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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"."
Actually, no, but I've noticed that the suckups who post with that headline always get modded up.
And I don't care about you personally, I'm an asshole and just want the results.
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.
What a ridiculous idea...you're on an internet forum, and you're not swearing at each other? Thanks a lot George W Bush!
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
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
Linus:
I care about the technology and the kernel
Martin Luther King:
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their kernel
.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Open source projects with this attitude usually fail. Linux and open source "products" are successful because they care about employees and about the end users. I think Linux has been successful much more because of the GPL and the contribution of companies such as Red Hat than because of Linus himself. I even consider that someone holding so much sway (and personally holding the trademarks) is in fact a liability.
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.
One should not mix up "being nice" with "not being a dick"...
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.
Linus is playing the "people want me to be PC" card, and mixing it in with some anti-American-ism for popularity.
Nobody's asking him to be PC. Not many people are asking him to be friendly or polite. People are asking him to not be publicly abusive, to not be a bully, and to recognize the impact his words have on others. It is perfectly possible to be an effective manager and leader without being abusive and bullying. Stick to the facts, among other things.
Ie:
"Your code check-in appears to cause a bunch of compile errors, so I've rolled it back. Also, I've noticed that this isn't the first time. We're a large-scale project and it is helpful if contributors extensively validate their contributions."
Not:
"Don't you know how to validate your code? Stop wasting my time! Come back to me when you've evolved past a chimpanzee." ...and also not:
"Hello! Thank you for your code check-in! Now, I'm sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news, but there's a small problem with your code. If it's not too much trouble...." etc etc.
Please help metamoderate.
You're not going to draw me into a Slashdot thread on this subject. Ok, sure, I posted this one comment in the thread. But no more.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Greg Kroah-Hartman is quite relaxed guy, I like him. He's a proof that you can be an elite Linux developer and still be cool. BTW he did an Ask Me Anything session recently.
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.
Saying Linus is the leader is like saying all Christians listen to the Pope.
Good-bye
And I suspect that the components of most mission critical projects are selected with no thought about the personality of the leadership at all. Use it because its good. Don't use it if it's not.
If a project desends to being some sort of frat party, where everyone has to be drinking buddies and there is a social pecking order, I don't think it's a terribly 'critical' project.
Have gnu, will travel.
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...
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.
To an extent I agree with Linus. Being nice is not what counts. Especially if the project has a deadline approaching. But at the same time, there is a difference between not always being nice and being a belligerent asshole. And many times recently its obvious that Linus may not see that distinction.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
... you can always fork your own kernel.
ie:
We're so sorry, Uncle Albert
But we haven't done a bloody thing all day.
We're so sorry, uncle albert,
But the kettle's on the boil
And we're so eas'ly called away.
Not:
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Nobody's asking him to be PC. Not many people are asking him to be friendly or polite. People are asking him to not be publicly abusive, to not be a bully, and to recognize the impact his words have on others.
So, PC then - its his project, he can run it the way he wants.
So what if words have impact on others - grow a pair and deal with it, requiring others to cater for your pansy ass feelings *is* asking them to be PC.
Being a bully is also subjective - you are there voluntarily as part of the project, you can leave the project just as voluntarily.
Abusive is also a PC subjective thing.
So yes, you are asking him to be PC, because PC is the current attitude pushed by certain pressure groups.
There's an old saying - "Be nice to people on your way up, because you'll meet them again on your way down."
No OS lives forever. Linux has gone from small to bloatware, the same as many of the projects associated with it. Sometime in the next 10 years we'll get yet another iteration of "Here's a nice small fast OS and toolset that does only a few things but does them really, really well."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"I'm not a nice person, and I don't care about you.
Funny, when I have said the exact same thing on here, people whine that I should care about someone else, how I have no compassion or am just plain evil.
When Linus comes out and says the same thing, he's regarded as quirky and a hero.
Nice double standard. Just like, "Big government is in the hands of evil corporations! Get it out of our lives! Except when we want Big Government to force people to hand over their money to corporations so I don't have to take personal responsibility for my actions."
Nice job, hypocrites.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
another iteration of "Here's a nice small fast OS and toolset that does only a few things but does them really, really well."
that'll be either systemd or FreeBSD, depending on your ideology :-)
There's this idea in the US that you are never allowed to hurt anyone's feelings.
The problem with that is that people are irrational, oversensitive, and cannot control themselves. Interacting with such fragile daisies is like tiptoeing through a minefield.
It is not, to me, a foregone conclusion that assertive people should tolerate having to deal with sensitive people. That is the prevailing dogma in US business, but it's not clear why that should be the case.
The meta response to this entire conversation space should be "stop bothering me with your bullshit and submit some fucking code"
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I like this quote from Stargate SG-1:
[Col. Vaselov, a Russian recruit for the SGC, is insulted when O'Neill denies his request to join SG-1]
Dr. Jackson: Yeah, don't take General O'Neill's decision personally.
Col. Vaselov: Frankly, his attitude is offensive. It leads me to wonder if he knows the cold war is over.
Dr. Jackson: His attitude has nothing to do with you being Russian. He's an equal opportunity offender.
