
Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off - fejkp
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CA+55aFy+Hv9O5citAawS+mVZO+ywCKd9NQ2wxUmGsz9ZJzqgJQ@mail.gmail.com/
======
jakeinspace
Linus is stubborn, persistent, and unyielding to what he sees as bullshit.
These I believe are all very valuable qualities for the head of a massive
software project, and may be part of the reason as to why Linux is where it is
today.

However, Linus is also a bit of an asshole, turning technical criticism into
personal seemingly personal attacks. I believe those 2 sets of qualities are
separable, but I would guess it's uncommon to find many people who are capable
of being as tough as Linus without in some way alienating those around them,
it's a fine line at times.

Anecdotally, one of the most effective engineers I worked with, who asked
penetrating questions during code and design reviews, did come off as a bit of
an asshole at times. Whether by genetics or through childhood, I'd bet people
tend to cluster onto the line separating "agreeable and lax" and "rude but
firm" (as a sweeping generality). We often label people who are all smiles
while simultaneously extremely strict as passive agressive. Add to that the
fact that many technical people are less socially adjusted than average and I
can see why we have so many examples of mean but effective project leads.

~~~
JohnBooty

        I'd bet people tend to cluster onto the line 
        separating "agreeable and lax" and "rude but 
        firm" (as a sweeping generality)
    

Consider this:

A third category of people who are able to accomplish their goals by rallying
others to their cause. They are essentially imposing their will on others, but
are able to do it in a way that is not "rude." This is called charisma.

\- "Agreeable and lax"... you allow them to paint the fence however they want,
even if their work is shoddy. you may wind up doing it yourself because you
don't feel comfortable enforcing your will on others. or perhaps you just wind
up with a crappy looking fence.

\- "Rude but firm"... you don't care about others' feelings and force them
somehow to to paint the fence to your specifications. either by physical
force, economic force (you have money they need) or some other means

\- "Charisma"... you convince them that painting the fence the way you want it
painted is the best possible thing they could be doing. they willingly paint
it for you because they believe it is a good cause and a good use of their
time. (note: this does not necessarily imply dishonesty or trickery. arguably,
the most charismatic people might be those that are true believers)

[https://www.google.com/search?q=tom+sawyer+fence](https://www.google.com/search?q=tom+sawyer+fence)

Somewhat tangential, somewhat related: Sun Tzu wrote that the most perfect
form of victory was adding the enemies' forces to you own by convincing them
to support your cause.

~~~
hyperpallium
> people who are able to accomplish their goals by rallying others to their
> cause.

Like Linus.

~~~
jjeaff
Is anyone really rallied to the cause by Linus himself? I think the product is
the only real draw. With the exception of a select few that simply want to
work with someone as high profile and legendary as Linus.

~~~
nomel
Personally, and maybe I’m in the minority when thinking this, but I can’t
stand working with polite people.

They not only slow down the progress of a project by often causing unneeded
busywork, from simply not halting bad ideas, they often slow my learning
progress down by not telling me I’m wrong.

If you see something stupid, call it out. If I’m doing something stupid or say
something wrong, call me out!

There’s obviously a happy medium somewhere in there, and Linus isn’t it, but I
would much prefer working with a Linus than someone polite. From the history
I’ve read, he’s not holding grudges, or necessarily attacking people, he’s
attacking dumb approaches and ideas, which happen to be authored by people. At
least that’s how I’ve always interpreted his rants.

~~~
bluecalm
You're in the minority but you're not the only one. You can see the sentiment
expressed about Rust community a lot. Super nice - don't ever say anything
that may upset someone - kind of atmosphere is off-putting to many. I for one
wouldn't want to work in such environment but I would love to work with Linus.

The problem is that people who prefer direct non-bs communication are also
usually more emotionally mature and better at adjusting to others. They will
keep quiet or look to move somewhere else but will rarely complain. Meanwhile
easily upset and less stable people complain more readily and usually louder
to force others to adopt their preferred style of communication (which often
comes down to "don't criticize me and use the kind of language I prefer")

~~~
mathw
You can be super nice and not upset anybody without compromising on technical
rigour.

> The problem is that people who prefer direct non-bs communication are also
> usually more emotionally mature and better at adjusting to others.

I would argue this is entirely false. If they can't adjust to others finding
their behaviour offensive by not being offensive, they're not "better at
adjusting to others". Yes, this is a two-way street, but that doesn't
automatically mean everyone has to be comfortable with the guy who swears at
you and calls you an idiot for writing a patch they didn't like.

We can have technical discussions without personal attacks, without rude
language, without racial or sexist slurs. We manage it at my work all the
time, although I for one think I could still do this better.

It's difficult when we grow up in a culture which glorifies violence and
"macho" behaviour, where most of us in the field are male and have been told
all our lives that we're expected to be strong and independent and assertive.

And honestly, if you can't find a way to explain why an idea is bad on a
technical level without offending someone, maybe you don't have a good enough
reason to criticise it, or you need to think about it some more to figure out
why you don't like it apart from your initial reaction.

~~~
repolfx
_You can be super nice and not upset anybody without compromising on technical
rigour._

That's the ideal. In practice there are always people, a minority, who can't
or won't separate criticism of their work from criticism of themselves
regardless of how nicely it's put. And then you have a problem.

Fortunately these people are mostly outside the technical realm, where direct
criticism of work is very rare.

~~~
foldr
>Fortunately these people are mostly outside the technical realm, where direct
criticism of work is very rare.

I think this sort of special snowflake attitude is part of the problem. There
are plenty of other fields where people's work gets directly criticized. Tech
is not uniquely (or even unusually) rational or meritocratic.

~~~
repolfx
I was thinking in the context of a tech company, where you also have non-
technical business people.

Yes, obviously in some fields tough peer review is also common.

~~~
foldr
But non-technical business people in a tech company do get their work
criticized.

~~~
repolfx
That's extremely rare, in my experience. Nowhere near what developers go
through.

It's rare even for basic things like spelling errors or typos to be pointed
out, let alone more serious problems like a presentation containing statements
that are wrong or vague, meaningless, etc. If people get their work criticised
so easily why are there so many spreadsheet errors around, why are there so
many vacuous PowerPoints and business processes that go round in circles
leaving behind furious customers?

I've witnessed all this first hand. I've also seen what happens when
programmers and non-programmers in a tech firm get accidentally mixed
together: the programmers start pointing out mistakes in the non-programmers
work and cause an "incident" because the others aren't used to being peer
reviewed like that.

------
staticassertion
I feel like anyone who says "Linus was harsh but fair" never really read much
of what Linus said.

Many of his attacks, especially long ago, were quite vitriolic and very much
not technical. Oftentimes they weren't rants, just flat out insults, short and
mean (I remember, in particular, posts directed towards PaX). They weren't
productive, there wasn't a brash technical take buried in them - they were
just insults.

Many people seem to just remember snippets of his more popular, more recent
rants, which sometimes have some technical take in there at the least, but
also, in my opinion, cross well over the line into personal attacks.

Glad he's owning up to the fact that he has some serious social baggage to
deal with. I don't foresee the linux kernel community changing much in the
near term though.

~~~
Klover
It might be worth noting that the people who do say he’s harsh but fair are
people who actually comment on his rants.

When I see another on HN I scroll past it, because I’m not interested in the
sensation. I can’t imagine I’m the only one.

Then there are people who do see his rants as a model, or who do like the
sensation and do like the spice. Those people are far more likely to discuss
it, repeat it, mimick it or indeed condone it.

~~~
stephengillie
Steve Jobs did it better.

------
serf
I'm probably going to be alone in saying so, but I always enjoyed Linus and
his attitude.

(to me) it made him appear honest and dedicated to (his own) goals, and I
always felt like that was respectable. (mostly) whenever he was proven
technically wrong about how to do something he would concede to the
technically better solution, and if he didn't do so he gave reasons for his
conclusion.

in other words : his technical brilliance, in my own opinion, was a far larger
boon than the problems stemming from having to deal with his knife-like
personality.

~~~
DannyBee
"in other words : his technical brilliance, in my own opinion, was a far
larger boon than the problems stemming from having to deal with his knife-like
personality."

One thing that is true in all successful organizations over time is that for
any given person, no amount of genius will make up for being an asshole.

It may take time, etc, but eventually, it ends up a significant net negative
for the organization.

The sooner folks are forced to deal with it, the better off the organization
ends up in the long run.

It also turns out you can be effective at dealing with people _and_ still be
brilliant, and it usually doesn't take a lot more than spending more energy in
being self aware and trying to see the perspectives of others.

~~~
endtime
> One thing that is true in all successful organizations over time is that for
> any given person, no amount of genius will make up for being an asshole.

Wouldn't Steve Jobs be a counterexample to this? And possibly Bill Gates?

~~~
DannyBee
No, actually (at least, IMHO). Jobs organization failed more than once due to
him?

Remember that Apple (etc) have been troubled at many times through their
history with him at the helm :)

Gates also eventually left in part because he was doing more harm than good
(and has tried to turn himself into a more reasonable person it seems).

Compare that to the organization that MS is now under a leader who isn't an
asshole?

I'm certainly not going to claim you can't make a successful company or
organization by being a brilliant asshole. I'm only claiming it eventually
catches up with you, and over time, ends up a net negative for the
organization.

~~~
endtime
So you think Steve Jobs was a net negative to Apple? They'd be better off if
e.g. he'd never come back to run it?

~~~
DannyBee
No, as I said, i think it eventually would have caught up with them and ended
up a net negative compared to _not_ being an asshole. It did in the past, why
would it not in the future?

To give an example: Elon clearly drives tesla in it's current position. Do you
think at some point he will not be a clear net negative to the organization?

(It's also interesting to me that essentially the only counterexamples people
have tried to raise are CEO's - i'm curious if this means people believe what
i say is true for lower levels but not founders/ceos/etc, or what)

------
w8rbt
Way to go Linus... this is a great lesson for all of us!

It's easy to get caught-up in the heat of the moment and say and do things
that we regret. We've all done it. It's part of being human. The key is to
realize it, apologize and do better.

~~~
joatmon-snoo
More importantly, many thanks and congratulations to the folks who finally
changed his mind.

~~~
mcguire
I wonder what that discussion was like. It's not as if no one ever mentioned
the subject to him before.

~~~
Rapzid
You would think and yet.. Did none of John Lasseter's friends call him out and
tell him to take the T down a notch over the past 20+ years?

I've pondered over this a bit and have come to the conclusion that a lot of
people simply don't have close enough friends exposed to their work behavior,
or they simply accept it.. Feedback from randos isn't the most likely to
instigate big personal change and reflection.

~~~
ci5er
I'm a SIGGRAPH rando who implemented a clone of RenderMan in 1992 or so on Sun
Workstations. (It wasn't that great of an implementation (Pat Hanrahan helped
me with one bit), but because of the Sun's networking capability - it could
parallelize as well as anything else at the time).

I don't every recall seeing Lasseter doing anything inappropriate.

To your point: The company was going through a hard time, and randos would
have been the PERFECT feedback to him. The company would have died without
their support.

But, who could be there to tell him to take it down a notch[0], when he acted
like a professional all day long?

Net-net: I disagree with what you just said.

