I feel it's equally important to point ot that Torvalds recognized his toxic behavior, apologized for it, and took steps to rectify it.
In an email to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, which also addresses the kernel update of Linux 4.19-rc4, Torvalds writes: "I need to change some of my behavior, and I want to apologize to the people that my personal behavior hurt and possibly drove away from kernel development entirely."
"I am going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand people's emotions and respond appropriately."
I've heard he's not perfect but he doesn't lose his temper anymore and has only gotten better with age. I respect anyone who can self reflect and introspect and come out a better person.
So two wrongs make a right? Or could this have been a civil private email instead? And if civil private conversations aren't working, then it's time to part ways.
Acceptable, yes. But a good manager knows not to shine a spotlight on the mistakes of the team. There's nothing to gain keeping it public that you wouldn't also gain by keeping it private. But your team's morale is kept high if you sing their praises instead of their shortcomings.
I get what your saying, but i feel like the aggressively public development model means that more could be public here than i would accept on another team.
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
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.
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.
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.
I went to LKML for context, so I return with context.
When 3.8-rc1 was released, "Rafael J. Wysocki" reported 100% CPU usage by knotify4(part of KDE) on OpenSUSE Thubleweed with pulseaudio as audio server.
At which Mauro Carvalho Chehab replies starting with blaming pulseaudio(why? Srsly, why? I don't like it, but this is just troll behaviour) and saying pulseaudio(which is NOT knotify4) should not try to use V4L2.
This shitty behaviour ignites Linus' back and he replies with mentioned in post message.
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.
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.
"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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Even more so because Torvalds is not his boss and the guy is a volunteer that is not being paid for his contribution.
I'm glad Torvalds was the bigger man and got help for his temper.
Yeah, I completely agree, the guy's a duche, blaiming others for his mistake (assumption, that leads to a shitty PR, which is a mistake).
As I said, if I did that, I would gladly take the heat from Linus. Own up to your mistake. Yes, you do deserve to be called names. You're a maintainer for the most wide spread kernel in the world. "But I don't get paid...". You can quit at any time pal, no one is forcing you to do it.
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.
I thought he branched out to tech tips as a way of making extra money. Never seen the tech tips myself and with the controversy not too long ago probably never will.
As an entertainment show about tech, it's a pretty decent show to watch, I wouldn't use it to base my decisions on, but if you want to hear someone talk about tech stuff in a somewhat entertaining way I'd say give them ago, Linus can be a bit much sometimes but the rest of the crew are alright.
I've only ever heard of torvalds because of pages like this one and since I don't watch LTT videos often, I've only ever heard his first name connected with the channel.
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.
Yeah, those mailing lists used to have some quite funny stuff; my favorite so far is smth along the lines of "whoever thought this was a good idea should be retroactively aborted".
But, on the other hand, damn it's toxic. Should've really sucked to work on the kernel back then.
I was curious as I couldn't help but laugh, but damn dude. That is rough. Hilarious looking at it now, but I feel bad for whomever was at the receiving end.
Of course, I'd also suggest that whoever was the genius who thought it was a good idea to read things ONE FUCKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte should be retroactively aborted. Who the fuck does idiotic things like that? How did they not die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?
Someone else pointed out that he actually apologized for being toxic sometimes and took some time off as a kernel maintainer because of that. Nice to see.
He did hurt the mission. Plenty of kernel maintainers have left, and those were people who had been with the project for years. Losing experienced people to toxicity 1000% harms both the project and the product.
In almost instances of Linus going off on one in public it is because maintainers weren't doing their jobs (to act as quality gatekeepers), or particular developers thinking they could steam roll road changes through if they kept submitting them, or not listening to what Linus was saying. I remember Linus used to ream out Hans Reiser a lot (the guy who was subsequently imprisoned for murdering his wife) because he constantly tried to get ReiserFS into the kernel despite serious issues Linus had with it.
So generally when you see a rant, there is a history behind it and the rant itself is directed with a point. I also think it's self evident that the kernel has benefited from this "benevolent dictator" model. I'm sure some people have gotten all precious over their feelings being hurt. The rest raised their game and the result has been a code quality standard you'll probably never see anywhere else.
If there's a surplus of talent (sounds like Mauro was dead weight) then at most he was just rude on Mauro's way out the door.
I'm not saying it's cool to be rude, but if it's Linus' review then you get what you get. To be butthurt about someone being rude to you should motivate you to learn your code interactions better. (In this case error handling)
You seem eager to pose this “if the product was undamaged” as if you can quantify what might have happened differently, but then in a comment below you ask someone else to prove that maintainers left.
It might shock you to learn that products are developed by people. Actual people stay or leave and work wildly differently based on things like respect, expectations, and being in a hostile environment.
Want proof of that? Go work on an actual project with a team sometime.
edit - And this isn’t even accounting for the ways toxic communication impedes wider adoption of a product
People who could be easily replaced. It's a non issue.
I do work on software teams, and don't conduct myself like Linus, because I'm not Linus. That pattern of communication isn't available to me, an average engineer.
But if someone spoke to me that way (and they have) I took it as a clear signal I need to level up and act right. Not an invitation to feel bad about myself.
Linux has clearly not missed out on wide adoption in any way.
If someone whom I respected shat a bit in email about my work product, I'd be sad for a bit. Then I'd read it again and understand it's my work product and I am not my work. I can make mistakes and I can fix them, and fixing mistakes is how we get awesome.
I have received negative feedback. And I did feel just a little butthurt about it. But it was in NJ and I was new, and didn't see from the first read that Buddy was expressing frank and honest concerns about my work product and not me. I'm embarrassed to say how long it took me to clue in, but I did. And we worked through my mistakes and I was the better for it. And I learned.
And when he said my work didn't suck as much, I knew I was improving, because I could trust him.
I get what you mean, but there are ways to say you fucked up, without calling you expletives. Some days, you get angry and scream at someone, but it doesn't really make it feel amazing for the party being screamed at.
I didn't mean it was mean from him to give him feedback or correct him, but the way he said it was a bit overblown.
As already stated it's less about the facts being communicated and more about the way they're being communicated.
I would posit that the mismatch in the style of communication lead to you needing more time to clue in. And in that way, the initial feedback might have been an inefficient way to relay the point.
However it's also entirely possible that trying to package it in a better way, the point of the feedback-giver would have gotten lost, leading you not to clue in at all.
Communication is hard, especially tailoring it to the expected audience. That being said I don't think being an asshole is ever ok, unless it directly saves lives or something. 😅
That's why you should never put people on a pedestal. There are a lot of people I admire, but I always try to imagine them being stupid assholes most of the time to balance things out in my head.
I'd give as good as I got and we'd be fine. Not everyone is a spineless crybaby who melts down at the first hint of disapproval. Are you all little children?
Edit: Stupid question, apparently. Good thing it was rhetorical.
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.
I agree. In a leadership role it's one thing what you say to a person in front of others and a completely different thing what you say when alone with them....
I think he's being fair and balanced. Also please stop calling mild irritation "toxicity", it only makes you sound like a whiney douchebag who cries whenever they're questioned about anything.
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.
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.
So Linus should have sided with someone who in regression report of KDE using 100% CPU starts blaming pulseaudio and opensuse and double down on blaming pulseaudio? Instead of fixing syscall returning completely unrelated error code. It's like if your router crashed with message "there is no milk in your fridge".
Well, he isn't anyone's boss here. I agree, and so would linus nowadays, that this is toxic and should be avoided, but the anger I fully understand.
Attempting to shift blame away from yourself after making a change which breaks a large portion of user space is cause for termination at any company I've worked at. It's cowardice. This action goes against one of the most important, core philosophies, of the kernal. Do not break userspace. Also, this person should know better. They are not some odd newbie who may not grasp the ideas yet.
In a world where termination is not an option harsh criticism is required. This though, I agree, was anger driven unprofessionalism
I think there may also be a cultural angle here. Anglo-Saxon culture really places a much higher emphasis on "not causing offense", whereas other cultures place a higher emphasis on speaking truthfully, even if harshly.
So Linus, who grew up in Finland, may have thought of his message as harsh but fair, whereas to native English speakers it comes across as incredibly rude.
It doesn't come across as particularly rude given what the offense here is. Someone blamed other projects for their mistake after getting called out. That deserves harsh criticism.
I think you are talking about American ideals. Not ideals in the English speaking world. Nothing here is remotely toxic by British standards. Swearing isn't a big deal here, people regularly call each other swear words as a sign of affection. If someone does something stupid you can say they are acting like an idiot and hopefully they will listen. If you didn't they might not think you are serious.
For sure. It's funny in a way, but this is not a great way to treat folks that are trying to contribute, often on their own time. This could have been rephrased in so many other ways where Linus doesn't come off as a total jerk, and still be "right" with the same message.
This is a message to an @redhat address, as you might notice. Mauro gets paid to work on the kernel and is not a noob who doesn't know better, either, he's a maintainer who fucked up basic maintenance.
I just wish for all of us to become more accustomed to working on ourselves instead of projecting the need to develop virtue on others. Linus actually did it, doesn't mean that he was an asshole before. Brash, sure, crass, yes, but actual assholes don't calm down as easily.
