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Kernel Dev Tells Linus Torvalds To Stop Using Abusive Language
darthcamaro writes "The Linux Kernel Development Mailing List can be a hostile place for anyone. Now Intel developer Sarah Sharp is taking a stand and she wants the LKML to become a more civil place. Quoting her first message: 'Seriously, guys? Is this what we need in order to get improve -stable? Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation and violence. Ingo Molnar and Linus are advocating for verbal abuse. ... Violence, whether it be physical intimidation, verbal threats or verbal abuse is not acceptable. Keep it professional on the mailing lists.'"
The entire thread is worth a read, but Linus isn't buying it: "Because if you want me to 'act professional', I can tell you that I'm
not interested. I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The
same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to
buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and
backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because
THAT is what 'acting professionally' results in: people resort to all
kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their
normal urges in unnatural ways.'
He also offered cookies in exchange for joining the dark side. An earlier reply by Linus further explains why he thinks it is OK to be mean: most of the time, he's only yelling at people who should know better (cultivating a crew of lead developers bound to him by Stockholm Syndrome?).
Torvalds was always like that and whining won't change him.
Nerdy news for your nerdy needs? http://www.soylentnews.org Soylent News is people!
If someone else managed to do his job better than him it would be trivial to do a fork. That this has not happened is a testament that his way doing things works. Simple as that. So what if he is verbally abusive.
How can you not be playing the victim card when you self-identify as a minority, join a community and demand that it change it's standards to match your own?
if you ever worked well any job you know what hes talking bought. people nice to your face wile they back stab you in backroom office talks.
i love this guy (linus). he is kinda zen master ,he says what he think, without any fear
Deal with it. No one is forcing you to work with him. The great thing about FOSS and the Linux kernel is you can fork it all you want. You can take your ball and go home.
The English have mastered delivering withering insults very politely. Simply being polite does not make you "nice". Is it more "professional" to wrap your disdain for an idea in language that is courteous on the surface? Maybe. Is the emperor going to change? Unlikely.
Anarchists never rule
I just recently graduated with a degree in mathematics, and a minor in computer science. I can program well, for the amount of experience I have, and I would love to get better. I, personally, think that one of the best ways that I could get better is to contribute to OSS projects. However, I can't lie, reading stories about the abusiveness of the community is a huge turn off. Now, I realize that I am probably not one of those people who 'should know better,' and I realize that really extraordinary outbursts are rare (which is why they get reported on, obviously), but I still have enormous trepidation about joining the OSS community. I feel I may have talent and ideas to contribute, but when I see stories about the way that people get treated when they make mistakes, it makes me want to avoid the whole thing. I wouldn't be doing it for money, I would be doing it for fun, and to learn. And as far as I'm concerned, if I'm going to be abused for making mistakes, I am not having fun, and I am likely not learning much either. Now, again, I understand that this is not usually the case as far as OSS development, but I'm just relaying my gut reaction to hearing about behavior like that.
I once read a study of string quartets and communication methods. Some quartets were nice to each other and polite and tried not to hurt each other's feelings. Others insulted each other and said just what they thought.
The quartets that were willing to insult each other, and even sometimes get into fights, ended up playing music much more as a team, whereas the 'polite' quartets played poorer music, because instead of resolving disputes, they ended up each playing their own way.
Linus doesn't insult people, he insults what they do, when they do stupid things. Don't break the build/submit poorly written patches/etc and there isn't a problem. It is not personal at all.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I know this has to happen sooner or later.
For past few decades, political Correctness has been steadily encroaching into all aspects of our lives, and now, even the Linux Kernel Development is not spared.
I hope sane minds within the KD will prevail, and stop the PC disease from spreading further, or else, they would start to cherry-picking for some of the more exotic labels within the source codes and make a mountain out of a molehill.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
From one of the more recent things he engaged his primary flame-cannon over, the person he aimed it at did screw up pretty badly and for no apparent reason (I mean, seriously, submitting code that you don't know if it works and you admit is probably not necessary? Don't do that).
So no, I don't think he's a dick for the sake of being a dick - he's a dick because people shouldn't be submitting things that are broken and that kind of person deserves to be told off.
Anyone who has worked with her in her capacity as the USB3 driver majordomo knows what a PITA she can be.