[0] I generally know who was working on that project at that time, but I don't
think it advances this conversation...

~~~
erikpukinskis
[https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/8/17443370/pixar-walt-
disney...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/8/17443370/pixar-walt-disney-
animation-john-lasseter-leaving-company-sexual-harassment)

It's probably relevant that the majority of Siggraph participants are not John
Lasseter's subordinates.

------
jernfrost
I think one has to be fair about what sort of asshole Linus is. He is not like
Steve Jobs, Balmer and Gates who could be vindictive and get personal.

For Linus it is more about being far too blunt. But you can clearly see Linus
himself being aware of it and having some humbleness about it. Jobs in
contrast would never admit his bad behavior.

As a fellow Nordic (Norwegian) I feel a significant component of this is
simply Nordic cultural trait. We are quite blunt. We value honesty and
directness. However Finns I believe are farther out on that spectrum.

The second parts is that I think he has probably mild asperger traits. I have
that, my wife and oldest son. That does not make you an asshole. I don’t talk
like Linus but it can mean you often are not able to pick up other people’s
emotional state.

Keep in mind this is very different from being a psychopath. They can pick up
other people’s emotions but don’t care of they are hurting them. Somebody with
asperger don’t want to intentionally hurt others but may do so accidentally by
not reading the person properly. Somebody with Asperger is willing to admit
they have a problem that needs fixing just like Linus.

A psychopath does not think he/she has a problem that needs fixing.

~~~
dx87
I agree, he seemed to only get personal when he knew the developer, and it
seemed like it was mainly because he knew that they knew better, but were
still submitting bad patches anyway. I still remember seeing an email response
to someone who was just starting college and was telling Linus that he thought
the way they were using spinlocks in the kernel was wrong. Linus knew they
didn't know any better, so he didn't insult them, and went into a lengthy
email about why they were doing things the way they did, and how the student's
professor had taught them wrong.

Even though Finns can be much more blunt than people are used to, I think he
recognized a while ago that he was going beyond being blunt. During a
conference in Australia, someone asked him about how people perceived his
attitude and it's effect on the kernel community. He told them that he's not a
nice person, he doesn't know why people think he would be, and that if people
enter the community with that in mind, they'll stop feeling like they're being
personally attacked.

~~~
kupiakos
That sounds like an interesting email. Would you be willing to link to it?

~~~
Aweorih
Maybe this one:
[https://yarchive.net/comp/linux/semaphores.html](https://yarchive.net/comp/linux/semaphores.html)

------
Leszek
Maybe this will finally end the myth that "you can be rude and insulting as
long as you're right" that people seem to attribute to Linus's outbursts

~~~
tomohawk
I have to wonder if Linux would even be remembered other than as a footnote at
this time without his forceful personality being in the mix.

Many things fail when they get pecked to death by ducks. His forceful
personality carried the day on many occasions.

~~~
eridius
You can be forceful without being an asshole about it.

~~~
sonnyblarney
In reality, being 'forceful' will almost always be perceived as being kind of
an asshole.

BUT - there's a world of difference between being 'forceful perceived as jerk'
and 'demeaning and needlessly insulting or derogatory'.

Never a reason to put people down.

In Linus' 2008 speech at Google talking about Git, he said he created it
partly to avoid politics - he can just have people copy his stuff into their
own repo and go off yonder and not have to deal with them.

------
JoshTriplett
Take a look at the chart in
[https://twitter.com/ErynnBrook/status/1038893975279550465](https://twitter.com/ErynnBrook/status/1038893975279550465)

Many people are so afraid of ending up in the bottom right (just giving in)
that they head for the top left (zero-sum competition).

This underlies some of the things people fear about codes of conduct; they're
afraid that they're being pushed into that bottom right corner, rather than
striving for better collaboration.

Be direct. Be clear. Seek the best solution. Don't be awful to people while
doing it.

~~~
microcolonel
The problem here is that the "Collaborating" sector is the wrong goal for the
Linux kernel. Linus Torvalds is uniquely qualified to be concerned about
matters concerning the kernel; if his interlocutors "win" too much on their
side of the "win/win", every user loses.

The public embarrassment of lazy and dishonest actors, especially those who
are paid to collaborate, is an effective tool for maintaining order and
standards on behalf of the quality of the product, and provided nobody gets
hurt permanently at the end of the day, it is easily justified.

~~~
moosingin3space
> Linus Torvalds is uniquely qualified

Gotta stop you right there. Hero worship should not be considered a good thing
in our industry.

The kernel subsystem maintainers, who actually review the code prior to
getting it merged, are the ones with the real power and the necessary
knowledge, and I'd argue they are more qualified to oversee the project's
future than Torvalds.

~~~
tomnipotent
Yeah, just like regular employees are better qualified to run a company than
the CEO.

No one is more qualified than Linus to run this project and he's done a damn
good job so far. Has he made mistakes? Sure. He's human.

~~~
moosingin3space
I think that when a company reaches a certain size and stability level, as
long as the CEO is competent and understands how to balance external and
internal issues, the particular CEO doesn't matter that much. The real power
over product direction comes from the PMs, VPs, etc. That's my argument --
Linus isn't uniquely qualified to run the Linux kernel project, since he's
barely even involved in the direction of the project.

~~~
tomnipotent
> the particular CEO doesn't matter that much

Business history & Jack Welch disagree with you. Individual project success is
incredibly nuanced and individuals - even in 10k+ orgs - can have massive
impacts. Trying to pretend that outliers don't massively influence company
success is naive, and MBA programs study these individuals because they are
the exception and not the rule.

There's a reason we have Madison Square Garden, Rockefeller Center and
Carnegie Mellon. It's not hero worship to acknowledge the contributions of
individuals - recognizing a great general doesn't diminish the accomplishments
of his army.

~~~
emodendroket
Consider how few "genius CEOs'" reputations have survived their attempts to
take over failing companies and turn them around.

~~~
tomnipotent
What do "genius CEOs" have to do with anything? Most successful CEOs were only
responsible for a single business. Multiple successes don't change what Gates,
Ellison, Knight et el. accomplished because they only did it once. Plenty of
instances of people that failed plenty before eventually succeeded elsewhere
(Ray Kroc).

~~~
emodendroket
Well, if CEOs didn't have that much bearing on the success of businesses, or
don't have much bearing on the success of businesses once they reach a certain
size, then seeing a wildly successful CEO completely flop at the next company
would make sense.

------
dotancohen
Newton was an asshole too. The whole "apple fell on his head" story came about
because he was so mean to people.

I won't say that most geniuses are inempathetic, but many are. Einstein
wasn't, some say Gauss was. Beethoven was. Linus is. And we'll accept Linus's
attitude for being an aversion to bullshit, just the quality that we need in a
kernel maintainer.

I'm glad to see that Linus finally realizes that he has a problem, but truth
be told I'd selfishly rather that he keep his problem because I doubt that he
could steer his ship without it. I hope to be proven wrong.

~~~
jXCw1N0jtH3
Are we seriously putting Linus in the same category as Newton

~~~
ekianjo
Its an analogy, not a classification. If you want to go by that logic then no
one can be in the same category as Newton as he was the ultimate genius who
revoutioned maths and physics singlehandedly.

~~~
Cyph0n
Euler, Al-Khawarzmi, Gauss, Darwin, Maxwell, Einstein, von Neumann, Fourier,
Laplace, Aristotle, Ampere, Descartes, Kepler, etc.

Linus does not fit in that list.

~~~
cdelsolar
Why not?

~~~
ozborn
He's not really a scientist - at least one as theory heavy as the names above.

However, his work with linux and git is at least comparable to that of other
big scientific names known more for their engineering impact - like Van
Leeuwenhoek. I'd also say the impact of Linus is greater, in part because of
his insistence on making Linux GPL early on, rather than the secretive
approach taken by someone like Van Leeuwenhoek.

------
JoshTriplett
The other huge news here, both for Linux and for numerous other communities
trying to make similar changes:

The most recent commit, right before the release, deletes Linux's "Code of
Conflict" and replaces it with a real Code of Conduct, the Contributor
Covenant.

[https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=8a104f8b5867c682d994ffa7a74093c54469c11f)

[https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/code-of-
condu...](https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/code-of-conduct.html)

Quoting the commit message:

> Explicit guidelines have demonstrated success in other projects and other
> areas of the kernel.

> Here is a Code of Conduct statement for the wider kernel. It is based on the
> Contributor Covenant as described at www.contributor-covenant.org

> From this point forward, we should abide by these rules in order to help
> make the kernel community a welcoming environment to participate in.

Something worth emphasizing here: adopting a code of conduct, and choosing to
be welcoming and inclusive, does not mean a project and its developers avoid
disagreement, or avoid feeling passionate about their work, or avoid
discussing and fixing issues. It just means not letting things turn heated or
hateful, and treating people well.

~~~
wolfgke
> It just means not letting things turn heated or hateful, and treating people
> well.

Different people have very different beliefs what is to be considered
"heated", "hateful" and "treating well" or not.

~~~
meowface
I don't think the language of the Contributor Covenant [1] contains anything
really objectionable by anyone, even people who wouldn't consider themselves
left-leaning. "Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or
political attacks" is arguably the only ambiguous part. That said, I am a bit
skeptical of the CC creators' motives and goals.

[1] [https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/1/4/code-of-
con...](https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/1/4/code-of-conduct)

~~~
DC-3
The contributor covenant is fairly in-objectionable. Yes, the list of
'privileges' is a bit of a checklist for left-wing soapboxes, but it's not
necessarily a bad thing to explicitly list traits commonly targeted by bullies
and harassers.

The problem many people have with it, as you imply, is that it's the thin end
of a doorstop, at the thick end of which is the Post-Meritocracy Manifesto:

[https://postmeritocracy.org/](https://postmeritocracy.org/)

Written by the same author and often championed by the same people as the
Contributor Covenant, it espouses some rather more radical ideas which, while
carefully stated to sound superficially agreeable, are not ones I would
consider beneficial to the open source community.

~~~
Ws32ok
Just one example from that manifesto: “We have an ethical responsibility to
refuse to work on software that will negatively impact the well-being of other
people.”

This a terrible slippery slope. It eliminates any military, security or even
anything useful.

A thief’s well-being is meant to be negatively impacted by a security measure.
A guidance system in a missile is intended to negatively impact the well-being
of the enemy.

I feel negatively impacted by this manifesto. So by definition every signatory
is in violation of that manifesto.

~~~
tptacek
The Contributor Covenant says nothing of the sort. It is entirely reasonable
for developers to believe that the statements in the Covenant are a baseline
for professionalism and, at the same time to disagree amongst themselves about
whether they should contribute to military projects (or whether they buy into
a "post-meritocracy" philosophy).

~~~
Ws32ok
I was referring to
[https://postmeritocracy.org/](https://postmeritocracy.org/)

As per the comment to which I was replying.

~~~
tptacek
Once again: whatever the "post-meritocracy" philosophy is, it has nothing to
do with the kernel Code of Conduct.

~~~
meowface
I wouldn't say it has nothing to do with it. It's not part of the explicit
language of the Code of Conduct, but the first few paragraphs of
[https://www.contributor-covenant.org](https://www.contributor-covenant.org)
talk about the same concepts.

I think these attempts at redefining meritocracy are concerning, and I don't
blame anyone for questioning the Contributor Covenant as a result, even if the
Code of Conduct itself is reasonable and pretty much common sense.

~~~
tptacek
None of those words are in the kernel Code of Conduct.

------
d33
> I am going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand
> people’s emotions and respond appropriately.

Wow. Torvalds going to a therapy. I seriously couldn't be more impressed about
him, because he always seemed too much of a narcissist to me. I understand how
difficult it might be to decide to admit that you have a problem at this
stage. And for doing that, he has my deep respect.

Which kind of brings me to the other point - would Torvalds be Torvalds if he
was treated before? Is the same piece of his personality that made him a truly
unpleasant person also the one that made him super motivated?

That's the second BFDL stepping down (this one claims to go just for a while),
after Guido. And note that this is one is also about psychology.

