kernel design may be significantly increasing Linus' stress as a kernel manager (as the Kernel moves closer to some point of collapse or major security breach from complexity -- of which the systemd controversy is a big symptom).
https://www.mail-archive.com/f... [mail-archive.com]
But I don't see everyone migrating to Minix 3... :-) Or something else.
Tanenbaum's early choice of proprietary license for Minix will go down in history of one of the biggest licensing mistakes of all time -- even if it is free now, and recently had millions of euros of public funds poured into it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.minix3.org/ [minix3.org]
But had we all moved to Minix, we would probably not be hearing that much swearing by Andrew Tanenbaum or other Minix kernel maintainers compared to Linus Torvalds and other Linux kernel maintainers, as with so few core lines, there is not much to maintain in the Minix kernel, and so it is easier to test and debug. See:
http://wiki.minix3.org/doku.ph... [minix3.org]
"Monolithic operating systems (e.g., Windows, Linux, BSD) have millions of lines of kernel code. There is no way so much code can ever be made correct. In contrast, MINIX 3 has about 4000 lines of executable kernel code. We believe this code can eventually be made fairly close to bug free."
I feel ultimately that difference is why Linus Torvalds is stressed enough that he spouts so much profanity at kernel maintainers when they make a mistake -- a fact he may never be able to admit? :-)
Anyway, some of this is cultural. By contrast to the USA, people in, say, the Netherlands are more forthright and less quick to take offense (another cultural aspect). In the USA, you never know how quickly your cutting comment might make an enemy (including, say, the above). Anyway Linus, I may disagree on monolithic vs. micro kernel design obviously, but kudos to you for going free early and often!!! And git is great! :-)
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I feel ultimately that difference is why Linus Torvalds is stressed enough that he spouts so much profanity at kernel maintainers when they make a mistake
To be fair to Linus, he doesn't spout profanity when they make a mistake. For the profanity to spew forth, two conditions must be met:
1) It must be a VERY bad mistake, like purposely breaking backwards compatibility and then arguing that doing so is a good idea.
2) The developer has to be experienced enough that they should know better.
If they are inexperienced, he won't start yelling at them.
confusion (Score:2, Insightful)
One should not mix up "being nice" with "not being a dick"...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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There is not a reason that talent and asshole must always be coupled in the same person. And very few people who aren't assholes like to work in an abusive environment. Therefore, this kind of environment excludes people who have talent but who are not assholes. Of course, a "nice" environment excludes assholes for very similar reasons.
So what we need is what we've got: two distinct environments. One is where assholes with talent build one set of components, and nice people build other components. Occasio
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Linus is nearly always correct. He has a set of rules and requires a certain amount of quality. If you mess up, he'll correct you. Kind of like a parent being strict with their child for good reason. I don't mind "jerks", as lo
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I'm not saying Linus doesn't have talent, or that he's not "nearly always correct", but I am saying that he goes beyond stripping away sugar-coating, and resorts to name calling (I believe the phrase I once read was "unevolved chimpanzee"), and public (not private) belittling of people who makes mistakes. That's not simply "correcting you", that's not straddling the line in any way. That's fully crossing the line to being an asshole, and it's completely unnecessary. And here he is, talking about it again.
Re:Let's be blunt (Score:5, Insightful)
Number one can't be addressed within kernel community in any way. No point to even try. It should be addressed within our whole culture, by revising our notion of gender roles.
Do you have kids? I have 3: one boy and two girls. As far as gender role models go, my wife is also in the tech field. I do all the cooking at my house. My father-in-law does all the cooking at his house. My wife has cooked a total of five meals in 20 years. I've never seen my mother-in-law cook. The kids were effectively raised with reverse gender roles.
When the older two were three and four years old, we plopped them in the dirt while building our garden. The boy grab a matchbox truck that had been left over from the previous owners and start pushing it through the dirt making engine noises. The girl started making mud pies.
Sorry to be the one to inform you, but boys and girls are wired different from birth. Testosterone probably plays a huge role in this. I realize that that was political incorrect to say, but a little real world information would be great before going through and doing grand experiments on all of society to fit your perceived notion of the way things ought to be.
Re:Let's be blunt (Score:4, Interesting)
reminds me of an article by a progressive liberal feminist who had kids, she said that even though she kept all misogynistic toys from her boy and ensured he had a full suite of acceptable role models and no violent media.... he still played guns with the cardboard inner from toilet rolls.