I don't think she is in any position to offer advice on professional behavior.
Sarah:
> Let's discuss this at Kernel Summit where we can at least yell at each
> other in person. Yeah, just try yelling at me about this. I'll roar
> right back, louder, for all the people who lose their voice when they
> get yelled at by top maintainers. I won't be the nice girl anymore.
>
Linus:
That's the spirit.
Greg has taught you well. You have controlled your fear. Now, release your anger. Only your hatred can destroy me.
Come to the dark side, Sarah. We have cookies.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Not being a dick != political correctness
Sarah: Hey assholes, let's not be so mean, ok?
Linuz: bitches, please.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Violence, whether it be physical intimidation, verbal threats or verbal abuse is not acceptable. Keep it professional on the mailing lists.
Not acceptable? By who's standards?
It's seems acceptable by the law in most countries that matter for the development of the linux kernel.
It seems acceptable by the main dude (Linus)
It seems acceptable by the developers, as they could have forked and started their own project with a more acceptable mailing list policy.
Who is it not acceptable to? and why can't those people make their own fork or simply not participate in the mailing list? (besides Sarah Sharp) If we were losing lots of talented developers because they just couldn't bear the mailing list, that would be a different story.
There is no absolute morality of the way things should be. There is what works. If you have a way to make something work better, no one is stopping you.
Honestly I can't tell if you're serious, but that's the funniest thing I've read all day on Slashdot.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I thought his rant on OpenSuse and needing root access for connecting a new printer or wireless network was pretty funny.
I find that language offensive. Please use the word 'appendage'.
Is it really a chance to grab power? If she can assert her will in this, does she become "a voice to be reckoned with"?
I saw a really mediocre movie once where it was asserted that when guys have an argument, they get it right out in the open, do a lot of chest beating, and then get to working together. Women on the other hand will play everything behind the scenes - cloaking it all in an air of civility while they sharpen their knives.
Since I saw that movie (ashamed to say I saw it, but if you happen to remember the reference go ahead and out yourself), I've notice that it's actually a very true statement.
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing for money.
Okay, that's nice. Do you talk that way to your wife while at home in your bathrobe? Your mother? Neighborhood children? It's not "fake politeness" to stop using abusive language, it's normal politeness. You're just being an asshole.
Not being a dick != political correctness
There are few things more dickish than 'you must behave the way I tell you to' political correctness.
What some people call "political correctness," others call "having some fucking consideration for people other than themselves."
Linus becoming polite on his e-mails is going to happen right after the Linux kernel gets ported entirely to C#.
My standard reply for this kind of issue is, simply linking this 3sec video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmnN3eVMWgA
morcego
This may actually show how HEALTHY the Linux kernel developers community is. Where else can a junior person tell the CEO he's being an asshole in front of the whole company? You'd be fired.
What's this got to do with political correctness?
I've worked with people like Linus many times; brilliant, know it, and abuse those who suggest ideas that don't align with their world view. They are usually correct when they shoot down an idea. However, I avoid them at all costs, both from a hiring and from peer perspective, because they are a cancer in most organizations, and the long term cost of dealing with their anti-social behaviour greatly outweighs the benefit they bring.
Abuse does not solve problems. Belittling others does not benefit anyone. It's fine to be blunt and explain why the idea proposed will not work, it saves time and energy. It is sign of a deeply flawed personality to attack the person who proposed the idea that won't work.
2) Meeting deadlines is stressful.
Since when does Linux have deadlines?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
What's this got to do with political correctness?
Nothing at all. That is just the "PC Card" that is played whenever rude or abusive people don't like to be told they are acting like wanton children. It's their excuse to act as rude as they like for the sake of the attention it brings them.
Does he use "violence, whether it be physical intimidation, verbal threats or verbal abuse" to get his wife and kids to do something?
I'm guessing he does not.
...with their faux outrage at Linus' "tantrums." They're not, if you read context, but this isn't about context. This "controversy" is all about slamming Linus personally and Linux by implication by comparing his management style against a non-existent ponies-and-rainbows environment. And this isn't the first time it's happened here.
Such bullshit.
--
BMO
Saying something is "not acceptable" is not an argument. It's a demand. Or, at best, a whine.
And demanding that people 'act professionally' is demanding that they shut up and do what they're told, because that's what 'acting professionally' means.