~~~
ufo
> Which kind of brings me to the other point - would Torvalds be Torvalds if
> he was treated before?

Some years ago I had to go to therapy for some issues of my own and back then
I was afraid that it would fundamentally change who I am in some way. In
retrospect that was a foolish thought. It made me wait longer to seek help
than I should and in the end I was still like my old self (but better).

~~~
tomjakubowski
> Some years ago I had to go to therapy for some issues of my own and back
> then I was afraid that it would fundamentally change who I am in some way.
> In retrospect that was a foolish thought. It made me wait longer to seek
> help than I should and in the end I was still like my old self (but better).

I've been in therapy off and on most of my post-adolescent life. In the
beginning, it felt like its only use was to have a place to vent about life to
an agent who is largely external to it (i.e., my therapist doesn't know my
family or my friends), but who has your back and is interested in helping you
succeed. That certainly had value, but it didn't especially change how I
lived.

There was a point where my attitude towards therapy changed completely, when I
started really listening and paying attention to what my therapist was doing.
I might describe to him an incident which made me feel some unusually bad (or
good!) emotion, and the therapist would ask just the right questions (and
follow-ups) to get at the root cause of why I _really_ felt that way.

Eventually, I started to experience these internal dialogues which resemble a
therapy session when I felt angry or sad or upset for some other reason. I
might ask myself, "Why is this trivial argument with Person X making me so
angry?", then examine my relationship with Person X, and then other recent
incidents with this person, etc. etc. These internal "therapy sessions" not
only help to calm me down, but also tend to point in the right direction to
improve the overall relationship with Person X. I think it's been an amazing
turn in how I interact with other people and helps me enjoy life.

So, in conclusion, I think that's one way to really benefit from therapy:
deducing, by observation, the _system_ or _process_ your therapist is using to
help you, and applying that same system to yourself. In other words, good
therapy helps you learn to be your own therapist.

~~~
tomp
That's a really interesting perspective. I wonder if you/we could learn this
_without_ going to therapy... Maybe we should/could teach this in school?

~~~
remar
From what I understood of OP's description of the process, it sounds a lot
like the sort of awareness that's cultivated through long-term and consistent
practice of meditation (implicitly or explicitly depending on the school of
practice).

I noticed after a couple months of initially starting daily zazen practice
(just 10-15 minutes every night), that I went from reacting in a way that was
originally: event -> (usually 'extreme') reaction, to something more like:
event -> stepping back/observing what would've originally been my reaction ->
choosing to engage with it or not. After a year of practice, this new pattern
of reacting basically became muscle memory and would happen _even when_ I
sometimes wanted to strongly react to things (i.e. music/art/social situations
with friends/etc __).

After about 4 or 5 years of consistent practice I caved into what I had even
read was a common pitfall for most practitioners in thinking that I had
"achieved" most of the "benefits" I could from meditation and just stopped
practicing all together. It took about a year for most of these benefits to
even start decaying, but after about that 2 year mark, my pattern of
thought/reacting had almost entirely gone back to how it was before I had ever
started practicing.

I'm thinking there has to be some happy medium where you have the ability to
observe as well as engage, but I'm not sure what the original philosophies of
the practice actually "advocate" for as I never really delved too deep into
the literature on this.

 __I think this was actually one of the main reasons I stopped practicing,
because I was wondering if my 'artistic side' was being 'dulled' by
meditation. This is still a question I want answered and have been wondering
if it may be worth doing a deeper dive into the literature/having a teacher
guide me through the rest of this journey.

~~~
tomp
Thank you for your perspective!

Yeah, I've thought about meditation myself, but I don't really see how to
effectively teach it, especially in a class-room (i.e. 1-to-many) - but maybe
that's just because I've learned (well, tried to) meditation by myself, by
reading, not from a teacher/mentor.

One other idea that crossed my mind, but it's far from fleshed out, is to
teach people the exact same techniques that therapists use (i.e. "asking the
right questions" to drill deeper in the direction towards understanding
yourself), but with the purpose of using them on themselves. However, I've no
idea if that's simply too much to learn, or if maybe "being a good therapist"
comes only with "having a lot of life experience".

------
osrec
I remember criticizing Linus' sarcastic comments on here some time ago. I was
surprised by the number of people that defended him saying stuff like "Linus
is just Linus" or "he needs to be like that to keep Linux moving forward". I
personally think his brilliance would be even more appreciated if he were a
bit less sarcastic.

~~~
tomlu
I feel people confuse being blunt with being rude.

"This patch is crap. Stupid this silly that, and how many times have I said
you can't break userland."

vs.

"I won't accept this patch as-is, or possibly at all. It has the following
problems [...] and I don't feel you respect userland stability enough."

I really don't see how the second version compromises on the clarity or kernel
quality.

------
floatingatoll
I'm known at work for being That Guy who will point out the elephant the room
and discuss it face-on, but I invested decades into empathy work so that
people now respect me for doing so rather than hate me. I'm glad to see Linus
considering an investment in empathy, and I don't feel it will negatively
impact his forthrightness long-term — the best of all possible outcomes.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Have you read the book "Crucial Conversations"? It covers exactly how to have
conversations about tough topics.

~~~
komali2
That and "how to win friends and influence people" are solid. Should be taught
in highschool imo.

------
protomikron
> This is more like the time I got out of kernel development for a while
> because I needed to write a little tool called "git". I need to take a break
> to get help on how to behave differently and fix some issues in my tooling
> and workflow.

Oh nice, so he's going to write another ground-breaking piece of software that
will change how we do software. :)

Kidding aside, I think his comment is well-thought and I wish him all the
best. Btw. I don't think his (sometimes heavily criticized) way of
communication is _that_ bad, it's more a clash of different kinds of culture -
he is Finnish and used to a very direct way of communication and confrontation
(which can be good and bad). That doesn't excuse some of his (admittedly
uncalled for) rants, but I don't think he wants to sound as harsh as he often
comes across ...

~~~
smsm42
The git thing is what I admire about Linus... He saw that existing version
control tools don't do what he wanted, so he just sat down and wrote the best
(ok, one of the best :) version control tool on the market, from scratch. Just
like that. OK, I know I'm simplifying, but still. If he does something like
that again, I'll start to think maybe he was sent to us from the future to
help us.

------
harshreality
Great. Everyone needs to work at being a nicer and better person, Linus
perhaps a bit more than most.

But equally important is everyone on the other side working to avoid being
consumed by emotion, and learn to control their emotions better, when people
and things in the world end up being mean or distressing.

This doesn't happen so much with Linus anymore because everyone knows about
him and the people most likely to go on tilt when Linus goes on tilt have
adapted and avoid communicating with him. That would be a universal solution
if you could get a list of all the potentially harsh communicators out there,
but doesn't work at all when you don't have such a list, and anyway it would
severely constrain your interactions with the world because a fairly large
number of people are like that.

People will gain a lot more from, in addition to _calmly_ pointing out how the
hostility they're encountering is unwarranted, learning to self-reflect and
switch mental states to avoid getting into self-destructive patterns of
thought just because someone else or something else is being harsh or mean.

Various kinds of meditation-like practice seem to be a good way to pursue
improvement for people on both sides of the problem.

It's not any easier for Linus to always be nice than it is for someone who
takes personally one of his outbursts to not take it personally.

~~~
hfdgiutdryg
_But equally important is everyone on the other side working to avoid being
consumed by emotion, and learn to control their emotions better_

You just described exactly what Linus needs to do.

 _It 's not any easier for Linus to always be nice_

He doesn't have to be _nice_. He just has to curb the sadistic and unnecessary
meanness and maintain some minimal level of professionalism in his
communication.

------
notacoward
Wow. I can't count how many times people have tried to excuse Linus's
outbursts by saying he doesn't mean them personally, but here he is explicitly
admitting that he has done just that. Then he goes on to say that his behavior
needs to change and that he will seek help doing so. Good for him. These are
hard things to admit, and he's setting a great example.

> In my quest for a better patch, this made sense to me. > I know now this was
> not OK

There are _so_ many people in tech who need to read that a hundred times.
Including a couple of his top lieutenants.

------
RyJones
Linus and I draw our paychecks from the same place: The Linux Foundation. I've
only been there three and a half years, but the "no brilliant assholes" line
in the hiring process has always rung hollow.

Glad to see this is being addressed.

------
quotemstr
There exists a tremendous danger of overcorrection here. Too much
agreeableness is inimical to technical progress, which requires placing
technical standards over egos.

While it's counter-productive to provoke people unnecessarily, we can't allow
someone's claim to have been emotionally hurt to _automatically_ trump
technical criticism. We should strive to be as kind as possible, but not to
the point where we begin to sacrifice the truth.

There are some people today who are so averse to negativity that merely saying
"this code sucks" is enough to get the speaker called a "jerk". This level of
sensitivity is not compatible with a pursuit of technical excellence. We have
to be able to acknowledge that both bad and good code exist in order to make
technical progress.

I hope Linus doesn't end up being guided by the kind of people who go so far
toward protecting people's emotions that they demand we accept technical
mediocrity.

------
mewaj
And to prove how important it is to be respectful, empathetic and tolerant,
the originator of the new Code of Conduct is gloating on Twitter and mocking
those who disagree with this move.

This is not about being respectful to others, it's about forcing others to be
respectful to you. Unfortunately respect is earned, not given, and anything
else extracted under duress just breeds resentment.

~~~
lucio
link?

~~~
explainplease
[http://archive.is/6AyZy](http://archive.is/6AyZy)

------
Nasrudith
A slowgoing development for him, still I sympathize and wish him the best
while wondering ironically if personal issues aside what works best.

It brings to mind fundamental organizational and management. Is it better to
have a "rude" organization? Calling bullshit early and often instead of polite
everything is fine stacks of lies since it would be impolite to point out
having O(N!) code just can't work for anything of appreciable size? The
optimal approach likely varies on several variables.

~~~
dstroot
Can’t you blend them? In other words I’d love to work in an organization that
can _politely_ call bullshit early and often. It is possible to fundamentally
disagree without making it personal.

Really good to see him acknowledge this and tackle it head on. I hope he gains
a better perspective. Thank goodness for Linus and Linux!

~~~
webkike
I don't see why you'd ever need to go further than "I strongly believe that
your view is incorrect, and here is why". Attacking people is not "calling
bullshit"

~~~
chillacy
In my experience saying the words "your view" often makes it personal for the
other person, which can lead to them defending that view much stronger than if
the criticism goes towards "this view", which invites objectivity.

Probably not a huge game changer, but it's definitely a little hack that I
think has served me well over the years.

------
herpderperator
While I am glad this happened, I am surprised. I truly would not have expected
Linus to ever write something like this. I am curious how this can happen so
suddenly. Have people not tried to convince him that he can be critical
without being insulting many times before? What was different this time?

~~~
lucio
He's tired. He's older. He mentioned several times how he's been developing
this for decades. Maybe he is making a balance, maybe he thinks that the
Kernel does not really need him so badly now, and he can take a time out.

~~~
h1d
Out of interest, what changes could happen if Linus disappears tomorrow?

~~~
lucio
It depends on how stable is the Kernel, the rate of external changes (e.g. new
processors), new discovered vulns, and the capacity of the new leader.