Sugar coating it just leads to people not getting the message, as long as you treat all the same no matter what sex or color or religion or whatnot they belong to - including not using that as derogative - it's fine with me. Same as when you won't fail people because that's not nice so a D is now the new F or refusing to time a children's race because they're all winners.
I remember when there was a big article and discussion about whether you could chastise other people's kids when they were being brats in your house. Most were on the "my house, my rules" side but some were in the "don't you dare, I choose how to raise my kids" corner too. Seriously, like you expect to be the sole judge of their behavior until they're 18? Hell no.
You might not like other people's opinion much, particularly if it's negative but it's also part of growing up - figuring out who is worth listening to and who is not. And who is just being a dick trying to make you do a dare or peer pressure or consequences like getting grounded and getting bad grades. "Tough, but fair" should be a honorific, at least compared to the wishy-washy people who'll spout vague positive encouragement no matter what.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
.. and these SJWs loved Steve Jobs. Idolized him, even.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
If you are asking him to modify his behaviour because others do not like it or feel hurt by it, then yes that is being PC. The correct response to those people is "don't interact with him if you don't like his behaviour".
I would rather buy a good product made by assholes than an inferior product made by a racially diverse, socially responsible, gender neutral "nice" firm.
I am Audience.
It's usually the assholes telling everyone else that they need to be nice.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Thanks, Mr. Nadella!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Your first response doesn't convey the additional problem the way the 2nd one does
What additional problem?
"Hi, I am the busiest man in the free software world, and you just consumed my valuable time with amateur level mistakes. We have a FAQ about this, which you either didn't read or didn't understand, and as a result, my productivity has suffered. Please re-read the contribution FAQ. If you are still confused, send a message to LKML, not to me"
"I've cc'd this response to LMKL so that others don't repeat your mistakes, and so that everyone else is expecting your follow up questions and amended patch"
It's not "abusive" to point out that when people don't do their due diligence, everyone else suffers. Set an expectation of excellence, and expect people to follow it.
Results first. Feelings later.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
There is an unspoken assumption by "sensitive" people that they deserve your time, or that their ideas need to be heard irrespective of merit.
Disagreeing with them, correcting them, or challenging them is _offensive_ to them.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
It sounds like your workplace is respectful, and that race and gender rightfully don't factor into your opinions of each others' work. It sounds like your workplace happens to be diverse, which helps keep everyone centered on what does matter (technical chops), as opposed to what doesn't (gender, race, age).
But what are your feelings on the rise of brogrammers? Sexual harassment at conferences? Companies with cultures that do fixate on gender / race / what-have-you? Typically these cultures arise when the population is too insular, too homogeneous.
Diversity isn't about saying "we need more vaginas in here programming." What an irrelevant strawman. Rather, it's about preventing the myopic echo chamber that can result when things are too homogeneous.
Program Intellivision!
Nobody's asking him to be PC. Not many people are asking him to be friendly or polite. People are asking him to not be publicly abusive, to not be a bully, and to recognize the impact his words have on others. It is perfectly possible to be an effective manager and leader without being abusive and bullying. Stick to the facts, among other things.
Forget it, Lennert. You're not going to get an apology - you deserved everything that was said to you, and you know it.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I suspect there are some mission critical projects which have decided to not use Linux when they found out how unprofessionally the leader acts. "Cool kernel, but can we really put our trust on this kind of guy?"
Then how do you explain all those mission critical projects using Oracle?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
I'd rather see something in re-entrant assembler. For one thing, it would get rid of the latest crrap added to C++. For another, it would get rid of all the wannabe programmers. Win-win.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
And you know what? 30+ years will have been a pretty good run for "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu."
Program Intellivision!
I always thought you should be nice to everyone, until I found some people mistake niceness and politeness for weakness. Switched job, and stopped being way too nice in my new company. And I kid you not, I'm having it my way and doing what really needs to be done here.
Kind of rare in LA too, and parts of the SF Bay Area.
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.
Well, they do seem to produce an awful lot of DNA code and you'll never find "programmers" more protective of their work, even though one only updates the code once a month and the other is just spewing it out to see what sticks. And they are extremely proud when a million monkeys (not sure where the typewriters come in) do produce a Shakespeare.
P.S. I know it's technically the testicles and ovaries, but lighten up...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Most managers manage less than a couple of dozen individuals personally. They can afford to spend some time to shape employees into appropriate productive parts of the team.
If you're at a higher level and in one way or another in charge of thousands of individuals most people on lower levels will have the sense not to waste your time unless absolutely necessary, they're completely sure of what they're doing and their communication is highly relevant. Mail your 5k+ employee corp CEO with budget suggestions based on random numbers taken out of your ass? Best case you'll get ignored. Expecting a polite reply after he's personally taken time to run your numbers and realized you haven't even actually looked at the current budget, checked with someone else or know anything about accounting? I... don't think that's what's going to happen.
The purpose of such communication back isn't to encourage more such waste of time. It's to ensure it doesn't happen, ever, again. And preferably make sure nobody _else_ wastes time that way either. In a company with a normal hierarchy and a reasonably accepting management culture, that would most likely be handled by the employees manager being tasked with making sure that the employee understands that while input is welcome, pure waste of time is not.