People talk that way at the office, it's just not openly aired. The LKML is like an office for the developers, but it's kept around for all to see, it's not shocking to me that it crosses the lines of what one would see in corporate email, when people are much more in contact with those they work with. I also like that actual offensive behavior can be seen by all, and tracked.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Being blunt has gotten me a lot further than being polite ever did.
There was this one customer/client/coworker (yeah, fucked-up business relationship), who just did not get what was going on. I tried being polite. I tried using all his lingo, "actioning" this and whatnot. I tried. It got me nowhere.
One phone call where I straight-up said "that problem was *your* fuckup, and I am tired of cleaning up your mess then getting blamed by you for it because you weren't even aware of the problem until I took care of it", and that got me further than months of politeness.
Hell, we still seem to get along. I think we've been communicating even better now that I've stopped "artificially limiting" my communications. I actually just made a note to myself to yell at him to check his code before he checks it in - there was a SQL file with an *obvious* syntax error, one that our standard IDE (which he uses) highlights...
I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe.
Linus is one beard away from becoming RMS.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
If you ask a humble question or make a polite request to someone who represents a system (political, corporate, cultural etc.) and get an aggressive response, you have acted politically incorrect. It's what you say to whom, not how you say it. Linus Torvalds might be a rebel in the world of tech giants but in the community of linux kernel developers, he is a person of power and should take it seriously when someone points out a problem.
When asked why, the answer is almost always: "It's 2014".
I fully support Linus on this, years of project management helps you realize many things. This is one.
Being verbally abusive like this basically helps you to tell more objectively how much people does actually care about something, and it works very well with people who just likes to argue for the sake of being right.
You are serving them on a plate the perfect excuse to walk away with the moral high ground. If they take it by becoming offended or complain, you immediately can tell how much did they care to begin with.
When they answer back and keep on topic, they definitely might have a point.
There are few things more dickish than 'you must behave the way I tell you to' political correctness.
Like the "you must tolerate my gratuitous abuse because I am more important than you" 'tude?
If Sarah cannot stand the heat, she should go back to the kitchen.
See - now that is political incorrectness.
Linus isn't a dick though; indeed, he's quite laid-back and personable. When he criticizes someone like this, his criticisms are almost universally very accurate, and he only uses "extreme" language when (1) the person he's addressing did something really stupid ("merely stupid" isn't enough) and (2) that person really should have known better (so he doesn't tend to do this to strangers, only people he's well acquainted with, and has some trust in). He doesn't just call people names, he makes detailed technical arguments which happen to be decorated with er, expressive language.
This particular style is very common in the tech world, and if anything, Linus is far better than most, because he strictly sticks to technical criticisms; his language may be extreme, but for him, it isn't personal—if he is wrong, he'll very quickly admit it and apologize. Almost all of the time, the conversation quickly calms down and settles into a discussion of how to make things right. Note that this makes him vastly better than average: there are many others in the tech community who do take things personally, and won't back down no matter how obviously wrong they are.
This style isn't to everyone's tastes, and to someone who isn't familiar with Linus or the LKML, I guess it can be startling to see one of these exchanges. Maybe there are times when he goes too far. But claims that he's "abusive" are simply laughable. Things are not always as they appear at first glance...
We live, as we dream -- alone....
I've worked projects since then where I'd wished I could verbally abuse co-workers. There's a general theme there. All those people who I wanted to abuse sucked. I think the moral of this story is, if you don't want to be verbally abused, try sucking less. :-P
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If Sarah cannot stand the heat, she should go back to the kitchen.
See - now that is political incorrectness.
Yet also a fair statement. After all, when you attempt to join a community you either abide by the rules and customs of that community or else you leave and go elsewhere. You do not demand that community change to meet your world view.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
I think (2) is something people often miss. If you're a n00b who posts something stupid on LKML, you are not going to get massive old-school-Usenet-style flames. When heated LKML arguments make it to Slashdot, it's almost always a case where both sides are actually reasonably known, like the maintainers of two different Linux subsystems having strong disagreements over direction. You don't find Linus flaming a college kid, both because that would be unnecessarily mean, and because it wouldn't be worth his time to write out long heated posts just to rebut n00bs.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
You need to have the skin of a thousand rhino and the determination of the super-est of all supermen to push your idea across the many seasoned, and equally thick-skinned developers.