If all of those things go in the wrong direction, Linux could lose its
reputation. For example, imagine a new vuln discovered and Linux failing to
fix it for more than a year, or imagine Linux becoming slower than other
alternatives in new processors

------
qaq
A bit of unpopular opinion for HN the perception is highly culture specific
and the way Linus conducts himself might be very controversial for US PC
culture yet might be considered fairly mild by other cultures standards.

~~~
brynjolf
I don't think you need to add PC. US culture is very different from Nordic
countries. The difference I think is that the US is way less tolerant of
differing opinions, mostly due to the amount of people willing to disagree
with you.

------
JepZ
IMHO, this reads like an email from someone who finally grew up and regrets
the mistakes of his youth ;-)

I think it is a good sign that Linus tries to improve upon his people skills
and hope it will end with more than just 'a tool' (as building a tool is
probably the wrong way of solving such problems).

Nevertheless, I also hope it won't water down his ability to give _clear_
feedback. I mean, his rants were often too personal causing massive emotional
damage to some humans, but for the technical side, it was probably beneficial
to have a clear sentence about a given topic.

------
eloff
Agreeableness in general is negatively correlated with career success. Have
you noticed that Fortune 500 CEOs tend to be extremely disagreeable, to the
point of psychopathy in some cases. At the risk of sticking my neck out, it's
also one of the many reasons for the gender pay gap, woman are more agreeable
than men. And you have to be somewhat disagreeable to stand up for yourself
and demand a raise (or quit and seek a better paying job.) But on the average
it's a relatively smallish difference and only accounts for a small part of
the pay gap. The biggest component of the pay gap is the difference between
mothers and non-mothers. I've heard it said that woman who are not mothers
earn 95 cents to every dollar a man earns. But I don't have a source on hand,
so take that with a grain of salt.

~~~
damnyou
What if, and this might blow your mind, we tweak things so that agreeableness
is rewarded more?

Society is constructed too adversarially for my tastes. More collaboration
would be better.

~~~
Fordrus
There isn’t some function we can feed a different argument here to value
agreeableness more highly though. I generally agree, but that more
collaboration would be good isn’t so much the question - the question is HOW
these tweaks can be done.

~~~
damnyou
I think getting more women into positions of power will be a start.
Testosterone really does affect aggression.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Perhaps more importantly, there is lots of evidence that exclusively male
environments seriously amplify the effect and make aggression a fundamental
part of the culture. Even very aggressive men tend to behave differently in
mixed gender groups.

~~~
jasonm23
Very true.

I think it's worth noting the inverse. That less aggressive men will become
more competitive and aggressive over time in all male groups.

------
motohagiography
I hope for the sake of the stability of the ecosystem he doesn't apologise
again. It's one thing to just change, and another to make a public gesture to
seek out approval on weak terms.

As soon as it becomes about other people forgiving him, they will just pile on
because it elevates them.

Good on him for recognizing what got him here isn't the tool to get him and
the kernel where he needs to go. But that should be it.

Anything more invites a coup and hyper politicized governance of what is now a
core internet technology.

I hope he draws a line under this and moves forward instead of being co-opted
by a committee.

"I did that, and now I don't anymore, here is what we're doing next," is far
better than, "I am afraid of some consequences of things I did in the past and
I want your permission to continue." For a leader, the latter is death.

------
forapurpose
Congratulations to Linus; that's courageous, and posting is wonderful
leadership for the Linux community and the IT community in general - many
other leaders could take the hint.

A major challenge of top-level leadership is you have no boss, nobody setting
high standards and helping you (including pushing you in a healthy way) to
achieve them. Linus' job is leadership but his work product has had these
major flaws. If someone subordinate to him turned in such flawed work, Linus
would have let them know and wouldn't have accepted the patch. Linus and all
leaders need to be equally demanding of the their own work product: it should
be up to the highest standards of Linux kernel contributions - in design,
implementation, quality, and effectiveness; in the effect on the component and
in the ripple effects on the rest of the system; in its immediate impact and
in its long-term 'technical'/organizational debt. Does that seem like a lot to
take into account? Why should your engineers' work product have highers
standards than yours?

The heart of the issue, IMHO, is how to do it. How can a human being, with all
the limits we have, realistically maintain that focus and motivation on a day-
to-day basis without someone else helping them?

------
Annatar
This is bad. One of the things that kept all these people in check was fear
that Linus will yell at them if they're sloppy or lazy and deliver crap
quality. If he mellows his tone, the already low architectural and system
engineering quality will drop to dismal levels.

His apology has nothing to do with professionalism, which in this case is
system and kernel engineering; resist all attempts at behavioral correction
any time someone tries to pass it off as unprofessional, because it is that
someone trying to subjugate you with their values and morals. And that's just
so inherently wrong: nobody should be attempting to subjugate anybody. We must
stop such people from trying to pass their judgment on others as "being
uncivil" or "unprofessional"; it's not right, and has nothing to do with how
well one writes code or designs hardware: the level of quality is the level of
professionalism. As the old adage says: "if you can't take the heat, get the
hell out of the kitchen!"

------
Tankenstein
This is actually great news. Shows that one of the most important leaders in
tech is actually capable of introspection , admitting fault and changing their
ways, even after many years, without a massive public scandal.

Massive kudos, Linus. I don't think this was easy.

------
DonbunEf7
May I say that the whole message seems forced?

A sort of "shape up or ship out" from the Linux Foundation management.

Especially with the concurrent switch to the new, more community acceptable
code of conduct.

Will Linux have a new maintainer in a few weeks?

------
Ricardus
I use and love linux, and have read many things about Linus being abusive and
what not. I am on the spectrum and wasn't diagnosed til my 40s. Looking back
on my earlier adult years, I was described as abrasive, obnoxious, and many
others.

I tend not to suffer fools lightly, but somehow, on my own have learned better
self-editing skills. Hopefully Linus will figure this out, because it truly
will benefit everyone in the community.

------
nafey
Thats very mature of him. Hats off.

------
safgasCVS
People change over time. If you are the same person today as 10 years ago
you're doing something wrong. Good for him

------
urmish
Unbelievable. They got to him finally. He really shouldn't have to explain,
let even apologize for his behavior, which wasn't wrong in the first place.
Pathetic, whoever made him do this, shame on you.

------
booleandilemma
_This is more like the time I got out of kernel development for a while
because I needed to write a little tool called "git". I need to take a break
to get help on how to behave differently and fix some issues in my tooling and
workflow.

And yes, some of it might be "just" tooling. Maybe I can get an email filter
in place..._

Comes back a month later announcing a revolutionary new email service that
ends up displacing every other email service and people start putting it on
their resumes because almost every company starts using it and Microsoft
integrates it into TFS.

------
menacingly
I'm generally a supporter, but this is a good step. I can speak from rough
personal experience that this type of realization is brutal, and leads to hard
work that "attaboys" don't reach because it just leads to you behaving like
you should have been doing in the first place, and you know that.

It doesn't have to be either/or, you can be assertive without operating from
fear and insecurity (which is usually the place venom like his classics comes
from).

You can actually be _more_ assertive when it's not burdened with also
protecting your ego.

------
leephillips
Linus Torvalds has created and led teams that maintain software that has made
a better world and has improved my life. I am grateful that he has used his
talents in this way. Can you imagine a world without Linux and without Git?
I've read the supposedly scandalous emails that Torvalds has sent out, and I
fail to see what the big deal is. Whoever convinced him that he needs to take
time away from creating software to get training in how to coddle the
emotionally delicate has done us a disservice.

~~~
DoreenMichele
If you believe him to be a genius, then let me suggest you trust his judgement
on this personal decision. I do.

------
stingraycharles
Site is down, but here's a mirror: [https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-
kernel@vger.kernel.org/ms...](https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-
kernel@vger.kernel.org/msg1767002.html)

------
Pxtl
Hopefully this will inspire leaders of other projects to realize that it's not
okay to be a toxic jerk just because you're smart and in-charge and confident
that you're right.

~~~
qrbLPHiKpiux
He gets focused on a task at hand, and everything else is sight in the
distance. Talented people can't be entirely social 100% of the time. That will
burn you out real fast trying to keep a smile on your face all of the time.
I'm the same way and I'm up-front with everyone I hire about this. That when I
become so focused on a task, that sometimes, you just have to take what I may
say "with a grain of salt" and move on. I've lost one person who couldn't
handle it. The rest are still with me so far (it's been years).

~~~
InclinedPlane
There is never an excuse for being an ass, even less so when it's a known
pattern of behavior. When you screw up without bad intentions once that's one
thing, when you continue harmful behavior having been told by many that it's
harmful then it's intentional.

------
MrLeap
I hypothesize that this change will make Linux (ie: the quality of the kernel)
at least slightly worse in 20 years than it would have been if Linus never
changed.

Linus has been a great steward of the Kernel. I have never seen any instance
where he has trashed on someone for any other reason than _Linux_. Sometimes
he's cringingly brutal, sometimes he offends people. Regardless, he's been
immaculately consistent in motive during the time I've been paying attention.
That two decades of casual observation has elevated him to the status of
philosopher king of the Kingdom of Linux in my mind.

When Linus publicly shames a person or company, he's emitting antibodies to
the cybernetic organism that is "linux".

Some folks abuse politeness to press ulterior, self serving motives. It's a
lot easier for viruses like that to thrive in scenarios where there's no
social cost for rolling the dice.

For a contrived example, imagine there's a person that gets paid every time he
convinces a project to change to a specific color of blue. Is this easier to
accomplish in project with very strict codes of conduct, or with an asshole
BFDL and a hierarchy?

Virus: "I've done research (<link>) that suggests that #006699 provides a
superior user experience than what's currently being used. This is a PR to
affect that change."

Maintainer: "Uhh, I don't think so."

Virus: "But why not? Here's another whitepaper that shows that it's literally
the best UX change you could make. #006699 is inclusive and egalitarian and
your current colors are racist."

The virus can press their intent as long as their persistence holds out. Any
transparent, clinical mitigation to this will be gamed. However, if the BFDL
is an asshole, the Virus thinks twice about social brute-forcing. If you're
publicly berated when you cross the BFDL's threshold, you lose social
standing. The mere threat of it hamstrings privately pressing your objective
at those in the middle of the pyramid!

In addition, when done with _some_ discretion, your lieutenants will learn the
implicit contour of your policies and priorities. This provides MUCH greater
defense against subterfuge and unity of action than explicit Codes of Conduct.

Over the long haul though it doesn't really matter. Philosopher Kings are rare
and they die. It does exasperate me to see how slow we are to develop a
consciousness for that category of social attack.

When we finally do, it'll be a subtle compromise between authority and
egalitarianism. It'll usher in a golden age with a seemingly endless frontier
of optimism. Then, in less than a generation people will lose the plot, take
it too far and we'll rot from the other direction.

TLDR; I wish Linus the best.

~~~
moosingin3space
Where exactly is this conspiracy to make the kernel worse through ulterior
motives coming from? Literally every large company relies on the kernel
working well today, so "corporations" or "shills" aren't rational origin
stories.

~~~
MrLeap
I wouldn't call this a conspiracy, unless I start selling T-shirts. My
hypothesis wasn't even that people are _trying_ to make linux worse. Just that
it will be.

Intel pushed a half-baked mitigation for meltdown that Linus was real mean
about recently. Linus made a remark that stuck out to me.. Something about
calling into question the motives of Intel that would even push it.
(Conspiracy time) it smelled to me like management pushing for a PR clot
before their fix was ready.

Working well for _your_ interests doesn't necessarily mean working well for
everyone's. Linus's motives are transparent and for the Kernel.

Linux ran by a commission representing large companies would definitely behave
differently...

------
woodandsteel
A good book about how to be direct without being abusive is Nonviolent
Communication by Marshall Rosenberg.

