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Linux Kernel Dev Sarah Sharp Quits, Citing 'Brutal' Communications Style
JG0LD writes: A prominent Linux kernel developer announced today in a blog post that she would step down from her direct work in the kernel community. “My current work on userspace graphics enabling may require me to send an occasional quirks kernel patch, but I know I will spend at least a day dreading the potential toxic background radiation of interacting with the kernel community before I send anything,” Sharp wrote. Back in July, 2013 Sarah made a push to make the Linux Kernel Development Mailing List a more civil place.
I agree with you here, for the most part. I don't think it's so much as "when dealing with women", but more of a "when communicating as a professional". There's a time and a place for everything. Also, women need to lighten the fuck up.
This is one of those things that needs context.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Everyone who gets involved in kernel development (male, female or other) finds the whole process utterly brutal and gets the shit kicked out of them at some stage. While not all that nice sometimes it at least does ensure that ideas and code passes the mustard.
I'm a man and I don't like when guys feels it's ok to be bullying me.
Being nice is not so difficult.
The link from "back in July" was from 2013, and Sarah hasn't made a kernel contribution in 18 months. She's moved on to other projects, and I wish her the best of luck.
Grammatically, it's fine.
The phrasing is not entirely sensible and could be improved, though.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
in the *very* early days (0.9x), and back then Linus never seemed like much of a dick, but then again, at the time he was still a student. Even met him face-to-face a couple of times. I stepped away due to the huge time commitments required by my regular job, not because of any issues I had with anyone.
The stories I hear leave me scratching my head. This isn't the Linus I knew back in the day. I guess all the fame and all of that must have gone to his head.
No true Scotsman argument.
Lots of men are put off by the same BS behavior, the difference is that there is more pressure to conform / suck it up, etc. Company I know removed a manager who had this style and the team was composed solely of males in a male dominated profession. Environment was getting toxic so instead of allowing the department to fail upper management took action and probably saved the company.
While I appreciate the idea of catering your communication to your target(s), I have to say that dealing with people who need constant emotional petting to stay productive is exhausting ( women mostly ).
I much prefer working with men for this reason. While it's not a guarantee you won't get "Whiny Bitches" in a male dominated environment, it's far less likely. By putting aside the emotional overhead, the entire team can more effectively focus on the task(s) at hand.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Yeah no, men need to learn to communicate _differently_... at work, period. The socially gauche developer stereotype (or the 'brogrammer' type) are both toxic; it's not difficult to not be an asshole.
July... 2013. So it's been two years.
Reminds me of the old phrase about being able to dish it out all day but not being able to take it for one second.
Kind of reminds me of the whole Ellen Pao debacle where she accused people who worked with -- at a VC firm -- of being complete assholes. And she was right about that part. However, she lost the case because the facts showed that she was one of the biggest assholes in the whole place so she might as well have sued herself.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
What a load of stereotypical bollocks. I'm a man, and I don't accept or give abuse at work. If someone is rubbish, I'll tell them politely and professionally what they need to change, and if they continue to be rubbish, I'll fire them. Most of the women I have worked with seem to have the same sense of humour, skin-thickness and social skills as the men. i.e. if you are flat out rude and abusive, they get upset.
There is no need for for abusive leadership styles, irrespective of whether the team members or male or female.
Same here. You talk like that to me... either you're fired or I quit.
I'm a man
Debatable.
I'm a man and I think this is a shit way to treat a human being. No, it's not okay to treat me that way just because I have "outdoor plumbing". I'm not your bro. We're not going to bro down at the bar after you berate me.
This is a part of nerd culture that we need to not quietly condone any longer.
You're making crude generalizations on the basis of gender. I dare say that borderline bullying isn't a healthy environment for a lot of men or women; it's immature and unprofessional and, as Sarah Sharp eloquently points out in her post, by tolerating such a culture the leaders of the community in question are prioritising the "need" for people to express themselves aggressively over other people's potential need for respectful and sensitive communication.
It's all very well to say that people need to learn not to take things personally, but the fact is that you can't possibly know - especially not over a mailing list - just what emotional or personal issues a person might be going through. Do you really a want a situation where curious and potentially talented developers are put off contributing to an important project because of a toxic culture?
How about people grow up, be adults, and not swing dick around over people who are attempting to make positive contributions on their own time and dime. If you can't figure out how to communicate effectively in a way that doesn't involve flaming you are detrimental to any team.
Also, women need to lighten the fuck up.
So, by default you assume the "man's perspective" is better than the "woman's perspective"? Interesting.
Also, as a man... grow up.
Men need to learn to communicate _differently_ with women and consider their feelings.
Problem: Women, don't want to be treated differently.
"Strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
Maybe you appreciate being called a fuckwad by other men, but I don't.
Perl Programmer for hire
Both. Men need to learn to communicate _differently_ with women and consider their feelings.
what about "equality"? If you want to come and work in X, integrate with the was of X, dont try and change X unless X wants change
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Men are blunt to each and will call you out on your bullshit to your face.
Women, on the other hand, will do it behind your back and will be far more vindictive about it.
That is the real difference.
On the other hand, a great many men are capable of being competent, professional software developers without fantasising that we're engaged in a macho dick swinging contest. When a community behaves in this this fashion it excludes others from wanting to participate regardless of how skilled they are, and the development community self-selects the small proportion of probably-male developers who are willing to engage in the fantasy.
At the same time, the community will claim that it acts in that way because it promotes some kind of libertarian lord-of-the-flies only-the-strong-survive technical meritocracy, without recognising that others just don't have to play their game.
...What that means is they are privileging the emotional needs of other Linux kernel developers (to release their frustrations on others, to be blunt, rude, or curse to blow off steam) over my own emotional needs (the need to be respected as a person, to not receive verbal or emotional abuse). There’s an awful power dynamic there that favors the established maintainer over basic human decency....
That shows a complete lack of professional respect on the part of those who bully others by demanding the environment be so disrespectful.
.
In a professional environment, you criticize the work, not the person. Period.
Those who say that such bullying is par for the course are more part of the problem than part of the solution.
I don't like to be bullied either, therefore I don't allow people to do it. You have to take accountability for yourself. If the person is being a bully, call them out.
Get your PostgreSQL here: http://www.commandprompt.com/
NO. there's no excuse for being an asshole.
You don't even need to go that far really.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This isn't empowering women. This is arguing that they are weaker than men far more profoundly than any MRA red piller gamer gater misogynist could ever hope to accomplish.
I would argue that dealing with a bully that can't control his constantly demeaning comments is just as exhausting.
Maybe we are looking at differing communication styles, and the effort required to cross the boundary of what we are comfortable with might be the real issue.
I've read through the lists, and I see a lot of guys insulting each other. You know what? Guys insult each other. It's how we communicate, it's how we bond. It's also brutally honest and helps to enforce the environment that makes for good IT - namely
A woman inserting themselves into that environment should expect to be treated like just another guy.