I kindly disagree with most of what you said. Linus is brilliant, and I appreciate his contributions not just to technology and freedom but also to society. However, this does not pardon the hardships he has also brought upon others.
It's important to be honest in code reviews, but his language, while also honest, goes far and beyond that. We're doing ourselves a disservice defending this behavior as if it's a standard of communication quality that people should strive for, or learn how to behave like.
Current-day Linus wouldn't react much differently. Cut the "shut the fuck up", the one or other "fuck" (but not all, some need to be there for emphasis), done. It's the real personal shit, the "should be aborted retroactively" stuff, that he cut out. "Obvious garbage and idiocy" is a technical term, programmers apply it to their own work all the time. Compilers are more technical in their language but we know what they mean.
And was this mail, seen in its total impact, a hardship? He went down hard, yes, and thousands upon thousands of Linux users breathed a sigh of relief, seeing that Mauro's attitude towards userland doesn't fly.
The hardest-hitting sentence in that mail is actually "You have shown yourself to not be competent in this issue". Absolutely devastating. Taking context into account it's the equivalent of telling a professional cook that their ingredients suck, what they did with them sucks, and most of all that the gall which which they claimed that the customer is wrong about their dinner sucking is completely, and utterly, unprofessional.
Of course that's hard on Mauro. There's no way to tell someone about such an epic cock-up without being hard. But not going that far, avoiding that hardship for some notion of civility, now that would be right-out cruel.
Please defend these statements for me. I'm having a hard time understanding how this is language we should strive for in a code review, even with your explanation.
Additionally, if you can give me any pointers on how I can communicate this way, I'm all ears and would appreciate the help.
There's a hell of a difference between calling random commenters "dickriders" and having your boss, whom you have a very unequal relationship with, berate you like this.
He is the dickrider I'm talking about. Being contrarian for their beloved Linus.
Me saying one derisive word on an online forum is not exactly the same as a business environment where your for the lack of a better word boss is publicly cussing you out and humiliating you. There are a million other ways to get the point across without being an ass about it.
Honestly, if such incompetent developers weren't as arrogant as to argue how their bullshit is the right way to go, I would agree with you. But instead their bullshit philosophy is the expected way to work in many places, and it's the cancer of computer development, so the anger is deserved IMO.
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.
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
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.
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.
As many seem to have overlooked itb this is from more than a decade ago.
And to those setting "not being toxic" == "being vague":
Suggestion if you're in a situation: separate the subject discussed from the person and, to the contrary to what is said in some other posts, be very specific!
Improvised example:
Hey all,
patch xyzz and its aftermath communication is unacceptable.
It's content is not to the standards we have set here (explain).
Even worse, in the communication aftermath we blamed behavior of user space applications for bugs that are within our domain instead of owning up.
The bugs within the kernel will be focused on with highest priority by a, b and myself.
For the communication: (consequences).
As explained the patterns shown here are unacceptable.
I have decided to no longer have x as a kernel maintainer on our team/enforce pairing for all communication/set up stricter consequence catalogue. Any specific action,really...
Not perfect as it's very early here, I haven't slept well and I'm not deep into the topic.
Just remember to separate subject to be discussed from person(s) acting please.
And always remember: bad communication is really easy and a lot of managers trained that their whole life! ♥
Reading this version I wouldn't know the writer is deeply disappointed, frustrated and angry. It's good you're trying to improve the letter but this is exactly what many people don't like about it: it changes the meaning. Perhaps you could include a paragraph which conveys this, such that the reader understands the gravity of the situation better.
Oh that was in purpose! It shouldn't matter that I personally am angry. My employees should never NEVER try to prevent me from being angry but focus on doing the best job they can.
That's what I admire about Linus: he realized the negative impact his anger had on the performance of others - and fixed it!
To be clear: I can be angry - but my anger isn't the reason I want things to change. Being angry is MY FAILURE as manager!
Think about it in another way: do you want your colleagues do things they thin prevent you from being disappointed, frustrated or angry - xor do you want then to move your collective goal forward no matter what you'd think.
Another example: if I'd be the one to have caused this communication mess I'd want my employees to call me out - even though I will get angry the moment I realize I've fucked up big time!
Ignoring emotions is very unhealthy. I understand that it is seen as desirable in a business context, but it is very unhealthy and detrimental in the long run.
I agree! Making someone aware of your feelings doesn't mean exploding. You can just tell them. "I am very sad, frustrated and angry due to your actions. Please don't do this again." Is very clear and hurts no one.
I apologize - it wasn't my intention to imply that at all!
Emotional self management is a critical skill for managers - and that shouldn't mean "go away, emotions!".
A trainer and coach I highly respect phrased it simply: "emotions are. They exist if we like them or not.".
What I intended to convey was "do not use a public platform to channel your emotions."
If this would've been a private conversation I would integrate an explanation of my current situation, feelings and context for my reaction. And also this sounds abstract it can totally be a "dude I'm absolutely pissed. I need you to work with me through this." (this works btw in both meanings of "pissed" ;)).
I think removing someone's maintainer status does communicate disappointment in their performance quite well.
And as for anger and frustration, these things really don't matter in this circumstance. Work is not therapy. If you need to vent anger and frustration, get a therapist. Employees are employed to do their job, not to be the emotional punching bag for a manager who can't control their temper.
If an employee doesn't perform to expectations repeatedly and even after you had a few constructive one-on-ones, then demote them or fire them. No need to vent your anger on them and lose your professionalism.
Tbh, the first time a boss of mine loses their temper and verbally attacks a colleague like Linus did here, they have also lost all of my respect for them. And at that moment I will start to look for another job.
I am not and was not advocating for venting - just for communicating emotion. This can be as simple as:
"Your actions have deeply frustrated me and caused great anger on top of [technical reasons]. I would ask that you be more careful in the future."
This ensures the reader not only understands they hurt Linux with their actions but also another human being. Many people will be more careful if they know they caused personal pain to an actual human being and not just to an abstract technical object such as a codebase.
I know I am going against established cultural norms in western business context - please don't disregard my proposal just because it contradicts established culture.
I do understand what you mean, and it makes much more sense than advocating for venting.
But I still feel that putting emotions into a discussion about work performance isn't the right way, especially when done in public.
In a situation like that where something caused a lot of negative emotions (that go beyond your work performance is bad), I think you should have two separate talks. One about the factual things where one is boss and the other is employee, and one about the hurt/emotions the behaviour caused and in this talk, both are just people resolving their personal problems.
Something like the issue in the OP really shouldn't cause anger on Linus' side, since it's a totally factual issue. A propper response would have been to decline/revert the change while publically saying "This change validates that rule of the project" and then privately contacting the maintainer in question and tell him, "We talked about this repeatedly, if you don't stop, we need to take consequences."
Emotions should really only enter the picture when personal offenses where comitted before or maybe if the employee did something with the intent to hurt the project/company/manager.
But if you get really angry because your employee did something wrong, then that's a problem on the side of the manager and not on the side of the employee.
That said, I think it's totally ok to tell the employee about the consequences of their actions ("We lost X amount of money" or "It took Y amount of time to correct it" or something like that).
But if you get really angry because your employee did something wrong, then that’s a problem on the side of the manager and not on the side of the employee.
This is probably taught in manager courses in order to protect their subordinates from managerial outbursts, which is a good cause, but they're not quite right.
The Linux kernel is Torvalds life work. He literally spent most of the time he has on this planet on it, as did thousands others. Instead of watching his children grow, he made sure the planet gets a great operating system. It takes immeasurable effort to keep a vast software project in a good state - most large organisations with many times the resources fail to do so.
The maintainers behaviour represents a complete disregard for this sacrifice. They are showing through their actions that they don't care that Torvalds and many others spent the little time they have on this planet on this software project instead of more fulfilling and joyful activities. I cannot imagine many more hurtful or disrespectful insults than this. It's not far from saying their efforts are null and thus their life wasted.
I am saying all of this because I feel that you are speaking as a leader in a company, where you make sure other people's money is spent productively. This not at all the same thing as what Torvalds is doing, because it's not just a job, it is his literal life or life's work.
This doesn't excuse the behaviour, obviously - but it makes it very human. It's good that he changed. I just hope we can find a middle ground between forced business speak and emotional outbreaks.
I'm not a manager (used to be team lead, but managing is not for me), but I've worked under a few coleric managers and some that where able to communicate in a sensible way.
One of my bosses, for example (that was the job where I was team lead) had a pretty similar style of communication as Linus.
Sure, the company was his life work. But I also started there shortly after the company was founded and I too spent a lot of time and was very emotionally invested in the company and the products. And my boss was just human (and on top didn't know a lot about the subject), so he made mistakes. And his judgement was often wrong.
But he was never able to accept that he made any mistakes. He'd offload all his mistakes onto some employee, while claiming that every idea that worked out was his, and not the idea of the employee who actually had the idea and had to convince him first. And every time something went wrong, he'd slam the door of some employee open and shouted and swore at that employee.
Turns out, that's not a great way to encourage people working there. Most of the good people quit after one especially bad explosion of his.
Back to Linus: is it human to be angry that someone disagrees with you? Maybe.
Is it in any way helpful to anyone? Clearly not.
I am pretty sure that anyone who gets to be a maintainer on the Linux kernel is heavily invested and has sacrificed a lot to get there. Attacking them like Linus did, that really renders their life work worthless.