Now, I suspect this is rather academic, as I don't think that many patches causing obvious bunches of compile errors actually reach Linus these days, but would go through possibly multiple layers of reviewers and maintainers before he'd even see it.
But it's an interesting topic. I mean, if you're intellectually honest, you'll admit that in the absense of an actual hierarchy that can manage problems, there is a certain percentage of people without sufficient social awareness and self-control that would eventually take up so much time when you scale up a project that you'd get stuck with all your time being spent on those individuals. Polite and friendly replies do not work; these are not people with normal social awareness who can read between the lines in your reply (or anyone over the age of 10 wouldn't have sent the unchecked work in the first place to someone most people understand is fairly busy, but would rather carefully ensure they know the proper procedure and have more senior but less busy persons help them to ensure they do nothing wrong).
Can you come up with an _effective_ way to manage the problem? Personally I'd probably simply put such people on ignore and lock them out, I don't like insulting people. Alternatively, not reading anything by default and ensuring anything I see is already vetted would be an option if I had others I could rely on but then their time would have to be cheap enough that I thought it reasonable to waste or I'd ask them to ignore such people as well.
Insulting someone? Well, while I wouldn't chose that option, such words do, as you say, have an impact. If that impact is what is needed to prevent the waste of time, while still allowing the possibility of them changing and contributing in the future then it might be less unappreciative than my own likely method of simply permanently ignoring them.
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.
But that's not the two options usually given, because the assumption made is that someone has a right not to be offended, and a right to be able to do something even if that means someone elses behaviour has to be modified to allow them to do it. Don't like the behaviour of a group leader but still want to take part in the group? The PC reaction is that your right to take part trumps the leaders right to be themselves. My reaction is that both of you have the same right - but that doesn't solve your problem with the group leader so its a zero sum game.
The point is, the PC groups position is not to ask the leader not to be an asshole, its to require them to not be an asshole - putting your right above theirs. By all means, ask. But when you step over the line into requiring a change of attitude or behaviour, that's when its wrong.
I've never seen a penis or vagina produce any code
And that's why you're only barely a kernel contributor. You could code faster but you're only using your two hands to type when you have a perfectly good third appendage sitting idle.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Being nice is a valuable ability. Being unable to be nice is a serious disability. It is not such an unusual disability at all. Criminals often suffer large doses of this problem and reach out and touch someone without any thoughts of mercy or decency. Internally they are at war with their own primate nature.
Fixed that for ya, bro.
The goal of diversity initiatives is to make the pool of qualified candidates more diverse. But it doesn't say anything about the differing attributes having anything to do with how qualified you are. Yes, diversity includes gender diversity. But, that has absolutely nothing to do with the (correct, but meaningless) assertion that people don't program with their genitals.
My statement was meant to be read as "We need more vaginas in here programming, as if vaginas have some role in the process of programming." They don't. And to suggest "diversity initiatives" imply that they do is a strawman.
Program Intellivision!
"Everybody knows boys will be boys." Bullshit. Treating creepy, gross, harassing behavior as somehow normal, and that "everybody knows" it'll happen just perpetuates it. Not acceptable.
Read some of the horror stories from DEFCON 20. Whether or not you're there to get laid, none of that shit's acceptable, period.
Program Intellivision!
I suspect there are some mission critical projects which have decided to not use Linux when they found out how unprofessionally the leader acts. "Cool kernel, but can we really put our trust on this kind of guy?"
They looked at his track record, leading a 23 year project from something that he started alone to having a global community of developers. How linux it is the kernel in the majority of mobile devices and supercomputers and said: "No, we need to choose something else marketed by a sensitive weasel..."
I just hope that those mission critical projects stay very far from me...
and what their values are.
"Their values" being a codeword for whether they go to the same church or smoke the same dope.
Nope. Basic economics: Whenever you weigh the relative values of several options, you assign relative weights to each characteristic being measured. The total weights add up to 100%. If one or more of those characteristics is the moral or social standing of the supplier, that weight is subtracted from the other measures. If you want to make that sort of compromise, fine. But you won't be building any mission critical systems for me. Particularly if the competition (and by mission critical, this might mean military) are not hampered by such misguided principles.
Have gnu, will travel.
Key word there: CONSENT. Harassment is inherently non-consensual.
Program Intellivision!
Nobody is going to happy with other people are doing all the time. If you think somebody is being jerk, but you just bite your tongue to be nice; are you just being phoney?
We should get Linus one of those "doesn't play well with others" T-shirts. His behavior is somewhat over the top sometimes but then he's generally been provoked badly by that time. I think the fact that he does seem to get along well with a lot of kernel developers must mean he's capable of being civil when he wants.
Excellent point. One of my favorite jokes "What's the difference between Larry Ellison and God? God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison."
I am one of Poettering's favorite targets. I am one of those "UNIX grey beards" that Poettering has such deep contempt for.
Since Poettering is such an arrogant ass about it, I know where he stands. Poettering has made no secret of hating the UNIX way of doing things, and adoring the Microsoft way of doing things. So great, I know that LInux is being controlled by a Linux hater.