------
kjullien
How do you think someone like Linus was treated their entire life and work-
life before all this ? Why waste time analyzing the consequence of a society
that shuns people that have this "lack of empathy". How do you think somebody
that's treated their entire life as if they weren't human will behave ? Some
people smile and give orders, lie, oppress, harass, and manipulate for their
personal gain, this is what is acceptable in our current system. 97% of the
workforce I've been around behaves like this. Some people on the other hand
just don't give a fuck about you or anybody in the company and just wants to
work on something he enjoys, which is why most of these profiles try and start
their own projects or work freelance.

------
vertline3
I got the feeling reading that, that Torvald is burned out and frustrated.

I know as a kid helping father with a project, sometimes he could be a bit
frustrated, maybe I wasn't grabbing the correct size tool, or holding the
flashlight in the right place. Maybe Linus feels like that?

~~~
craftyguy
He specifically said he wasn't burned out. I agree that he does sound
frustrated, though maybe with himself more than with any particular folks.

~~~
vertline3
Yeah maybe I took it from when he said he had been attending a conference for
20 years and was hoping he didn't have to.

He does say he loves the project and wants to continue and compared it to when
he developed git

~~~
craftyguy
Ah good point, yea I can see how you could come to that conclusion. I
understood that to mean that perhaps he felt like he wouldn't be missed (i.e.
they would be able to manage without him).

------
all2well
Being combative rarely works out the way you want to, at least in my
experience. That being said, it's still important to have standards beyond
just empathy. I hope that Linus, and the Linux community can "do both" in some
sense.

------
miguelmota
> I am going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand
> people’s emotions and respond appropriately.

Glad Linus is finally coming around. Hope he comes back as a more
understanding and improved Torvald++

------
person_of_color
Any LKML Insiders know what prompted this?

------
billiam
1\. The Linux kernel is the most successful software project in history. 2\.
This is not the same as saying that it can continue to be so successful as it
takes over the universe. 3\. Most people including his detractors would say
Linus' many good and bad qualities are a big part of why it has succeeded
until now. 4\. Linux would be better if as many smart people as possible can
work on the project. 5\. His self-admitted abusive email practices (mostly
they are in email, he's pretty meek in person IMHO) appear to have alienated a
lot of people, and indeed seem to have driven away a decent share of half the
brains that can make the kernel better. That's women, in case that is not
clear. 6\. If the kernel project wants to continue to succeed and power our
cars, and phones and spaceships, key people not just Linus need to consider
that it can't scale with the same dynamic it has. There are a gazillion
useless contributors, there always will be, and the somewhat closed male
community of core developers and reviewers needs to find ways to let in
players in a way that does not alienate all the people that are not like them
and communicate like them. And those attitudes start at the benevolent
dictator level.

------
cjhanks
Every time a person comes out and proclaims they have acted cruelly towards
others, and states that they will work on changing their behavior they should
be celebrated.

Congrats to Linus.

------
alliecat
I'm glad. It's been a long time coming.

If the person I considered least capable of not being an asshole has developed
self-awareness and has shown a genuine desire to change, then we have so much
hope as a wider community.

It is definitely possible to retain the unyeilding attitude that Linus is
famous for _without_ being an asshole, and... I really hope he can pull this
off.

I'm genuinely a bit emotional: this was wonderful to read.

(VM fixes are welcome, too!)

------
pc2g4d
"Hell freezes over"

Honestly this is potentially one of the most monumental events in Open Source.
To have Linus himself say it's not okay to treat people like garbage, and seek
actual help in correcting his behavior, will set such a wonderful precedent if
he follows through properly. I admire someone who can do things one way for
nearly thirty years, and then say, Hey guys, I was wrong.

------
jammygit
Years from now when Linus retires, what will the platinum members of the
foundation decide to do with the project? Is it like Apple without Steve Jobs?
Him taking time off leads one to wonder about such things

[https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/](https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/)

------
bayindirh
With that e-mail, Linus has just leveled up. Hope that he can find the way to
separate his firmness and "quest for a better patch" from his somewhat
volatile responses.

Yes, reading Linus' e-mails is somewhat fun, like watching a documentary with
some satirical, comical moments. On the other hand, being on the receiving end
of these conversations are always painful, and yes he possibly kept some
people away from kernel development.

Being burnt and roasted and yelled at for your best effort can break your
motivation from its foundation if you are new at something, and it's not
really fun.

I congratulate him for being honest with himself and us, and congratulate
again for trying to change and improve himself. I also believe that if Linus
can patch himself up and make the new version work, Linux kernel will also
change for the better. At least its development community will work with lower
stress levels, and can talk more freely.

Again, congrats Linus. Just go for it!

Edited: Ambigious words and sentences are corrected, effects of late night
commenting are masked.

------
malikolivier
For those interested, here is the commit where the code of conduct was
included:
[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/8a104f8b5867c682d99...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/8a104f8b5867c682d994ffa7a74093c54469c11f)

"code of conflict" was rewritten to "code of conduct".

------
bawana
Linus is to Linux what Jobs is to Apple. And tho Jobs has passed, his spirit
is still alive (tho fading). We should have encapsulated Jobs in an AI. (Using
data of his behavior, decisions and fMRI we could have made a model). It's
still not too late to make a Linus AI. Why save the minds of these architects?
After all, creativity is a uniquely individual endeavor. Giants like these
have given us tools have become fulcrums on which millions of humans have
pivoted their thinking, their livelihoods, and their behavior. We cannot
understand creativity, model it or reproduce it. But the same can be said of
strong AI as it is modeled by deep learning. Perhaps we can use a tool too
complex for human understanding to recreate a human process that we do not
understand. Imagine if we had the genius of gauss, fermat, pascal, newton,
liebniz, galileo,and so many others all available at the same time. in the
same room. to answer the same question.

Google , are you listening?

I know the question I would ask.

------
thrownaway954
Can't stand how people are too sensitive today. Linus is and has been a
asshole for decades. But that asshole has given us one of the greatest
contributions to computing. If you can't handle his attitude then don't be a
part of the community or grow some thicker skin. Life isn't always soft.

------
undefined_user4
Seems to me like he's been brainwashed by a bunch of emotional SJWs. I'll
certainly miss the old Linus.

~~~
sctb
I can believe that it does seem like that to you, but if you're going to post
on Hacker News please say something substantive and please avoid pure
inflammation.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
keithpeter
It will be interesting to see what kind of tooling Torvalds ends up with. I
suspect that bit may have been a joke but you could imagine a 'professional
feedback generator'.

Time out might yield positive benefits. At _some point_ (5 years? 10 years?)
he will have to retire / take on a different role.

------
8xde0wcNwpslOw
Shame. "Professional" offendees got into Linus' mind at last, to no one's
benefit.

Enjoy the break at least.

------
jknz
A middle ground solution between the former situation and leaving completely
is to have someone [with good editor skills] edit your emails before they go.

1\. Write your usual technical emails with possibly some knee-jerk personal
attacks stuffed in.

2\. Click send; which sends the email to the email editor. The editor redacts
your email, keeping the technical substance while removing anything personal.

The editor could only remove the problematic stuff, and for instance keep the
congrats, personal encouragements and whatever other personal positive
remarks. With time, the editor can learn what can of messages make the
community thrive, and edit the emails towards this. Some people are naturally
good at this; for others, hiring someone to edit emails may end up cheap for
the outcomes it may bring your organization.

------
fareesh
This part of the code is primed for issues:

> or to ban temporarily or permanently any contributor for other behaviors
> that they deem inappropriate, threatening, offensive, or harmful.

So in 2035 if someone submits a security patch and promotes eating steak,
we're all in trouble.

------
nojvek
> I took some time off to write a little tool called “git”

I wonder how many awesome things we’d have if brilliant engineers just took a
bit of a time off to build something that fixes an annoying pain point.

I look forward to what he builds in his time off :)

------
ivraatiems
I have complained about Linus's behavior before many times, on here and
elsewhere - it's in my comment history. I am extremely pleased to see Linus
owning up to his behavior. In a weird way, given that I have no personal
connection to him whatsoever, I'm proud of him.

I hope he makes good on his word as laid out here, I hope he takes the time he
needs and gets some good help, and I hope this sets a strong positive
precedent for Linux and the greater open source community going forward. This
can't have been an easy choice to make, and I respect him for making it.

------
doe88
_The Times They Are a-Changin '._

------
rectang
Folks, I understand that some of us have itchy scars, but can't we please take
"yes" for an answer?

This is seriously good news for the Linux community, and the wider Open Source
industry.

~~~
marmot777
The good news being that one of our heroes has demonstrated self awareness?
Yes.

------
cribbles
> This week people in our community confronted me about my lifetime of not
> understanding emotions.

> I am going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand
> people’s emotions and respond appropriately.

This is completely disingenuous. It's clear from Linus's persistent and cruel
personal attacks that he acutely understands many emotions: anger, fear,
shame, etc. He attempts to exploit these when he coarsely insults his
maintainers. Framing his actions otherwise is a form of deflection.

------
throw091618
Words and phrases I hate seeing from a brilliant and competent leader:

1\. "[something] was Not OK"

2\. An apology to "people who were hurt by my behaviour"

3\. "I'm going to get outside help to learn how to be better"

etc etc etc

Basically all the hallmarks of American PC overly sensitive culture that ruin
excellent organisations or products because of weak-minded, _mediocre_
nobodies.

Here's hoping Linus comes back fired up. He (and the rest of you lot) cannot
let useless people dictate the direction of important projects and
organisations.

~~~
atoav
I disagree. It is not really quantifiable whether Linus' (at times erratic)
patterns of communication had an positive or negative impact. You can very
well be firm and tell people what they need to hear while staying friendly. If
they realize you say the truth it will be more effective if you didn't give
them an excuse to blame everything on you.

Communication is important in bigger project. This is why leaders have to be
both aware and in control of what message gets across, otherwise the whole
thing is based on luck and people's good will to read what you might have
meant. Linus himself said he wasn't aware and that alone is a bad thing.

Don't get me wrong, you can totally get somewhere while beeing rude and
erratic, but in my experience there are more civil ways which will get you
there faster, with better morale and less overall friction.

------
mcqueenjordan
I have a lot of ambivalence about this. On the one hand, inclusiveness and
culture that leads to more diverse representation has shown to produce better
results. On the other hand, too much hand holding and accommodation will swing
the pendulum too far and lead to even worse results.

I’ve grown a thick skin and taken to respecting people like Linus, even if the
ire is directed at me. But that’s likely a function of my privilege that I’m
able to accept that and function in those conditions.

------
jondubois
It's interesting because I know a couple of authors of big open source
projects who have anger issues and who also profess to have little empathy for
others.

I struggle to understand how it's possible for someone who works for free for
the benefit of others to also lack empathy; isn't that a contradiction?

That said, I did experience extreme career-damaging betrayal from an open
source author who had a similar attitude as described in the article. Some
people are just living paradoxes.

------
fefe23
Is there any actual data on how "being an asshole" is bad for the product?

Because, frankly, Linux is one of the most successful projects in history. I
think if Linus telling repeat offenders to stuff it was bad for the project,
we ought to be able to measure some bad effects. Note that I'm saying measure.
I'm talking about actual, objective effects, not someone complaining.

If "people are complaining" would be bad for business, Comcast and EA would
not exist.

------
badrabbit
If this was your typical org,Linus would be a lead developer and architect who
is also the CTO.