The maintainer did nothing with the purpose to harm the Linux kernel project. He just accepted a change that he thought would improve Linux. Disagreeing on a factual topic with your boss should never trigger an explosion like that.
I would disagree just because the success of the product (be it closed or open source) shouldn't be dependent on the feelings of one person. You can be frustrated and angry, but it's more useful to explain why you feel that way and what can be done to address it. Including your feelings only makes the person not want to do what specifically hurts you, not what is best for the project.
I agree, it's completely unacceptable to introduce a bug and then to instead of taking responsibility for introducing such a bug, you start pointing fingers at everybody else.
It's like when a car hits a cyclist following all the rules and then tries to blame the cyclist for not following some made up rules that only exist in the drivers head "Cyclists should be on the SIDEWALK if they don't wanna get hit!"
Not only were they wrong to hit them, they're DOUBLE wrong for trying to blame them after the fact.
Nah it's completely fine. I vastly prefer an angry-sounding takedown over a passive aggressive takedown and a takedown Mauro definitely deserved because his code was, in fact, utter shite, and that as a maintainer. This isn't "oh he's a noob he doesn't know how the kernel works" type of territory. Also note that this happened after he had been told what's up in a neutral and factual way: Linus, even in his most management by perkele days, never made those things the first reply to anything. So Mauro got his chance to spot that he fucked up and correct his approach, he didn't, therefore, it has to be said loudly. Simple as that.
Also, no "you should be aborted retroactively" in sight anywhere. Yeah that stuff wasn't necessary even though everyone with an ounce of social intelligence should readily spot that those insults were always so over the top as to be obviously humorous.
It's possible to be assertive and assign responsibility for a screwup without being a dick. "Being a dick" is the nothing else has worked option, not step one.
"being a dick" and "assertive" are weasel terms which do a hell a lot of lifting in your argument there. I have no idea where your line for behaviour to be deemed acceptable actually is.
IMO, no, Linus wasn't a dick. He called out a specific attitude and behaviour which Mauro is not supposed to show in his role as maintainer. What about Mauro being a dick because he went in all self-righteous like "this is a bug in pulseaudio"?
If you were a restaurant manager, and a server told a customer that he's not going to serve beer with steak but only wine because "drinking beer with steak is obviously wrong", what would you do? Chew them out, of course. It's way out of line. This isn't Linus exploding over nothing just to bully someone, that's a thing he has never done.
If you want someone toxic to complain about in the FOSS space pick Lennart Poettering, the kind of guy who replies to "We'd like to be able to disable various features to keep things small" with "why do you hate disabled people they need accessibility". More generally speaking: Focussing on tone never ends up well. You can be incredibly toxic in the most flowery of idioms.
Your example is from one of this industries notorious for being toxic -- that doesn't make it right.
"Why would you think that's even remotely acceptable? Now I have to go apologize and possible comp a meal." Depending on the circumstance: take them off that table, send them home, or fire them. Being in control of themselves is one of the defining aspects of leadership, and being abusive is the sign a "leader" that isn't.
If they start being a dick: sure, game on -- so long as you're not demeaning yourself doing it. But most people are capable of a degree of self reflection and accountability once you make the situation clear to them, and they deserve that chance. Sometimes people don't even realize they're the ones that screwed up, even when it's obvious to everyone else.
Maybe fair in a typical setting, but getting iffy around programmers, especially kernel maintainers. I'm convinced linux and foss in general would not exist without the autism spectrum, and who knows maybe even borderline personality disorders
I don't think I am missing the forest. There's not an issue with the idea of correcting a developer, but there is an issue in the way the correction was carried out. Just because something behaves "better" after punishment doesn't mean the punishment was good. Ends justifying means and all.
That's very "ends justify the means" of you. No, that's not the question here. Linus could have gotten the same results without the yelling and insults. You do not need either of those to be direct, assertive, and clear on what the issue is, something that Linus has since learned
Both Mauro and Linus are human. I trust them to be so. I don't get the point of endlessly pontificating about human quirks & behavior, we are all not assembled from the same factory. And we all grow and we learn. No one's perfect.
Plus, your argument fails to address the main issue here, Mauro needing to realize that he needs to improve in order to continue contributing to a project shared among many people and one passionately guarded by Linus as his baby.
Seeing the rest of the thread really contextualizes Linus' anger.
Only seeing the message from Linus makes him look like a dick. But when you see that he's responding to someone deflecting blame and being a shithead to the guy trying to report a problem and provide a suggested fix, the aggressive response seems more justifiable.
Yes. I did not include patch from first person in screenshot because I thought it would make it too boring to read. But it kinda adds even more to context.
Replying to "I get this regression with KDE on this system caused by this commit and here how I fixed it" with "lol, pulseaudio sucks, opensuse sucks" of course will make Linus angry and he will reply not only "no u", but also "and here's why".
Okay, I agree that this is a really dickish way to respond to a dev, and I can see Torvald's message being as much an olive branch to app devs as it was a thorough humbling of the maintainer. Still wouldn't call it professional, but... I get it.
Honestly, with this response although I think he didn't deserve all of that from Linus, he did deserve quite a bit of it. So condescending and smug to application developers that actually make the user experience of Linux a good thing.
I think whoever recieved this would be completely fine to report Linus to HR or something. The fact somebody thought to circulate it is suggestive that it crossed a line. I do appreciate he does seem to really care about the kernel. He could maybe tone down the hysterics a little.
I think if there's a lesson here its "Never hit send while you're angry" always wait until your hormones to subside before sending an email because emails are records and people don't have good judgement while angry, so an email sent in anger is just a record of your poor judgement.
One does not simply break userspace. You'll receive more than just angry bug reports. There are restless maintainers who will not sleep. And the great corporations are ever watchful.
Yeah, maybe left kernal development (like Linus indicated he may have done to various people), maybe that person was traumatized. But alas, there's no other way to let a human being know they made a mistake without making exaggerated personal attacks.
They are literally interacting with the dudes life work, and apparently shitting on core rules. No surprise he got heated. It's not just a job to that dude, it's like he slapped his mother
All attacks were related.to the professional output (the code, and the ability to code)
Nah my man. No excuse to act like an ass like that; life's work or not. That's simply a sign of poor emotional maturity, and is (plain and simple) abusive behavior. People make mistakes, regardless of the severity of the mistake. Let's put it another way: would you be okay with someone talking to a child that way? If not, why is it okay to do so to an adult? Just because we're older, doesn't mean we deserve it.
Yeah, it's kind of invigorating to see somebody speak so plainly. No "There's a couple issues we should maybe discuss", no "Let's loop back on that sometime", no "Hmm, is that really the best approach? Do you have any documentation?" Just a straightforward "Dude, this is shit! Here's some reasons why!""
Having worked for a decade in tech, I would love it of people were this direct.
Having worked in tech for two and a half decades, and in places that were this direct - no thanks. There's a fine line between being clear and direct, and being toxic - what Torvalds did here was toxic, and in many workplaces of today would be classed as bullying. Being subjected to this 'directness' for any given amount of time will do a number on most people's personality and self-esteem. People don't improve themselves if all you do is shit on them.
Agreed. I think it's amusing to observe. Being around it yourself is quite difficult. Being the target of it sucks and having your peer go off the deep end and finding a way to reel them in sucks too.
Fair. I've worked in tech for just over a decade now, and I've only been in the polar opposite environment, and found it sorta suffocating. Everybody knows this guy is pumping out crap, and every bug in the system comes from his part of the code, but well...if anybody says it, or even hints it, they're being unnecessarily confrontational, and nobody ever gives anything but positive feedback in peer reviews.
I feel, from my limited experience, like the 90s might have been peak machismo rock star hacker work culture, and the pendulum has now swung to the very far side.
It's perfectly possible to say "this is unacceptable, we never break userspace. Mauro, your change is obviously what is breaking userspace because ..." without adding "SHUT THE FUCK UP" or "[all of this is] TOTAL CRAP", i.e. being direct without being derogatory.
I mean, that's fair, and as was pointed out elsewhere Linus has sought help for his temper.
On the other hand, for all the talk of how "unprofessional" it was for him to behave this way, he did shepherd an OS kernel from a hobby project to the most popular OS on the planet (with the possible exception of Minix, apparently...)
I agree that polite directness might be better, bu IMHO the more common polite indirectness and avoidance of any hint of conflict is clearly worse.
I read a lot of frustration in that post. I don't know if that frustration was warranted, but I've been in (non-tech) leadership where you almost just have to scream like this to get the point across.
"This is incorrect. Here's why. 1. 2. 3." no need to be disrespectful, no need to make it even call it a fuck up. either the individual has the maturity to grow or ...not. but then... I certainly understand the frustration. There's just some people... that definitely struck a nerve of the 'you don't get it, do you?' variety. like the guy who told me (working contract security), that it was illegal for us to make them go outside in winter, because below-freezing is too dangerous. (yeah. We, uh, provided them with some fairly good parkas, and had hats and gloves available. with 'if you need more' accommodation already mentioned.)(Oh, and he was only needing to be outside for about ten, or so minutes.)