Oh, and read this:
http://www.computerworld.com/a...
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Was about to post the same thing. The idea that men should just ignore their emotional needs is an example of toxic masculinity.
Being brutal about technical stuff is fine, welcome in fact. But to ignore to be deliberately brutal to the human being is both unnecessary and drives good people away.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No, it's men that must learn how women are and change to conform to them. Don't you understand how that's perfectly equal?
Exactly this.
Welcome to the game of power dynamics! If you call them out, will they make your life difficult? If you call them out, will they physically attack you? If you call them out, will they use their authority to subtly destroy your life or career? The answer to all these questions is "I don't know!"
That can only lead to one logical conclusion.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Considering that this is communication we're supposedly talking about; everything is orthogonal except its effectiveness... and considering this isn't a complaint relating to OS/2, I daresay the answer is self-evident.
If that's your opinion, you're not much of a man.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
That's not my experience of how men communicate in a professional way. Men *are* willing to say, "this is broken" with the implication being "you broke it." The other man will typically respond, "yes it is." The first says, "you need to redo this with x, y, and z." The second agrees. In my experience this is *not* how women communicate because there's a lot of worry about feelings, but in a case like this, men seem to be able to not worry so much about the emotional part and just focus on the facts at hand. I think this is where men and women's communication style clashes (in the case of taking something personally when it's clearly a matter of describing facts - and note that I'm generalizing too, as I was certainly a lot more sensitive to the hurt feelings side when I was a younger guy.) If the two men know each other socially, then perhaps there's a bit of "good natured ribbing" but that's not supposed to be present among colleagues who only work together. Any place where someone says, "you're being a fuckwad" is completely unprofessional and that's not acceptable behavior unless these are "buddies." There's never a need for an ad hominem attack. If the code sucks, say it's not acceptable, and say what you think should be done to correct it. Both men and women need to be willing to accept constructive criticism based on facts at hand. There's no need to call people names.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Would you treat coworkers like that? In meatspace? If someone called me a fuckwad in a way that wasn't obviously jokey/ironic it would be a huge problem to me. Being nice and civil is a much better way to get things done. Like, grumpy/curmudgeonly is kinda par for the course but that's totally different.
I used to work with a really toxic dev that for whatever reason our management dept protected. He was extremely misogynistic and refused to work with any women. One time in a meeting he said something basically like "it's in the spec, you stupid bitch" (as an aside, it wasn't in the spec ;p). He used to get away with yelling at people etc. Then I got sucked into the daily meetings and said basically "there is no call to raise your voice in a meeting at work. if you have a personal problem with me, we can go outside and talk about it". Never had a problem with him after that - unsurprisingly most misogynists and bullies are in reality cowards.
It took a hell of a lot of digging, but it seems to have started with this thread, way back in 2013.
Now, I'm all for professional communication, and emails can be easy to misinterpret, but this looks like a bit of an over-reaction. Someone commented that they send patches to Greg KH because Linus scares him, but added a winkey smiley afterwards, i.e. not really all that scary. Then Linus made a joke about Greg being big and squishing people that may or may not be playful or insulting, without knowing much about the relationship between these guys it's hard to say. Squish is hardly a word you use when you're really angry though.
And then Linus and Ingo gently tick off Greg and says he should be tougher, Linus says Greg is acting like a "door mat" and says "You may need to learn to say no to people". Ingo says "be frank with contributors and sometimes swear a bit". Probably this discussion would be held off list in a more traditional corporate environment to avoid embarrassing Greg (though "you are too nice" is not that embarrassing), but he takes it in his stride and agrees to be tougher.
OK, so far, just another day in open source land? Well, then Sarah Sharp flies off the handle and says:
What the heck? The only thing she could be referring to this thread so far has been Linus talking about Greg being a giant who might "squish you without even noticing". Nobody could seriously interpret that as advocating for violence unless you were so unbelievably literal you'd be unable to handle ordinary conversations.
And then there's the conflation of "verbal abuse" with "violence". These are two words that mean very different things. And finally the assertion that by trying to make jokes (perhaps not very well), Linus and Ingo were being unprofessional. Not surprisingly, Linus had a problem with this claim.
Now I don't know, probably this could have been avoided if the discussion with Greg had been private. But it seems Sharp would have let rip at some other point if someone else made an off-colour joke. I can believe LKML is a tough environment, but this isn't the best evidence possible. Perhaps there have been other incidents, but as Sharp doesn't list any, it's hard to say.
If you were too chickenshit to test them on the grade school playground you will always be too chickenshit.
You don't even have to win the fight, you just have to hurt them, and they will leave you alone in the future. Mostly it's not an issue, bullies are usually cowards.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You know, if in my place work work I had to put up with "You're being a fuckwad. Don't do this." my response is going to come down to "why do I have to listen to whiny little children not capable of communicating like adults?" I'm sorry, but in the real world there is an expectation people will act like grown ups. In fact, there's probably an HR department and some labor laws which say you are required to act like grownups. Your ass will be out on the street if you act like this.
This whole bullshit of women should just suck it up because that's how the world works? Guess what, in the real world ... like corporations where people have jobs ... there isn't this anywhere but self entitled assholes on the internet.
The Linux developers might think they live in a microcosm where acting like a childish asshole is commonplace. But it's important to realize this has NOTHING to do with pretty much anything else. That the internet is full of assholes doesn't mean in real corporations with real people with real jobs get away with acting like this.
Trash talk is NOT how things happen in the real world. And a bunch of self entitled idiots claiming acting like self entitled idiots is normal doesn't make it true.
The fact that there's no adult supervision and people keep believing they can act like out of control high school students is the problem here.
If you haven't already learned to interact with people in a civil manner, the get out of your mother's basement, and learn that shit like this will get you fired from a real job. Working on the Linux kernel is not free license to be a major asshole and a social halfwit.
So maybe the problem is the idiots who think this is a problem with women. Because you sure as hell wouldn't expect to get away with this in any corporate setting; not even a little bit.
Seriously, people, grow the hell up. You likely already have people enforcing some degree of civility on you, because pretty much no organization is going to put up with this shit.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Actually it's mostly only feminists who argue that women are weaker than men, hence all the grants, special support, womens groups, damselling, demands for even shorter prison sentences than they already get and so on. I'm guessing from this woman's language and unhealthy fixation on power dynamics that she's a feminist, so in ways you're right. Not many ways mind you.
It's not even about being nice, necessarily. Why the fuck would you throw away the moral high ground without getting anything in return first?
There's a time for shouting, and there's times for civil discourse. Off the top of my head, things like life and death situations would qualify for heated responses. A mailing list for a kernel? Nothing but pure ego stroking.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
I stopped contributing to the Linux kernel in like 1995 because the environment even then was too toxic. With the same sort of 'apologist' rhetoric that we hear today. In the 20 years I've been contributing to FreeBSD, I've still yet to accumulate as much toxin as was present in the 12 months or so I tried contributing minor things to Linux.
