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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
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.
Excellent point. One of my favorite jokes "What's the difference between Larry Ellison and God? God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison."
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.
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.