So having a good idea well developed and code that is written cleanly and clearly isn't important, it is more important to be able to browbeat others into liking it.
The so-called "abusive languages" is but a mechanism to weed out ideas which are not fully thought-over.
And here I thought that a clear and concise technical discussion would be a way to weed out ideas that are not fully thought-over. Or simply saying "your idea is not fully developed and it will not appear in the kernel." Who knew that the only way to do that was to be verbally abusive and insulting?
I think it speaks volumes that the concept of "acting professionally" seems to mean only not wearing a bathrobe when in private to some. I think the phrase "unclear on the concept" was developed for people like that.
If you can't stand the heat, dear Sir, I suggest you to get out of the kitchen.
It's interesting you use a kitchen analogy in this discussion. For several years I've been watching Gordon Ramsay in his various rant-prone self-promotional programs. For the last couple of months I've been watching MasterChef on BBC America with Michel Rue. The difference is that Gordon Ramsay is a foul-mouthed abusive fellow who can do nothing but yell and insult the people competing in his programs when they make the tiniest mistake, and Michel Rue's harshest comment has been along the lines of "that needed more seasoning" or "that was too pink for my taste". When Ramsay's folks bring him poorly produced food he throws pans and pots; Rue wrinkles his nose a bit and says "that wasn't your best work". The other difference is that Ramsay's contestants produce zero-star pablum and Rue gets one-star creative performances from his. It seems one feels the need to express his superiority at every chance, the other wishes to develop talents in others. They are both good at achieving their goals. I'll leave it to the reader to guess which goal I think is more worthy.
American Civil Rights Movement.
Done, done.
When did civility become a disease?
Most of the time when people complain about political correctness, it's because they the self-discipline or the intelligence necessary to compose a polite reply. Clearly Linus is not lacking in intelligence, but he seems short on common sense here.
Political correctness, when done well, is a more effective weapon than boorishness. Calling someone a fool is easy, but crass and wasteful. In the eyes of the audience it lowers you to the level of the fool, and you have to work harder to prove you aren't. Giving someone else the opportunity to open their own mouth and prove themselves a fool, now that's economical. They'll happily blather out their inanity on their own, if you let them.
John
I'm very honest and direct with the people who work with and for me. And yet magically I'm not an asshole like Linus. If you're incapable of delivering an honest and direct message without abusing people, then you're a shitty human being.
Honest and direct: "This is not good enough. The logic is flawed and the code is sloppy. Go back and do it again".
Asshole: "How fucking stupid do you have to be to write something like this crap".
See the difference?
Life needs more saving throws.
And no one did this better than Steve Jobs from what I heard from people who've been in meetings with him. In the corporate world, essentially the CEO, a few execs, and star sales members, can get away with being foul mouthed and abusive but absolutely everyone else has to be polite. So what happens if that you get some major culture shock of seeing unprofessional behavior when you find yourself in a meeting with the CEO, however you also get that culture shock if you start working on open source.
... is fucking complicated. Especially if you have a good idea of what principles need to be followed as how to make decisions on what stays and what goes in terms of quality or goal of the overall project.
There's lots of people out there who THINK they have skill but are garbage since most people suffer from the Dunning Krueger effect in a similar way that most people believe they are 'above average'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes."
The problem is as you advance in skill you have limited time and options in order to convey the vast warehouse of knowledge in your brain as whether to something stays or goes on any given project. Any project has a tendency to become a big mess or fall apart over time since. How many OSS projects are started only to be abandoned? Lots.
Someone has to make the big decisions and when you have seen and worked on so many projects you develop techniques to quickly shut down bad ideas and often time that means being direct and even rude to the clueless because you simply don't have the time, energy, means to communicate to the other party on what's and why's.
Lack of conflict, and harsh language does NOT mean civil. In practice, in the US, it means dishonesty.
That said, honesty without compassion is brutality.
I've never seen Linus be brutal
If you're so into tolerance, why don't you tolerate my intolerance? GOTCHA QED /s
For the same reason that "free market" is an oxymoron. Either the market is regulated by a central authority, or it is quickly captured by a dominant player(s) and ceases to function as a market. The one thing that you are not free to do is to impede others' freedom.
