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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"."
I use Linux everyday and have for a decade. I'm very glad for what Linus and the rest of the open source community have done for software and computing.
That said, Linux folks can be real assholes and there is no good reason for it. This is less of a problem as the community grows, but it clearly still exists.
People who are part of a society should always be civil to each other. Else we are all just closer to the apes from which we came than we think we are.
I'm a polite Canadian, and worked much of my career for a "california cowboy company". We were never nice.
In many cases, what probably was meant as tongue-in-cheek comments came across poorly to Canadians and British, sometimes even as assholery or prejudice. I wouldn't expect "nicey nice" from my colleagues or my American cousins, and I'm quite surprised to see people in the US asking for it!
davecb@spamcop.net
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. Linus works with adults. He can do nothing to counteract gender imbalance that was created via indoctrination that starts at early childhood.
Linus is Linus, just as RMS is RMS; you have to take them on their own terms or leave them alone. Me, I leave them alone.
If you want to play in their sandboxes, you have to deal with their quirks. Kinda like with Apple.
Welcome to Earth, here's your pitchfork.
Exactly. There's a big difference between telling it like it is, and being an asshole. I've worked for a boss who would never fail to point out mistakes and shortcomings. Some people had a problem working with him, calling him "not nice", even though he would never chew someone out in public, and never got abusive. That I can respect. I have also worked for people taking the Torvalds approach to criticism, and I've since promised myself never to work for assholes again (it's one of my reasons to go freelance). I'm not suggesting that Linus should become PC, and he should manage his project as he sees fit, but I wouldn't work for him nor employ him.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
reminds me of an article by a progressive liberal feminist who had kids, she said that even though she kept all misogynistic toys from her boy and ensured he had a full suite of acceptable role models and no violent media.... he still played guns with the cardboard inner from toilet rolls.
Embrace our equality by all means, but understand our differences.
reminds me of an article by a progressive liberal feminist who had kids, she said that even though she kept all misogynistic toys from her boy and ensured he had a full suite of acceptable role models and no violent media.... he still played guns with the cardboard inner from toilet rolls.
My mom wouldn't buy me war toys so I made them out of legos, traded legos for war toys, and made war toys out of cardboard and tape. I own real guns today. Never shot anybody, hope never to shoot anybody.
I remember seeing a pic floating around of a car upside down in a doll cradle with a little blankie over it. Seems some parents gave their little girl a car to play with. She drove it around like you normally would a car, then when she was done she put it to bed so it could sleep.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Do you even kernel mailing list?
Linus sends like 1000 emails a month. And 999 of them are perfectly civil. And he does exactly what you say. "Hey, this is broken, please fix."
And then they don't fix it.
"Ummmm, did you hear me? Why did you break this? Fix it."
After the third time, probably after they've mouthed off with some bullshit excuse about how it's not actually broken, or they're just not going to fix it, he loses his shit and cusses them out. And that's the one email that makes the rounds on the tech rags.
Also, it's his project. If that's the way he wants to run it, that's the way he can run it. He's not paying these people. They're not his employees. They're free to go fork the kernel and have their own software wonderland, with neither blackjack nor hookers.
And it's not like these people are just "generous volunteers." The most egregious fuck-ups are from Red Hat. Red Hat. Red Hat is not your friend. Red Hat is intentionally breaking shit and fucking with the entire Linux ecosystem to infect it and make it dependent on their projects. I will screw my tinfoil hat on a little tighter and suggest it might have something to do with the US Army being their largest customer. I don't know what their endgame is but I do not think the State likes the bulk of the world's economy and communications systems running on something they can't lock down and control. So instead they subvert.
The "be nice!" bullshit is just a psy-op to counter Linus' exasperation with the intentionally broken submissions from the poor, beleaguered "volunteers" from the billion-dollar, military-funded corporation.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Having a cult status allows you to be a jerk and get improved results. The guy after linus will be nothing more than a kernel maintainer and if he's a jerk and I'm deciding what project to volunteer my time too, well life's too short to feel like a dickhead.
the boy/girl divide is fake. There's only one human mind and it's gender neutral in principle.
Why is it so hard for some people to realize that sexual dimorphism affects the physiology of the brain just as much as that of the rest of the body? There is a well established body of research documenting these differences in the brain, which are particularly pronounced in certain areas, such as the ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus. And since mind is what the brain does, there is every reason to conclude that biology is the primary determinant of many of the psychological differences that politically correct ideologues with a social engineering agenda — see parent post — ascribe to rearing and culture.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... "Acclaimed journalist, author and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich explores the darker side of positive thinking."
I've written before on how the monolithic Linux kernel design may be significantly increasing Linus' stress as a kernel manager (as the Kernel moves closer to some point of collapse or major security breach from complexity -- of which the systemd controversy is a big symptom).
https://www.mail-archive.com/f...
But I don't see everyone migrating to Minix 3... :-) Or something else.
Tanenbaum's early choice of proprietary license for Minix will go down in history of one of the biggest licensing mistakes of all time -- even if it is free now, and recently had millions of euros of public funds poured into it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
http://www.minix3.org/
But had we all moved to Minix, we would probably not be hearing that much swearing by Andrew Tanenbaum or other Minix kernel maintainers compared to Linus Torvalds and other Linux kernel maintainers, as with so few core lines, there is not much to maintain in the Minix kernel, and so it is easier to test and debug. See:
http://wiki.minix3.org/doku.ph...
"Monolithic operating systems (e.g., Windows, Linux, BSD) have millions of lines of kernel code. There is no way so much code can ever be made correct. In contrast, MINIX 3 has about 4000 lines of executable kernel code. We believe this code can eventually be made fairly close to bug free."
I feel ultimately that difference is why Linus Torvalds is stressed enough that he spouts so much profanity at kernel maintainers when they make a mistake -- a fact he may never be able to admit? :-)
Anyway, some of this is cultural. By contrast to the USA, people in, say, the Netherlands are more forthright and less quick to take offense (another cultural aspect). In the USA, you never know how quickly your cutting comment might make an enemy (including, say, the above). Anyway Linus, I may disagree on monolithic vs. micro kernel design obviously, but kudos to you for going free early and often!!! And git is great! :-)
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.