An oldie, but a goodie
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Not going to touch the general toxicity as it’s something Linus has already apologized and worked through with professional help, but I love the attitude when it comes to responsibility.
Far too often it’s easier to blame someone else for error.“No this is our problem, and I’m ashamed you’re trying to blame someone else for it” is respectable take
Getting angry = tOxiCK i cry evertem
Everyone gets angry, but this is not a constructive way to communicate what someone else needs to do. You can express all of this without belittling and swearing at someone. Being angry is fine, taking it out on other people is rude and unnecessary.
He basically has one rule and one rule only… we don’t break user space… IMO, if you break that one rule, I believe he has the right to be angry. It’s not constructive, but I wouldn’t hold it against him.
If he was my boss and he treated me like this I would absolutely hold it against him! Honestly I don’t care how much an employee fucks up, there is no excuse for abusing them.
The virgin IT tech tears in here are real.
Tough love isn’t toxicity, even if Linus had to grovel a bit to divert the Karens elsewhere.
Shut the fuck up.
Stop breaking user space
His style of being direct, having a high quality threshold and calling out bullshit immediately and bluntly is why the Linux kernel went from a university project to powering everything from lightbulbs to super computers. I think it kind of ridiculous that this demonstrably effective style got framed as “toxic” just because he hurt a few people’s fee-fees.
You can be direct and call out bullshit without swearing and name calling. While the content of this sounds reasonable, the tone definitely isn’t. If someone talked to me like that I’d tell them to fuck right off.
Yes you could but he didn’t and clearly his style was self evidently effective. And I’d add that if you’ve ever read the LKML archives, that these rants were rare and usually preceded by long chains of discussion before it reached that point.
Doesn’t make it right. Michael Jackson’s dad abused his kids and they became world famous artists, doesn’t mean abusing your kids is acceptable or should be seen as such.
This is a nonsensical comparison
It’s not a comparison, it’s an analogy. Important distinction.
It’s a rotten analogy. Comparing Linus having a go at some volunteers is not analogous, or comparable to a father abusing kids.
Yes you could but he didn’t and clearly his style was self evidently effective.
Depends on how you define “effective”. Because by his own admission, it gets shit done, but also alienates people in the project and turns off others from joining it.
So yeah, you’ll get the update pushed, and it’ll work, but down the line you find yourself struggling to keep up without the help of people that don’t want to work with you.
Linus’ mistake is a classic one: really self-sufficient tech person doing fantastic work with a team but not appreciating that there’s a whole social layer to it that is every bit as important as the standards and procedures at keeping everything working.
I define effective by the fact it was self evidently effective. No need to split hairs or dissemble here. Linux is objectively, indisputably the most important piece of code in the world. Everything else, such as a the context free boo hoo about some times when he has had a go at people is just noise.
Seems like the man himself disagrees with you, since he saw it as a big enough problem to get professional help and make long lasting changes. 🤷♂️
Or he’s just playing the game within the current “social layers” that have attached to or are inherit to the project to placate those who require placating. Not like pubic figures haven’t had to blow sunshine up asses to shut the the “whiners” up before. And if so, maybe those lasting changes are trivial because it was never a major habit to begin with and rare. Its was just an approach to get the result. But you’ve to show the public you care (even if you don’t) and talk about how you worked real hard and put in the work. (Even if the work was trivial)
Sure you can. But the evidence i see in my immediate vicinity is that informations go in through one ear and straight out through the other without holding on to anything if presented in in a none swearing or name calling manner. It hurts but it works.
Oh noes he used bad wordsies? My fee-fees!
Demonstrably effective
Where’s the logic in looking at something successful and picking a singular thing to be responsible? What seems more likely is you are looking for an idea you are attached to that exists adjacent to something successful. It’s like a Mormon looking for successful Mormon CEOs to then claim the company’s success is due to the Mormon work ethic. It’s like how in Whiplash the Charlie Parker story is venerated and seen as explanatory by the characters.
The logic is simple. This is s his style and it demonstrably worked. I’m sure you could point to someone else’s style that also works in another context but that’s irrelevant.
But did it work because of the style or in spite of it? No reason to believe it wouldn’t be even more successful if he had been less abrasive like he is now.
Because of it, quite obviously.
How is that obvious? Especially because it’s become even more successful after he’s mellowed out?
“Especially because it’s become even more successful after he’s mellowed out?”
