

Linus Torvalds Explodes at Red Hat Developer  - recoiledsnake
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/02/25/1251236/linus-torvalds-explodes-at-red-hat-developer

======
jonascopenhagen
> Linus said what most free software user feel and wanted to say from the very
> beginning but neither had the strength or conviction, that Linus has

So it takes strength and conviction to be rude and condescending? I'd say it
takes strength to remain polite in a heated argument. I'm not impressed with
Torvalds' attitude.

~~~
dguaraglia
Linus is one of the nicest people you'll ever see. He's just a massive
troll/flamethrower when it comes to online discussions. He acknowledges so
himself. I don't mind it, Linux is his baby and if you don't like interacting
with him you can just fork it and go your own way. Nothing stopping you.

I think nobody takes Linus's insults at face value anymore. I'd actually laugh
my ass off if I was a kernel developer and got told off by Linus.

~~~
DanBC
There is a problem that flaming is seen as normal, acceptable behaviour in
some communities.

People see Torvalds doing it, they see de Raadt doing it, they see a bunch of
people doing it, and so they think it's okay to do it in their email list.

This increases developer churn and burnout, and that's not something that
OpenSource can afford.

I think it's a shame if young people are learning how to collaborate with
others from these broken models, rather than learning effective skills.
Especially if inter-personal skills are more likely to be weak in the dev
community.

Having said all that, I kind of agree that it's okay for someone to be an arse
on their own pet project. If it becomes unbearable people could just fork it
split and the project.

------
dustin
Not exactly political, but the man has a point.

Better explanation here linked from Slashdot here (the actual mailing list
site is down.) [http://www.muktware.com/5276/linus-torvalds-secure-boot-
supp...](http://www.muktware.com/5276/linus-torvalds-secure-boot-supporters-
not-dick-sucking-contest)

------
dhruvmittal
He's right, but Red Hat isn't necessarily wrong. Red Hat's doing what's right
for their consumers, but Linus is speaking about what's right for the
ecosystem. They're different groups/people with different priorities. While I
tend to side with Linus on this, I see the values of Red Hat coming up with a
working solution, even if it is catering to Microsoft. I'd love to see
something in userland and I don't see why the kernel team needs to concern
itself with what vendors want to trust. Leave that to Red Hat and Canonical.

Regarding his words: I honestly don't know why I'm still surprised when he
does/says things like this, and I still don't know how I feel about it. The
way he instantly reaches for his bag of obscenities seems a bit childish, but
he does more often than not get his point across.

I have to wonder if he uses such language so often because he knows tech news
is going to report on it when they might not if he were to gently rebuke a
kernel dev? It should be noted that after his rant at Nvidia
([http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/17/3092829/linus-torvalds-
fuc...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/17/3092829/linus-torvalds-fuck-you-
nvidia)), Nvidia driver support became a hotly discussed topic and very soon
became significantly better. In that regard, Linus seems to get things done
and for that, I commend him.

On the other hand, he tends to curse and complain a lot on his g+. It's fairly
likely that's just all him.

------
mixedbit
Can anyone explain or share a link explaining what was a high level purpose of
the RedHat patch? (besides winning the contest, because I understand there was
no such thing)

~~~
praptak
_"The high-level view is this: Microsoft wants to ensure that nobody can run
unapproved software on their home computers. As a first step toward this
nightmare, they bullied computer makers into shipping a bootloader signature
system that could potentially prevent people from running GNU/Linux. Red Hat,
a multibillion dollar GNU/Linux distributor, decided to play along and got a
special signing key from Microsoft. Linus apparently does not want to play
along (and I commend him for it)."_

Taken right from the comments on the linked article:
[http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3492573&cid=43...](http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3492573&cid=43002783)

------
meaty
I would have probably done the same under the circumstances. The solution was
a crock of shit.

You can only take so much.

------
pavel_lishin
I find it weird that "dick" was obscured more than "fucking" was.

~~~
jhdevos
In the original, Linus had already obscured "fucking", but not "dick". Perhaps
the automated obscenity filter just didn't pick up the "f*cking".