Ah, yes, the MAD style of conflict resolution. They send one of your guys to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue! That's the free software way!
I'm a man and I don't like when guys feels it's ok to be bullying me. Being nice is not so difficult.
The problem is people that aren't able to perceive the difference between bullying and simply being straight up honest/healthy banter. Saying "You're being a fuckwad. Don't do this." I would not take as bullying from anyone I work with. having said that I have no idea how good or bad the kernel group is. Not trying to be Anti-American but I find this problem comes a lot more from americans (men and women). I will use those exact sort of phrases to my work mates here in Australia all the time (men and women), it isn't bullying or demeaning, it is simply how we talk. We regularly have overseas employee's working with us, most are shocked to start with, the americans though quite often can't get over the cultural barrier and can't think of it as anything but, racism, bullying, abuse or whatever else their closed mind indignation can summon up. I remember a few years ago one even put in a formal complaint about my work mate saying he was racist against aboriginals, not realising he was actually an aboriginal.
Honesty, if you call me a fuckwad, I will become uncooperative. And depending in my standing, I will quit or I will quit you.
Such language is totally unprofessional.
When we hire people, we train them to separate the personal from the professional. We can never attack the personal but we can attack the professional as brutally as we want.
You simply have not been trained to tell the difference. Instead, what you have been trained is that the world is a female world and that there is no difference between the personal and professional.
That is simply, and factually, wrong.
You're the best bro ever.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Yeah men just let it slide... are you kidding me? 1st man tells 2nd man he's being a fuckwad, 2nd man gets so puffed up with bravado, threat displays and yes DRAMA, that you know there will be asses kicked over it, maybe even deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duel
Always handy to be able to project all your flaws on people who are not you, and all the virtues on yourself. Gender discussion is irrelevant anyway. It's been widely established that Linus is a fucking dick to people, male & female alike.
Yes, calling an asshole an asshole is frothing.
OR maybe you look at assholes too much...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
When we are discussing such fine grained gray areas, what some consider bullying others do not.
We train our staff on the first day that they MUST be able to separate the personal from the professional. Personal attacks are not allowed. Professional is open season.
The difference is obvious. Intent. One intends to hurt the team member and is designed to change the team dynamic, the other is only a little more brutish than being polite and allows us to blow away the haze of political correctness.
The issue is not bullying. The issue is you not being trained to tell the difference and / or working in a place that does not have training in place to assist people like you to either get up to speed or get out.
Maybe you appreciate being called a fuckwad by other men, but I don't.
I don't appreciate it if it is unwarranted, but I have acted like dick and before (everyone has at one point or another) and I have appreciated it when someone bluntly let me know.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
That's not toxic masculinity cupcake, that's just being a dickhead. And guess what, women can be just as bad if not worse. Step out of the feminist echo chamber for once and actually ask a woman, they'll be happy to tell you how ruthlessly competitive and cut-throat women can be when it suits them.
My first knee-jerk reaction was also, "Yeah, SHE couldn't take it." But after reflecting on Linus Torvald's style and comparing it with workplaces that I've been at over the years... yeah, I can't say I blame her. The key to successful leadership is giving criticism when it's due and also giving praise when it's due. Books have been written about how to be a successful manager and leader. A few I can think of off the top of my head:
How to Make Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
You have to be able to understand what motivates and what de-motivates people. The Linux community has a hard time attracting talent precisely because the people in charge have essentially zero skill in interpersonal relationships, and often they are completely unaware of this. Looking at it from the perspective of pure instrumental rationality, when you're leading a project, your primary focus should be saying and doing things that advance the project. Taking glee in dishing verbal abuse does not, most of the time, advance this goal.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
minor correction: How to WIN friends and influence people. This is what I get for not using google.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
So, when someone is being dismissive to me at the office, the correct thing to do is to bash their face in with a keyboard? What kind of passive-aggressive conflict resolution are you proposing here?
I wonder what misusing lmgtfy.com tells us about a person.
I was curious and did some research on this. I know Linus and some of the other guys can be a lot to take. However, after reading a lot of the posts Sarah made complaining about people and things, I started to get the feeling she's attention seeking and disruptive. She constantly brings up gender in irrelevant ways and appears to be the self styled 'girl kernel developer'. She also punches below the belt. For example:
"*Snort*. Perhaps we haven't interacted very often, but I have never seen you be nice in person at KS. Well, there was that one time you came to me and very quietly explained you had a problem with your USB 3.0 ports, but you came off as "scared to talk to a girl kernel developer" more than "I'm trying to be polite"."
Linus tends to be very direct, as are a lot of important open source communities. The critical people are very busy and get frustrated when people display various kinds of incompetence. In fact, it appears to me that they were treating Sarah very gently precisely *because* she was a girl. Or maybe it was the intel.com email adress -- who knows.
I dunno.... If this is how things are being conducted on the developer lists, I think the woman has a valid complaint/point.
It's one thing to talk trash to each other when you're playing competitive sports against each other. (And I'm willing to bet women do the same thing when playing tennis, basketball or other womens' sports?)
But software development should be a little bit more professional in nature. I'm more of a sysadmin than a software coder myself, but I'd probably take it personally, too, if every time I worked hard to contribute something to a development project, people turned around and told me I was a "fuckwad" for having the idea and so on.
I mean, why bother contributing at all if everyone else involved comes across like they're that unappreciative of my efforts? I'm not going to "take it personally" in the sense it makes me question my ability to code and I consider switching careers .... but I'd definitely think about putting my efforts into other projects.
Your the one that assumes 'mutually assured destruction' is in scope for dealing with a bully.
I will grant you one thing, if the bully has nukes, your method is better.
Absent that, stand up for yourself or forever be a doormat.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Easy, just encourage people to talk nicely to anyone who has the "delicate flower" flag set. You could even hire someone to translate guy talk into inoffensive speech; one translator should be enough for probably a hundred developers so it won't cost much.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
The real issue is that when you work with others and the others wont follow the rules after being told repeatedly what needs to be done then the attitude is going to flow. If you have told someone over and over how to do something and they won't do it then you scream and belittle them until they either start doing what was told to them or they can quit. Mr. Torvalds doesn't get angry for no reason. It is ALWAYS because of some idiot, err person, not following the rules. Being a woman or man has not a damn thing to do with it. Sometimes people don't realize how hot the kitchen is until they walk in. Astronauts have to shit in a bag but you don't hear them bitching about it on NASA. This fucking PC crap has about reached its limits
What in the world is a "toxic culture"? Because I don't think it's the LKML.
Which world would you rather be in, one where people are going to tell you exactly what they're feeling, good and bad; or one you're afraid of being honest and you don't know anyone else's true feelings either?
