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Torvalds: I Made Community-Building Mistakes With Linux

Posted by samzenpus on from the you-can't-handle-the-truth dept.

electronic convict writes In a Q&A at LinuxCon Europe, Linux creator Linus Torvalds — no stranger to strong language and blunt opinions — acknowledged a "metric sh*#load" of interpersonal mistakes that unnecessarily antagonized others within the Linux community. In response to Intel's Dirk Hohndel, who asked him which decision he regretted most over the past 23 years, Torvalds replied: "From a technical standpoint, no single decision has ever been that important... The problems tend to be around alienating users or developers and I'm pretty good at that. I use strong language. But again there's not a single instance I'd like to fix. There's a metric sh*#load of those." It's probably not a coincidence that Torvalds said this just a few weeks after critics like Lennart Poettering started drawing attention to the abusive nature of some commentary within the open-source community. Poettering explicitly called out Torvalds for some of his most intemperate remarks and described open source as "quite a sick place to be in." Still, Torvalds doesn't sound like he's about to start making an apology tour. "One of the reasons we have this culture of strong language, that admittedly many people find off-putting, is that when it comes to technical people with strong opinions and with a strong drive to do something technically superior, you end up having these opinions show up as sometimes pretty strong language," he said. "On the Internet, nobody can hear you being subtle."

5 of 387 comments (clear)

  1. The language in the old west by stox · · Score: 4, Interesting

    was not so nice, either. As the newly occupied lands matured, so did language and behavior. This frontier is no different.

    --
    "To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
    1. Re:The language in the old west by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Everybody, everyday, is saying "fuck", but somehow, your society has decided it should not be uttered...

      Not everyone. I decided to eliminate certain words from my speech because that's not who I want to be seen as, someone who is, even accidentally, foul-mouthed. It took me a week.

      One of my sisters thinks it's stupid. She asked "So, do you tell people you're taking the dog out for a poo?" "No, I'm taking him out for a walk." "So you never swear?" "There's no need to." "Do you know how childish that makes you sound?" And yet she criticizes another sister for sounding like someone with Tourette's.

      One good side effect is that on the rare occasions where I still am aggravated to the point where I want to swear, the habit of not swearing now acts like a "pause" button would act for sending emails that you later wish you hadn't sent. It forces me to look at my own reactions, and respond in (hopefully) a more helpful fashion.

      People who have known me for a few years have remarked that they are impressed that, no matter the situation, I don't swear. They wish they could "keep their cool" the same way. Why not give it a try?

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  2. Has it been working so far? by linuxguy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At the end of the day, he created and manages the largest open source project ever. More than 20 years on, it is still going strong. I am not about to find faults with his management style. People have been free to fork it and run with it. Nobody has done that. Perhaps a little bit of screaming every now and then is needed for this job.

    He gave us Linux and he gave us git. Maybe we should stop nitpicking and say thank you for once.

  3. I'm not convinced by jones_supa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "One of the reasons we have this culture of strong language, that admittedly many people find off-putting, is that when it comes to technical people with strong opinions and with a strong drive to do something technically superior, you end up having these opinions show up as sometimes pretty strong language," he said. "On the Internet, nobody can hear you being subtle."

    Excuses, excuses. One can easily be heard and still be professional if he wants to. Linux alone is so cool and influential that the leader of the project will certainly get noticed even without peppering everything with insults and cursing.

  4. Maybe I imagined it... by Ynot_82 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...but isn't the reason Linus tends to be blunt due to an experience early in Linux's existence?

    Someone came in with a big, grand idea and asked if this is something Linux needed.
    Linus replied with something meant to be taken as a polite NAK.

    Guy didn't get the subtle hint, and proceeded to go off and spend x months developing feature.
    Came back with patches and had the whole thing rejected.
    Guy left saying he was so depressed he may commit suicide.

    Since then, Linus has been up-front and directly.

    Can't remember who, what, where or when
    Anyone?