------
msvan
Well it certainly gets him some celebrity, as if he were in need of any more.
It seems Linus Torvalds lashes out on someone every month, and it's probably
not an attitude that makes people want to cooperate with him. Or are they used
to it by now?

~~~
nicholassmith
From seeing the results of the flames it appears most people are used to it
now, which I can't decide is completely horrific or not.

------
fareesh
"People who are offended should be offended." -Linus Torvalds

------
wyck
Kernel drama, will this be on TMZ?

It elicits the same emotional knee-jerk response, just don't.

------
miga
Indeed the kind of argument is inappropriate to say the least. Information
content below 4bit in a whole message?

------
pupppet
He may be right but that doesn't mean he doesn't sound like some 14 year old
douchebag on his XBOX.

------
gnosis
...and people get on Stallman's case for being antisocial and offensive.

------
samuel1604
does mjg still work fo rh I tought he went to openstack?

------
jwmoz
Riveting stuff.

------
nirvana
Frankly, I think Linus Torvalds may be the next Steve Jobs.

This is very Jobsian. He knows what's right, and he's dressing down people who
also knew what was right but did the wrong thing anyway. People act as if Jobs
was a tyrant badmouthing random innocent people. He wasn't. He was actually
pretty genial most of the time. What would set him off was not when someone
made an error, but when someone did the wrong thing and they knew it was wrong
at the time, but did it anyway.

Jobs was the keeper of the flame of "do the right thing" (my phrase for it)
which always involved the right thing for the customer (which is why Apple
doesn't follow trends, and rather than make netbooks made the iPad, a superior
customer experience.)

Linus is doing the same thing here. For Torvalds the customer is a different
customer, both linux users but a lot of developers and the open source
community at large. But he's keeping the flame as he sees it, and history
indicates he's pretty accurate.

As to another commentators wondering if this would happened if the submitter
was female, it really shouldn't matter. I'd like to think that Linus reacted
to the error, not the person. It's true that taking it down a notch or two and
being more diplomatic is appropriate, almost all the time. It's clear that
Torvalds is this way almost all the time, which is why he has such a lovable
teddy-bear image, for the most part. The power of blowing up on someone is not
when you're doing it, but in the knowledge that there is shit up with you will
not put. That's the power.

Also, there's nothing really that gender specific in what he said. Both men
and women could engage in hypothetical "dick sucking contests".

Frankly, the average female engineer I've known is tougher than the average
male engineer I've known (who tend to be a bit on the wimpy side, while the
women tend to be a bit less wimpy than average for people.) But that's just my
experience, and consequently anecdotal. The point being that I don't really
believe that female engineers are desperate for people to protect them, and
that most of the "software development is _So Sexist_!" people are non-
engineers looking for an excuse to be outraged. Some evidence: all the hate
towards "brogrammer" stuff, which it is painfully obvious to everyone inside
the industry is an inside joke lampooning male programmers by contrasting
those pasty nerds with the tanned jock stereotype that beat them up in high
school. To act like "brogrammers" are perpetuating a male sexist culture is
to, in the most profound way possible, not get the joke!

However, there is sexism... and the reaction from the sexists would be _much_
different if he had been addressing a female. But that's not sexism on Linus's
part- in this hypothetical he was saying the same thing in both cases. But if
he'd said it to a female, the knee jerk sexists who want to see sexism
everywhere (except in themselves) would have reacted quite differently.

~~~
coffeeaddicted
Third forum where I see this discussed - and same as in the other 2 a lot of
the discussion here is again about his choice of his words instead about the
content. I don't think that's a good sign.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"and same as in the other 2 a lot of the discussion here is again about his
> choice of his words instead about the content"_

Yes, and this is an important lessons to people who underestimate the
importance of communicating effectively. If you walked onto the stage at the
Oscars wearing assless chaps, you can hardly blame people when they can't
remember what your thank-you speech was about.

Similarly, when you throw around ad hominems about your opponent performing
fellatio on a competitor, you cannot blame people when the discussion
recenters around it.

~~~
jlgreco
Do you really think that the people who actually matter failed to receive the
message?

No, spectators on slashdot and HN do not actually matter, despite how hard our
ego may make it to internalize that.

~~~
anon1385
It's an embarrassment to our entire industry. It's one of the main reasons
people avoid contributing to open source projects. Yes it matters. People who
have the maturity and communication skills of 14 year old boys are not the
only ones that can make worthwhile contributions.

~~~
jlgreco
Torvalds being a meanie is dragging down the entire industry? That seems like
quite the leap. Where are all of these people with patches that they have been
holding on to for fear of the wrath of Torvalds, and why haven't they banded
together and just ignored him?

Unlike bullies in corporations, this guy is incredibly easy to just ignore;
the only reason people don't ignore him is because despite being a meanie, he
still commands respect. If he didn't, he wouldn't be in the picture.

~~~
anon1385
This isn't about one individual. Offensive, sexist, bigoted communication is
standard in the industry. There are mini-Torvalds (and mini-ESRs and mini-
DHHs) everywhere who think making derogatory comments about women or otherwise
being gratuitously rude is how you prove your worth/"manliness" and a good way
to run a project. Bad behaviour filters down, especially when people on HN or
slashdot applaud it.