In fact, Poettering pisses me off the most when he pretends to be nice by saying that Red Hat listens to Linux user. What a total load of crap. I much prefer honesty to niceness. Same goes for Linus, and Theo de Raadt, among others.
Some truly horrible behavior. It should not be tolerated. I find it interesting that it has degraded so much there since the author of that article attended defcon3. I know when I was young such behavior was not tolerated. One girl in my class was walking up to turn in a test at the teachers desk when one of the guys reached over and flipped her skirt up to see her panties. She turned around and slapped him hard and everyone in the class laughed at him with the palm print on his face. When the teacher realized what had happened he was off to the office where his parents were called and he was suspended for 3 days. I often wonder if any of these assholes have sisters and what they'd do if someone grabbed their sister's crotch. What an ugly thing to do and it should not be tolerated.
Open your eyes... Reddit is all around us. It's everywhere. And underneath? Just more Reddit. It's Reddit all the way down.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I half agree....
Agree that systemd's pretty much going to make Linux into more of a small niche product than it ever way.
But this seems to go far beyond RedHat --- with systemd advocates pressuring to Extend/Embrace/you-know-the-rest Linux from many sides.
I want to see Linus and Matz in a room together discussing a technical subject. Has it ever happened? WHAT would happen? "Matz and Linus, sitting in a tree..."
It would be fascinating!
Matz holds a similar role to Linus, but for Ruby. He's the King of Ruby - the sole developer "in charge" for all the time since Ruby was invented. (And, of course, it's been accomplished with a great deal of support from others.)
Matz is Japanese, not American. I wonder how "nice" he thinks Americans are? (That was facetious, as we Americans generally don't get the "nice" moniker applied abroad.) I can tell you, though, that, generally we ARE nice to Matz, because Matz is nice to us. Funny how that works.
I met him only once, at RubyConf 2013, and just happened to sit in the section with his Japanese colleagues at the closing question/answer session. Damn, was everybody so NICE. And it seemed to have rubbed-off on everybody in the room. Sat in the goddamn nice section, and lived to tell about it!
One of the things that Matz is good at is realizing and then even apologizing for his mistakes. He was SO apologetic over prior revisions of Ruby garbage collection, and urged everyone to ditch his prior efforts and move on to 2.x.
He can be a little mean, though. But only a little, and with a smile. And it take a bit of urging from the crowd to get him to be a little mean. It's a little game that I think he and the crowed plays whenever he speaks somewhere. Let's see if we can get Matz to say something just a little not nice.
Ruby is as successful in it's space as Linux is in it's. So, I think it is fair to say that one can develop great open-source software while still being nice.
----
But - whatever works for you, in your particular working environments. One of my first jobs was for a small company (like 5-6 employees) and me and my boss (the company president) would close ourselves in his office to "discuss" technical details passionatly. The rest of the office would gather at the closed door to hear the ensuring shouting-match. We would hash it out, and then he would take everybody to lunch - and a "few" drinks - for the rest of the day - to celebrate the resolution of whatever. That worked for us because we knew there was no real animosity. It was like that cartoon where the fox and rooster (FogHorn LegHorn?) go at it all day, then the factory (farm) whistle blew, and they went off best of friends.
That style seems to work for the Linux community. Matz's works well for the Ruby community. (Rails is a different story - oy vay! At least historically - haven't followed the drama in the Rails community lately).
I answer a lot of questions in some jQuery forums, and I sometimes get called out for not being nice. Interestingly, those who do seem particularly not-nice in doing so. I might suggest that somebody "begin at the beginning", "review the basics of blah-blah", "show us what you tried", "don't ask us to guess", or throw up a picture of Karnac and The Envelope, and suggest that "we are not mind-readers" to illustrate that point, and they will then get VERY offended (and offensive) in a disproportionate manner. In other words, butt-hurt.
Well, sometimes, I am not nice, particularly to people with no personal initiative. We are not there to write your application for you or do your class homework. We are not there to replace the basic books on Javascript and jQuery that you should have bought. We are not there because you cannot bother to read the docs or use the jQuery Learning Center. We are not there to implement the impossible assignment you accepted on some renta-coder site without any clue as to how you might do it. We are not there to teach you PHP (and that PHP doesn't run in browsers), or to explain one more time that no, you cannot lock users into not being able to navigate away from your malware or porn advertising page.
Sometimes I wish I could just tell them to RTFM. But I sense that's an unacceptable response there. It's web front-end, it's not the L
+1 truthy
Could you give an example of "bloat" in the Linux kernel? Probably any feature, architecture or device driver you deem useless is essential to someone else.
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."
There is an unspoken assumption by "sensitive" people that they deserve your time, or that their ideas need to be heard irrespective of merit.
Disagreeing with them, correcting them, or challenging them is _offensive_ to them.
You've put my thoughts into words! I myself cannot stand being mean to other people, but I've been on the receiving end of well deserved criticism and it helped me. I felt a bit butt hurt for a few hours, but then I calmed down and realized it was for my own good. The other person eventually apologized for being so stern with me, but I told them it was fine and to let me know right away next time.