Embrace our equality by all means, but understand our differences.
Re:Let's be blunt (Score:4, Interesting)
reminds me of an article by a progressive liberal feminist who had kids, she said that even though she kept all misogynistic toys from her boy and ensured he had a full suite of acceptable role models and no violent media.... he still played guns with the cardboard inner from toilet rolls.
My mom wouldn't buy me war toys so I made them out of legos, traded legos for war toys, and made war toys out of cardboard and tape. I own real guns today. Never shot anybody, hope never to shoot anybody.
I remember seeing a pic floating around of a car upside down in a doll cradle with a little blankie over it. Seems some parents gave their little girl a car to play with. She drove it around like you normally would a car, then when she was done she put it to bed so it could sleep.
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Well I have no idea where my kid got it.
When my son was born we decorated everything with animals. Gender neutral. And I wasn't trying to do some gender-neutral hippie thing, it's just...we picked animals.
I'm not a car guy. I don't have a truck. I don't watch tv shows about trucks (I watch very little TV at all). After he was about six months old we started taking him to a daycare where the only other kids were two slightly older girls who played with princess stuff.
My kid's first word? Truck. All about tru
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Mod parent down (Score:4, Interesting)
the boy/girl divide is fake. There's only one human mind and it's gender neutral in principle.
Why is it so hard for some people to realize that sexual dimorphism affects the physiology of the brain just as much as that of the rest of the body? There is a well established body of research documenting these differences in the brain, which are particularly pronounced in certain areas, such as the ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus. And since mind is what the brain does, there is every reason to conclude that biology is the primary determinant of many of the psychological differences that politically correct ideologues with a social engineering agenda — see parent post — ascribe to rearing and culture.
Re: Let's be blunt (Score:2)
So, you don't have kids.
Re: Let's be blunt (Score:3)
"To many women, just showing up should entitle them to respect and encouragement"
No misogyny here, right? Just pointing out the objective fact that men will work hard while women loaf around and complain, I'm sure. I can't understand why anyone would think tech has a sexism problem.
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Slashdot needs a "-1: Generalising and dismissing others on irrelevant physical attributes" modifier.
strawman; nobody's asking him to be "PC" or "nice" (Score:3, Insightful)
Linus is playing the "people want me to be PC" card, and mixing it in with some anti-American-ism for popularity.
Nobody's asking him to be PC. Not many people are asking him to be friendly or polite. People are asking him to not be publicly abusive, to not be a bully, and to recognize the impact his words have on others. It is perfectly possible to be an effective manager and leader without being abusive and bullying. Stick to the facts, among other things.
Ie:
"Your code check-in appears to cause a bunch of compile errors, so I've rolled it back. Also, I've noticed that this isn't the first time. We're a large-scale project and it is helpful if contributors extensively validate their contributions."
Not:
"Don't you know how to validate your code? Stop wasting my time! Come back to me when you've evolved past a chimpanzee." ...and also not:
"Hello! Thank you for your code check-in! Now, I'm sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news, but there's a small problem with your code. If it's not too much trouble...." etc etc.
Re:strawman; nobody's asking him to be "PC" or "ni (Score:5, Interesting)
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Nobody's asking him to be PC. Not many people are asking him to be friendly or polite. People are asking him to not be publicly abusive, to not be a bully, and to recognize the impact his words have on others.
So, PC then - its his project, he can run it the way he wants.
So what if words have impact on others - grow a pair and deal with it, requiring others to cater for your pansy ass feelings *is* asking them to be PC.
Being a bully is also subjective - you are there voluntarily as part of the project, you can leave the project just as voluntarily.
Abusive is also a PC subjective thing.
So yes, you are asking him to be PC, because PC is the current attitude pushed by certain pressure groups.
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If you are asking him to modify his behaviour because others do not like it or feel hurt by it, then yes that is being PC. The correct response to those people is "don't interact with him if you don't like his behaviour".
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But that's not the two options usually given, because the assumption made is that someone has a right not to be offended, and a right to be able to do something even if that means someone elses behaviour has to be modified to allow them to do it. Don't like the behaviour of a group leader but still want to take part in the group? The PC reaction is that your right to take part trumps the leaders right to be themselves. My reaction is that both of you have the same right - but that doesn't solve your problem
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We should get Linus one of those "doesn't play well with others" T-shirts. His behavior is somewhat over the top sometimes but then he's generally been provoked badly by that time. I think the fact that he does seem to get along well with a lot of kernel developers must mean he's capable of being civil when he wants.