It is easy for me to criticize his behavior(and I don't agree with his rants)
but it is also a difficult thing to be a leader. It would have been better if
he got rid of the cult that alienates anyone who criticizes him. He is a
perfect fit for the role but he should also be more tolerant of people who
criticize his communication style.

~~~
DoreenMichele
_It would have been better if he got rid of the cult that alienates anyone who
criticizes him_

That's an incredibly tall order.

I've been popular in the past on various forums and, inevitably, any position
I took became a polarizing case of "I'm on her side!" versus "I'm against
her!" And I never found a good solution to that.

I spent some time making sure that people trying to "side" with me for pecking
order bullshit reasons were handed their head publicly while being as civil as
I could be to people whose disagreement seemed genuine and not just asshole
behavior. It didn't work all that well, though.

I have spent a lot of years trying to sort out how to not wind up tangled up
in mess of that sort. One solution that kind of worked: Be a big fat nobody.

Time will tell if I have my crap sorted enough to not wind up mired in that
again should I ever gain any real popularity ever again. But I'm 53 and spent
a lot of years living quietly and eschewing fame. Torvalds came to fame young
and seems to not have the best social skills and that may not be something he
can ever really fully sort on his own. It's not an easily resolved issue, from
what I have seen of life, the universe and everything.

------
sebringj
It would be funny if we flipped the script and us "normal" people wrote...I
have been demonstrating consistently my inability to contribute anything
significant to better humanity for my entire career. I'm sorry and I hope I
can correct this behavior in the future. I'll be taking some time off now to
gather and regroup.

That would be a lot of apologies if that was supposed to be the norm.

------
ezoe
> And yes, some of it might be "just" tooling. Maybe I can get an email >
> filter in place so at when I send email with curse-words, they just > won't
> go out. Because hey, I'm a big believer in tools, and at least > _some_
> problems going forward might be improved with simple > automation.

Strictly following the virtues of the programmer, I guess.

------
fouc
I wonder if the negative behaviour was essentially knee-jerk lizard-brain
reactions against other developers that wasted his time because they don't
share his values for Linux.

If he maintained a manifesto of values for linux's kernel, always kept it up
to date with the new technological choices and so on, maybe that would've kept
the bike shedding away.

------
lovemenot
This seems to be about succession planning. Linus first talked about not
attending a regular session, then fully realised its impossibility and the
reasons thereof.

Style is less than substance. If there's one person who knows this, it's Linus
Torvalds. And the proverbial bus would be all substance, if and when it hit.

------
dijit
Good for him, I wonder how this will affect kernel development though.

“Benevolent dictator for life” might not scale. And it might sound horrible;
but there are some strengths involved that I feel the Linux project benefits
greatly from.

I figure that Linus has insulated himself very well with competent leaders,
but, I don’t have much insight-

~~~
lvh
Why doesn't BDFLhood scale? Eventually people step down (Python, now Linux) --
but I'd say those projects have been wildly successful.

------
xfitm3
It’s impossible to make everyone happy. Linus has a tough job. I’m not looking
forward to the day he steps down.

------
rothr
> Maybe I can get an email filter in place so at when I send email with curse-
> words, they just won't go out. Because hey, I'm a big believer in tools, and
> at least _some_ problems going forward might be improved with simple
> automation.

Linus dealing with his behavior as an engineering problem. Genius.

------
SamReidHughes
Still waiting for all the people that go around with a smile plastered all
over their behavior to apologize.

------
wwarner
I'm of 2 minds. He goes to bat for the rest of us defending the quality of the
kernel and the open source movement, and he wastes no time and he doesn't
mince words. But he was doing the same thing 20 years ago and was nicer about
it and by being nicer invited more participation.

------
wyclif
As someone familiar with LBT's mailing list rhetoric since the early days, I'm
guessing a big part of what's happening here is that LBT hasn't changed the
way he communicates but the rest of the world has moved on. And let's face it,
the engineering and programming world has gotten a lot more politically
correct—I think the main factor driving this is the increasing presence of
women in technology.

What I mean is that it's getting less and less acceptable in tech to make
excuses for abusing people either verbally or in writing. Back when
engineering was almost totally male-dominated, you were excused for using
harsh criticism and vituperation at work. Many people, I think, will be glad
that sort of culture is going away.

~~~
kryptiskt
If you look at the tech world of the 80s, 90% of it was very buttoned-up and
proper, despite being male-dominated. The rudeness comes from Linux' roots in
a youth-dominated hacker subculture. It just doesn't work very well when they
aren't teenage hackers anymore, but have gone mainstream and are working at it
in a professional capacity.

~~~
wolfgke
> It just doesn't work very well when they aren't teenage hackers anymore, but
> have gone mainstream

What has gone mainstream is in my opinion something very different than what
the original hacker ethos was about. See for example
[https://aeon.co/essays/how-yuppies-hacked-the-original-
hacke...](https://aeon.co/essays/how-yuppies-hacked-the-original-hacker-ethos)

------
hyperpallium
> get some assistance on how to understand people’s emotions and respond
> appropriately

> like the time ... I needed to write a little tool called "git". I need ...
> to fix some issues in my tooling and workflow.

Hopefully we'll get another world-wide revolution out of this.

~~~
djsumdog
I dunno. I think git's success is less around Torvald's developing it and more
about companies like Github finding ways to capitalize on it.

They kinda made a Freshmeat/freecode that included the code repository,
without being as shitty as Source Forge.

~~~
hyperpallium
there was great excitement and adoption before github

famous linus talk at google 2007
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8#](https://youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8#)

github founded 2008
[https://wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub)

git's distributed nature was revolutionary. Although not the first (BitKeeper
for one preceded it), it has a mind-numbingly simple design, of distributed
data by content addressing (data named by its hash, so it has the same name
whereever it is).

------
totally
> hey, 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 don't care who you are, it takes a lot of courage to say something like
this. Respect.

------
johnny22
How many of the folks commenting on this issue have actually contributed
substantially to various FOSS projects.

I keep believing I might have wrong in thinking that most of the commenters
have never done so, but so many folks seem to to tip their hand.

~~~
InclinedPlane
What is this? "Jessup's defense" (from a few good men) or somesuch? What sort
of bad behavior is allowed by FOSS project contributions? Can it be used to
get out of parking tickets?

~~~
johnny22
I wasn't commenting on bad behaviour or not (at least not in that comment). It
just seems like lots of folks are talking about this issue in the abstract
rather than from experience.

------
yenwel
"In accomplished leaders, we often mistake vices for virtues.

Steve Jobs succeeded in spite of his cruelty, not because of it.

Every great leader has flaws. What defines a truly good leader is the humility
to recognize them and the courage to rise above them."

@AdamMGrant

------
antpls
Does everyone really think Linus will change 30 years of past behavior at his
age?

The bits about how Git was created, and the mention of automated tools at the
end make me believe Linus will come up with a new shiny tool. Or maybe he
hopes so.

------
icelancer
What was once a strength (albeit with a major drawback) is now no longer
needed as Linux is in a much different place than it was when Linus had to
forge headon. Not many can make this switch. I give him plenty of credit.

------
EGreg
I kind of liked Linus’ rants! However, I always thought he was much more
socially aware and empathetic than he admits to being here. He just chooses to
express himself that way. Wonder if I gave him too much credit?

------
im3w1l
I don't think anyone, not even Linus himself, really knows whether his
abrasive attitude was necessary or not, and whether it was helpful or not.
Will be interesting to see what happens.

~~~
InclinedPlane
It was not necessary, it was not helpful.

------
unstuckdev
Good on him for doing what's right for his community. It takes a lot to own up
to _a_ mistake and work on doing better. It takes more to do that when there's
a pile of them.

------
billfruit
This is a pretty long comment section here, but does anyone have a summary of
the immediate context of the discussion that may have lead to his idea to take
a bit of time off to reflect?

------
quickthrower2
Nice apology. As someone who hasn't been following can someone give a bit of a
background. What was the bad behavior exactly?

And why is he needed at every summit? That sounds like a bus factor.

------
jefurii
It takes a lot of courage to say what Linus said today. Especially in this
current climate and in the face of some of the comments I'm seeing here and
elsewhere. Respect.

------
deafcalculus
I really hope he doesn't change on code quality standards.

------
sz4kerto
We should also keep in mind that the fact that he's trying to change his
behavior does not mean that it has been counterproductive overall for Linux
over the last three decades. It might not be optimal now for leading kernel
development, or it might not be optimal for him as a person. However, this
introspection really does not mean that Linux would have been more successful
if he'd been nicer in the past. Maybe yes, maybe not -- but some commenters
seem to imply that this email is somehow a proof that people calling Linus out
in the past were somehow right.

~~~
alkonaut
I don’t like the whole “to make an omelette you have to break some eggs”
excuse.

If you can’t create something without hurting people then don’t create it.

Yes everyone calling out LT being an asshat has been right, from day 1.

~~~
sz4kerto
Sorry, I wasn't defending Linus at all, and I would not behave as he did. I
was just saying that him changing his behavior doesn't prove anything about
successful management techniques. Of course I'm not pro assholes :)

~~~
alkonaut
I was merely trying to make the point that if one measures the success of a
manager by only what is produced and not by how people are managed then one
made the same mistake Linus did.

~~~
sz4kerto
This is quite complicated. Primarily, the measurable bit of a manager's
performance is what's produced. If you start measuring people's emotions then
that's going to be very hard to quantify.

Let's say that your company is trying to revolutionarize transportation by
breaking the monopoly of ICE engines and replacing them with electric motors.
What's the compromise you can allow yourself if there's a conflict between
your employees' life and emotions and your company's success? If hundreds of
people get totally burned out working for you but you help millions of
children growing up with less pollution, then is that acceptable?

It isn't always true that you can have your cake and eat it as well. I don't
know the right solution, but it's definitely not a simple that "produce great
output and also make your employees happy" \-- there are countless situations
where these conflict. Sadly.

Regarding the case in point -- I think Linus' contribution to the world is so
overwhelmingly positive that these rants and hurt feelings don't even compare.
It'd be better if he didn't do them but this is his character, and nobody
knows how this roughness correlates with his perseverance and care about code.
(I'm really not saying it does, but it could.)

~~~
alkonaut
> If hundreds of people get totally burned out working for you but you help
> millions of children growing up with less pollution, then is that
> acceptable?

It may be an acceptable tradeoff, but I wouldn’t say it makes someone a ”good
manager”.

------
h1d
For people not really involved, what does it mean?

Is this just an apology out of daily discussions or is anything going to
change for Linux development?

------
hismaj
Linus torvals behavior has spun a bunch of people who think it is perfectly
okay to be rude, like the some of the linux folks in intel

------
YeGoblynQueenne
I never quite got this sort of thing- programmers talking "tough" like they
are, dunno, extras in gangster movies or something. We're just a bunch of
nerds tapping away at keyboards all day. Were does all this _attitude_ come
from?

Collectively, we must think we're a really tough bunch. Don't mess with us or
we'll screw up your codebase and rename all your variables "bob". Hah!

I hope we can all learn a lesson from Linus. Those of us who still need it,
anyway.

------
craig_peacock
Anyone that can't take the criticism for bad work presented to the head of the
most successful software project of all time don't deserve to participate.
Linus has done an amazing job of keeping all my computers, safe, secure and
reliable and anyone that messes with his method should not even be allowed to
participate. I don't care about anyone's need to feel like a special and
capable snowflake, I need the best software Open Source can provide.

------
h1d
What does this mean for the kernel development? Are we going to lose a
dictator and things start to drift left and right?

------
purpleidea
The negative thing to come of this is that maybe he won't tell off bad
companies any more. _cough_ Nvidia...

------
fergie
Last time Linus took time off from kernel development the world got Git. I
wonder what we will get this time?