> what are your feelings on the rise of brogrammers
We don't have very many data points from which to draw reliable conclusions. We know that essentially all studies show that younger professionals hold fewer gender stereotypes than older ones, so the RISE of such seems quite unlikely. All of the reliable evidence points toward LESS bigotry over time, not more. So the phrase "rise of programmers" is probably factually inaccurate clickbait.
There are of course SOME men and women who have issues with the other gender. Does "some" mean 1/100 people? 1/1000? We don't know. Here's something I do know:
When my boss started her job the group consisted of two guys who had been close friends for years, one loner, and she was the new person. She could have felt left out since the two guys had that close friendship. She could have blamed that on sexism and completely eliminated any chance of a good relationship. Later, when I joined the team, the two friends didn't invite me to join them for lunch either. I'm a guy, so not sexism - they just didn't welcome the new person into their close friendship.
On the other hand, we have that blogger at the conference you mentioned. She heard a guy say something about a tool. She doesn't know what he said, she reports, but she's sure it must have been sexist and inappropriate. I'd be willing to bet that she half-hears a lot of "must be sexism" based on her viewpoint.
So we simply don't know how much of that goes on. I haven't seen it. That may be because I work in Texas, and the ladies whose opinions I respect also work in Texas. I wouldn't be surprised if it were much more common in California or Denver. People from California and Denver SEEM to be much, much more preoccupied with gender and ancestry than we are here in Texas. It's just not something we talk and think a lot about - not in a way that you might consider positive (promoting diversity etc.) and not in a negative way. It's just not something we spend our time on.
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.
try this. That's a lot of source to maintain (don't forget, you've got to include not just the binary kernel but also the loadable modules to get the run-time kernel effective size, otherwise you're hiding bloat).
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
There are any number of sanctimonious jerks who will use demands for civility and manners the way a shepherd uses a sheepdog -- as long as you're going in the direction they want, you can do and say what you want, but if you oppose them they won't oppose you directly but just tone-police you. If you can't beat them at their own game, smashing through the bullshit with some bluntness can work, provided you're powerful or popular enough to get away with it... and Linus is.
Really, that is among the most stupid postings in this thread. It has no resemblance to reality at all, that is not how such decisions are made.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Spoken like a true AC that has nothing worthwhile in his life and has never accomplished anything.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Right. I wouldn't classify for example greatly increased hardware support as bloat. Technically it probably is, but then in this case the word doesn't have the usual negative connotations.
They're free to go fork the kernel and have their own software wonderland, with neither blackjack nor hookers.
If they want to arrange their own blackjack and hookers, they're free to do so. It's Open Source.
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 really doubt that that's it. I think you've let the tinfoil slip over your eyes a bit too far, and you've lost sight of reality there.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Comment: It's the very first question, any idea as to who asked the first question, talk about being ambushed! A classic, generate some controversy at the conference and then only report on that. I wonder did anything of a technical nature occur at the conference.
.. I'm not trying to really make excuses, I'm more trying to explain that this is where I come from.
--
transcript starts from 10.00:-
Q : Morning, so Linux, nice easy question to start with (laughter). Over the years there have been various people including myself who have either reduced their involvement in the kernel community or stepped away from it entirely due to the tone on LKM and especially your contribution to that. Why do you continue to argue that being really unpleasant to people is good leadership.
A : Part of it, fair question, that's not actually my real argument. My real argument is that people are different and I'm a really unpleasant person (laughter). I mean that's what it really boils down to. Some people think I'm nice and some people are then shocked when they learn different. And I'm not a nice person and I don't care about you - really seriously (laughter). I care about the technology and I care about the kernel and I really think that a lot of projects in the Open Source community sometimes care about non-technical things too much. And the reason I say that is that the only thing we can actually agree on ever tend to be technical issues. And if we start making a big deal about non-technical issues - that are important - don't get me wrong. I'm not saying they're not important, I'm saying whenever we start making non-technical issues primary issues - that just guarantees we'll never agree - right. And
And I appreciate the diversity in Open Source, but to me that diversity is not about gender, it's not about skin color, it's about - people are different. And people are different in what they are interested in. People are different in what they're good at. Skin color and gender and all these issues that get brought up as really important things - those are details. What is great about Open Source is that some people are unpleasant but they're technically really good - right. Some people are pleasant and like bring other people in and I think that's one of maybe the most important of Open Source - is that you can do what you're good at. So when you look at bringing in minorities, bringing in females, bringing in people who don't speak English. My argument has been and is, that we should look for people who are good at being the people who can be between other people - right. There are a lots of good kernel developers who are great at working with people. And they may not ever be great technically - and that doesn't matter - because we all have strengths. And this is my argument - and I refuse to change - well no - that sounds bad (comment "s'not quite true" laughter). It's not that I refuse to change, it's that I don't think I want to try to bow down to what other people think.
My personal personality is pretty abrasive, I love arguing. Appearing at the Museum of Technology I spent the whole time just arguing with people (laughter). And if you're that kind of personality - when you are on LKM - you will argue. And I know they're are other kernel developers that are like me. And I know they're are other kernel developers who are not like me - and that's all wonderful. That was a really long answer to a really simple question. But the fact is - that's how I feel.