If a "tolerant society" allowed its members to be intolerant to one another, it would no longer be a tolerant society. The sole bit of uniformity we ask of our members is that they not judge us based on all our other nonuniformities. Is that so hard to understand?
And to save you the trouble of responding to my straight-man comeback, WHOOSH.
However this is also what many people complain about with bad managers. There are many ways to handle problems and not all of them involve yelling and abuse. It affects more than just the person receiving the chewing out, the bystanders are also influenced and may feel that they're in a hostile environment (ie, stressed out to never make a mistake lest they get same treatment). There are managers who strongly felt that yelling was the proper way to motivate people, however those managers are now much more rare because companies are more aware of the problems and crack down on it.
Ie, the old saying of "you attract more flies with honey than vinegar" covers this subject, as well as books like "How to win friends and influence people".
In this case I think the abuse is in doing the chewing out in public. That is fully intended to embarrass that person as well as intimidate others. A private message would have also served the purpose to correct the developer, and especially if the developer doesn't mind emails full of expletives then Linus could go crazy in that private email. I am certain there are people out there who shy away from Linux kernel development precisely because of the culture on those mailing lists. Some people thrive on stress and others wilt under it.
the CEO, a few execs, and star sales members, can get away with being foul mouthed and abusive but absolutely everyone else has to be polite.
That may be the case in the corporate world. But Linus will take it as well as dish it out.
I have often seen this same "enforced politeness" tried on other mailing lists, and the result is always the same. The "wizards" soon migrate somewhere else, and the mailing list becomes nothing but a bunch of clueless (but polite) noobs commiserating with each other.
I've always thought that political correctness is just another excuse for the educated elites to look down on everyone else.
Offensiveness doesn't come from words, it comes from the thoughts and actions behind those words. We've gone from nigger to negro to black to african-american back to black...and guess what? Racism hasn't gone away. All you do is replace one word with another word that has the exact same meaning. That's not progress; that's just confusion and wasted effort. Racists will still be racists no matter what words they're using to express it.
Which is essentially the same argument Linus is using -- assholes will be assholes no matter how you dress them up; why waste time and energy trying to sweep that under the rug?
If you would seriously physically assault someone speaking to you bluntly, you are the one with a problem.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Linus talking about this very thing in a talk at Aalt University in Helsinki (video: 02:50 minutes).
FYI, the entire video here (video, 01:03:57 hours).
What's up with the assumption that women are delicate little flowers that need to be protected because they can't handle...anything? Seems to me like your POV is a bigger problem.
There is nothing wrong with being polite when you judge it to be adequate. There is a lot wrong with being forced to be polite when you don't judge it adequate because someone feels offended.
Language's main objective is to transmit information. When you stop using words and expressions because you think they are rude, or offensive, when you stop saying things because you think people will be hurt you are altering the meaning of what you want to transmit, because no two words mean exactly the same thing.
Sometimes it is necessary to do so, but doing so as a principle cripples the language, and when you cripple the language you sooner or later cripple critical thinking that opposes the mainstream thinking.
That is the whole technique used in 1984 by introducing the Newspeak. You should read this book, it will be enlightening I promise. You will see a lot of similarities between the the Politically Correct doctrine and the books's Nationalist doctrine that was indoctrinated into people.
I do think that we'd agree that professionalism is a good thing.
Why? Linus has an excellent point, that often "professionalism" is an excuse to be abusive, just with a prettier veneer.
I personally prefer generally to communicate "professionally", but I'm also not dealing with something as important as the Lunix kernel. The greater degree of importance something has in the world, the more blunt I feel everyone is allowed to be and in fact is of benefit.
Also Linus comes from a culture that is more direct, and I don't see anything wrong with a project adopting the cultural attitudes of the leader.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
From one of the more recent things he engaged his primary flame-cannon over, the person he aimed it at did screw up pretty badly and for no apparent reason (I mean, seriously, submitting code that you don't know if it works and you admit is probably not necessary? Don't do that).
So no, I don't think he's a dick for the sake of being a dick - he's a dick because people shouldn't be submitting things that are broken and that kind of person deserves to be told off.