------
l8again
I would never work for this asshole. I have not granted any one the privilege
of being disrespectful to me. No, no one has my permission to be
unprofessional and/or disrespectful towards me, no matter the cost. Everything
else is fair game. To be clear, I have had a fair amount of criticism on my
work by all kinds of people (and most of them I deeply respect and consider my
mentors).

~~~
kyberias
You calling Linux here "asshole"... does it tell more about Linus or about
you?

~~~
l8again
It says that verbal abuse cannot be a part of a deal.

------
entwife
This has me curious about what outcomes are desired and what method(s) he is
going to use to get results.

------
kstenerud
Words can't describe how happy this makes me!

Linus is very much a Sheldon Cooper: Brilliant, usually right, but lacking in
empathy (colloquial: an "asshole").

That he's finally recognizing this deficiency AND taking steps to correct it
is the best news ever, because it means Linux development will flourish now
that a toxic element is being removed (the behavior, not Linus himself).

Bravo! And good luck to you!

------
thinkingemote
Who benefits the most from this? People within protected groups or
corporations with strategic aims?

------
chaosbolt000
The comments are too harsh, you can be a good person and an asshole, since
when insults were this much of a problem, a few decades ago people would've
just said he's a guy with an attitude, or hot blooded, etc... I prefer people
like him to calm always smiling sociopaths who only say the right things and
take actions that truly hurt people.

------
HaoZeke
This is just sad. Linus was a driving force. His comments were often acerbic
but always fair.

~~~
NegativeK
> His comments were often acerbic but always fair.

No. [https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/6/495](https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/6/495)

~~~
mmirate
Uhh, that one is _very_ fair.

Two cross-ring context-switches _per byte_ (!!!), is insanely idiotic at best;
any BSCS program worth half its salt will teach you why; and one would
certainly hope that a developer of a central/core userspace program would be
far more knowledgeable than someone straight out of a BSCS program.

------
kyberias
Well, kudos to Linus. I still think the man should not change, but hey who am
I to say that.

------
dgellow
That seems sincere and is well formulated. Kudos to him for sharing that
publicly.

------
mnemotronic
<quote> ... a long-winded way to get to the somewhat painful personal
admission that hey, 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</quote>

been a long time coming.

------
brian_herman
i hope he has a good vacation i really like him guido was nice too :/

------
emodendroket
I think this is great. Too many people look at figures like Torvalds or Jobs
who have big accomplishments but also acted like jerks and decide they had
achievements because they were jerks and so acting like a jerk is the thing to
do. I would say that is not the case.

------
PeterMikhailov
I look forward to esr writing the absolute worst take on all of this.

------
pcvpcvpcv
The headline sounds like a start of a sci-fi movie (or Onion news).

------
atoav
It is very interesting how dichotomic Linus' traits are beeing discussed here.
Many seem to think that him beeing an asshole at times correlates with
communicating clearly – then the opposite is quickly constructed: kind,
polite, but not saying what is needed, robbing everyone of their time, beating
around the bush..

As a (film) director I work with both with a technical crew and rather non-
technical actors. As you can imagine good communication and leadership is key
to make something as complex as a movie work on multiple layers. But you don't
necessarily have to be aware of how your communication effects people to be a
good leader (as Linus stated he wasn't), but it certainly helps to make your
communication more intentional and less erratic. Film directors can pull the
strings of their actors while beeing assholes, real friends or a cold
professionals – but all of them have to be aware of the effect it is having on
the actors – otherwise they are just shooting darts into the fog monte-carlo-
style.

You can't just force someone to deliver peak performance. You also can't just
convince them rationally, even if they have a huge incentive. It is your job
to get them into a place where they A)can deliver their best and B) they also
_want_ to deliver their best. If they are mentally stuck it is your job to
show them the possibilities, if they are head-in-the-clouds it is you job to
ground them back to earth, while still leaving them freedom.

How to achieve effective communication like this depends mostly on the
situation, the constellation between sender and receiver and last but not
least on the character of the individual.

Someone who overestimates themselves all the time, but can't deliver and
destroys work of their team might need a different treatment, than somebody
who really gives their best and accidentally fucked up. Psychologically
speaking, some might be more receptive to public communication (where there is
more than one person listening) and others want/need a one-on-one.

Effective communication is, when you can push everybody over their boundaries,
using the language they need and in the end they should feel like they wanted
all of this themselves.

This won't give you that infamous aura, but it will get the job done faster,
better, using less words and in in an ideal case everybody will thank you,
because they learned a lot.

One cannot not communicate. That is why it is important to make communication
intentional. Read Paul Watzlawick's Five Axioms of communication, if you
didn't already: [http://www.wanterfall.com/Communication-
Watzlawick%27s-Axiom...](http://www.wanterfall.com/Communication-
Watzlawick%27s-Axioms.htm)

------
stevew20
Linus would make a great character in a Neal Stephenson book.

------
Sharlin
A certain sort of ruthlessness and lack of empathy, accompanied by having an
extraordinarily driven personality, certainly seems to often make things
happen (see also: Steve Jobs). The ages-old question is – is it worth it? Do
ends justify the means?

~~~
cowmoo728
People can be ruthless without being abusive. Linus had effectively ultimate
power over the kernel for quite some time, so he could have said things like:

"I disagree with this patch and I'm not going to merge it. It does these
things wrong, and this line of reasoning makes no sense. Change these things
and explain the reasoning behind this and I'll look at it again."

Most of his rants that I've read could have been summarized by that without
including any personal attacks.

~~~
wolfgke
> People can be ruthless without being abusive.

Everybody has a different conviction about what is abusive and what is not.

~~~
cowmoo728
One of Linus's more colorful rants:

"Of course, I'd also suggest that whoever was the genius who thought it was a
good idea to read things ONE F _CKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for
each byte should be retroactively aborted. Who the f_ ck does idiotic things
like that? How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely
too stupid to find a tit to suck on?"

~~~
Rainymood
Honestly it's a well-crafted insult, I give him that

~~~
notriddle
If this werea Shakespeare play, it would be.

But in real life, we have to worry about being honest. And it's honestly not
true that anyone who reads a byte at a time is too dumb to operate a nipple.
All it means is that whoever did it doesn't know much about syscalls.

~~~
lowry
It will be remembered as well as Shakespeare play.

------
chj
Linus finally gave in.

------
MikeGale
My question. How does it go when Linus does get out of it?

------
brynjolf
This comes right after Intel got flack from Linus...

------
solarkraft
> I need to take a break to get help on how to behave differently and fix some
> issues in my tooling and workflow.

I find it interesting that this is happening _now instead years / decades
_earlier.

~~~
smt88
I think it's important to react to people's progress with encouragement rather
than, "Why didn't you do this sooner?" We all have issues we should've worked
on by now and may not ever work on.

This is, of course, separate from holding him accountable for treating others
badly. He can and should have consequences when that happens.

------
poosanth
Good for him. Hopefully it would do him some good.

------
jwilk
Please don't editorialize titles.

------
brian_herman
i love linus he is an asshole but he is out assshole and he earned it :/

------
O_H_E
Self reflection and redirection are one of the most important traits that lead
to personal growth.

Great job Linus

------
wolco
Long live Torvalds

------
oh_sigh
insmod empathy

------
poosanth
Good for him.

------
Havoc
Good for him

------
gorbachev
Finally!

------
nailer
[The text part of the post with corrected formatting, rather than 78 chars:]

\---

So this email got a lot longer than I initially thought it would get, but
let's start out with the "regular Sunday release" part ]

Another week, another rc.

Nothing particularly odd stands out on the technical side in the kernel
updates for last week - rc4 looks fairly average in size for this stage in the
release cycle, and all the other statistics look pretty normal too.

We've got roughly two thirds driver fixes (gpu and networking look to be the
bulk of it, but there's smaller changes all over in various driver
subsystems), with the rest being the usual mix: core networking, perf tooling
updates, arch updates, Documentation, some filesystem, vm and minor core
kernel fixes.

So it's all fairly small and normal for this stage. As usual, I'm appending
the shortlog at the bottom for people who want to get an overview of the
details without actually having to go dig in the git tree.

The one change that stands out and merits mention is the code of conduct
addition...

[ And here comes the other, much longer, part... ]

Which brings me to the _NOT_ normal part of the last week: the discussions
(both in public mainly on the kernel summit discussion lists and then a lot in
various private communications) about maintainership and the kernel community.
Some of that discussion came about because of me screwing up my scheduling for
the maintainer summit where these things are supposed to be discussed.

And don't get me wrong. It's not like that discussion itself is in any way new
to this week - we've been discussing maintainership and community for years.
We've had lots of discussions both in private and on mailing lists. We have
regular talks at conferences - again, both the "public speaking" kind and the
"private hallway track" kind.

No, what was new last week is really my reaction to it, and me being perhaps
introspective (you be the judge).

There were two parts to that.

One was simply my own reaction to having screwed up my scheduling of the
maintainership summit: yes, I was somewhat embarrassed about having screwed up
my calendar, but honestly, I was mostly hopeful that I wouldn't have to go to
the kernel summit that I have gone to every year for just about the last two
decades.

Yes, we got it rescheduled, and no, my "maybe you can just do it without me
there" got overruled. But that whole situation then started a whole different
kind of discussion. And kind of incidentally to that one, the second part was
that I realized that I had completely mis-read some of the people involved.

This is where the "look yourself in the mirror" moment comes in.

So here we are, me finally on the one hand realizing that it wasn't actually
funny or a good sign that I was hoping to just skip the yearly kernel summit
entirely, and on the other hand realizing that I really had been ignoring some
fairly deep-seated feelings in the community.

It's one thing when you can ignore these issues. Usually it’s just something I
didn't want to deal with.

This is my reality. I am not an emotionally empathetic kind of person and that
probably doesn't come as a big surprise to anybody. Least of all me. The fact
that I then misread people and don't realize (for years) how badly I've judged
a situation and contributed to an unprofessional environment is not good.

This week people in our community confronted me about my lifetime of

not understanding emotions. My flippant attacks in emails have been both
unprofessional and uncalled for. Especially at times when I made it personal.
In my quest for a better patch, this made sense to me. I know now this was not
OK and I am truly sorry.

The above is basically a long-winded way to get to the somewhat painful
personal admission that hey, 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.

Put another way: When asked at conferences, I occasionally talk about how the
pain-points in kernel development have generally not been about the
_technical_ issues, but about the inflection points where development flow and
behavior changed.

These pain points have been about managing the flow of patches, and often been
associated with big tooling changes - moving from making releases with
"patches and tar-balls" (and the _very_ painful discussions about how "Linus
doesn't scale" back 15+ years ago) to using BitKeeper, and then to having to
write git in order to get past the point of that no longer working for us.

We haven't had that kind of pain-point in about a decade. But this week felt
like that kind of pain point to me.

To tie this all back to the actual 4.19-rc4 release (no, really, this _is_
related!) I actually think that 4.19 is looking fairly good, things have
gotten to the "calm" period of the release cycle, and I've talked to Greg to
ask him if he'd mind finishing up 4.19 for me, so that I can take a break, and
try to at least fix my own behavior.

This is not some kind of "I'm burnt out, I need to just go away" break. I'm
not feeling like I don't want to continue maintaining Linux. Quite the
reverse. I very much _do_ want to continue to do this project that I've been
working on for almost three decades.

This is more like the time I got out of kernel development for a while because
I needed to write a little tool called "git". I need to take a break to get
help on how to behave differently and fix some issues in my tooling and
workflow.

And yes, some of it might be "just" tooling. Maybe I can get an email filter
in place so at when I send email with curse-words, they just won't go out.
Because hey, I'm a big believer in tools, and at least _some_ problems going
forward might be improved with simple automation.

I know when I really look “myself in the mirror” it will be clear it's

not the only change that has to happen, but hey... You can send me suggestions
in email.

I look forward to seeing you at the Maintainer Summit.

Linus

------
kalman5
he is getting old

------
another-cuppa
Oh dear. So they finally got to him. First Guido, now Linus. If some "nice
person" would write a better free operating system I'd be all over it. But
Linus is one of the people that has made it possible for me to not only run a
free operating system, but the best system in the world. The people who
criticise and attack Linus are the one who don't understand us. They don't
understand what this software means to us.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Good deeds don't justify bad behavior. Ever.

------
GW150914
_This week people in our community confronted me about my lifetime of not
understanding emotions. My flippant attacks in emails have been both
unprofessional and uncalled for. Especially at times when I made it personal.
In my quest for a better patch, this made sense to me.

I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry. The above is basically a
long-winded way to get to the somewhat painful personal admission that hey, 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._

Now that’s something I never in a million years thought he’d be capable of
thinking, never mind admitting in public, without reservations. I sincerely
hope that it sticks, and the result is good not just for the community, but
Linus himself. Good luck, and I hope people give him the chance to make good
on his attempt to grow as a person. It takes a lot of courage to be this
vulnerable in public, especially when you know and that you hurt people.

------
lgleason
Linus's revelation kind of looks like he has been infected with "feels over
reals" postmodernism. Not a good omen for engineering where reality needs to
come first.

