
Linux founder not a 'people person' - AndrewDucker
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35599774
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matthewowen
That's cute, but clearly he is. Linux is a huge complex project that requires
a lot of careful delegation through a tree of maintainers.

If you can manage that, you _are_ a people person. Maybe not in the way people
often use the term, but you can't do the job without being good at working
with people and getting them do the thing you need them to do, and it's hard
to do that if you don't on some level value other people.

~~~
rms_returns
> but you can't do the job without being good at working with people and
> getting them do the thing you need them to do

Basically, the "merit-based" structure of an open-source project ensures that
people can get away with bare-minimum communication skills. If I'm a BDFL, all
I need to convince people to join my project is a good, working product (and
Linus had that - Linux). As an enthusiastic programmer, all you need to
contribute is ability to send a pull-request.

There are matters like internal politics, but beyond a certain expansion, it
becomes almost impossible to justify doing a fork just for egoistical reasons
(and most people know that, even the less "people-friendly" or "more geeky"
people).

All in all, it is the community/hacker culture that drives an open source
project development and takes a life of its own, matters like personal
communication skills seem insignificant in front of that larger force.

Another reason Linus could get away with lesser people skills was perhaps
because he followed the bazaar style of development which invites literally
everyone into the project. This way, if one particular geek didn't agree with
Torvalds, he could replace him/her with someone else as the bazaar model
ensured a good competition among the geeks.

Richard Stallman, however, followed the cathedral style of development for
creating emacs and gnu utils. This model involves just Stallman's chosen few
geeks or programmers, so communication and people skills matter a lot here. If
you have only a few programmers to do your job, you can't afford to call them
bad names and lose them, can you!

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kelvin0
Welcome aboard! I'm Captain Obvious! That being said, I can totally relate to
how he enjoys his 'boring' office were he can be productive and focus on what
he loves: Technology/Engineering/Coding. He really seems to know himself and
is able to properly assess his strengths and weaknesses (not delusional!).
Seems to be true to himself and it works for him.

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rms_returns
"I can't do it to save my life. If I was stranded on a desert island and the
only way to get off was to create a pretty UI I would die there,"

Now I understand why Linus isn't too fond of Github!

~~~
n0us
On a related note. Git is obviously an extremely powerful program that would
arguably be very simple to understand if the interface weren't so complex and
(at times) counter intuitive.

~~~
rms_returns
True. But the way Github has designed their interface is also not too bad,
especially considering that it is supposed to be used by both laymen as well
as programmers.

~~~
n0us
Agreed. Github has a nice interface and helped me to make sense of git when I
was getting started programming.

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Derpdiherp
How this ever made it onto the BBC is beyond me. "News Flash - Legendary
programmer is not a people person"...

~~~
surething
The newsworthiness of the piece is probablity in the rarity of Torvalds giving
an interview.

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nickpsecurity
A huge number of reporters should all email him at once for confirmation that
he's not a people person. :)

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romanovcode
>"I often work in my bathrobe, and I have to have complete silence."

So much this. And yet we see that so many companies are doing open-office as
if it's advantage. Especially when they place programmers close with
marketing.

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carsongross
It isn't Linus who isn't a people person, it is people who aren't Linus
persons.

Linus Torvalds is a pan-national treasure.

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xmstr
I think every here already knew that.

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rvdm
A great voice of reason amid all the news of inflated valuations and scandal.

Keeping it real since day one.

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abc_lisper
Is there a video?