-
Keynote: Linus Torvalds Linux.conf.au 2015 -- Auckland, New Zealand
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.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No kidding! There are SO many people in America who do not know when you should use a comma, semicolon, colon, hyphen, or period in a sentence. This place needs more English training. I can't agree more!
Yeah, but they are all loosers.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Rachel has helped solve some tough problems at work. She's never used her boobs to do so, meaning they just aren't relevant.
How do you know?
I hear that Lefty does a mean switch statement.
One got so bad he had to be escorted off the work site and asked to not return.
Why? Was he threatening people? Or just being loud? The latter can just be handled with a quiet, "Shh. Use your inside voice please."
we can overlook folks 'values'
But what you describe isn't 'values'. It's behavior.
becuase they are savants who can't seem to function with anyone else.
But this is an accurate description of Bill Gates. And look how far it got him.
Have gnu, will travel.
Not necessarily. The meme is spawned from an episode of Futurama in which the drunken, criminal, robot Bender, tired of others not doing things his way, states that, he's going to go build his own theme park, "with blackjack, and hookers."
However, were the faux-PC hand-wringers involved in kernel development to storm off in a huff to start their own project, I doubt they would be interested in either blackjack or hookers, as both of those things are unsavory and demeaning to women and/or people who are not good at blackjack.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Except when that boy's testosterone starts to flow at puberty, he'll see what kind of a bitch his "dad" really is. MAN THE FUCK UP and get a real job, pansy ass. You just said men and women are wired differently at birth. Why are you attempting to subvert your natural place in the world, huh?
From the parent
my wife is also in the tech field
-- meaning we're both in the tech field (and based on laws of averages, each of us is making more than you do), so I guess you failed at reading comprehension. Let me guess, you're male (males tend to suck at reading comprehension more than girls do -- it's PC to say that only because it slams the male [and can be backed up with statistics]).
It's just damn hard to do, as software is so complex these days. Even if you come up with a better idea of how things should be done, you need a good sized team to make it happen. That's why Red Hat takes the pie: it has the resources (armies of paid developers) to make this stuff happen. Well, there's always Kickstarter... ;)
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
To be fair to Linus, he doesn't spout profanity when they make a mistake. For the profanity to spew forth, two conditions must be met:
1) It must be a VERY bad mistake, like purposely breaking backwards compatibility and then arguing that doing so is a good idea.
2) The developer has to be experienced enough that they should know better.
If they are inexperienced, he won't start yelling at them.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Nicely put, thanks from all the rational ones.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
You appear to have confused a small teaching tool for something completely different. Minix is not much like linux at all.
The "culture" of kicking the girls off the keyboards is a relatively new thing (though older than some readers here) and has produced a self perpetuating widening gap.
Law got over it. Mining got over it. The armed forces got over it. We are making it worse. We're not oil drillers so what's with the testosterone fuelled bullshit that is even scaring off male geeks?
There is an unspoken assumption by abusers that the abusive way they're treating people is normal and that it's just that the person complaining is "too sensitive."
This is literally another form of abuse in and of itself. It's called minimizing.
Please help metamoderate.
Anti-American-ism?
You must be incredibly thin skinned for your country if you think Linus is Anti-American.
So that's being polite?
I sense a very extreme double standard here.
Do you even kernel mailing list?
Linus sends like 1000 emails a month.
Err...you might want to tune that value a bit. The whole LKML gets roughly 1000 messages a month.
In Australia we elected one of those to run the country. Of course he told the Judge it was only the woman's back and not her crotch, so it came down to the word of his friends versus the word of the victim.
People can cut and paste in any language :(
The average tone on the kernel mailing list is not an incentive to participate to an unbiased observer.
If you care about results, dont drive people away. And yes that applies for the whole OS community. Whenever I consider to take part in an OS project, because i find it interesting, i look at the development process/communication and find the tone, way of discussion, and egocentric behaviour inacceptable.
Do you really think i contribute to a project which barely builds in exactly your environment with hundred of obscure dependencies, and when i try to fix it, getting barfed at over the inacceptable choice of standard tool X (yeah, i know, build processes which work out of the box on all linux distributions are *evil*), which seems to be directly from hell?
Do you really think i participate in a discusssion where three dickheads call my approach "SHIT" because they dont like it, without a proper argument, and often referring to episodes which happened 20 years ago as justification?
Do you really think i invest time into projects where the goals are defined by the means, and not vice versa (see the systemd debate)?
I really think i have better things to do with my life.
Actually, you're the one who needs to tune their value. LKML gets more like 1000 messages a day, and Linus can easily average 20 a day, or more, just to LKML. That doesn't count al the other forums he posts to. Linus is an email machine.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Wohow, you're right! I'll tune my values immediately.
How about handling it sensitively. After all, someone cares enough to think that you need to know and be involved.
Did lower management tiers fail them, are they talking shit or did they just skip the chain of command? For the former you absolutely want to be nice to the individual, they've just helped you realise that you have a problem. For the latter two options it's pretty easy to diplomatically steer them back towards the appropriate channels without being a complete cunt about it.
Can you come up with a reasonable scenario in which being a twat _is_ the correct action, in a business environment?
What, you say you couldn't do it? Well, why are you demanding that others do it or shut up?