Well that's pretty hilariously ironic. I'm nothing like this, I wish I were more comfortable being direct. But meanwhile, you heap abuse on me and threaten to beat me up because I said "boy, it's nice to see someone speaking directly". You're much worse than Torvalds, and I completely agree it would be a terrible idea for us to ever work together. Or for you to work with anyone else, for that matter.
One can sternly address serious mistakes by a subordinate without being outright mean about it. Doing so calmly and seriously is usually more effective anyway.
Treat your volunteers well, or why should they continue volunteering?
Kernel maintainers have plenty of other opportunities.
I don't know if they are volunteering or being paid. The other person said they are being paid.
Either way, no one deserves being talked down to like that, even if they made a mistake. It's a matter of respect and self-respect. And as a skilled person like a kernel developer, it should be trivially easy to find other work in a more appropriate environment.
That being said, maybe I'm missing something. Torvalds has been known to be like that for a long time (although that seems to be over now). And still, Linux has been developed over decades. So apparently, skilled people flocked around Torvalds, or maybe rather his project. Not entirely sure why, but I'm taking it as a hint I might be missing something.
Poor Mauro: they weren't good at what they loved, they blamed others for their failings, and their community leader was nuts.
Jokes aside, we've already got toxic right there. Linus isn't right, but someone like that would be fired with good cause. It's one thing to make a mistake, it's quite another to blame your co-workers for your own shoddy work.
In the following responses Mauro was very professional. l haven't heard much about recently but Linus had some high tier anger issues. Most of the cases I was following back then he was right, but desperately needed to cool off.
I find it ironic that Linus’s explanation for ENOENT being invalid for an ioctl given its meaning of “No such file or directory”, while simultaneously ioctl can return ENOTTY when using a mismatched device fd despite the error meaning “Not a typewriter.”
I feel like people are overlooking the fact that this is typical early internet behavior lol.
I get that its the linux kernel mailing list, but I'm pretty sure Linus was way more wild online than in person because that's how public internet forums and IRC used to be like.
Stallman has also said some equally braindead stuff lol.
I wonder if the guys here who are moaning like the snowflakes they are about Linus' way of conveying the message (not the message itself) are from the US? I sometimes really wonder about the US mindset. The boss is critisizing you justifyably but in an inadequate tone? Hell breaks lose. But as an employee insisting on healthcare, an adequate number of days on paid time off, unionazing or at least have an able workers' representation? Nah, that's unheard of.
How about having some priorities? Grow a pair and chose your battles more wisely. The boss criticizes you? If he's right, own up to your mistakes. Want some rights you are actually entitled to? Yeah, that's what you fight for.
Linus doesn't love that, he literally got therapy to not be like that. Maybe there's a lesson there for you.
In fact, in a more recent talk he mentioned being horrified at the sort of people who liked how he spoke and the way they assumed he shared their political opinions as a significant motivator.
I just love people that don't beat around the bush and are straight to the point. We have enough snowflakes and bullshitters in this world IMO. Everyone's so sensitive all the time, like... grow up and own your mistakes. And a wake up call guy like Linus is exactly what people need.
But, having one definitely raises alarams about the seriousness of the issue... and this was a serious issue, not breaking user space is why we're still using Linux. If it broke something on every update, I'm sure we would have opted for something else a long time ago... so would every server on this earth, as well as Google for Android.
If you think it is acceptable to lash out at someone you're mean and if you can't find ways to communicate clearly without lashing out you're a bad communicator.
Linux/open source has a massive problem with finding maintainers and contributors for critical projects and a significant contributor is just how awful the communication culture of programmers is.
Nope, actually I'm fairly calm. I only lash out when others do it at me first, but I own up (not lash out) if I was to blame. And the guy did own up, and that's great IMO, he admitted he was wrong. Bravo 👏.
Kernel devs are like mini-gods, so I can understand them being with their nose up in the clouds a bit... and they completely deserve that, they're the driving force behind what we use every day, for free I might add. But, since Linus started the whole thing, it's his show, he's running it. If he doesn't like what's being done, and especially if it's bullshit code, yes, I completely understand him lashing out... I might not do it that way, but I feel that there is nothing wrong with that either.
yet ppl here mostly dont care about breaking the userspace and use systemd shit that breaks said space. mention it here...get a hated for pointing out lennart poettering is a wanker.
It's often clear to see that Linus hasn't experienced the "and find out" part of what happens when you fuck around. I know that many of us techies aren't the most confrontational types, but I'm surprised that no one has hit him yet.
Your subpar ability to understand that the self fellating anger in that email is in no way something that generates quality and standards says much more about the decline to mediocrity.
Nonsense. It's simply that that kind of conduct is deeply unprofessional and reflects poorly on Linus. He could have said the exact same things about the issues with that patch without the obscenities and personal attacks.
I've worked as a software team lead for nearly 30 years, you do not get the best out of people by belittling and berating them.
I feel it's equally important to point ot that Torvalds recognized his toxic behavior, apologized for it, and took steps to rectify it.
That was seriously admirable. From memory he actually did improve quite a lot after that as well.
I've heard he's not perfect but he doesn't lose his temper anymore and has only gotten better with age. I respect anyone who can self reflect and introspect and come out a better person.
Yeah, shouting at your subordinates in public is utter bullshit.
So is breaking the userspace
So two wrongs make a right? Or could this have been a civil private email instead? And if civil private conversations aren't working, then it's time to part ways.
A civil public email would have been fine.
Acceptable, yes. But a good manager knows not to shine a spotlight on the mistakes of the team. There's nothing to gain keeping it public that you wouldn't also gain by keeping it private. But your team's morale is kept high if you sing their praises instead of their shortcomings.
I get what your saying, but i feel like the aggressively public development model means that more could be public here than i would accept on another team.
This probably helped others not to make the same mistake
Of working with Linus? Yes, it probably did.
What? I'm talking about breaking userspace?
I'm really glad you added this, that was pretty awful to read.
It's sad we don't get this energy anymore. Who will keep the fuckers in line now
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
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.
Except it's not a distinction at all.
It's a rotten analogy. Comparing Linus having a go at some volunteers is not analogous, or comparable to a father abusing kids.
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)
Oh noes he used bad wordsies? My fee-fees!
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.
I went to LKML for context, so I return with context.
When 3.8-rc1 was released, "Rafael J. Wysocki" reported 100% CPU usage by knotify4(part of KDE) on OpenSUSE Thubleweed with pulseaudio as audio server.
At which Mauro Carvalho Chehab replies starting with blaming pulseaudio(why? Srsly, why? I don't like it, but this is just troll behaviour) and saying pulseaudio(which is NOT knotify4) should not try to use V4L2.
This shitty behaviour ignites Linus' back and he replies with mentioned in post message.
I'm glad I don't live in your immediate vicinity.
Way to infantalize the people calling him out while excusing his childish tantrums.
Randomly blaming pulseaudio when talking about 100% CPU usage by KDE. I don't like pulseaudio, but this is childish indeed.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
How to communicate with someone who in conversation about KDE randomly blames pulseaudio and opensuse?
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.
Even more so because Torvalds is not his boss and the guy is a volunteer that is not being paid for his contribution.
I'm glad Torvalds was the bigger man and got help for his temper.
Red Hat email, not a volunteer.
Where is abuse part? More like victimblaming from Mauro.
Yeah, I completely agree, the guy's a duche, blaiming others for his mistake (assumption, that leads to a shitty PR, which is a mistake).
As I said, if I did that, I would gladly take the heat from Linus. Own up to your mistake. Yes, you do deserve to be called names. You're a maintainer for the most wide spread kernel in the world. "But I don't get paid...". You can quit at any time pal, no one is forcing you to do it.
To be fair he did it after Linus' speech.
I posted 3 screenshots in comments here.
https://lemmy.world/comment/5872379
The virgin IT tech tears in here are real.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfv0V1SxbNA
Fuck it's me.
I am Spartacus!
I thought he branched out to tech tips as a way of making extra money. Never seen the tech tips myself and with the controversy not too long ago probably never will.
As an entertainment show about tech, it's a pretty decent show to watch, I wouldn't use it to base my decisions on, but if you want to hear someone talk about tech stuff in a somewhat entertaining way I'd say give them ago, Linus can be a bit much sometimes but the rest of the crew are alright.
No, I am Spartacus!
I've only ever heard of torvalds because of pages like this one and since I don't watch LTT videos often, I've only ever heard his first name connected with the channel.
But LTT-Linus is 17 years younger and Canadian. O_O
Time to merge both Linus branches together into a Linus Hivemind.
I was a couple weeks into using Linux before this was made clear to me and the world made a lot more sense.
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"
Yeah, those mailing lists used to have some quite funny stuff; my favorite so far is smth along the lines of "whoever thought this was a good idea should be retroactively aborted".
But, on the other hand, damn it's toxic. Should've really sucked to work on the kernel back then.
I was curious as I couldn't help but laugh, but damn dude. That is rough. Hilarious looking at it now, but I feel bad for whomever was at the receiving end.
That's some quality venom.
Gold
Someone else pointed out that he actually apologized for being toxic sometimes and took some time off as a kernel maintainer because of that. Nice to see.
This happened on kernel 3.8, he stepped down on 4.18. That's plenty of time time for as lot more fuckups.
It's not really a fuckup it's like a fucksideways.