You state that as if its also “obvious”. How is this a fact? How is it obvious? Is it more successful because of his mellowing or irrespective of it? On its face, seems to me we cant nod our head in agreement to your sudden assertion any more than arc’s assertion that Linus’ initial style worked.
You seem to want arc to provide some sort of metric or proof to back up his assertion. Well, where is yours? Where’s your metric/data?
I agree on the first part. However this is from 2012 and in the meantime Linus himself realized and admitted that he was not proud of behaving like that and took real measures and seeked help in order to improve himself.
I totally agree. I have mad respect for Linus for the work he’s done and the immense amount of retardation he’s had to sift and fight his way through.
I have very little respect for the people critiquing his behavior while contributing nothing of value themselves.
Way to infantalize the people calling him out while excusing his childish tantrums.
There is a difference between a rant and a tantrum. If you read the post, you could see very clearly he makes a point very forcefully.
Okay. How about: don’t lash out at people when you’re mad.
Way to infantalize … his childish tantrums.
Come on dude. Either there’s a standard here or there isn’t.
Uh yeah. Childish behavior is childish. Holding people to a higher standard is not.
… he hurt a few people’s fee-fees.
Way to infantalize the people calling him out while excusing his childish tantrums.
You’re infantilizing Linus’ expression of anger, just the same as the person you’re replying to is infantilizing people who’re upset by it.
Either they’re both bad, or they’re both acceptable - or you’re effectively saying that infantilization is fine, but only towards people whose behaviour you disapprove of.
One behavior is inherently childish. One is not.
One is objectively the attitude of an infant and thus does not require the act of infantalization in order to be framed as such. This is not the double-standard gotcha that you think it is.To rephrase, one more time:
The act of calling out childish behaviour is not childish.One behavior is inherently childish. One is not. One is objectively the attitude of an infant and thus does not require the act of infantalization in order to be framed as such.
No, it isn’t, and this is a subjective opinion on your part. Not everyone agrees with you, so it’s not objective. Even what exactly is ‘childish’ behaviour is subjective, and arguably culturally dependent.
His behaviour is pretty much by definition, that of an adult. An adult with poor impulse control, poor anger management skills, sure. But childish? That’s a value judgement which contains no insight likely to reach anyone. It adds nothing to the conversation.
Use less reductionist words to explain why it’s bad.
Or to rephrase: Linus’ reply isn’t bad because it is childish. All calling it childish, or infantile, communicates is your own judgement.
Also; describing your judgement as ‘calling out’ - particularly when this is behaviour he has since admitted was poor, and has taken time out to address - just reads like you’re using the language of social justice to justify judgemental language.
I think too many people get upset about swearing. It brings a strong emphasis, it’s not disrespect imo. Knowing how Linus is, I’d take that response in stride. I appreciate his direct approach especially to the brazen arrogance of someone too full of themselves to see themselves as wrong. It wouldn’t be a great way to start a conversation, but as an ender it’s terribly effective. He called a fucking idiot a fucking idiot. That shouldn’t be toxic. Not everything that hurts someone’s tender feels is toxic. The intent should be taken into consideration.
Hell yeah. But it’s not considered good anymore, everyone has to be very nice and whatnot. Too bad imo but I guess less hurt feelings.
It’s easier to label other people toxic rather than finding flaws in themselves. More people will agree with someone being toxic, because deflection as a tactic got so ingrained in people that they don’t know better.
Torvalds got professional help for that. Even he acknowledged that it was a problem.
Exactly. It might not be good to be on the receiving end, but the chain of discussion that went before these rants should have given people the clue they needed to stop while they were ahead.
Honestly, I maybe get why some people are too sensitive to work in such conditions, but from my professional experience, I’d much rather prefer getting angry mail explaining why my actions are stupid, than everyone being nice to one another but the codebase is utter garbage and everything falls apart, which happens a lot in private companies.
What if I told you that you can have constructive discussions without being verbally abusive?
I would verbally abuse you
What if I told you to shut the fu… oh… Oh… okay…yeah, that wasn’t constructive…
Okay, I see your point.
I would tell you that you haven’t worked with enough people. I don’t disagree but occasionally you find people that need a really really good reminder that they not only suck but you’ve tried to be nice multiple times and it didn’t penetrate.
I agree that some people need harder tones, but I don’t think anyone needs the abusive language that Linus used. If that feels like the only option, I think it probably means the person has gaps in their social toolbox.
