Linus On Diversity and Niceness In Open Source

An anonymous reader writes "Linus Torvalds has sent a lengthy statement to Ars Technica responding to statements he made in a conference in New Zealand. One of his classic comments in NZ was: "I'm not a nice person, and I don't care about you. I care about the technology and the kernel — that's what's important to me." On diversity, he said that "the most important part of open source is that people are allowed to do what they are good at" and "all that stuff is just details and not really important." Now he writes: "What I wanted to say — and clearly must have done very badly — is that one of the great things about open source is exactly the fact that different people are so different", and that "I don't know where you happen to be based, but this 'you have to be nice' seems to be very popular in the US," calling the concept of being nice an "ideology"."

Comments

Being nice is why business is a clusterfsck

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to be nice in business in the US because the principals have money and generally no knowledge of technology.

They are a class (which we most assuredly do have as much as they deny it) that doesn't want, or have to know details and will most assuredly terminate you if give them cause to have to think. Cause would be butthurtedness for not lionizing their brilliance at being self made (it's tough when you come from the "middle class", which is what anybody who knows somebody with more money thinks they are). To them, wealth is how you judge intelligence. If you're so smart, why aren't you rich? You're just a peon if you have to beg for scraps (a.k.a. be an employee)
Thing is they are only capable of thinking about money and believe "the customer" (them) "is always right".
The only workaround is to have enough knowledge for them to exploit while being part of an organization small enough where nobody is really readily expendable.

Let's be blunt

[MikeRT]

In the US, there are two main problems with diversity:

1) Women don't really enjoy the work or the culture.
2) Non-Asian minorities tend to be at a severe disadvantage when it comes to the home life that gives whites and Asians early access and encouragement to get started.

Number two is reasonably remedied without radically changing the work or the culture. Number one isn't. Most women are simply never going to feel comfortable even in a polite but very competitive environment where they have to do the same sort of work as the respected men to get comparable respect. To many women, just showing up should entitle them to respect and encouragement, but Linus is correct here. Most people just don't give a damn that you're a woman in this field.

Re:Let's be blunt

[Dragon Bait]

Number one can't be addressed within kernel community in any way. No point to even try. It should be addressed within our whole culture, by revising our notion of gender roles.

Do you have kids? I have 3: one boy and two girls. As far as gender role models go, my wife is also in the tech field. I do all the cooking at my house. My father-in-law does all the cooking at his house. My wife has cooked a total of five meals in 20 years. I've never seen my mother-in-law cook. The kids were effectively raised with reverse gender roles.

When the older two were three and four years old, we plopped them in the dirt while building our garden. The boy grab a matchbox truck that had been left over from the previous owners and start pushing it through the dirt making engine noises. The girl started making mud pies.

Sorry to be the one to inform you, but boys and girls are wired different from birth. Testosterone probably plays a huge role in this. I realize that that was political incorrect to say, but a little real world information would be great before going through and doing grand experiments on all of society to fit your perceived notion of the way things ought to be.

genitals don't code, and Linus doesn't know my rac

[raymorris]

I (barely) qualify as a kernel contributor. Neither Linus nor anyone else involved with the kernel even KNOWS what my racial heritage is*. That's as it should be, because skin complexion doesn't have any effect on the quality of ideas or code. It's simply not relevant. It's a distraction. All this talk about "diversity" is a sneaky way of continuing to divide people into groups based on where their great-great-grandparents were born. It's a stealthily way of keeping racism alive, forcing the politics of division into situations where people don't know or care about your ancient ancestors, they care about getting job done and done well.

I've never seen a penis or vagina produce any code, so we don't need more women in tech, we need more competent people in tech. Competent people like my mother, my boss Rachel, and myself. Rachel has helped solve some tough problems at work. She's never used her boobs to do so, meaning they just aren't relevant.

* also, most Slashdot readers don't know my racial heritage. Some therefore make the most ridiculous and comical accusations, like the idiot the other day who accused me of "dog whistle racism". Apparently he thinks that "planning ahead" == "white". At first that's offensive, for him to imply that my family can't plan ahead because we're too dark. Then I remember living with that kind deeply racist thinking while hating racism and therefore hating yourself must be quite painful. I pity the guy.

Re:Don't care?

[bmajik]

Do you have any evidence of this? At all?

Because here's what I see:

Linux has remade the software world in its own image. I'd hardly call that "failing". Real actual super computer companies (e.g. Silicon Graphics) stopped developing their own OS and started shipping Linux.

Microsoft, the arch nemesis of Linux and Open Source, is shipping kernel patches and releasing code under open source licenses.

What does "success" look like to you?

And lest you say "that's just a singular case", we can look at Theo and OpenBSD. OpenBSD has been wildly successful, both as a BSD fork, but also in its broader mission to cultivate a software culture of excellence and correctness, with results that speak for themselves.

Linux and OpenBSD are two of the oldest open source projects around, with two pretty intense personalities at the helm.

I see no evidence to support your claim whatsoever.

Re:No, Microsoft sucks, but Red Hat may be worse.

[Ol Olsoc]

Red Hat is likely to destroy Linux as we know it. That is something even Microsoft could not do.

I am a bit surprised that so many Linux do not understand how systemd is a scam that Red Hat is using to monopolize Linux.

I'm really surprised at how many of you act like luddites and want to control what others do.

If Linux is destroyd by all the systemd retards running across your lawn, you know exactly what the answer is. It's the same thing that people like you have been telling anyone with a complaint."

It's open source. If there is a problem - fix it.

In your world, the true believes in exactly how Linux muist be, should be able to rise, phoenix-like from the ashes, when systemd causes linux to utterly fail, by writing new and better operating systems the way that Linux must be.

You sound like people bitching about when they took lead out of gasoline, to make a car analogy. Going to destroy cars, going to have to do valve jobs at 50 thousand miles, it's not broken, don't fix it.

Yeah, I know - I just don't understand, right? At some point, that is the wrong answer.