The kernel was safe, only feelings were hurt
I meant Linus' behavior was a fuckup. And he probably fucked up a lot between this example and his stepping down.
Was the product impacted? Did Mauro get his commit together?
If the product was undamaged he was just rude. A fuckup means he hurt the mission, he hurt his goals
He did hurt the mission. Plenty of kernel maintainers have left, and those were people who had been with the project for years. Losing experienced people to toxicity 1000% harms both the project and the product.
In almost instances of Linus going off on one in public it is because maintainers weren't doing their jobs (to act as quality gatekeepers), or particular developers thinking they could steam roll road changes through if they kept submitting them, or not listening to what Linus was saying. I remember Linus used to ream out Hans Reiser a lot (the guy who was subsequently imprisoned for murdering his wife) because he constantly tried to get ReiserFS into the kernel despite serious issues Linus had with it.
So generally when you see a rant, there is a history behind it and the rant itself is directed with a point. I also think it's self evident that the kernel has benefited from this "benevolent dictator" model. I'm sure some people have gotten all precious over their feelings being hurt. The rest raised their game and the result has been a code quality standard you'll probably never see anywhere else.
Did that demonstrably happen?
If there's a surplus of talent (sounds like Mauro was dead weight) then at most he was just rude on Mauro's way out the door.
I'm not saying it's cool to be rude, but if it's Linus' review then you get what you get. To be butthurt about someone being rude to you should motivate you to learn your code interactions better. (In this case error handling)
You seem eager to pose this “if the product was undamaged” as if you can quantify what might have happened differently, but then in a comment below you ask someone else to prove that maintainers left.
It might shock you to learn that products are developed by people. Actual people stay or leave and work wildly differently based on things like respect, expectations, and being in a hostile environment.
Want proof of that? Go work on an actual project with a team sometime.
edit - And this isn’t even accounting for the ways toxic communication impedes wider adoption of a product
People who could be easily replaced. It's a non issue.
I do work on software teams, and don't conduct myself like Linus, because I'm not Linus. That pattern of communication isn't available to me, an average engineer.
But if someone spoke to me that way (and they have) I took it as a clear signal I need to level up and act right. Not an invitation to feel bad about myself.
Linux has clearly not missed out on wide adoption in any way.
Like, I get how it's funny, but I would hate to get this kind of shit from someone I respect. Would really mess me up, personally
So publicly, too. People have quit over it.
If someone whom I respected shat a bit in email about my work product, I'd be sad for a bit. Then I'd read it again and understand it's my work product and I am not my work. I can make mistakes and I can fix them, and fixing mistakes is how we get awesome.
I have received negative feedback. And I did feel just a little butthurt about it. But it was in NJ and I was new, and didn't see from the first read that Buddy was expressing frank and honest concerns about my work product and not me. I'm embarrassed to say how long it took me to clue in, but I did. And we worked through my mistakes and I was the better for it. And I learned.
And when he said my work didn't suck as much, I knew I was improving, because I could trust him.
You need to learn honest from asshole.
I get what you mean, but there are ways to say you fucked up, without calling you expletives. Some days, you get angry and scream at someone, but it doesn't really make it feel amazing for the party being screamed at.
I didn't mean it was mean from him to give him feedback or correct him, but the way he said it was a bit overblown.
As already stated it's less about the facts being communicated and more about the way they're being communicated.
I would posit that the mismatch in the style of communication lead to you needing more time to clue in. And in that way, the initial feedback might have been an inefficient way to relay the point.
However it's also entirely possible that trying to package it in a better way, the point of the feedback-giver would have gotten lost, leading you not to clue in at all.
Communication is hard, especially tailoring it to the expected audience. That being said I don't think being an asshole is ever ok, unless it directly saves lives or something. 😅
That's why you should never put people on a pedestal. There are a lot of people I admire, but I always try to imagine them being stupid assholes most of the time to balance things out in my head.
It's nice to have an idol to aspire to, but they don't say "don't meet your heroes" for no reason..
Not me, I'd just take a closer look at what I've done and see where my mistakes are.
It's not like we're married or something, I don't live with him. It's just an email, get over it.
I don't think having tough skin should be a prerequisite in IT.
You can tell a person they made a mistake or are wrong without being a cunt about it.
When the person doesn't see anything wrong with what they did, yes I belive I have the right to be a cunt about it.
I'd give as good as I got and we'd be fine. Not everyone is a spineless crybaby who melts down at the first hint of disapproval. Are you all little children?
Edit: Stupid question, apparently. Good thing it was rhetorical.
Wow, you are sooooooo tough, guy!!!!!!!!!!
So strong and manly!!!!
I'm sure you have so many girlfriends!!!!
They might even smoke weed
NO WAY!!!!
THE DEVILS LETTUCE?!!??!
That's so toxic. You may need therapy
Guy called me spineless crybaby. It's fair to hit back.
I hope I never meet you. You really don't know how to human.
This is way beyond a first hint of disapproval.
Found the Karen.
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.
Absolutely awful shit and I would be ashamed for decades if I acted like this to another person.
Really shows the worst of him here. It's rare that he becomes this toxic and humiliating.
To his credit he undertook sensitivity training and is a much, much, better communicator now.
He used to channel the whole juvenile angry-but-gifted programmer crap, accepted (eventually) the criticisms and did the right thing: changed.
I agree. In a leadership role it's one thing what you say to a person in front of others and a completely different thing what you say when alone with them....
To be fair, if he said what he wrote here in private, it'd still be extremely bad leadership.
Obviously he should correct them and point out why, but maybe not trash on them entierly.
Lmao he is often celebrated for his put downs
I think he's being fair and balanced. Also please stop calling mild irritation "toxicity", it only makes you sound like a whiney douchebag who cries whenever they're questioned about anything.
If this is not toxic, what is? Where do you draw the line? Would you call this email professional?
Fair and balanced in the same way as Fox News. :)
This was anything but "mild irritation". Makes me wonder what does a great irritation look like for you
Please don’t ever have kids.
I find this kinda insulting in an unnecessarily personal way. How is this comment not toxic in its own right? Kinda gross imo.
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.
He's the Gordon Ramsey of programming. THE KERNEL IS FUCKING RAAAWWWW!!!!
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.
What a toxic ass message. If he was my boss I would not tolerate this. It's weird how many dickriders here are defending him here
Jose1234, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Fix your fucking comment and don't ever blame OP.
Whoa WhoaWhoa, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
It's a mistake alright - by the boss. How long have you been an employee? And you still haven't learned the first rule of employment?
We never EVER blame the employee. How hard can this be to understand?
So Linus should have sided with someone who in regression report of KDE using 100% CPU starts blaming pulseaudio and opensuse and double down on blaming pulseaudio? Instead of fixing syscall returning completely unrelated error code. It's like if your router crashed with message "there is no milk in your fridge".
uis, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
if only this were true.
fingers will always be pointed at us developers even as management takes full credits for the success every other time. :(
Well, he isn't anyone's boss here. I agree, and so would linus nowadays, that this is toxic and should be avoided, but the anger I fully understand.
Attempting to shift blame away from yourself after making a change which breaks a large portion of user space is cause for termination at any company I've worked at. It's cowardice. This action goes against one of the most important, core philosophies, of the kernal. Do not break userspace. Also, this person should know better. They are not some odd newbie who may not grasp the ideas yet.
In a world where termination is not an option harsh criticism is required. This though, I agree, was anger driven unprofessionalism
There is a way to say all of that and not be a dick about it. Angry responses are seldom needed.
He did it seldomly
I think there may also be a cultural angle here. Anglo-Saxon culture really places a much higher emphasis on "not causing offense", whereas other cultures place a higher emphasis on speaking truthfully, even if harshly.
So Linus, who grew up in Finland, may have thought of his message as harsh but fair, whereas to native English speakers it comes across as incredibly rude.
It doesn't come across as particularly rude given what the offense here is. Someone blamed other projects for their mistake after getting called out. That deserves harsh criticism.
I think you are talking about American ideals. Not ideals in the English speaking world. Nothing here is remotely toxic by British standards. Swearing isn't a big deal here, people regularly call each other swear words as a sign of affection. If someone does something stupid you can say they are acting like an idiot and hopefully they will listen. If you didn't they might not think you are serious.
For sure. It's funny in a way, but this is not a great way to treat folks that are trying to contribute, often on their own time. This could have been rephrased in so many other ways where Linus doesn't come off as a total jerk, and still be "right" with the same message.
This is a message to an @redhat address, as you might notice. Mauro gets paid to work on the kernel and is not a noob who doesn't know better, either, he's a maintainer who fucked up basic maintenance.
Neat.
Linus could also be kinder.
I just wish for all of us to become more accustomed to working on ourselves instead of projecting the need to develop virtue on others. Linus actually did it, doesn't mean that he was an asshole before. Brash, sure, crass, yes, but actual assholes don't calm down as easily.
I kindly disagree with most of what you said. Linus is brilliant, and I appreciate his contributions not just to technology and freedom but also to society. However, this does not pardon the hardships he has also brought upon others.
It's important to be honest in code reviews, but his language, while also honest, goes far and beyond that. We're doing ourselves a disservice defending this behavior as if it's a standard of communication quality that people should strive for, or learn how to behave like.