And also if you are a manager and one of the team members perform poorly and you cannot help the person improve, you should rather let that person go before you get to a state, in which you write such mails.
You can be polite or just straightforward and still get your message across.
“We don’t blame bugs on user programs”, “This is not an error code that should be used here”, “Your coding standards may have relaxed over your tenure, be sure to maintain quality code.”, etc. I get the annoyance, but you can be firm without yelling, especially in a professional environment.
Edit: Seeing the full context of Mauro’s message (posted below), I can see why Linus took this tone. Mauro was being pretty condescending to a dev.
You can be angry without being rude. I’d much prefer passive aggressiveness than egregious blame-shifting and accusations.
you seem to have created a false dichotomy where it’s impossible to fix bad code without being abusive. would you like me to call you “dumb motherfucker” or is this explanation enough?
I think you’ve missed what the sin was, as well as the context of the players.
The sin was not the bad code. Let me say it one more time for clarity: the issue was not the code
The issue was that, when presented with the defect (inevitable outcome of any software project: not intrinsically sinful) Mauro started blaming other people on a public mailing list
Mauro, being a maintainer, was in a position of authority. Like a police officer, their bad behaviour reflected poorly on the organization*as a whole.
If a cop was abusing their power (publicly or not), I expect the chief of police to come down on that abuser; to make clear that this abuse is absolutely unacceptable, not only within the accute instance, but within the greater context of the expectation of the behaviour of the whole organization.
Mauro chose the context of his abusive behaviour as the public mailing list.
Him getting slapped down in that same forum is the direct result of his own choices.
In the same way that I would be upset with the chief of police not publicly and harshy denouncing an abusive police officer, so would I be upset with the absence of such a response in this situation
You don’t need to tell each other to shut the fuck up in all caps and call each other idiots to get the point across. It’s possible to instruct your peers in a much more professional manner.
I’m betting this isn’t the first time, or the second, and probably not third time this guy has fucked up.
There’s a time for the kid gloves to come off.
Programmers are sensitive enough. All you have to do is raise your voice slightly, and they’ll think you’re yelling. You could probably make one cry just by saying their patch isn’t good, without having to resort to aggressive language.*
I don’t know the whole history, but this seems highly unnecessary, and typical Linus. Didn’t he resolve to be better a few years ago?
Ah found it.
*Source: am programmur
This screenshot is from 11 years ago.
Yeah I just noticed that after commenting this. Still halfway applicable, but who knows how Linus is these days - not me 🤷
It’s all fun and games till the baby blows up when it really really shouldn’t blow up. And I personally, would rather have people learn that pain an email than learn that a million people are in pain because of their ignorance/bad work.
Or nice in person, then all the toxic bakstabbing behind the scenes.
This reads like the Sh*t My Dad says book. The author said it seemed harsh to some people, but the bonus was there was never any passive agressiveness, and you always knew exactly where you stood.
Ugh, having been on the receiving end, this type of belittlement is the worst, and breeds resentment, factionalism, and a host of other toxic elements in the workplace.
Irrespective of the validity of his critique, prima donna developers are the worst and I would start looking for jobs elsewhere because programming is already stressful enough, don’t want to start worrying about the people.
Luckily, this is from years ago. Linus took a hiatus a few years back to work on his anger, and he’s been a lot better lately.
Yeah, and now instead of directly participating in this kind of shit behavior, he just lets everyone run wild and do it for him while sitting atop his pedestal
Do you have evidence of this being the case? Is the CoC not being enforced?
I mean Billet Labs, Madison, the shit apology videos, leaked HR meeting recordings; even if he doesn’t directly participate in the shit, it still slides from what I understand. I don’t think I know 100% of everything to do with the situations, and I have been a long(ish)time fan, but tbh it wouldn’t surprise me as his attitude is clearly reflected in the original post. If not directly an asshole, definitely egotistical.
Not this Linus, this is not the LTT Linus, this is the guy who wrote Linux.
Oops haha.
Oh fuck 😂 my bad
I read through most of that email thinking it was that Linus as well. Read it in his voice and everything lol… Then the last name finally clicked for me and I realized it wasn’t him
Once I realized you meant LTT I laughed so hard
The initial belittlement was from Mauro though, just more concealed.
He’s the Gordon Ramsey of programming. THE KERNEL IS FUCKING RAAAWWWW!!!