>Where are all of these people with patches that they have been holding on to
for feel of the wrath of Torvalds, and why haven't they banded together and
just ignored him?

On my hard drive and a million other people like me. Not for the linux kernel
in my case, but other open source projects that I don't post my fixes to
because it's probable that I'll just get flamed and it isn't worth the stress.
If you don't realise how endemic this problem is then I can only presume you
don't know any programers who aren't part of the 'boys club'.

Torvalds can get away with it because linux is huge, but there are hundreds of
other projects that struggle through lack of contributions.

Next time some software you use crashes or hits some kind of bug, consider
that you are probably not the first person to experience it and somebody
somewhere probably already fixed it but didn't upload the patch because they
didn't want to get abused.

~~~
jlgreco
No, Torvalds doesn't get away with it because Linux is huge. In a world where
Linux is huge _and_ people didn't value his input, then he wouldn't get away
with it. The open source ejects people with bad attitudes who are not worth
the trouble, just look at glibc and Drepper's reign of terror.

If there are really _millions_ of developers sitting on patches because they
don't want to deal with mini-Torvalds, then you really should start a
movement.

~~~
anon1385
It seems like you still don't believe me that people keep patches to
themselves because the open source community is so unpleasant to deal with. We
had several huge threads about this the last time some alpha jock devs got
called out for being assholes. Here are some examples:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112713>
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112665>
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112513>
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5112763>

~~~
jlgreco
Oh, I believe it happens, I just don't believe that it is as pervasive as you
suggest. If it were _millions_ sitting on good patches for no reason other
than a few people in the "in crowd" being caustic, then the developer-power
represented by that group would rival the developer power of the big meanie
"in group". Seriously, if that is actually the case, organize.

Here is my perspective though: for the past week I have been sitting on a few
commits for git that I would get flamed for if I aired them publicly. Why am I
so sure I would get flamed? Because if I am honest with myself, it is because
the change is shit. The change is not backwards compatible, has only
hypothetical use-cases, and has questionable support in the UI. Until I
resolve those things I know it would be flamed (or worse, and more likely,
ignored). Now, I'm not sitting on it because I know it would be flamed, I am
sitting on it because I know it is shit. If I fix those things, and I don't
conduct myself like an asshole when my baby gets curtly shot down, I am fairly
confident that I won't be verbally abused. If I am, who gives a shit?

I suspect most people sitting on patches for fear of being flamed, if they are
honest with themselves, are so sure that they will be flamed because they
understand why they would be. Are there a few who have good changes that are
irrationally afraid of being flamed? _Yes_ , I am certain of it. Are there
some projects currently headed by people who flame good patches? _Absolutely_
, glibc a few years ago was such a project... but Linux is not one of those
projects today.

~~~
rachelbythebay
It happens in the corporate workplace, too.

<http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2012/10/14/2gb/>

I found a problem in production, figured out what was going on, wrote a
workaround, mailed out a patch, and ... they hated it. I didn't want to fight
forever. So, I took my ball and went home, so to speak.

Months later, a different, nicer, person came to me and asked if I still had
it. Fortunately for him, I had kept a copy of the change separate from our SCM
in my home directory. I handed it over, he merged it, and that was the end of
that problem.

------
recoiledsnake
>Guys, this is not a dick-sucking contest. If you want to parse PE binaries,
go right ahead. If Red Hat wants to deep-throat Microsoft, that's _your_
issue.

I wonder what would've happened if he was addressing a female kernel
developer. Would he have toned it down or would it have been the same? On one
hand I like the straightforward talk without beating around the bush, but on
another, taking it down a notch or two and getting the same idea across more
diplomatically seems to be the better answer.

~~~
rplnt
I wonder what the reaction from the community would be. Probably not very
good... which is bad since the meaning of those words, in this context, is
clear. And it's not really offensive, although there are more polite forms of
course.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"And it's not really offensive"_

Wait, someone using crude, derogatory language to describe someone else is
_not offensive_? Describing your opponent as wanting to deep-throat a
competitor is merely _impolite_ now?

How socially clueless are we around here?

I'm so very sick and tired of the apologists here. Our industry is _known_ for
prima donnas who are constantly at each others throats, with no semblance of
civility whatsoever. We are the only industry I've ever seen where we _take
pride_ in being callous, insensitive, and deliberately terrible to each other.

All under the guise of "not playing by The Man's rules".

~~~
rplnt
He wasn't describing anyone, just their actions. And it's perfectly clear what
it means.