The LKML doesn't generally make personal attacks. But if your code is shit, well that's a whole different story. And if you're going to take your poor code as a personal attack... well whose fault is that?
Wonder what the public key field is for?
"A man", not "all men". Plenty of men are sensitive where there ego is concerned, and don't hang it up when the day is over.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Parent is "flamebait"? What a shame...
No, the problem is that we live in a culture of pampered cunts. We need people who are willing to be "assholes" whereby all we really mean are people who don't give a shit if what they say hurts your feelings as long as it's honest. I would much rather have to deal with an "asshole" who flat-out tells me that my code is bad and completely unworkable than a whiny cunt who tries to "protect my feelings" by talking crap about me behind my back.
The problem is that normal criticism is now considered "being an asshole" and being a whiny cunt is now "professionalism."
If you have a problem with the way the Linux kernel is managed, it's because you want everyone to treat you like a delicate flower. Sorry, no, it's the real world. Grow up yourself, get some thicker skin, and be willing to accept some criticism every once and a while.
"Men need to learn to communicate _differently_ with different people and consider their differences . Unless they don't care, in which case they willingly suffer the consequences "
FTFY.
I work in a professional environment where we do not use vulgarity or obscenities, do not personally insult one another, nor threaten with violence, even emotional violence. I also volunteer, but do not for those organizations that permit such willful dysfunction.
Sarah is entirely in the right on this. Continued behavior like this may only cost the Kernel team a talented but replaceable team member, but making it a public issue may also cause them recruiting problems, and it should.
If you want to play in Linus' world, you know the price.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
If the person is being a bully, call them out.
It's not so easy, this is a community fostered and led by a man who has an unprofessional and childishly abrasive way of communicating. He has said he will not change but the Linux community needs him so ultimately pretty much whatever he does will be accepted in that community and that community attempts to emulate him. You don't need the childish name-calling but in the Linux community Linus does it so they will justify it some way like "well that's just how he is so you have to accept it".
You can call out Linus but the whole Linux community will turn on you.
Professional behavior doesn't differ by gender. Even the words should be the same.
I never have to treat the women I work with differently because of their 'emotional state' or any gender issue.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
When you slugged him, you should have hurt him.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Sorry, but your prejudices aren't always correct. I work in a workplace where the men, for the most part, are more "sensitive". Granted, I prefer to call their behaviour professional. On the other hand, the women (again, for the most part) are insensitive. I'm not talking about the stereotypical women style of insensitive either. I'm talking about the stereotypical men style of insensitive.
Workplace culture is defined by the workplace, not necessarily by the stereotypes within the culture as a whole.
Because if you want me to "act professional", I can tell you that I'm not interested. I'm sitting in my home office wearign a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because THAT is what "acting professionally" results in: people resort to all kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their normal urges in unnatural ways.
Sometimes it's not entirely clear which side is doing the bullying.
Those engaging in very harsh, perhaps aggressive, discussion and criticism within a challenging and highly technical project? Or those trying to force change upon a community/organisation with public shaming and social media activism?
Why should software development "be a little bit more professional"?
Rather than view it in terms of "the right way" versus "the wrong way", how about we agree that on average men PREFER a certain communication style that is different from women's average preferred communication style.
It's an old-fashioned "culture conflict" type of problem.
These are mostly volunteers in this case such that we cannot simply slap a discrimination lawsuit on them to force them to talk "professionally".
Maybe someone can offer special classes to learn how to sling "dude crap" with the best of them. I've known women who perfected the art. They can be fun to be around, but I wouldn't want to date them.
As an anecdote, I was arguing with one lady about a signature on a document. "I don't care how it's signed, I'll sign it with my damned wanker if I have to!".
"Ah, you mean short-hand!", she replied.
Table-ized A.I.
Actually, cut to the chase.
If the Kernel team's goal is the best work they can do, is abusive behavior helping achieve that goal? If a locker-room mentality works, so be it, but you will narrow your pool of available talent. Will that get you the best work you can get?
If the Kernel team is not interested in doing the best work they can do, then it's up to their leader, Linus from the sounds of it, to decide if that's the way he wants it to be.
And again, it's Linus' world there. Play or not, yours and his choice. Results will prove out.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I believe this is known as "natural selection."
What is the alternative? Allowing that sort of behavior to go on without being corrected?
What are the risks? Should we genuinely fear seeing a Private Pyle? Is that a threat?
Professionals are blunt. What you are looking for is "when communicating as a business person," which is usually the opposite of a professional.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
As opposed to make programmers, the not mytical at all Jabba the Hutts.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Hardly. This isn't analogous to MAD in the slightest; rather, it's a simple matter of establishing boundaries. Nice try, though.
Male, that is. Or 'make' programmers, too, most likely.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
All men? Are we all toxic brogrammers or are you willing to accept that some of them know how to communicate effectively?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
No they don't. Feminism presents it as a battle between male space or a female space. It's a false dichotomy. The hypocrisy is that feminists expect men to take the 'chivalrous' route and modify their interaction styles for women, yet asking women to reciprocate with some toughness and objectivity is 'oppressive' or 'misogynistic.' The net result is that men are driven out of areas where women have gotten their PC 'safe spaces' for their interaction and thinking styles because men do not do well there. Just ask a male nurse. Fighting discrimination with discrimination is not a solution.
I'm a fan of what works for a given environment and given group of people. The individuals making up the bulk of the effort are the ones who decide the culture simply because they are the most productive. Anything else would drive these productive individuals out and weaken the result. Linus and his lieutenants are far more productive than sarah sharp is, and she is not happy with the interaction style they set, so she goes. No big loss. She's welcome to either adapt to that or work on a different project. If her viewpoint is truly superior and her politics in line with reality, it should be a no brainer to fork the kernel and demonstrate this. The best contributors would flock to her and, in time, her branch would be the technically superior one. She should be showing us 'misogynists' how it's done instead of whining and stirring up shitstorms.
Feminism (and the social justice crowd in general) hate the idea of judging on merit and performance.
Some random quick google searches. Note how they contort the language and definitions..
http://mediadiversified.org/20...
http://geekfeminism.org/2009/1...
This has also infected academia. It's no surprise a lot of people with sarah sharp's attitudes have come out of the university system.
http://www.ucop.edu/academic-p...
Mitt Romney once used the phrase "knock some heads together" in a debate regarding how he'd ensure some gov't task was done right. I don't remember the typical pundits or press taking notice of that statement. Contrast the reaction with "binders full of women".
Table-ized A.I.
But who decides what is toxic and what is merely communication pointing out people's mistakes? It's subjective and differs from person to person. Most people call any sort of criticism toxic, and it's impossible to do any productive work if you can't tell that a person did a mistake.
What a load of stereotypical bollocks. I'm a man, and I don't accept or give abuse at work. If someone is rubbish, I'll tell them politely and professionally what they need to change, and if they continue to be rubbish, I'll fire them. Most of the women I have worked with seem to have the same sense of humour, skin-thickness and social skills as the men. i.e. if you are flat out rude and abusive, they get upset.