This patch has so many bugs in it, Microsoft added it to Windows 11 and called it a feature.
Ouch
Wheres the lamb source?!
Gordon Ramsay is terrible scumbag and the fact he’s a star instead of hated freak speaks a lot about society
Happy Linus took a more constructive path and worked out his anger issues
I like the discussion this has generated around toxicity and professionalism, but I’m still very amused by the fact that he censored himself in the last line after not doing so for the rest of the message.
It’s typical of a venting boss, he vented now he’s calming down
Just like a toddler!
First of all, this is horrible and no one should talk like that.
But it’s funny that he censored the word “fucking” as if that crossed some line
To add context:
Linus only reacted this way to people who really should have known better. This isn’t a “here is my first ever patch, I read all the rules and I hope I didn’t break any” situation. The person he is chewing out is a kernel maintainer. They are someone who is experienced and trusted and Linus was rightly angry that this poor quality work was submitted.
However… Linus has also worked a lot on himself in the past few years, fully acknowledging that he shouldn’t behave this harshly when someone fucks up. If the same situation was to present itself today, he would be much more professional, but would probably still be a bit angry and you’d know about it.
Linus is a flawed human being, but credit where it is due, he has worked on some of his character flaws.
Sure but this is still horrible and should not have been sent.
But I agree with you.
As i understand it Linus has at least acknowledged that his tone has been very problematic and has been working on the way he expresses himself.
No, it’s for emphasis
It’s disgusting that this post has not been removed, has a 96% postive vote ratio, has over 1K upvotes and is sitting at the top of All after almost a day.
This isn’t a Linux meme. It’s a celebration of abuse, abusive behaviour and abusive people.
All the people ITT condoning or making even the slightest accommodations for this behaviour ought to be ashamed and need to take a good, long look in a mirror.
What are the moderators of this community thinking? Are you reading this stuff? Do some of you agree with any of it?
Of all the things to celebrate about Linus and Linux this is not one of them.
There is no value in leaving this post up. There is nothing to be learned or gained by revealing just how gross some supposed Linux supporters may be.
Does anyone ITT seriously think this is how Linus or Linux developers want to be remembered and celebrated for their dedication and decades of toil?
Do you think anyone that’s been on the receiving end of this kind of abuse on the job or in the home wants to jump onto Lemmy today to see this celebration of abusive and awful behaviour.
There are no excuses to be made. It doesn’t matter that this happened many years ago and that Linus has managed to overcome behaving like this. The post itself is now the issue.
The many comments that have made even the slightest excuse for this kind of behaviour are awful and damaging to the reputations of Linus, Linux and the Linux community.
I don’t read it as celebrating abuse. clearly there are better ways to correct peoples mistakes. As adults I think we all recognize that. I assumed the upvotes were because Linus is setting the high expectation that we don’t see from Paid OS and Paid software. He is defending the philosophy of the next kernel should not destroy all the downstream work people put in. I’m currently working at a place that sells 3rd party software. It is an expensive product and touted as backward compatibility for 40+ years, and their newer versions have taken a F@©k Y0U approach to users. People with decades of files are now getting screwed and the software company turns down regression and bug reports and wants them submitted as feature enhancements. LOL WTF. I wish I could share this letter with their developers and management.
The point
While Linus went overboard (as he has a history of doing, and as has also caused negativity to the community), this post is still very well liked because it appears to be a strong example of someone calling out the BS that a lot of developers like to throw around. No one’s going to join in a circle celebrating Linus picking on some first time contributor who didn’t know any better, but that’s how it sounds like you’re interpreting the post.
To add some context, there’s a toxic superiority complex that many developers have where they jump to blame others for issues that actually relate to their code. You can see this anywhere from developers who immediately blame users without investigating to software developers within companies who are quick to pass off issues as not their team’s problem.
So, in this example Linus is actually calling one of these developers out, which is why the post is very well-received.
Well put
Alert! The point is being contested!
Is it team Shitter-Reddit again?
Don’t worry, they are so incompetent, that they can’t read more than one line of text.
You mean the light isn’t properly aligned?
Wat? I mean the point was written in easy to ubderstand way. It is picture of point from TF2.
I still do not understand how Dustbowl’s point has anything to do with conveying that meaning but whatever I do not care.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a celebration of abuse. I agree that he’s obviously way out of line sending this email.