Current-day Linus wouldn't react much differently. Cut the "shut the fuck up", the one or other "fuck" (but not all, some need to be there for emphasis), done. It's the real personal shit, the "should be aborted retroactively" stuff, that he cut out. "Obvious garbage and idiocy" is a technical term, programmers apply it to their own work all the time. Compilers are more technical in their language but we know what they mean.
And was this mail, seen in its total impact, a hardship? He went down hard, yes, and thousands upon thousands of Linux users breathed a sigh of relief, seeing that Mauro's attitude towards userland doesn't fly.
The hardest-hitting sentence in that mail is actually "You have shown yourself to not be competent in this issue". Absolutely devastating. Taking context into account it's the equivalent of telling a professional cook that their ingredients suck, what they did with them sucks, and most of all that the gall which which they claimed that the customer is wrong about their dinner sucking is completely, and utterly, unprofessional.
Of course that's hard on Mauro. There's no way to tell someone about such an epic cock-up without being hard. But not going that far, avoiding that hardship for some notion of civility, now that would be right-out cruel.
Please defend these statements for me. I'm having a hard time understanding how this is language we should strive for in a code review, even with your explanation.
Additionally, if you can give me any pointers on how I can communicate this way, I'm all ears and would appreciate the help.
No one is arguing that Linus isnt a total jerk.
Just like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and even Ol Musky...
We can be better. We can both be a community that is extremely direct with our core values and code it well, but we can also treat people right.
It's a reality in many places. And it's thanks to the many many many assholes that I listed above that brought this change.
Not sure those three names belong in the same list.
So glad he got therapy (after this post or very probably because of it).
That said, fuck Nvidia.
He did? Couldn't tell based off of this message
you should always check the date of anything you see online before forming any thoughts about it.
Calling a bunch of people 'dickriders' is just as toxic as the Linus-message. Do what you want, but you are not an inch better than Linus.
But yes, the mail is toxic and unacceptable.
Exactly.
There's a hell of a difference between calling random commenters "dickriders" and having your boss, whom you have a very unequal relationship with, berate you like this.
Oh the irony...
You're exactly proving my point
how does he?
He is the dickrider I'm talking about. Being contrarian for their beloved Linus.
Me saying one derisive word on an online forum is not exactly the same as a business environment where your for the lack of a better word boss is publicly cussing you out and humiliating you. There are a million other ways to get the point across without being an ass about it.
What does one's practice of riding dicks have to do with anything?
If only there was a way for you to get your point accross, without insulting others.
It only proves your hypocrisy as you’re being toxic yourself.
Honestly, if such incompetent developers weren't as arrogant as to argue how their bullshit is the right way to go, I would agree with you. But instead their bullshit philosophy is the expected way to work in many places, and it's the cancer of computer development, so the anger is deserved IMO.
I mean he went ballistic, but how long did he tell Mauro? I would have fired Mauro instead.
Nah, if you were spouting bullshit your boss won't tolerate you.
Linus never mails random contributers working on their own time. There are different maintainers for that.
Linus sends mail to people working under him directly.
Prolly cause your boss doesn't have half the responsibilities Linus did or had to deal with as many retards.
Weak ass excuse
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
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 think kernel still has compatibility with paleolithic glibc enabled by default
Why cringe? I find it fun.
Well you're broken and hurting inside.
What a nasty response
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.
This is hilarious to read from outside, but I am definitely not speaking like this to my colleagues
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.
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
As many seem to have overlooked itb this is from more than a decade ago.
And to those setting "not being toxic" == "being vague":
Suggestion if you're in a situation: separate the subject discussed from the person and, to the contrary to what is said in some other posts, be very specific!
Improvised example:
Hey all,
patch xyzz and its aftermath communication is unacceptable.
It's content is not to the standards we have set here (explain).
Even worse, in the communication aftermath we blamed behavior of user space applications for bugs that are within our domain instead of owning up.
The bugs within the kernel will be focused on with highest priority by a, b and myself.
For the communication: (consequences). As explained the patterns shown here are unacceptable.
I have decided to no longer have x as a kernel maintainer on our team/enforce pairing for all communication/set up stricter consequence catalogue. Any specific action,really...
Not perfect as it's very early here, I haven't slept well and I'm not deep into the topic.
Just remember to separate subject to be discussed from person(s) acting please.
And always remember: bad communication is really easy and a lot of managers trained that their whole life! ♥
Reading this version I wouldn't know the writer is deeply disappointed, frustrated and angry. It's good you're trying to improve the letter but this is exactly what many people don't like about it: it changes the meaning. Perhaps you could include a paragraph which conveys this, such that the reader understands the gravity of the situation better.
Oh that was in purpose! It shouldn't matter that I personally am angry. My employees should never NEVER try to prevent me from being angry but focus on doing the best job they can.
That's what I admire about Linus: he realized the negative impact his anger had on the performance of others - and fixed it!
To be clear: I can be angry - but my anger isn't the reason I want things to change. Being angry is MY FAILURE as manager!
Think about it in another way: do you want your colleagues do things they thin prevent you from being disappointed, frustrated or angry - xor do you want then to move your collective goal forward no matter what you'd think.
Another example: if I'd be the one to have caused this communication mess I'd want my employees to call me out - even though I will get angry the moment I realize I've fucked up big time!
Ignoring emotions is very unhealthy. I understand that it is seen as desirable in a business context, but it is very unhealthy and detrimental in the long run.
I wouldn't necessarily call it ignoring, if you just... don't explode on someone in a "professional" letter, if we can call it that.
I agree! Making someone aware of your feelings doesn't mean exploding. You can just tell them. "I am very sad, frustrated and angry due to your actions. Please don't do this again." Is very clear and hurts no one.
I apologize - it wasn't my intention to imply that at all! Emotional self management is a critical skill for managers - and that shouldn't mean "go away, emotions!". A trainer and coach I highly respect phrased it simply: "emotions are. They exist if we like them or not.".
What I intended to convey was "do not use a public platform to channel your emotions."
If this would've been a private conversation I would integrate an explanation of my current situation, feelings and context for my reaction. And also this sounds abstract it can totally be a "dude I'm absolutely pissed. I need you to work with me through this." (this works btw in both meanings of "pissed" ;)).
I think removing someone's maintainer status does communicate disappointment in their performance quite well.
And as for anger and frustration, these things really don't matter in this circumstance. Work is not therapy. If you need to vent anger and frustration, get a therapist. Employees are employed to do their job, not to be the emotional punching bag for a manager who can't control their temper.
If an employee doesn't perform to expectations repeatedly and even after you had a few constructive one-on-ones, then demote them or fire them. No need to vent your anger on them and lose your professionalism.
Tbh, the first time a boss of mine loses their temper and verbally attacks a colleague like Linus did here, they have also lost all of my respect for them. And at that moment I will start to look for another job.
I am not and was not advocating for venting - just for communicating emotion. This can be as simple as:
"Your actions have deeply frustrated me and caused great anger on top of [technical reasons]. I would ask that you be more careful in the future."
This ensures the reader not only understands they hurt Linux with their actions but also another human being. Many people will be more careful if they know they caused personal pain to an actual human being and not just to an abstract technical object such as a codebase.
I know I am going against established cultural norms in western business context - please don't disregard my proposal just because it contradicts established culture.
I do understand what you mean, and it makes much more sense than advocating for venting.
But I still feel that putting emotions into a discussion about work performance isn't the right way, especially when done in public.
In a situation like that where something caused a lot of negative emotions (that go beyond your work performance is bad), I think you should have two separate talks. One about the factual things where one is boss and the other is employee, and one about the hurt/emotions the behaviour caused and in this talk, both are just people resolving their personal problems.
Something like the issue in the OP really shouldn't cause anger on Linus' side, since it's a totally factual issue. A propper response would have been to decline/revert the change while publically saying "This change validates that rule of the project" and then privately contacting the maintainer in question and tell him, "We talked about this repeatedly, if you don't stop, we need to take consequences."
Emotions should really only enter the picture when personal offenses where comitted before or maybe if the employee did something with the intent to hurt the project/company/manager.
But if you get really angry because your employee did something wrong, then that's a problem on the side of the manager and not on the side of the employee.
That said, I think it's totally ok to tell the employee about the consequences of their actions ("We lost X amount of money" or "It took Y amount of time to correct it" or something like that).
I agree with what you said in general.
This is probably taught in manager courses in order to protect their subordinates from managerial outbursts, which is a good cause, but they're not quite right.
The Linux kernel is Torvalds life work. He literally spent most of the time he has on this planet on it, as did thousands others. Instead of watching his children grow, he made sure the planet gets a great operating system. It takes immeasurable effort to keep a vast software project in a good state - most large organisations with many times the resources fail to do so.
The maintainers behaviour represents a complete disregard for this sacrifice. They are showing through their actions that they don't care that Torvalds and many others spent the little time they have on this planet on this software project instead of more fulfilling and joyful activities. I cannot imagine many more hurtful or disrespectful insults than this. It's not far from saying their efforts are null and thus their life wasted.
I am saying all of this because I feel that you are speaking as a leader in a company, where you make sure other people's money is spent productively. This not at all the same thing as what Torvalds is doing, because it's not just a job, it is his literal life or life's work.