Never said "Shut up" now, did I?
Just offered a reminder of the greatest thing about open source.
As for me fixing it - hey, I don't have a big issue with systemd, so its not likely on my part. I'd have to take on some new knowledge anyhow to be truthful - which I could do if needed. But among those who know its going to kill Linux, surely the talent is there?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Actually you don't need to use a comma in English. It depends on which style guide you choose to follow.
(I did it again, enjoy!)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Wow. You really are confused if you think linux is still a small teaching tool and minux is no longer a small teaching tool. If you really are that confused and it's a serious suggestion why are you bothering to comment on this thread at all if it's so far beyond the realms of what you know? What motivates you to make noise with no substance in this situation?
You do realize that a lot of this depends on what sort of people you're working with, right?
A long time ago, there was a study on successful sports coaches on good teams. Their feedback tended to be negative or sort of negative-positive ("That's not how you do it" perhaps followed by "and this is"). At that level, the players were expected to know what they were doing and how to do it well. I assure you this would not have worked well in my PE classes.
Similarly, Linus should primarily be dealing with people who are technically very competent and know what they should be doing. By analogy, a more negative approach to comments might be productive.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It seems that Political Correctness is usually used by extremists. Some people use it to push a style where (for example) a man should not comment on anything physical about a woman. Other people use it as a counter to requests that they clean up their act, such as crudely and repeatedly hitting on female coworkers.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I've written in re-entrant assembler (likely before you were alive), sometimes doing code generation. I'm a lot more productive with modern C++.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Put "automobile" in there instead of "kernel" and you may gain some understanding as to why it is not static and unchanging.
As for the microkernel debate, see the Hurd project for an example as to why it's not trivial to do things that way either and how it hasn't "allowed growth while keeping the core functionality simple". It works for what it does, but I suggest you take a look at the current state of it and reconsider such a claim since reality seems to show it's still hard work to add more functionality over time.
Since it's a software philosophy thing (not just at the kernel level) I suggest you argue with the Wayland folks instead of me - one monolithic thing in the aim of performance versus X which has lots of parts that communicate with each other that apparently has overheads the Wayland folks think they can avoid with time.
I thought this thing was done and dusted years ago. There are two main approaches at the kernel level but only one has major implementations at this point.
See: http://linuxfr.org/nodes/88229...
"LinuxFr.org : MINIX received a [Euro]2.5 million grant from the European Research Council. Does it mean MINIX is still geared more for academic purposes than for production in the real world?
Andrew Tanenbaum : No, not at all. The ERC very much wants the results to be commercialized. In fact, I just received a second ERC grant solely for the purposes of commercializing MINIX 3. We are going to port it to the ARM and do that starting in January."
Also from there, which disagrees with my comment on the license -- although I think Tanenbaum remains unable to admit the license issue there, if he could see it, which maybe he can't, even if the rest may show why the BSDs lost momentum to Linux:
"LinuxFr.org : If you could return in the past to change the MINIX original proprietary licence to the GPL licence, do you think your system might have become the dominant free OS today?
Andrew Tanenbaum : Never. The reason MINIX 3 didn't dominate the world has to do with one mistake I made about 1992. At that time I thought BSD was going to take over the world. It was a mature and stable system. I didn't see any point in competing with it, so I focused MINIX on education. Four of the BSD guys had just formed a company to sell BSD commercially. They even had a nice phone number: 1-800-ITS-UNIX. That phone number did them and me in. AT&T sued them over the phone number and the lawsuit took 3 years to settle. That was precisely the period Linux was launched and BSD was frozen due to the lawsuit. By the time it was settled, Linux had taken off. My mistake was not to realize the lawsuit would take so long and cripple BSD. If AT&T had not brought suit (or better yet, bought BSDI), Linux would never have become popular at all and BSD would dominate the world.
Now as we are starting to go commercial, we are realizing the value of the BSD license. Many companies refuse to make major investments in modifying Linux to suit their needs if they have to give the code to their competitors. We think that the BSD license alone will be a great help to us, as well as the small size, reliability, and modularity."
Also from there:
"LinuxFr.org : Why porting the userland utilities from NetBSD? Is the goal to become a BSD-like system?
Andrew Tanenbaum : We think NetBSD is a mature stable system. Linux is not nearly as well written and is changing all the time. NetBSD has something like 8000 packages. That is enough for us."
Seems like another vote for BSD. :-)
BTW, maybe GNU Hurd has not gone that far for whatever reasons, but, QNX is a very successful example of a microkernel OS (mostly in the embedded space).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q...
"As a microkernel-based OS, QNX is based on the idea of running most of the operating system kernel in the form of a number of small tasks, known as servers. This differs from the more traditional monolithic kernel, in which the operating system kernel is a single very large program composed of a huge number of "parts" with special abilities. In the case of QNX, the use of a microkernel allows users (developers) to turn off any functionality they do not require without having to change the OS itself; instead, those servers will simply not run.
The system is quite small, with earlier versions fitting on a single floppy disk.[3]
QNX Neutrino (2001) has been ported to a number of platforms and now runs on practically any modern CPU that is used in the embedded market. This includes the PowerPC, x86 family, MIPS, SH-4, and the closely inter-related family of ARM, StrongARM and XScale CPUs."