As the main target for said outburst, it was definitely an epic f*ckup on my part. When I got the email, I pretty much chuckled and then said I need to do some damage control. I was not in any way offended. Linus later said:
For example, my latest cursing explosion was for the x86 maintainers, and it comes from the fact that I *know* they know to do better. The x86 tip pulls have generally been through way more testing than most other pulls I get (not just compiling, but even booting randconfigs etc). So when an x86 pull request comes in that clearly missed that expected level of quality, I go to town.
That is part of why I don't get offended when Linus curses at me.
Calling him names in a retort about verbal abuse ... +1 for irony.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I have often seen this same "enforced politeness" tried on other mailing lists, and the result is always the same. The "wizards" soon migrate somewhere else
Then wish them well and send them on their way.
I find your implied association between smart people who get useful things done and rude people who can't act like adults unlikely. I know plenty of smart people, and the overwhelming majority of them would prefer to work with others in civilised fashion. Sure, when people are passionate about something then occasionally someone might cross the line, but then they apologise and everyone carries on.
I know plenty of blustery people as well, and a lot of them bluster to cover the fact that they aren't nearly as smart or valuable as they would like everyone else to believe. As with any bad apple, the best management decision for the project as a whole is usually to fire such people at the earliest opportunity rather than let them contaminate things any further or dig in any deeper.
Sometimes doing that will hurt in the short term, but no-one is irreplaceable. Once the bad ones are out of the way you can get on with bringing in other smart people to replace them. That can now include all the smart people you couldn't bring in before because they had no interest in working in a hostile environment and, being smart, they had plenty of other choices.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
If you're a n00b who posts something stupid on LKML, you are not going to get massive old-school-Usenet-style flames.
I wonder how many n00bs never get that far, because they see how the leader of the community treats others and decide to go do something else instead. Maybe Linus does personally know the recipients of his infamous rants, but on a high-profile public forum not everyone watching might realise that.
If you walked into an office for a job interview, and the first thing you saw was some management type openly berating a subordinate, what tone would that set before you even started the discussion you were there for? Some conversations are best held privately, as much for the benefit of the community as for the participants themselves.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It is important in a creative-technical environment. To be creative you need to be comfortable and many people will be very uncomfortable if they hear a lot of verbal abuse going on, or are worried knowing that any mistake will result in a tirade, or are just tired of the non stop use of "fucking" as the only adjective and adverb ever used. Sure, if it's rare occasions that you're down right rude then that's ok, but this sort of behavior is often regular and ongoing.
Not being a dick != political correctness
No... but you really can't expect normative social behavior from an aspie, particularly after he's been the effective king of a feudal society for about 22 years now. Lieutenants who are effectively feudal lords who have sworn fealty to the king, it's a classic mutual security game.
The biggest problem this arrangement has is ... it works. It doesn't work as well as other mutual security arrangements, such as globocop, but it can be successful, particularly for volunteer organizations.
One property of the arrangement, however, is that feudal lords build walls between their fiefdoms. This makes it very hard to change anything that requires crossing multiple fiefdom boundaries, so if you want to change an API, a globocop arrangement is more conducive to negotiating API contracts (think of it as agreeing on diverting the location of a stream crossing between neighbors). Linux demonstrates similar problems.
Either way, unless there is someone elected to filter the comments (a majordomo), the king is going to say whatever the king wants to say.
Drive Me Crazy - Melissa Joan Hart.
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing for money.
This is the problem with "political correctness":
The act of trying to avoid being offensive, is, in and of itself, offensive to some people.
To whit, Linus Torvalds finds it offensive. QED.
This means that political correctness is fundementally faulted at its very conception, and can never be satisfied.
In the instances of verbal slurs, the creation of "inoffensive surrogates", as often tendered by political correctness advocates, simply shift the problem and do NOTHING to fix it. Take for instance, calling somebody stupid, vs calling them "mentally challenged". They mean the same thing, and are equally offensive.
Same with monikers for race; for instance, people with very dark skin of african origin:
Negro->colored->black->"african american"
The fact of the matter, is that using *any* term to draw attention to the skin color of a person, to distinguish a racially profiled stereotype, is equally offensive.
To whit,
"The prefferential treatment of african americans in the college entrance exams has led to a sharp decline in student achievement scores."
The sentence is just as offensive if you use "colored", "black", or any other colorful descriptor.
The same is true of descriptors for men who like to bang other men.