This doesn't excuse the behaviour, obviously - but it makes it very human. It's good that he changed. I just hope we can find a middle ground between forced business speak and emotional outbreaks.
I'm not a manager (used to be team lead, but managing is not for me), but I've worked under a few coleric managers and some that where able to communicate in a sensible way.
One of my bosses, for example (that was the job where I was team lead) had a pretty similar style of communication as Linus.
Sure, the company was his life work. But I also started there shortly after the company was founded and I too spent a lot of time and was very emotionally invested in the company and the products. And my boss was just human (and on top didn't know a lot about the subject), so he made mistakes. And his judgement was often wrong.
But he was never able to accept that he made any mistakes. He'd offload all his mistakes onto some employee, while claiming that every idea that worked out was his, and not the idea of the employee who actually had the idea and had to convince him first. And every time something went wrong, he'd slam the door of some employee open and shouted and swore at that employee.
Turns out, that's not a great way to encourage people working there. Most of the good people quit after one especially bad explosion of his.
Back to Linus: is it human to be angry that someone disagrees with you? Maybe.
Is it in any way helpful to anyone? Clearly not.
I am pretty sure that anyone who gets to be a maintainer on the Linux kernel is heavily invested and has sacrificed a lot to get there. Attacking them like Linus did, that really renders their life work worthless.
The maintainer did nothing with the purpose to harm the Linux kernel project. He just accepted a change that he thought would improve Linux. Disagreeing on a factual topic with your boss should never trigger an explosion like that.
I would disagree just because the success of the product (be it closed or open source) shouldn't be dependent on the feelings of one person. You can be frustrated and angry, but it's more useful to explain why you feel that way and what can be done to address it. Including your feelings only makes the person not want to do what specifically hurts you, not what is best for the project.
Why not both?
Man feel bad for the guy getting yelled yet
"An oldie but a goodie".... What?! This shouldn't be celebrated. What an absolutely unacceptable way to behave. Shame on anyone encouraging this.
I agree, it's completely unacceptable to introduce a bug and then to instead of taking responsibility for introducing such a bug, you start pointing fingers at everybody else.
It's like when a car hits a cyclist following all the rules and then tries to blame the cyclist for not following some made up rules that only exist in the drivers head "Cyclists should be on the SIDEWALK if they don't wanna get hit!"
Not only were they wrong to hit them, they're DOUBLE wrong for trying to blame them after the fact.
Nah it's completely fine. I vastly prefer an angry-sounding takedown over a passive aggressive takedown and a takedown Mauro definitely deserved because his code was, in fact, utter shite, and that as a maintainer. This isn't "oh he's a noob he doesn't know how the kernel works" type of territory. Also note that this happened after he had been told what's up in a neutral and factual way: Linus, even in his most management by perkele days, never made those things the first reply to anything. So Mauro got his chance to spot that he fucked up and correct his approach, he didn't, therefore, it has to be said loudly. Simple as that.
Also, no "you should be aborted retroactively" in sight anywhere. Yeah that stuff wasn't necessary even though everyone with an ounce of social intelligence should readily spot that those insults were always so over the top as to be obviously humorous.
It's possible to be assertive and assign responsibility for a screwup without being a dick. "Being a dick" is the nothing else has worked option, not step one.
"being a dick" and "assertive" are weasel terms which do a hell a lot of lifting in your argument there. I have no idea where your line for behaviour to be deemed acceptable actually is.
IMO, no, Linus wasn't a dick. He called out a specific attitude and behaviour which Mauro is not supposed to show in his role as maintainer. What about Mauro being a dick because he went in all self-righteous like "this is a bug in pulseaudio"?
If you were a restaurant manager, and a server told a customer that he's not going to serve beer with steak but only wine because "drinking beer with steak is obviously wrong", what would you do? Chew them out, of course. It's way out of line. This isn't Linus exploding over nothing just to bully someone, that's a thing he has never done.
If you want someone toxic to complain about in the FOSS space pick Lennart Poettering, the kind of guy who replies to "We'd like to be able to disable various features to keep things small" with "why do you hate disabled people they need accessibility". More generally speaking: Focussing on tone never ends up well. You can be incredibly toxic in the most flowery of idioms.
Your example is from one of this industries notorious for being toxic -- that doesn't make it right.
"Why would you think that's even remotely acceptable? Now I have to go apologize and possible comp a meal." Depending on the circumstance: take them off that table, send them home, or fire them. Being in control of themselves is one of the defining aspects of leadership, and being abusive is the sign a "leader" that isn't.
If they start being a dick: sure, game on -- so long as you're not demeaning yourself doing it. But most people are capable of a degree of self reflection and accountability once you make the situation clear to them, and they deserve that chance. Sometimes people don't even realize they're the ones that screwed up, even when it's obvious to everyone else.
"You're not wrong, [Linus], you're just [being] an asshole"
Maybe fair in a typical setting, but getting iffy around programmers, especially kernel maintainers. I'm convinced linux and foss in general would not exist without the autism spectrum, and who knows maybe even borderline personality disorders
You are missing the forest for the trees. The question is, did Mauro become a better kernel contributor/programmer?
As of 2017 he still contributes and said "it's fun." I assume he did.
But even Linus has since admitted that his behavior was unacceptable.
I don't think I am missing the forest. There's not an issue with the idea of correcting a developer, but there is an issue in the way the correction was carried out. Just because something behaves "better" after punishment doesn't mean the punishment was good. Ends justifying means and all.
That's very "ends justify the means" of you. No, that's not the question here. Linus could have gotten the same results without the yelling and insults. You do not need either of those to be direct, assertive, and clear on what the issue is, something that Linus has since learned
Both Mauro and Linus are human. I trust them to be so. I don't get the point of endlessly pontificating about human quirks & behavior, we are all not assembled from the same factory. And we all grow and we learn. No one's perfect.
Plus, your argument fails to address the main issue here, Mauro needing to realize that he needs to improve in order to continue contributing to a project shared among many people and one passionately guarded by Linus as his baby.
Fucking Mauro.
Randomly blaming pulseaudio and opensuse when talking about 100% CPU usage by KDE. It seems yes.
Seeing the rest of the thread really contextualizes Linus' anger.
Only seeing the message from Linus makes him look like a dick. But when you see that he's responding to someone deflecting blame and being a shithead to the guy trying to report a problem and provide a suggested fix, the aggressive response seems more justifiable.
Yes. I did not include patch from first person in screenshot because I thought it would make it too boring to read. But it kinda adds even more to context.
Replying to "I get this regression with KDE on this system caused by this commit and here how I fixed it" with "lol, pulseaudio sucks, opensuse sucks" of course will make Linus angry and he will reply not only "no u", but also "and here's why".
Upd: looked at future conversation. Mauro got it.
Okay, I agree that this is a really dickish way to respond to a dev, and I can see Torvald's message being as much an olive branch to app devs as it was a thorough humbling of the maintainer. Still wouldn't call it professional, but... I get it.
Honestly, with this response although I think he didn't deserve all of that from Linus, he did deserve quite a bit of it. So condescending and smug to application developers that actually make the user experience of Linux a good thing.
I think whoever recieved this would be completely fine to report Linus to HR or something. The fact somebody thought to circulate it is suggestive that it crossed a line. I do appreciate he does seem to really care about the kernel. He could maybe tone down the hysterics a little.
I think if there's a lesson here its "Never hit send while you're angry" always wait until your hormones to subside before sending an email because emails are records and people don't have good judgement while angry, so an email sent in anger is just a record of your poor judgement.
To be read in the voice of J K Simmons
Stuff like this is the reason Linus decided to take a sabbatical back in 2018 to work on controlling his temper.
One does not simply break userspace. You'll receive more than just angry bug reports. There are restless maintainers who will not sleep. And the great corporations are ever watchful.
I'll be that guy: I miss the old Linus. If I fucked up that badly I'd want to know I had fucked up that badly.
But you can be told you fucked up that badly without it being such a public spectacle and without trashing you as a person.
E.g.
True.
Bet that dude never ever fucked up a file open error again, and never broke the user space lol
Yeah, maybe left kernal development (like Linus indicated he may have done to various people), maybe that person was traumatized. But alas, there's no other way to let a human being know they made a mistake without making exaggerated personal attacks.
Is/was there a lack of kernal devs?
They are literally interacting with the dudes life work, and apparently shitting on core rules. No surprise he got heated. It's not just a job to that dude, it's like he slapped his mother
All attacks were related.to the professional output (the code, and the ability to code)
Nah my man. No excuse to act like an ass like that; life's work or not. That's simply a sign of poor emotional maturity, and is (plain and simple) abusive behavior. People make mistakes, regardless of the severity of the mistake. Let's put it another way: would you be okay with someone talking to a child that way? If not, why is it okay to do so to an adult? Just because we're older, doesn't mean we deserve it.
Yeah, it's kind of invigorating to see somebody speak so plainly. No "There's a couple issues we should maybe discuss", no "Let's loop back on that sometime", no "Hmm, is that really the best approach? Do you have any documentation?" Just a straightforward "Dude, this is shit! Here's some reasons why!""
Having worked for a decade in tech, I would love it of people were this direct.