I think Linus is (was) a complete asshole who lacks interpersonal skills, and this email exemplifies his character. To me, this post shows the mentality of some developers (and leadership) in FOSS and why some folks find it difficult to contribute to open-source software. This post opens up the discussion on that.
FWIW, I’ve received zero reports on this post itself. But I’ve received reports on abusive comments in this post, which I’ve promptly removed. This community is more/less self-moderating and if the post receives a significant positive vote ratio, I don’t think it should be removed by me. It brings an important discussion to the table regarding acceptable behavior in software development.
I’ve never had a negative experience contributing to open source.
I’ve also been to scrums where everyone is equal, and we have to be very PC, about explaining “processes” and “best practices” to people that break the build pipeline every single day. Eventually I just coded error handling and guard clauses into everything so no one could screw anything up by not following the documentation being a cowboy. That is a best practice, sure, but you’d be surprised by how people break things even after being warned not to do a very specific thing.
A cowboy that fixes things always 24/7 can be a maverick and talk shit.
But in todays PC world you can also be a cowboy that breaks everything always and spends weeks fixing something they themselves broke…
I wish I could say the things Linus said instead of just putting people on a performance improvement plan.
Sometimes being angry is appropriate. When I am I step back and try to figure out solution where the fuck up can’t happen again and no one gets hurt.
I’ve seen people be VERY angry and even hands on working in jobs where fucking up can kill people.
I’d rather see anger than people dying. Did Linus go too far here? Probably, but there is a time and place for anger and being direct.
I respectfully, and fully disagree with you.
Well, yeah. Gaslighting is kinda abusive. Don’t worry, after Linus’ explaination Mauro understood it.
Do some of you agree with any of it?
Mauro does. Here’s proof:
So, actual locker room talk then?
I’ll copy and paste what I wrote elsewhere:
To add context:
Linus only reacted this way to people who really should have known better. This isn’t a “here is my first ever patch, I read all the rules and I hope I didn’t break any” situation. The person he is chewing out is a kernel maintainer. They are someone who is experienced and trusted and Linus was rightly angry that this poor quality work was submitted.
However… Linus has also worked a lot on himself in the past few years, fully acknowledging that he shouldn’t behave this harshly when someone fucks up. If the same situation was to present itself today, he would be much more professional, but would probably still be a bit angry and you’d know about it.
Linus is a flawed human being, but credit where it is due, he has worked on some of his character flaws.
And I’ll add: This is the internet. There is no “taking down” of this. In fact, you’re getting angry over a screenshot of the original. Once it’s out there, it’s never getting removed.
The first point of your comment I completely disagree with; the second point acknowledges why the the first point is bullshit to begin with. Yes, someone can be incompetent and require corrective action. This was not it and completely, grossly unacceptable. That he had to adjust his behavior is an acknowledgement to this. We are all flawed humans; but some are more flawed than others. That being said, if it’s true he has reflected and taken corrective action on his own negative behaviors, kudos to him.
I couldn’t disagree more with you, and I truly feel that the lack of being direct is why we have an overwhelming amount of mediocrity in the “professional” corporate world. When everyone is just nice and we go the passive aggressive route, or have constructive feedback in the vein of “I can see you worked sooooo hard on this”, we get garbage.
If you want people to do their minimums, “act your wage” and all that shit, put your efforts accordingly. If you’re trying to be a part of something excellent and eschew mediocrity, then give your best or fuck off.
Well there’s a difference between “it’s not good enough” and " fuck you you fucking code fart". Being direct doesn’t equate to being an asshole. You can be direct while also being respectable and polite. But it’s still funny watching people lose this shit.
" fuck you you fucking code fart"
Linus didn’t call Mauro anything at all, much less a code fart. If anything, then an idiot (indirectly, by saying “I don’t want to hear that kind of garbage and idiocy from a kernel maintainer again”.
How many of the people complaining about the mail being abusive or whatnot actually read it.
No, that was just an example. I just meant it comes off as aggressive as all. Especially the Stfu part
How many of the people complaining about the mail being abusive or whatnot actually read it.
I would say I did read not only this email, but whole chain, but I did not complain to say that.
Most people would agree middle ground is better, but lots of people see the raw anger as refreshing and real
ENOENT is not a valid error return from an ioctl. Never has been, never will be. ENOENT means “No such file and directory”, and is for path operations. ioctl’s are done on files that have already been opened, there’s no way in hell that ENOENT would ever be valid.