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Your first response doesn't convey the additional problem the way the 2nd one does
What additional problem?
"Hi, I am the busiest man in the free software world, and you just consumed my valuable time with amateur level mistakes. We have a FAQ about this, which you either didn't read or didn't understand, and as a result, my productivity has suffered. Please re-read the contribution FAQ. If you are still confused, send a message to LKML, not to me"
"I've cc'd this response to LMKL so that others don't repea
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Nobody's asking him to be PC. Not many people are asking him to be friendly or polite. People are asking him to not be publicly abusive, to not be a bully, and to recognize the impact his words have on others. It is perfectly possible to be an effective manager and leader without being abusive and bullying. Stick to the facts, among other things.
Forget it, Lennert. You're not going to get an apology - you deserved everything that was said to you, and you know it.
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Most managers manage less than a couple of dozen individuals personally. They can afford to spend some time to shape employees into appropriate productive parts of the team.
If you're at a higher level and in one way or another in charge of thousands of individuals most people on lower levels will have the sense not to waste your time unless absolutely necessary, they're completely sure of what they're doing and their communication is highly relevant. Mail your 5k+ employee corp CEO with budget suggestions b
Re:strawman; nobody's asking him to be "PC" or "ni (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you even kernel mailing list?
Linus sends like 1000 emails a month. And 999 of them are perfectly civil. And he does exactly what you say. "Hey, this is broken, please fix."
And then they don't fix it.
"Ummmm, did you hear me? Why did you break this? Fix it."
After the third time, probably after they've mouthed off with some bullshit excuse about how it's not actually broken, or they're just not going to fix it, he loses his shit and cusses them out. And that's the one email that makes the rounds on the tech rags.
Also, it's his project. If that's the way he wants to run it, that's the way he can run it. He's not paying these people. They're not his employees. They're free to go fork the kernel and have their own software wonderland, with neither blackjack nor hookers.
And it's not like these people are just "generous volunteers." The most egregious fuck-ups are from Red Hat. Red Hat. Red Hat is not your friend. Red Hat is intentionally breaking shit and fucking with the entire Linux ecosystem to infect it and make it dependent on their projects. I will screw my tinfoil hat on a little tighter and suggest it might have something to do with the US Army being their largest customer. I don't know what their endgame is but I do not think the State likes the bulk of the world's economy and communications systems running on something they can't lock down and control. So instead they subvert.
The "be nice!" bullshit is just a psy-op to counter Linus' exasperation with the intentionally broken submissions from the poor, beleaguered "volunteers" from the billion-dollar, military-funded corporation.
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There is an unspoken assumption by "sensitive" people that they deserve your time, or that their ideas need to be heard irrespective of merit.
Disagreeing with them, correcting them, or challenging them is _offensive_ to them.
nice try, timothy (Score:2)
You're not going to draw me into a Slashdot thread on this subject. Ok, sure, I posted this one comment in the thread. But no more.
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Greg KH (Score:2)
Linus being Linus (Score:4, Interesting)
Linus is Linus, just as RMS is RMS; you have to take them on their own terms or leave them alone. Me, I leave them alone.
If you want to play in their sandboxes, you have to deal with their quirks. Kinda like with Apple.
Welcome to Earth, here's your pitchfork.
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Being an aspie, as I suspect both of them are to a certain extent, is not a get-out-jail-free-card for asshattery and not learning social niceties.
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"Aspie"-ness itself is no license, I agree. These peeps bring other skills to the table that make it worth tolerating their downsides. By all reports, Jobs was a narcissistic a-hole most of the time, but his eye for design and usability made him worthwhile. I got tired of working for/with people like that so I no longer do. I might have made one kernel contribution long ago, but no occasionto do Linux kernel work since then.
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Welcome to Earth, here's your pitchfork.
Well said.
genitals don't code, and Linus doesn't know my rac (Score:5, Insightful)
I (barely) qualify as a kernel contributor. Neither Linus nor anyone else involved with the kernel even KNOWS what my racial heritage is*. That's as it should be, because skin complexion doesn't have any effect on the quality of ideas or code. It's simply not relevant. It's a distraction. All this talk about "diversity" is a sneaky way of continuing to divide people into groups based on where their great-great-grandparents were born. It's a stealthily way of keeping racism alive, forcing the politics of division into situations where people don't know or care about your ancient ancestors, they care about getting job done and done well.