L4 is also a success according to the Tanenbaum and the LinuxFr article:
"LinuxFr.org : The two most famous microkernels nowadays are MINIX and L4. What are the differences between these two systems?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
With respect, if you'd spent as much time reading about the issue as you have writing you would understand the differences and we would not be having this discussion. It was done to death in many places, including here, a bit over a decade ago.
However my main point is the suggestions that something that hasn't scaled is better at scaling than something that has scaled do not have any evidence at all to support them at this point. They are currently only wishful thinking and the efforts with the Hurd project have shown that it's not an easy thing to attempt to turn them into reality.
So while you may want it to be real it isn't as yet. If you are interested enough why don't you join in with the Hurd project and that way you can learn about microkernels and have something both interesting and true to say about them.
Your comment above really has nothing to do with the post I commented on, about the current state of linux and minux instead of what happened in an alternative universe in your head so please stop pretending it is relevant.
If you wish to comment on things that were not said then I can't see how you can take so much offence at being laughed at. The bullying "grow up" shit is an added bit of noise. I suggest you start again instead of jumping into a conversation that you are not paying attention to. Either that or go back and look at the context and you'll see why I thought you had to be joking if you were attempting to class both linux in 2015 and minix in 2015 as "small teaching tools". It's a ridiculous comparison and can not in any way be taken seriously.
Reading more is always nice, but I've been living this issue in practice for three or four decades. I was even hanging around CMU when Mach was just getting started (and even made some suggestions for it back then after one presentation someone made on it). Again, QNX and L4 are microkernels that power over a billion devices. Trotting out difficulties with Hurd to justify saying all microkernels are bad is a bit like me saying that some the failure of the Chandler project proves no database or PIM or information management could be useful... It doesn't prove much; it mostly only proves that Chandler project was not well managed (which could included being over-ambitious relative to the resources available or guessing wrong about who to hire or who to partner with etc.). Still, it is also true the "software is hard":
http://gamearchitect.net/Artic...
The social networking effect drives many "successes" like Windows, Linux, Facebook, PHP, JavaScript, and so on that may have little connection with technical merit. Sure, once you get a huge social network, then you have thousands of people, say, trying to make PHP suck less, and eventually, yes, PHP is not that bad. I'm moving much of my work to JavaScript (following the lead of Dan Ingalls, co-inventor of Smalltalk) even though I know JavaScript reinvents several wheels badly (default globals? WTF!). This is because JavaScript has easy *installibility* due to the social network effect, and also has a growing range of libraries and now other tools like emscriptem and ASM.js. However, I know that these are tools and systems that would have been totally unneeded if we had just had a decent popular cross-platform message-passing VM to build on like the one ParcPlace made for VisualWorks Smalltalk in the 1980s! IBM also had solid multi-architecture VMs, and aside from Forth, pretty much invented or at least ran with that idea. Instead we have a tower of crazy stacks -- and it is hard to be more inefficient in CPU use and programmer/support time than that. One slashdot post a few weeks ago (discussing Docker?) had a great plausible stack I'm too lazy to try to find again -- but its often layers on layers like Hypervisor, Linux, VMWare, Linux, Docker, Apache, PHP (server side) / JavaScript (client side)... And what that all is trying to solve is pretty much just not having a decent VM or microkernel in use to reduce the need for so many layers in the first place. Meanwhile, in the early 1980s, you could put a floppy with QNX in two PCs and almost immediately start using resources across the network as easily as if they were on your local machine. Thirty years ago!!! And yet people are still struggling with the next incarnation of some sort of ad-hoc data transfer system built on top of JavaScript and PHP (on top of layers and layers of other stuff). Of course, even big proprietary enterprises can get stuck this way -- I recall in the 1990s reading about how Microsoft alone had like a dozen different virtual machines within its Office product suite due to the legacy of how it was created (all that on top of Windows).
The bottom line if priorities and values. You make some hand-waving references to issues with microkernels vs. monolithic kernels, without being specific about what they are. If you value stability, reliability, modularity, run-time flexibility, and such, you'll pick a microkernel in general (all other things being equal). If you value shared-memory performance and (currently) community etc., you'll pick a monolithic kernel like Linux or FreeBSD. There are gray areas, like do you get more security through simplicity or through community? QNX is also proprietary, as was Minix early on, so another factor in considering them as far as priorities, although the latest version of Minx and L4 are truly open source.
It also depends what kind of hardware you are planning for. On multi-core systems without shared memory (most newer designs as shared generally memory stops working well b
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Ah the petty bullying of pretending another has poor reading skills or a mental illness merely because you can't put up a convincing argument.
What a piece of work.
Next time you jump into the middle of a discussion I suggest you may want to determine what it is about before shouting ridiculous suggestions to the rooftops.
My refusal to play your game with your shifted goalposts may be annoying to you but it is no failure on my part, even if you try to use a bit of petty bullying to do it. Is your reason to be here to go looking for people with low self esteem to dominate? It's starting to look that way, and I suggest you stop posting such venom before it reveals even more of what sort of pathetic creature you are.