"Effeminate"->'poofter'->queer->gay->"homosexual male"
It isn't the words you say, it is the way you say them, that causes offense, but the PC crowd never gets this, and instead just comandeers word after word, after word, in its relentless and futile attempt to eradicate the intent behind those words. The result is that previously benign clinical terms like "homosexual" start to get lurid connotations, when previously they were absolved from those implications, because of words like "faggot". Deleting "faggot" from the dictionary does not make everyone stop harboring negative views about homosexual males. All it does is make a previousy useful word no longer useful, as all the malign implication of the slur gets transferred.
I would much rather have people shout about "faggots", and expose just what kind of people they are by its use, than have perfectly useful terms like "homosexual" corrupted, because of a fundamentally faulted worldview gone wild.
So, I side with Torvalds with this issue. Is his use of profanity reasonable? Probably not. Is his argument about why he needs to be allowed to use profanity when he feels necessary, perfectly rational and well founded? Absolutely.
Profanity is intended to convey beligerance. Deleting profanity does not make people have to resort to civility, it makes them coopt civilized language for profane use. Profanity serves a valid role in human communication. Stop trying to delete it. You can't.
Let's see what horrible thing Linus said to set this off:
On Fri, 12 Jul 2013 08:22:27 -0700, Linus wrote:
Greg, the reason you get a lot of stable patches seems to be that you make it easy to act as a door-mat. Clearly at least some people say "I know this patch isn't important enough to send to Linus, but I know Greg will silently accept it after the fact, so I'll just wait and mark it for stable".
You may need to learn to shout at people.
Sarah Sharp is not a new person on LKML. She's the USB3 host controller maintainer. She's been there for a while, and she totally overreacted. Linus' original message was a tongue-in-cheek one talking about Greg Kroah-Hartman (who is a fairly large guy while Linus is not):
"Have you guys *seen* Greg? The guy is a freakish giant. He *should* scare you. He might squish you without ever even noticing."
Sarah's reaction was, "Seriously, guys? Is this what we need in order to get improve -stable? Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation and violence..."
Anyone who takes Linus' comments as a serious suggestion needs their head examined. It was *clearly* meant as a joke.
Do you follow LKML (all 15K messages/month)? If you only pay attention to the messages that get covered on Slashdot then you're going to have a pretty warped view of how he communicates.
The majority of the time Linus is direct but not abusive. On the rare occasions that he uses what could be called abusive language there is usually a recurring problem and more subtle means of communication have not been effective.
Yours is not a fair statement. She’s been contributing to the Linux kernel for (as far as I can tell after a quick Google) 5 years or more. She’s not ‘attempting to join [the] community’; she’s already part of the community.
And she’s attempting to change it from within. Nothing, ipso facto, wrong with that.
30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks: Sarah Sharp <<-- describes her involvement with kernel in 2007.
I posted on Sarah Sharps' blog. I didn't use profanity, I even quoted Eleanor Roosevelt: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." I disagreed with her and stated that the most vile and ruinous censorship starts with a call for civility and that these are almost always from dubious motivations.
So, low and behold, it was moderated out of existence. It seems to me that Sarah has no interest in alternate viewpoints. It is her blog and she has the right to delete comments, but it is quite telling that she will silence a voice which does not agree with her while she is saying she wants to protect people's voices. Her calls for "civility" can be seen as nothing less than a call for censorship. We all must resist this sort of behavior because it is a direct attempt to diminish free speech and impose one person's morality on a larger group.
Yours is not a fair statement. She’s been contributing to the Linux kernel for (as far as I can tell after a quick Google) 5 years or more. She’s not ‘attempting to join [the] community’; she’s already part of the community.
And she’s attempting to change it from within. Nothing, ipso facto, wrong with that.
30 Linux Kernel Developers in 30 Weeks: Sarah Sharp <<-- describes her involvement with kernel in 2007.
Okay, in that case she's been a part of it for a while now and has (so far as I know) suddenly decided she doesn't like the way things are. That's fine. Asking for change and such is fine to a point. However, this is also closely related to the ridiculous idea that people have a right not to be offended or to hear things they don't like. No such right exists.
If they are unwilling to change, and I unsurprisingly tend to agree with Linus's stance on the fakery involved in being "professional", then she can either deal with it or leave. The people on that list were the way they were long before she got there even if she has been involved with it for the last few years.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"