I've never seen a penis or vagina produce any code, so we don't need more women in tech, we need more competent people in tech. Competent people like my mother, my boss Rachel, and myself. Rachel has helped solve some tough problems at work. She's never used her boobs to do so, meaning they just aren't relevant.
* also, most Slashdot readers don't know my racial heritage. Some therefore make the most ridiculous and comical accusations, like the idiot the other day who accused me of "dog whistle racism". Apparently he thinks that "planning ahead" == "white". At first that's offensive, for him to imply that my family can't plan ahead because we're too dark. Then I remember living with that kind deeply racist thinking while hating racism and therefore hating yourself must be quite painful. I pity the guy.
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I've never seen a penis or vagina produce any code, so we don't need more women in tech, we need more competent people in tech. Competent people like my mother, my boss Rachel, and myself. Rachel has helped solve some tough problems at work. She's never used her boobs to do so, meaning they just aren't relevant.
Well, they do seem to produce an awful lot of DNA code and you'll never find "programmers" more protective of their work, even though one only updates the code once a month and the other is just spewing it out to see what sticks. And they are extremely proud when a million monkeys (not sure where the typewriters come in) do produce a Shakespeare.
P.S. I know it's technically the testicles and ovaries, but lighten up...
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I've never seen a penis or vagina produce any code
And that's why you're only barely a kernel contributor. You could code faster but you're only using your two hands to type when you have a perfectly good third appendage sitting idle.
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Fixed that for ya, bro.
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Some truly horrible behavior. It should not be tolerated. I find it interesting that it has degraded so much there since the author of that article attended defcon3. I know when I was young such behavior was not tolerated. One girl in my class was walking up to turn in a test at the teachers desk when one of the guys reached over and flipped her skirt up to see her panties. She turned around and slapped him hard and everyone in the class laughed at him with the palm print on his face. When the teacher
Okay, sort of. (Score:4, Insightful)
To an extent I agree with Linus. Being nice is not what counts. Especially if the project has a deadline approaching. But at the same time, there is a difference between not always being nice and being a belligerent asshole. And many times recently its obvious that Linus may not see that distinction.
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But at the same time, there is a difference between not always being nice and being a belligerent asshole.
Yep.
And many times recently its obvious that Linus may not see that distinction.
Nope.
(No, I am not going to provide any references. You didn't, so why should I? I'll just state that I haven't seen any examples, ever, of Linus being a belligerent asshole. He has been crass, blunt and very pointed, on several occasions. In each case, there has been justification(s) for it. He has never been an outright asshole. The reason is quite simple: He isn't an asshole.)
if you don't like it... (Score:2)
Old saying - Be nice to people on your way up ... (Score:2)
There's an old saying - "Be nice to people on your way up, because you'll meet them again on your way down."
No OS lives forever. Linux has gone from small to bloatware, the same as many of the projects associated with it. Sometime in the next 10 years we'll get yet another iteration of "Here's a nice small fast OS and toolset that does only a few things but does them really, really well."
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another iteration of "Here's a nice small fast OS and toolset that does only a few things but does them really, really well."
that'll be either systemd or FreeBSD, depending on your ideology :-)
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Where are the pitchforks? (Score:2)
Funny, when I have said the exact same thing on here, people whine that I should care about someone else, how I have no compassion or am just plain evil.
When Linus comes out and says the same thing, he's regarded as quirky and a hero.
Nice double standard. Just like, "Big government is in the hands of evil corporations! Get it out of our lives! Except when we want Big Government to force people to hand over their money to corporations so
Frustration (Score:2)
There's this idea in the US that you are never allowed to hurt anyone's feelings.
The problem with that is that people are irrational, oversensitive, and cannot control themselves. Interacting with such fragile daisies is like tiptoeing through a minefield.
It is not, to me, a foregone conclusion that assertive people should tolerate having to deal with sensitive people. That is the prevailing dogma in US business, but it's not clear why that should be the case.
The meta response to this entire conversation
Equal opportunity offender (Score:2)
I like this quote from Stargate SG-1:
[Col. Vaselov, a Russian recruit for the SGC, is insulted when O'Neill denies his request to join SG-1]
Dr. Jackson: Yeah, don't take General O'Neill's decision personally.
Col. Vaselov: Frankly, his attitude is offensive. It leads me to wonder if he knows the cold war is over.