There is no need for for abusive leadership styles, irrespective of whether the team members or male or female.
Not everyone has the power to fire everyone they have a personality conflict with. You apparently are CEO and sole investor of your company.
This isn't empowering women. This is arguing that they are weaker than men far more profoundly than any MRA red piller gamer gater misogynist could ever hope to accomplish.
Then why is the woman the only one strong enough to stand up publicly?
I stole this Sig
The Linux kernel project seems to be doing just fine, and that's what we are talking about here.
The world doesn't work in any one way. There are all sorts of different companies, communities, and development teams. Women should do the same thing men do: if your workplace or project culture isn't a good match, you leave without making a big fuss. Simple as that.
This. Actual professional communication is tense, and doesn't pad criticisms. It isn't bullying, it is efficiency.
Problem: jackass is relative. One person's offense is another person's hello. To use two female coworkers: actions to one if done to the other would piss her off, but if NOT done to the first, would piss her off. How about instead, just do the job and leave feelings out of it *entirely*.
Tit-for-tat is actually the best strategy for peace if there is an incentive to attack. We even adopt similar tactics even if we have nothing to gain, as in an ultimatum game. Humans are wired with a sense of justice, and it's largely a smart strategy from an evolutionary standpoint.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Seriously. "Professional Communication" is not the time to be addressing "emotional needs." Emotional needs get addressed in personal time with your cat, bottle of whiskey, or other chosen emotional support method. It isn't about "toxic" or "masculinity." It is about people trying to work don't work well in an aspie hugbox.
I don't, I prefer "I don't appreciate your behaviour". Years ago I left Usenet because I noticed that the abrasive attitude was very easy to pick up (I certainly have played my ugly part) and in most IT related groups. It's also the reason why I don't contribute to any open source project. No idea if it's IT specific because I have friends who are biologists and I don't see that attitude between them. Maybe I don't know them well enough, I only see them a few days now and then during field trips. But each time it's like a fresh breath of air compared to the IT attitude.
Perl Programmer for hire
To be fair, this issue really has almost nothing to do with Linux on the desktop. This is about the kernel mailing list. The kernel has been used successfully on Linux desktop systems for over 15 years now; it's really not holding anything up there. Most of it is a solved problem. There's some interesting work still going on there to be sure, but most of it is either for servers/high-performance computing or for embedded systems, not for standard desktops. There's nothing that can be done in the kernel that will magically make Linux a much more attractive option for the desktop.
Almost all the stuff that could be done to improve the desktop experience is in userspace, which by definition doesn't have anything to do with LKML: things like init systems, desktop environments, application software, distributions, etc. The main exception is graphics drivers, but even that isn't really a LKML topic, those things (like Nouveau) are pretty big projects by themselves and aren't conducted on the LKML. And of course, it should be obvious that the biggest impediment to Linux on the desktop isn't really technical at all, it's the availability of application software (though I suppose you could argue that improving WINE would make a big difference here).
Anyway, the point is, this issue is about only one part of the whole FOSS/Linux community; other projects don't have this notoriety.
And a lot of men, myself included are put off by the sort of hostile work environment PC nazis create, where you have to say bullshit like "this is less than ideal." rather than "this is garbage." or "the fuck is this." to avoid offending people. It's especially bad when you're on the receiving end of this new PC form of disapproval, because many times you can't even tell if someone is praising or admonishing you, and you end up feeling like you're doing a shit job even when your boss is telling you everything is ok; and sometimes you are.
I'd rather be told, "jee what you've done is fucking bad." than say "well, we'll have to rethink this approach." and I'm left wondering, wtf does he/she mean by this? This hasn't happened to me, but getting fired after six months of never being told you've fucked up or done anything wrong must be brutal.
Now, I get there is some wiggle room, and you can be just as expressive and direct without resorting to swearing or simile, like instead of saying "this software is fucking garbage", saying "this software is bad, wrong and unfit for purpose." but you need to be direct and confrontational so that people know where they stand, rather than pretending to be polite when they are 5 minutes from being fired.
But you don't have to be a douchebag to get your message across tersely and efficiently.
Replace the italicized part with "unprofessional" to see what we can do differently to avoid problems.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Projection? You're denying the elephant in the room. Rather than dig up all the feminist teeth gnashing over this when it was news two years ago, let's just get it from the filly's mouth:
Two questions later...
Oh dear, gender essentialism... tsk tsk. There's nothing preventing women from learning and appreciating this "brogrammer culture". Women have done it forever, until feminist called them "cool girls" and started shaming them.
There is a place for profanity laced arguments. There are times when the cluebat need to be applied. They should be the exception and preferably done in private. The problem comes when every discussion quickly devolves into name calling and profanity. It has the following effects;
1. Less discussion as people drop out as vitriol ensues.
2. Fewer participants as people never come back.
3. Distraction from the real subject. It becomes an insult contest rather than a discussion.
4. Fewer discussions as many don't want to start arguments.
In the end it created smaller communities and worse code. Just because you can bully someone into agreeing does not make you right; just a more effective bully.
Just because a woman has brought it up does not make it a gender issue. In the end this is not a man or woman issue it is a civility issue.
To all those who say "women should get thicker skins and not take things personally" I say "certain men should stop equating being right with their worth/masculinity or go back to the cave where they belong".
Your post is a complete joke that serve your only ego. In a technical discussion there absolutely no valid reason to show your feeling.
Yes, because hormones, primary and secondary sexual characteristics, differences in nutrition, intuition, metabolism, ways of thinking, reflexes, strength, flexibility, personal dress, perception of customers and co-workers and workers lower and higher on the totem pole and the product and process(es) at hand, all personal interests that impact business thinking, not to mention (he mentioned) instinct and the male-female polarization evolution has so diligently implanted in healthy human beings, completely disappear (by magic, obviously) when one is a professional. Oh wait, I meant, "when one has been knocked out by a severe impact to the skull." And by "magic", I meant "brain function has been suspended." And by "professional", I mean SJW. Or "moron." No, actually both.
Wow, that was fun. :)
Takeaway: Of course women should be treated differently than men. Because, you know, they're... different. I'm so sorry you haven't noticed that yet. Take my word for it, though. Those differences can be valuable to everyone, if we stop this absurd pretense that we're all square pegs made from the same Styrofoam. Not that there's much chance of that happening.
