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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.
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.
The adage "Nice guys finish last" proves itself much more often than not. Being civil = far less results.
The quote you cite comes from a paraphrase of former baseball manager Leo Durocher, and is intended to be understood in a sports context. Sports is a zero-sum game: somebody wins and somebody loses, and there are no points for character. The rest of life is not necessarily like that.
While "nice guys finish last" is often extrapolated (dubiously) to areas like dating, or is sometimes put in the mouth of realpolitik advocates like Niccolo Machiavelli or Henry Kissinger, it was never meant to be a general descriptor of how to get along in life. Some bosses - like Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, or pre-mellowing Bill Gates were legendary assholes and still got great results out of their employees. There are other people who manage their employees with a gentler hand and play to their strengths, and get good results too. Your mileage may vary as to which is the best approach, but I certainly know which environment I would thrive in and which one would make me quit the first day.
Sometimes even if all you care about is the end result you may find that the end result would have been better if you had viewed the road getting there as being full of unique persons and not interchangeable tools. If you just aren't good at dealing with people, then fine, don't try to make yourself that type of leader/manager. But just remember that - to fight adage with adage - "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."
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