Dr. Jackson: His attitude has nothing to do with you being Russian. He's an equal opportunity offender.
Sugar coating it just leads to people not getting the message, as long as you treat all the same no matter what sex or color or religion or whatnot they belong to - including not using that as derogative - it's fine with me. Same as when you won't fail people because that's not nice so a D is now the new F or refusing to time a children's race because they're all winners.
I remember when there was a big article and discussion about whether you could chastise other people'
Doesn't sound any less civil than Steve Jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
.. and these SJWs loved Steve Jobs. Idolized him, even.
Re:Doesn't sound any less civil than Steve Jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't compare Linus to Jobs: Jobs was borderline sociopath. Linus is blunt but at the same time can also be perfectly nice and amiable - it really depends on whether he has to interact with assholes or nice people. Jobs made everyone suffer, asshole and nice person alike.
An Ability (Score:2)
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Being nice is only valuable as an additional asset to your others.
You don't hire people just because they are nice even if they make terrible workers, salesman or whatever (being nice does not guarantee sales, maybe customer relations, but not sales).
Therefore, being nice - once you remove the ideology that a lot of people have - is not necessary to succeed (by whatever definition you care to choose - wealth, charity, etc.). Some of the most fun, intellectual, influential people I know are not "nice" at al
Is being "nice" being fake? (Score:2)
Nobody is going to happy with other people are doing all the time. If you think somebody is being jerk, but you just bite your tongue to be nice; are you just being phoney?
I am glad that Poettering is not nice (Score:2)
I am one of Poettering's favorite targets. I am one of those "UNIX grey beards" that Poettering has such deep contempt for.
Since Poettering is such an arrogant ass about it, I know where he stands. Poettering has made no secret of hating the UNIX way of doing things, and adoring the Microsoft way of doing things. So great, I know that LInux is being controlled by a Linux hater.
In fact, Poettering pisses me off the most when he pretends to be nice by saying that Red Hat listens to Linux user. What a total lo
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And I suspect that the components of most mission critical projects are selected with no thought about the personality of the leadership at all. Use it because its good. Don't use it if it's not.
If a project desends to being some sort of frat party, where everyone has to be drinking buddies and there is a social pecking order, I don't think it's a terribly 'critical' project.
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and what their values are.
"Their values" being a codeword for whether they go to the same church or smoke the same dope.
Nope. Basic economics: Whenever you weigh the relative values of several options, you assign relative weights to each characteristic being measured. The total weights add up to 100%. If one or more of those characteristics is the moral or social standing of the supplier, that weight is subtracted from the other measures. If you want to make that sort of compromise, fine. But you won't be building any mission criti
Re:His hotheaded attitude might turn people away (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect there are some mission critical projects which have decided to not use Linux when they found out how unprofessionally the leader acts. "Cool kernel, but can we really put our trust on this kind of guy?"
Then how do you explain all those mission critical projects using Oracle?
Re:His hotheaded attitude might turn people away (Score:5, Funny)
Excellent point. One of my favorite jokes "What's the difference between Larry Ellison and God? God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison."
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I suspect there are some mission critical projects which have decided to not use Linux when they found out how unprofessionally the leader acts. "Cool kernel, but can we really put our trust on this kind of guy?"
They looked at his track record, leading a 23 year project from something that he started alone to having a global community of developers. How linux it is the kernel in the majority of mobile devices and supercomputers and said: "No, we need to choose something else marketed by a sensitive weasel..."
I just hope that those mission critical projects stay very far from me...
Re:Huh weird thoughts on the States (Score:4, Insightful)
It's usually the assholes telling everyone else that they need to be nice.
Re:Don't care? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have any evidence of this? At all?
Because here's what I see:
Linux has remade the software world in its own image. I'd hardly call that "failing". Real actual super computer companies (e.g. Silicon Graphics) stopped developing their own OS and started shipping Linux.
Microsoft, the arch nemesis of Linux and Open Source, is shipping kernel patches and releasing code under open source licenses.
What does "success" look like to you?
And lest you say "that's just a singular case", we can look at Theo and OpenBSD. OpenBSD has been wildly successful, both as a BSD fork, but also in its broader mission to cultivate a software culture of excellence and correctness, with results that speak for themselves.
Linux and OpenBSD are two of the oldest open source projects around, with two pretty intense personalities at the helm.
I see no evidence to support your claim whatsoever.
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Kind of rare in LA too, and parts of the SF Bay Area.