Sounds more like “it’s not good enough”.
I can see you worked sooooo hard on this
No Mauro obviously didn’t which is the fucking problem.
If you don’t want to use swear words fine, but usually the tone police doesn’t just want to tone down valuable emphasis, they also want to mess with the semantics of the message until it is insulting by means of assuming that the recipient is a toddler and completely ignores the actual issue, which is that Mauro has a role and responsibility and he failed in it.
On a construction site, if a foreman catches a worker not securing some area that they’re responsible for securing, you can bet your ass that some choice words are going to be heard. That not only saves people’s lives it also protects the worker from going to prison for negligent manslaughter or such. To do that, to have the necessary impact on the worker, yes it’s going to feel bad.
Absolutely, and rightfully so. When you fail to account for good craftsman ship, you deliver a shitty build or people get killed at worst.
Dude, thank you, totally agree. Anyone with skin thin enough to be hurt by this kind of corrective force shouldn’t even be in the conversation. Not sure why people are offended by this on here but when you engineer critical systems you damn well should know better by now.
“I can see you worked sooooo hard on this”
This isn’t constructive, but reflects what people usually asking for.
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and I truly feel that the lack of being direct is why we have an overwhelming amount of mediocrity
I think you hit the nail in the head with this. This is probably one of the main reasons why everything is garbage in recent years. Post-modernism reigns supreme, every idea is now a “good idea”.
It’s useful to note that there exists Lemmy servers where down votes are not processed. So the high up vote to down vote ratio isn’t necessarily a reflection of people not down voting, it’s potentially a reflection of the servers that allow down votes along with all other servers (generally they all allow up votes).
Didn’t know Lemmy has this “feature”. I know mastodon does not support downvotes.
I’m nitpicking here, sorry in advanced.
You put “quotes” around “feature” as though it is a bug. My instance (the user you are responding to is also a member of Blahaj) does not support downvotes and it is one of the reasons I signed up for it. So, I do feel it is a feature and not a bug.
Here’s a long explanation about why I feel that way:
I think people should be allowed to be wrong on the internet without having a huge negative number hovering over their head. If they’re wrong, people should go to the comments and say why. People absolutely care about that dumb number, and to pretend they won’t or shouldn’t is just not how humans work.
If a comment is controversial, it’s upvote/downvote will be neutral and it’ll get lost. Controversial comments should be read so discussion can form around it.
If the post should be downvoted to oblivion because it’s toxic or offtopic, it should be removed instead.
I feel that downvotes are only useful if the community needs to collectively use it to moderate (I’d argue it had a purpose on Youtube, before they removed it. It could be abused, but it was useful to fight misinformation or product marketing disguised as content).
Controversial comments should be read so discussion can form around it.
Some instances allow to sort by contraversy.
Isn’t showing only upvotes is default in Jerboa?
Some instances allow to sort by contraversy.
We’re ultimately talking about which order comments should appear on a post. I don’t think controversial sort should be default, and I don’t want to read the most controversial comments all the time. I think the comments that generate the best discussion and/or are the most valuable should float to the top naturally. Ignoring down votes does this, with the added benefits of removing the possible toxic effects of down votes.
Isn’t showing only upvotes is default in Jerboa?
Dunno, I don’t use it. Don’t need to, my instance doesn’t allow downvotes. If I needed to move from Blahaj for some reason, I might look into it, might not.
History must be shared so it’s not repeated. The email is dated 2012 so there’s context of this being some old school bullying. Asking people to Not share the past because it’s ugly is like asking people to not talk about slavery cause it’ll make white people feel bad that they thought it was okay to own people. Small minds will remain small and less you expand their visibility.
Honestly, whether or not we agree with the approach of Linus, these kind of disagreements happen in the real world. Tensions run high. Recently I’ve been on calls where things need to be implemented this month, during a time where most of our resources(engineers) will be on vacation. These kind of conversations can be important to have to make sure this doesn’t happen again. The project management team got their ass handed to them for kneeling to the LOBs’ ridiculous timeline expectations. And they were told to hold the L if things don’t work on the go-live date, there will be no post implementation support until mid January if something doesn’t work.
E:og of my reply was way too hostile
i think the post is useful in order to highlight the inappropriate behaviour by linus, but the amount of lunatics who champion that email for its “directness” is disturbingI think what you’ve said is brilliantly put.