I have zero problem with a woman who has/earns more money than me, who is smarter than me, who wants to dress and act as a guy or like a classic pinup, etc. Nor do I have a problem being polite to them, respecting the boundaries they set, if they do that, including them in my verbal horseplay (or not) to whatever degree they seem to be comfortable with, for whatever reason that may be. Same thing for the fellows. And I don't give the south end of a northbound rat what someone's sexual preferences are, or what they say, relate, or joke about, sexually speaking, until/unless I am sexually involved with them myself. What I have a problem with is people like you, who try to pretend that we're all the same. We're not. Not only are men not the same as women, men are not the same as other men, and women are not the same as other women. Any drive to present the situation as otherwise is an act of pure disruptive idiocy of real benefit only to lawyers. Should we all respect each other and try to work together smoothly and productively and for everyone's best outcome? Sure. Of course. Should we pretend we're all the same and create cookie-cutter uniform behavior to match? No. Fuck no.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You don't even have to win the fight, you just have to hurt them, and they will leave you alone in the future.
I knew a girl who was bullied by some other girls in school. One day she fought back, and landed a good punch. Two days later she was gone because they ganged up on her, set her hair on fire and burned her with cigarettes. Her parents drove her to another school after that.
bullies are usually cowards.
Except when they're not cowards, outweigh you, and have a lot of friends. This is not uncommon.
I know more than a few guys who were bullied. Some fought back, sometimes it worked. As often as not though, it didn't help one iota, and if anything just made it worse.
The football quarterback prom king dating the lead cheerleader who throws the best parties? Half the school worships him, including the teachers? He can be a bully too. I wouldn't count on the idea that landing a couple good punches on him is going to make life better for his victim.
And then what? Did he always need his friends around after that to defend himself against you? I know it didn't feel like it at the time, but frankly, you "won."
I was the fat, slow kid that a lot of people picked on. On two separate occasions - once in middle school, and once in high school, I turned on the guy hassling me and just started pounding. Got in trouble at school; in school suspensions. Neither of those guys hassled me again. My only regret is not doing it sooner and more often.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Torvalds tried to take the conversation private, Sharp choose to make it public again ..
"The argument over whether such language is appropriate then moved off-list, with Torvalds trying to make the conversation private and Sharp making it public again. "Oh, FFS, I [was] just called out on private email for 'playing the victim card,'" arstechnica.com
"I'm *also* not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords" Torvalds
It's the fucking Linux Kernel Mailing List, not a playground. Adults are supposed to be able to resolve their conflicts without violence, and act reasonably and even somewhat professionally towards each other. Grow up.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Sometimes you need to be an asshole to those who just don't get it after being told otherwise several times before.
Would this be news if it were Samuel Sharp posting this and quitting?
The problem is maintainers that don't understand that in a open community there is by definition all the possible perception. The only solution is to be professional and careful at the highest possible level with the others.
She probably left saying "Ah fork it!"
How do you talk to your clients ?
... the leaders of the community are prioritising the "need" for people to express themselves aggressively over other people's potential need for respectful and sensitive communication.
Yup, that's right. It's their communication style and it has worked well for them for years. If people with 'sensitive needs' want to participate, they should have to toughen up, or fork the code and show those mean bastards the superiority of 'sensitive' interaction styles. Sharp has no right to impose her expectations on them. They've made it clear they don't respect whiners who can't handle harsh criticism for mistakes, and what does she do? Whine. What a joke.
It's all very well to say that people need to learn not to take things personally, but the fact is that you can't possibly know - especially not over a mailing list - just what emotional or personal issues a person might be going through. Do you really a want a situation where curious and potentially talented developers are put off contributing to an important project because of a toxic culture?
It doesn't matter how talented the person is if those emotional problems prevent rational acceptance of criticism, especially if the person is now in a critical role. Linus gets a lot of flack for his bluntness, but he really only lets loose when someone in such a role fucks up big time. One individual's (or group's) toxic culture is another's productive environment. The only way to change the culture is to compete and outpace it with superior productivity. In the case of the kernel, she should fork it and start her own team to show linus and friends how it's done.
And yet she's perfectly willing to mock, abuse, and deride people on her own turf where she's the one in charge. This is just another case of hypocrisy from top to bottom. She wants to be an "equal" but she also wants everyone to bend over backwards to accomodate her and treat her gently. She talks about things being "toxic" but is toxic herself to anyone she disagrees with... when she's the one holding all the cards.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
+1000
Some peoples need to travel a bit more outside touristic places to test there ability to communicate.
Given that FreeBSD already has been neutered by a CoC due to similarly written complaints, this doesn't sound too different from a spurned SJW.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
(and that as the figurehead for the whole effort he has a non-negligible effect on the tone of communications)
The other day I was playing doubles tennis with some guy friends and one of them joked about something that we thought was funny, but the guy on the receiving end of that joke got angry, smashed his racquet and walked off the court. The rest of us were left puzzled. In my mind, LKML is a bit like that. Some people are too sensitive to be in that community and they probably should not be part of it.
This lady is probably a fine engineer, but perhaps too sensitive for LKML.
This is an interesting conflict. A group of people find the LKML culture to be toxic to such an extent that they decide to stop participating in it. The question is: should the LKML culture change to accommodate them?
I don't see any easy answers. Many people agree that Casablanca was a great film. At the time it was being made, the people involved thought it was just another film. We don't know what magic ingredients caused that film to be great. There is no known recipe to reproduce that greatness.
The Intel culture has produced some fabulous things. It has been at the forefront of exponential growth in digital electronics for decades. But there are many things that culture is not good at creating. Operating systems that run on their hardware, for example. Likewise, Google bought Motorola Mobility in 2011 but ended up selling it at a loss three years later. The Google culture was really good at many things but making smartphones was not one of them.
The Linux kernel is unique and like the movie Casablanca we just don't know what combination of elements caused it to be so great. We have no recipe for making another OS like Linux. This is not from lack of trying. The question is: should we try to change the culture on LKML in order to make it appear less toxic to a group of people? Are the parts of the culture that seem toxic to some people part of the magic that has made Linux so successful? We just don't know.
If I was king of the world and everyone ultimately answered to me then I would let Linus decide if he wants to change the LKML or not. I don't think anyone knows why the LKML consistently make good kernels the same way Intel consistently makes good hardware. The person who knows it best is Linus. I would trust his gut instinct of what to do about changing the culture he has created. If I was forced to decide then I would tell him to keep doing what he has been doing because, for me, the quality of the kernel is far more important than a group of people finding the LKML culture toxic.
Of course there has to be a line drawn somewhere. For example if the LKML required ritual human sacrifices, that would be totally unacceptable. Any forms of physical violence would be unacceptable, even forms of hate speech would be unacceptable. For me, a group of people who can't work with the kernel because they find the environment toxic does not cross the line. If it was a large fraction of the developers then it would be a problem. If I saw instances that were particularly egregious then that would be a problem too.
There are many work environments that people would find much more toxic than the LKML. Commercial fishing is one obvious example. I think the vast majority of people (at least from the first world) would find working as a commercial fisherman to be toxic, intolerable, and probably impossible. This does not necessarily mean commercial fishing needs to change in order have a less toxic work environment. The obvious solution has already been implemented: if you don't want to be a commercial fisherman then don't be one.