~~~
LaGrange
That's pretty much the opposite of postmodernism actually is.

~~~
hnzix
I was forced to take a unit of postmodernism as part of my studies and came
away no wiser as to what postmodernism actually is.

There was a bunch of dense, impenetrable academic word games that seemed to be
asserting that all truth is culturally relative.

I don't find gravity or physics to be culturally relative.

~~~
idontpost
Modernism is Descartes` "I will find a single indisputable axiom and can prove
everything knowable from there." His axiom? "Cogito ergo sum."

Postmodernism is rooted in the notion that there is no indisputable base axiom
from which we can build our understanding of the world. It's unprovable
assumptions all the way down. The consequences for this, if you accept it (you
don't have to, but you're going to have a hell of a time proving you're
right), are ENORMOUS and affect virtually every field of human understanding.

In the sciences we tend to start from the assumption that what we measure is
real. As a practical matter, that's fine, but there is no sound rational basis
for that assumption. It's an unprovable assumption.

All of our value systems (and by extension, our social systems) are founded on
unprovable assumptions.

This is the essence of postmodernism, in so many words. There are no sound
assumptions. The best we can do is say what follows from one assumption or
another, but we can never say which conclusion is right because we can never
say which assumption is right.

The implications of this can be particularly disturbing for rule-oriented
individuals, but that doesn't make it wrong. It's irrational to claim that
some assumptions are better than others without some basis (in which case,
they are no longer assumptions).

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
_In the sciences we tend to start from the assumption that what we measure is
real. As a practical matter, that 's fine, but there is no sound rational
basis for that assumption. It's an unprovable assumption._

Can you show that what we measure is not real? If you can’t prove anything one
way or the other, who cares? Why even bother with this line of thinking?

~~~
pell
Why exactly is 1 + 1 = 2?

Yes, postmodernism is in a sense very theoretical and I would also say the
word itself has been misused or used too broadly in ways, but the essense of
it definitely is a step further from the previous default.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
Maybe

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principia_Mathematica)

~~~
pell
Gödel countered this with the incompleteness theorems. If you're interested,
have a look here: [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel-
incompleteness/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/goedel-incompleteness/)

------
briandear
Can you explain what “left-leaning” has to do with it?

~~~
iherbig
It's a bit difficult to explain, but I'll try.

In the current political climate, the left and the right have been divided by
the public consciousness into the following dichotomy:

The left is overly sensitive and looks for things to be offended by.

The right is concerned with maturity and personal responsibility and anti-
political correctness, where those things are defined primarily in contrast to
the left's perceived over-sensitivity.

Simultaneously, there have been a lot of trends in various communities
(software and otherwise) to formalize rules of conduct and push out people who
are more naturally aggressive in tone.

Through that lens, this behavior has been seen as "left-leaning." So in
contrast, the right-leaning behavior would be letting everyone behave as they
want with the "free market of ideas" being the primary driving force for
change rather than any set of enforced community standard. (You can see the
parallel with the typically "conservative" economic perspective.)

I hope you can see the general trend.

So what the grandparent is saying is that it's not REALLY about left vs.
right, without explicitly contradicting the beliefs of the common social
consciousness.

Edit: The comment above that says, "Different people have very different
beliefs what is to be considered 'heated', 'hateful' and 'treating well' or
not" would be considered "right-leaning" through the common lens because it's
implicitly positing that there shouldn't be a common set of community
standards (with the implicit supposition that you CAN'T set a common set of
community standards because there will always be people who disagree). Not
picking on anyone, just using an available example.

~~~
jacobolus
> _The left is overly sensitive and looks for things to be offended by._

This is total nonsense. In the modern political climate _everyone_ is looking
for things to be offended by.

(It just happens that the “left” is offended by people getting beat up,
sexually harassed, prevented from exercising their basic rights, etc., whereas
the “right” is offended by the phrase “happy holidays”, by trans-gender people
using one bathroom or another, by football players kneeling to protest police
brutality, and so on.)

Or more to the point, media / social media that fixates on why readers should
be offended and aggrieved are much more “viral” than other types of messaging.
It’s hard to blame individuals for this, as they have been under intense
psychological attack by a combination of deliberate propaganda and accidental
harmful features of modern media. I say we need much stronger education in
media literacy, and better cultural/structural systems for keeping media
accountable for basic honesty.

~~~
tomp
You can easily find just as, and more, ridiculous examples on the left.
Offended by jokes, tshirts, suggestions that unborn children's lives have
value, praise of Israel, using biologically and factually correct terms for
people, suggestions that people shouldn't be discriminated against, pointing
out scientific/genetic facts, ...

~~~
ivraatiems
Who decides what examples are ridiculous and what examples aren't?

~~~
tomp
Exactly.

------
SBArbeit
It's about fucking time. I personally stay away from software created by
people who lack empathy; technical goodness !> creating a good environment and
product for actual people. I don't go to restaurants run by douchebags either,
no matter how good the food might be.

And Git has the UX of software created by someone with no empathy.

I hope Linus heals from this, and I hope the culture of the Linux community
changes as well, but that will take years to get past his past behavior.

~~~
craftyguy
> And Git has the UX of software created by someone with no empathy.

I would really like to understand what you expect a UX for a command line tool
to look like. Maybe instead of throwing an error if you did something wrong,
it would apologize to you first? Or perhaps it should preface all output with
"dearest Sir/Madam, here is the information you requested:" ?

~~~
anothergoogler
There would be no output. Sometimes you just need your software to _listen_ ,
not try and solve everything, and it would understand that.

~~~
craftyguy
How in the world do you have a useful source control tool with no output?

------
rashthedude
Another great man that fell victim to SJW.

~~~
sctb
Could you please strive to post in a way that's more informative and less
inflammatory? We're here to learn.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
AzzieElbab
There goes Linux

------
nige123
Linux was named after Linus.

Linus admits that he named "git" after himself too. At least he had some self-
awareness of his own "git"-ishness.

Trump, for example, is too far along the narcissistic spectrum to even feign
humility.

The software industry is sadly plagued by empathy-free, narcissistic gits.

It's sad - Why?

Empathy is actually essential for creating good software (and good leadership
too) - we write software for humans not computers.

Trump is sadly too far gone to show real empathy. Linus may be too ... but at
least he's seeking help.

Peace Linus - I hope you find your true empathic self.

More empathy in the development of Linux would be truly _great_ (and not in
the Trump sense).

~~~
mmirate
> we write software for humans not computers.

The "humans" are in every case either ourselves or our customers. Empathy is
certainly not needed when communicating with ourselves; and with the exception
of the (rare) type of developer who also owns the company, the latter case has
the indirections of Sales, TAM, Services, Tech Support and our managers.

Hence, while the quoted statement is true by itself, it does not support the
universal need for empathy for software-development.

------
coldtea
Ah, all these decades of American culture made him finally cave in...

------
sytelus
What is the context here? Does anyone know sequence of events that culminated
in to this?

~~~
djsumdog
I suspect there was no one single event. His mailing list rants have been
known for a while, and the occasionally make it to the tops of sites like
HN/Redit/etc.

I doubt it was less of a "Straw that broke the camel's back" and more of just
a "We all know this was coming," thing.

Or maybe it was? ... from the e-mail, it might have been words/things from
maintainers, specifically around the meeting/conference he mentioned, that
forced him to re-evaluate the way he works.

------
trumped
Hopefully this is not the beginning of the end of Linux as we know it today...

~~~
trumped
All software turns to shit eventually (those engineers need something to do
even when nothing needs to be done)... I'm really surprised that Linux lasted
this long... It will almost definitely turn to shit when Linus T. is no longer
around... hope I'm wrong...

------
squarefoot
I wish him best luck, he needs some. This guy is doing a tremendous work and,
yes, sometimes he's a certified ass, but we need people like him. If we had a
couple more clones of him, say one in the audio subsystem and the other
benevolently dictating development in the GUI field, Linux on the desktop for
everyone would become reality in no more than six months.

------
chris_wot
I wish he had recognised this six years ago:

[https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75](https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75)

This email alone set the tone for what was acceptable.

It was discussed previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5107495](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5107495)

~~~
zeroname
> This email alone set the tone for what was acceptable.

Did it really? Did other contributors adopt his "style"? Linus gets a pass
because he's Linus, I'm not so sure about other contributors, who presumably
have their own reputation to maintain.

~~~
chris_wot
For what was acceptable from Linus, sure.

------
sirsuki
I am very surprised at how many comments this story has gotten on HN. I am
even more appalled at how many continue to excuse his actions in the name of
"being right" or "technically valid".

This reminds me of the infamous [Wheaton's
Law]([https://everything2.com/user/OldMiner/writeups/Wheaton%2527s...](https://everything2.com/user/OldMiner/writeups/Wheaton%2527s+Law))
states: "Don't be a dick." A very sound piece of social expectation.

As comparison if I were to attempt to learn to be better I doubt I would have
any luck with a mentor who swears and insults me irregardless of being right
or wrong. I'm curious just how as people it is possible to excuse such
behaviour. Does the end truly justify the means? And if so can the end be
reach effectively with different means? If someone is a really good soldier
but was physically abused as a child is the abuse justified?

I only try to illustrate some of the absurdity that (in my opinion) is the
justification of the means in this case. I to suffer from social awkwardness.
I often find things funny when in fact they are insensitive. I wouldn't claim
that anyone is immune to social difficulties. However, I can say that there is
evidence that approaching social interactions with some tact can lead to far
better results then being bullish or rude.

Here is a quote from ["How to win friends and influence others" by Dale
Carnagie]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People)):
"Don't criticize, condemn, or complain. Human nature does not like to admit
fault. When people are criticized or humiliated, they rarely respond well and
will often become defensive and resent their critic. To handle people well, we
must never criticize, condemn or complain because it will never result in the
behavior we desire."

I'll close with a quote from the [four
agreements]([http://www.toltecspirit.com/](http://www.toltecspirit.com/)): "Be
Impeccable with your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid
using the Word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the
power of your Word in the direction of truth and love."

~~~
marmot777
People who don't exercise self control are those who never grew up. Linus
knows that.