Most of the top comments are negative about the post. You upvote to bring something bad to attention, not because you agree with it.
If I didn’t know anything else about him my takeaway from this post would be “Linus Torvalds is an abusive asshole”
I’m glad we don’t work together
Even those responding to you and trying to justify this, he sets a high bar yeesh. I don’t care who the person is saying it, I don’t care how much the guy he’s responding to deserves it, this is worst boss behavior that I would nope so far away from.
Damn, I really hate social snowflakes such as you. Linus was right and he got his point across quickly and without bulshit. The Kernel Maintainer should have known better. Why exactly is this “abuse”, because he used a few “naughty” words? Grow up. If you want censorship go back to reddit.
Edit: im fucking gigadumb, ignore me
Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux OS, not Linus of Linus Tech Tips.
Also not Linus from the Peanuts comic.
That’s a different Linus
I feel so old right how reading this.
Get off my lawn. /s
Nah, you are learning. Don’t worry.
Bait.
Damn that was probably very hard to read for Mauro. This is something you never want to receive as Mail in your job. On the other hand it is good that Linux priorities fixing the kernel instead of letting other developers fix your code.
This email should have stayed in Draft for a few hours and then come back to remove all the expletives. At least Mauro has something to hang on the wall of his crapper.
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Because shitting on other people, belittling them, attacking them personally, and being verbally abusive isn’t?
This was from a while ago. I believe Linus took some time away to try and work on his interpersonal skills. I haven’t seen anything since his hiatus, but hopefully he’s less abusive and more constructive in his messages now.
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Yep. In this email it is done using them though.
So then what makes the swearing special? It’s the intent that makes them hit, not the words themselves.
Nothing. He just used it here with angry intent and he should’ve removed it. And not change for non-sweary anger, if that isn’t clear
Nah, I say he could’ve kept the swearing if he changed the intent. Maybe it’s my Australian slipping out, but they’re just words. They can’t hurt you. The intention sure as hell can, and I’ve seen way more vicious things written without swearing.
And agreed, it’s just an arsehole-ish rant in general, regardless of whether he swore or not.
Nah. No one wants to work with people like this. It’s toxic
You can tell you havent worked in any more than a low-rung position anywhere
Wow, you’re an ass.
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“try to be a decent human being to others” isn’t exactly the embodiment of corporate culture though.
I don’t see the need to degrade others to get my point across - and I couldn’t care less if anyone needs a fucking curse to get their shit across.
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Neither does anyone until you grow up and realise you have to work with other people long term, and you have to develop others around you. Thats why behaving like a seething, spoilt cunt as linus is here doesnt achieve anything. It makes him look like hes stuck up his own ass and unable to communicate effectively - even if all of his points are technically correct.
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looks like every day is a great day to not work on the linux kernel
This is why Finland is most happy nation in the world
Sorry, I’m American and don’t understand, could you elaborate?
All the anger is in one man and it skews the statistics.
So I recently had a conversation with some who though Linus Torvalds (kernel) and Linus Sebastian (Linus Tech Tips) was the same person.
That was a pretty funny and confusing conversation.Imagine Torwalds doing reviews of old CPU coolers and completely losing his shit 🤣🤣🤣
Yes, please! 🍿
you know… that could be YT gold right there.
The trick is to listen to the pronunciation. Linus of LTT pronounces it as Linus, while Linus of Torvalds uses either Linus or Linus, but he doesn’t mind if people call him Linus.
/s
“You are HIV aladeen”
I was a couple weeks into using Linux before this was made clear to me and the world made a lot more sense.
Man feel bad for the guy getting yelled yet
I like that Linus is so strict on not breaking user space because this obviously aids with compatibility and it’s probably a big part of why rolling releases work.
But I sure hope Linus’ eventual successor won’t be toxic and…cringe. It’s hard to take someone serious when he’s raging this much.
The good news is Linus did eventually learn this isn’t okay and took some time off to reflect on how to approach these things better.
He still doesn’t tolerate things like he was responding to here, still responds to them firmly and directly, but doesn’t rant, yell, or hurtle insults
Good point, didn’t even realize this was from 2012.
I like that Linus is so strict on not breaking user space because this obviously aids with compatibility and it’s probably a big part of why rolling releases work.
I think kernel still has compatibility with paleolithic glibc enabled by default
To be read in the voice of J K Simmons