Perhaps the same obvious solution has been found here was well. I think it is good that this issue is brought up every now and then. It gives Linus a chance to see if he thinks the LKML culture needs to change. But I don't see any reason for the LKML to be all inclusive. I think it would be fine if it were a mostly all whiteboys club (I don't know if it is) as long as there is no discrimination based on gender or race instead of actions. If it works and you don't know how or why it works then don't fix it.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
You're making crude generalizations on the basis of gender. I dare say that borderline bullying isn't a healthy environment for a lot of men or women; it's immature and unprofessional and, as Sarah Sharp eloquently points out in her post, by tolerating such a culture the leaders of the community in question are prioritising the "need" for people to express themselves aggressively over other people's potential need for respectful and sensitive communication. It's all very well to say that people need to learn not to take things personally, but the fact is that you can't possibly know - especially not over a mailing list - just what emotional or personal issues a person might be going through. Do you really a want a situation where curious and potentially talented developers are put off contributing to an important project because of a toxic culture?
What struck me about what she was trying to do, and I've seen others try to do the same thing, is to equate some comment or comments on a mailing list, or other post, as "violence". When I grew up we learned that "Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me." That is, they're just words, they are not fists or knives or guns. It's not "violence" to berate someone or use colorful language or anything else. It may "offend" you, but taking offense at something someone says is entirely subjective, and impossible to enforce, because you end up with "speech codes", banning words, and other asinine restrictions until everything is a euphemism or metaphor until no one knows what anyone is talking about any more.
Bullying used to mean you're getting physically intimidated, punched, kicked, assaulted or robbed regularly. Now it seems it's enough that someone said something that hurt your feelings. And people can get their feelings hurt by things that are totally NOT intended that way by the speaker, just because of the listener's history or viewpoint.
Equating speech to physical violence is a very dangerous trend that will not end well.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
They want to be treated like human beings.
Why this is so difficult for you is beyond me.
Required reading for internet skeptics
A correct action (one of them, there are many) probably is to stand up, say "you're being dismissive of my (whatever) here, and I'm pretty sure you are doing the (business, operation, product, clean floor, collegial atmosphere, whatever) no favors at all with that because (short summary of why). How about you consider my input a bit more carefully and try again, or, please feel free to explain in detail what it is you have in mind that is better than the input I just provided to you?"
There are certainly others.
None of them involve smacking anyone with a keyboard, but also, none of them involve pretending that spirited back and forth is a bad idea, either. Sometimes we don't think through what someone else is telling us. Sometimes your idea is really not worth considering in any depth (hey, let's give away the product, we'll make it up in volume!) Sometimes you're right, but even so, you just have to stand up and make your point. Again, With more oomph. Perhaps even more than once. Without collapsing into a little heap of quivering goo and tears.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Shara doing shit code ? Have you some evidence ?
Badly.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There are a few problems here. 1) You don't understand the concept of equality. 2) You don't see anything wrong with your behavior.
Here's a hint: Men don't like your shitty attitude any more than women do. Women are just more likely to call you out than the other beta males you abuse.
Required reading for internet skeptics
A man can be blunt to another man and tell him "You're being a fuckwad. Don't do this." Hell, bitter sports rivals will go for a beer afterwards. The "trash talk" is par for the course and men think nothing of it.
A woman will perceive as the man not being "sensitive."
So who's right?
Both. Men need to learn to communicate _differently_ with women and consider their feelings. And women need to learn not to take everything so fucking personal. /Oblg joke. "Can you show me a woman who doesn't take everything personal? No, because you'd be left with a man!" (With apologies to Jack Nicholson in "As good as it gets.")
You are correct - sort of. I've seen this sort of thing blow up. Guy says something completely innocent like the teasing guys do. Says it to a woman. She goes nuts about it, and guy catches hell. Guy has no idea on how to communicate other that learn his lesson, and keep his mouth wired shut. Now the thing is, where I was, many of the women were just as pissed off at each other. As a rule, women in leadership positions were considered negatively - and not by the men.
It's the sort of thing that has made me consider that as you note, adjustment has to be made on both sides. Whereas everything I have seen is that men must adjust to what the women want.
But how would we even approach that subject? I'll be attacked for merely saying that all workplace problems are not 100 percent men's fault. Just watch.
But when many of the women in a workplace resent other women, it's going to be hard for men to fix that problem by changing.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
feminist bullshitter detected
Oh. My. Goodness. There are stresses and consequences to being the exception and attempting to remediate an entrenched problem within an existing system that could affect the viability of the system. Who would have thunk it? How could it BE that everyone in the system doesn't immediately send money, flowers and carve your name on a granite wall Time to go home and hide under the bed, clearly. Get going. It'll be dark soon.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I'm a director of IT with both men and women in the department. A good boss/leader knows how to motivate and recognizes that there isn't a one size fits all approach. I am by no means perfect but it is not at all hard to be clear and to the point without swearing, yelling, insulting people, or being abusive.
I rarely yell or swear but my employees know when I'm not happy and when they need to do better.
My honest belief is that a lot of people in IT simply do not know how to interact effectively with people who aren't like them. Even worse is that they see the problem as being with those that they're interacting with rather than as a set of skills they need to work on.
Let me be direct. If you find women as a group difficult to work with (as opposed to just certain individuals), then the problem is with your approach, not theirs.
Both perspectives are equally important, so the side that complains the most needs to grow up.
Bzzzzzzt. Wrong answer! or You're being a fuckwad. Don't do this.
This is not a gender-based difference. It's bullshit gender-stereotyping to think women need thicker skins, or than men need to be softer when dealing with women. I know plenty of women that can dish out and receive much blunter criticism than average, and plenty of men who can't.
This is a matter of different communication styles and is irrespective of gender. Insular communities that have made bluntness (or worse, crudeness) an acceptable form of communication are inherently hostile to people that find that unacceptable. As a result, they will lose the support and contributions from people that value less toxic communication.
On the flip side, too much caveating and balancing of emotion can be stifling to those who do not value amicability in their communications. This also can have a negative impact on participation. This is basic human communication skills, and requires finding the right balance based on the personalities of the participants in determining what the collective group will value and respond best to.
It's very well known that the Linux kernel community weighs very heavily to one side of the spectrum, and honestly it's as the public face, Linus sets the tone (intentionally or not). This is a very good example of a well-respected person making it clear that they are self-limiting their contributions specifically because of how communications within the community are balanced.
Chalking this up to "men and women are different' is a disingenuous attempt to sidetrack the discussion with a red herring.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
It's all very well to say that people need to learn not to take things personally...
Most people understand that to mean that adults should not take non-personal comments personally. The problem is that bullies turn it around to try to tell others that they should not take personal attacks personally, at which point it becomes bullshit.
That's exactly what Linus *doesn't* want. "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is all about manipulating people, stroking their ego and trying to act in a way so that they like you.