Having worked in tech for two and a half decades, and in places that were this direct - no thanks. There's a fine line between being clear and direct, and being toxic - what Torvalds did here was toxic, and in many workplaces of today would be classed as bullying. Being subjected to this 'directness' for any given amount of time will do a number on most people's personality and self-esteem. People don't improve themselves if all you do is shit on them.
Agreed. I think it's amusing to observe. Being around it yourself is quite difficult. Being the target of it sucks and having your peer go off the deep end and finding a way to reel them in sucks too.
Fair. I've worked in tech for just over a decade now, and I've only been in the polar opposite environment, and found it sorta suffocating. Everybody knows this guy is pumping out crap, and every bug in the system comes from his part of the code, but well...if anybody says it, or even hints it, they're being unnecessarily confrontational, and nobody ever gives anything but positive feedback in peer reviews.
I feel, from my limited experience, like the 90s might have been peak machismo rock star hacker work culture, and the pendulum has now swung to the very far side.
It's perfectly possible to say "this is unacceptable, we never break userspace. Mauro, your change is obviously what is breaking userspace because ..." without adding "SHUT THE FUCK UP" or "[all of this is] TOTAL CRAP", i.e. being direct without being derogatory.
I mean, that's fair, and as was pointed out elsewhere Linus has sought help for his temper.
On the other hand, for all the talk of how "unprofessional" it was for him to behave this way, he did shepherd an OS kernel from a hobby project to the most popular OS on the planet (with the possible exception of Minix, apparently...)
I agree that polite directness might be better, bu IMHO the more common polite indirectness and avoidance of any hint of conflict is clearly worse.
I read a lot of frustration in that post. I don't know if that frustration was warranted, but I've been in (non-tech) leadership where you almost just have to scream like this to get the point across.
"This is incorrect. Here's why. 1. 2. 3." no need to be disrespectful, no need to make it even call it a fuck up. either the individual has the maturity to grow or ...not. but then... I certainly understand the frustration. There's just some people... that definitely struck a nerve of the 'you don't get it, do you?' variety. like the guy who told me (working contract security), that it was illegal for us to make them go outside in winter, because below-freezing is too dangerous. (yeah. We, uh, provided them with some fairly good parkas, and had hats and gloves available. with 'if you need more' accommodation already mentioned.)(Oh, and he was only needing to be outside for about ten, or so minutes.)
If you'd left that last cringey part off it would have been perfection. Dumbass.
Well that's pretty hilariously ironic. I'm nothing like this, I wish I were more comfortable being direct. But meanwhile, you heap abuse on me and threaten to beat me up because I said "boy, it's nice to see someone speaking directly". You're much worse than Torvalds, and I completely agree it would be a terrible idea for us to ever work together. Or for you to work with anyone else, for that matter.
It's a commit that can be rolled back. Not even the worst commit to a development branch can ever be that bad of a fuck up.
One can sternly address serious mistakes by a subordinate without being outright mean about it. Doing so calmly and seriously is usually more effective anyway.
I would not work with or even for someone with such an attitude, not even for money. Ok, do it yourself, bye. Got better places to be.
Are kernel maintainers not unpaid volunteers?
That's kind of two of my main points:
I don't know if they are volunteering or being paid. The other person said they are being paid.
Either way, no one deserves being talked down to like that, even if they made a mistake. It's a matter of respect and self-respect. And as a skilled person like a kernel developer, it should be trivially easy to find other work in a more appropriate environment.
That being said, maybe I'm missing something. Torvalds has been known to be like that for a long time (although that seems to be over now). And still, Linux has been developed over decades. So apparently, skilled people flocked around Torvalds, or maybe rather his project. Not entirely sure why, but I'm taking it as a hint I might be missing something.
Poor Mauro: they weren't good at what they loved, they blamed others for their failings, and their community leader was nuts.
Jokes aside, we've already got toxic right there. Linus isn't right, but someone like that would be fired with good cause. It's one thing to make a mistake, it's quite another to blame your co-workers for your own shoddy work.
What's that Reddit phrase? ESH!
I miss when people had higher standards.
How sad to be working on a Sunday and two days out before Christmas.
Wouldn't lift a finger for less than triple time.
In the following responses Mauro was very professional. l haven't heard much about recently but Linus had some high tier anger issues. Most of the cases I was following back then he was right, but desperately needed to cool off.
I find it ironic that Linus’s explanation for
ENOENTbeing invalid for an ioctl given its meaning of “No such file or directory”, while simultaneously ioctl can returnENOTTYwhen using a mismatched device fd despite the error meaning “Not a typewriter.”But a file handle can be attached to a TTY.
In 2012?
Reminds me of Nvidia debacle. Good times
Telling a company to fuck off is much different than telling a person to fuck off.
Yeah, but still great reading Linus
anyone played MUDs MUSHs or MOOs?
That font gives me so much nostalgia
Shut up Mauro
If I was VOLUNTEERING my time on a project I loved and got that kind of response, I would delete everything I had ever contributed and walk away.
Looks like my trashtalk conversations with my discord friends. But if Linus said it was not acceptable then this propably wasnt a situation like that.
MAURO YOU SUCK!!!!
I feel like people are overlooking the fact that this is typical early internet behavior lol.
I get that its the linux kernel mailing list, but I'm pretty sure Linus was way more wild online than in person because that's how public internet forums and IRC used to be like.
Stallman has also said some equally braindead stuff lol.
Why don't he use some platform like Github/Gitlab and alike? The method to send patches via email is just stupid, isn't it?
I wonder if the guys here who are moaning like the snowflakes they are about Linus' way of conveying the message (not the message itself) are from the US? I sometimes really wonder about the US mindset. The boss is critisizing you justifyably but in an inadequate tone? Hell breaks lose. But as an employee insisting on healthcare, an adequate number of days on paid time off, unionazing or at least have an able workers' representation? Nah, that's unheard of.
How about having some priorities? Grow a pair and chose your battles more wisely. The boss criticizes you? If he's right, own up to your mistakes. Want some rights you are actually entitled to? Yeah, that's what you fight for.
Damn... we're so lucky to have Linus... I just love him, he's just straight to the point, no bullshit... I love that!
Linus doesn't love that, he literally got therapy to not be like that. Maybe there's a lesson there for you.
In fact, in a more recent talk he mentioned being horrified at the sort of people who liked how he spoke and the way they assumed he shared their political opinions as a significant motivator.
I just love people that don't beat around the bush and are straight to the point. We have enough snowflakes and bullshitters in this world IMO. Everyone's so sensitive all the time, like... grow up and own your mistakes. And a wake up call guy like Linus is exactly what people need.
It's obviously possible to be stern and direct while maintaining composure instead of having a temper tantrum.
Agreed.
But, having one definitely raises alarams about the seriousness of the issue... and this was a serious issue, not breaking user space is why we're still using Linux. If it broke something on every update, I'm sure we would have opted for something else a long time ago... so would every server on this earth, as well as Google for Android.
If you think it is acceptable to lash out at someone you're mean and if you can't find ways to communicate clearly without lashing out you're a bad communicator.
Linux/open source has a massive problem with finding maintainers and contributors for critical projects and a significant contributor is just how awful the communication culture of programmers is.
Nope, actually I'm fairly calm. I only lash out when others do it at me first, but I own up (not lash out) if I was to blame. And the guy did own up, and that's great IMO, he admitted he was wrong. Bravo 👏.
Kernel devs are like mini-gods, so I can understand them being with their nose up in the clouds a bit... and they completely deserve that, they're the driving force behind what we use every day, for free I might add. But, since Linus started the whole thing, it's his show, he's running it. If he doesn't like what's being done, and especially if it's bullshit code, yes, I completely understand him lashing out... I might not do it that way, but I feel that there is nothing wrong with that either.
yet ppl here mostly dont care about breaking the userspace and use systemd shit that breaks said space. mention it here...get a hated for pointing out lennart poettering is a wanker.
Linus is best kernel developer and best person
It's often clear to see that Linus hasn't experienced the "and find out" part of what happens when you fuck around. I know that many of us techies aren't the most confrontational types, but I'm surprised that no one has hit him yet.
I know it's partial satire but to be honest man, it's actually a good way to get the message across
Yeah, shut up, Mauro.
The times when Torvalds got things done, he's gotten all soft now kek.
What a piece of crap is linus. And I doubt 5hst he changed one bit. He is just afraid of the consequences of him being exposed
I wish I could talk to my engineers like that, maybe they'd stop fucking everything up.
If all your engineers fuck everything up, maybe the problem is with their leadership who never learned to communicate clearly and professionally.
Oh they would stop. Working there.
Lol at the butterflies itt. Oh no he so toxic.
False dichotomy.
Your subpar ability to understand that the self fellating anger in that email is in no way something that generates quality and standards says much more about the decline to mediocrity.
So you are saying personal offenses and coleric bosses are required to deliver quality?
How does screaming and shouting like a little kid in a temper tantrum increase quality?
If you need to resort to personal offenses to get your point across, you are either lacking a good point, communication skills or respect.
And behaving like a toddler tends to make people really respect you, right?
Nonsense. It's simply that that kind of conduct is deeply unprofessional and reflects poorly on Linus. He could have said the exact same things about the issues with that patch without the obscenities and personal attacks.
I've worked as a software team lead for nearly 30 years, you do not get the best out of people by belittling and berating them.