So that they like you? Wrong, it's about being able to identify what you need to say and do to a particular person in order to get that person what you need or want them to do. In other words, management, influence (it's right there in the title!). It's about how to effectively lead a group of people that each have their own personal needs. You identify the needs they have, what motivates or de-motivates them, and apply that to get them to effectively do their job as part of the team. It's exactly what being a manager or team leader is all about. In practice the bad managers are the ones who don't understand how to do that. There is a very good argument to be made that Linus is a very bad manager.
For example, I'm a developer and I have zero interest in getting involved with the Linux kernel specifically because I don't want to be yelled at while I'm learning the thing. I have other things I could be doing than getting yelled at while I'm trying to learn something. I studied the architecture of it in college (we had an entire class specifically on the kernel code), and I was interested to see how it worked and how they chose to solve various problems, but I have no interest in trying to actually engage with the people who would sooner tear me down than answer my questions or point me in the right direction.
It's not a work environment I want any part of, so Linus is free to refuse to do anything based on being able to work in his bathrobe from home, but in the end he's only going to attract the kind of people who want to work in their bathrobe from home. I'm not one of those people, shit I don't even own a bathrobe. It's like the women I know who have trouble finding a good guy, and decide to dress like a whore (I say this with the utmost respect for these women, it's a term they freely and jokingly use to describe their own outfits) and go hang out in bars. If that's how they dress and that's where they hang out, then they're only going to attract a guy looking for those qualities (which, incidentally, is not the kind of guy they really want). The same goes for Linus, he's only going to attract the kind of people who think that sitting in a bathrobe at home yelling at people is just the thing for them. That's great, but there are a lot of us who want more from our relationships, and Sarah Sharp, like my single female friends, is apparently one of those people.
The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because THAT is what "acting professionally" results in: people resort to all kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their normal urges in unnatural ways.
I'm split on whether Linus' logical fallacy is the slippery slope, or black and white. Apparently he thinks that putting on a tie and not calling co-workers names will always lead to what he's describing. The fact is that a lot of people manage to treat their co-workers with respect without resorting to lying, backstabbing, and passive-aggressive behavior. Linux is only saying that he's incapable of doing that. It's his failure personally, not a failure of being professional.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
There have been "abuse" problems on the internet since before it existed, when bulletin board servers were common. There is just something about being on a remote keyboard or microphone that brings out the absolute worst in a lot of people. Trash talking gamers, bigots, racists, stark raving lunatics -- they're all "wired".
You can complain about it all you like, but unless you're going to censor the shit out of every forum, website, and mailing list in existence, you are going to be faced with it. The same way you're going to be faced with such people in real life.
Sadly, a lot of people would rather whinge and whine about their "rights" and their "feelings" rather than face up to reality. They live in a dream world of kittens, unicorns, and rainbows that exhibits a completely and totally unrealistic expectation of what society is or should be.
Can't handle the pressure? Leave -- which she is doing. But posting a long-winded rant about why you're leaving is just childish, selfish, "pity poor me" bullshit. Everyone already knows it's going on; they don't give a flying fuck about your hurt feelings over anyone else's (often including their own.)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I will do my best to set them up for failure. People with that mentality don't usually plan ahead very well.
If a male developer was subject to perceived verbal abuse, he would have taken it up with the individuals in private. If a female developer perceives same, she can't wait to blast it out to the sisterhood. Who can find nothing better to do than attend tech conferences desperately in search of sexual harassment they can write about. If she had any common sense she would have paused before bring controversy to the LKML. Sometimes you would wish that certain people weren't on your side.
Linux kernel civility discussion
There is others places debating very technical question without using brutality, for example Stackoverflow.
This is just too true.
The more you delve into gender issues, the more you realize just how wrong people can be.
Just the other day, I was reading the globeandmail and they had some ground breaking research that men might not like to work long hours at the office fighting to bring home the big bucks. They might actually like to spend time with their families!
Shocking! Men aren't just alpha dogs battling to be the alpha male of the patriarchy!
I say it sarcastically, but the researcher was genuinely surprised at the findings.
It's the same with women. Lots of women are aggressive, bullies...
This is not to say there are not trends.
Maybe 30% of men like the aggressive 'alpha male' environment at work.
Maybe only 20% of women.
Who knows of the actual numbers.
I tried doing this, but the cops seem to disagree that a 40+ year old man beating up 3rd graders is an effective way of dealing with bullies...
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Can't take it? Go! -- No problem.
That's what she did. Linux lost a (presumably) talented coder because of inept management practices. A good manager knows his team and engages each person in a way that enables them to be most productive.
This in turn enables the team to be most successful.
Is Linux successful? Debatable. It has success in limited uses, but has never grown beyond these uses. It is a feature, not a product. Linus accomplished a lot, but what groundbreaking thing has he done in the last 20 years?
I'm sorry, but what Linus says is pure bullshit.
It's not about manipulating others or faking politeness, it's about respecting others.
You don't have to be condescending to be respectful.
And you can avoid bullying people when unnecessary.
It's all about non-violence: you treat others as you expect that they treat you.
At my first job, 30 years ago, experienced people were bullying inexperienced people, just because they had a little bit more knowledge.
Even though I was on the experienced part, it was a terrible experience for me, since toxic people endelessly badmouthed others and it was very demotivating.
A few years after I quit, I learned that the toxic guys were badmouthing each others, to the point that there have been some revenge, and the police was called !!!
What I learned from that is that if you want to be alone, you can treat others like shit, it doesn't matter.
But if you need to build a community, you have to learn how to behave, and encourage people to share knowledge and help them feel secure.
From a non-violent point of view, you have to realize that your actions will cause unpredictable reactions, and by treating others like shit, you are perceived as what you really are: an asshole.
Linus probably believes that he's irreplaceable, but he's not, and I'm sure he won't be missed.
I am sorry to say that Linus is completely wrong on this. He was always the uncontested leader of the project since almost a quarter of century, making her unable to understand the point of view of peoples not close to his position. I am as old as Linus, I also sitting in my home office (somethime) wearign a bathrobe. This don't allow me to expose any of my emotions to my professional contacts. Inability to communicate a disagreement without harsh words is immature and unprofessional. Linus has simply no one he respect enough to accept a limit on how he communicate. If I do the same, I will lost all my clients.
A lot of very bright but socially challenged folks in the online and developer world need to do a lot of growing up. It has nothing to do with "radical honesty". It has to do with spewing one's own inability to contain little frustrations out upon others. Letting loose and attacking is not honest communication. It is thoughtless treatment of others. The problem is not that the recipient is weak or can't play the game. The problem is that people think it is fine that they say anything, no matter how abusive, to anyone, and that there are no obligations to the rest of humanity.
Don't step on the baby.
What a load of stereotypical bollocks. I'm a man, and I don't accept or give abuse at work. If someone is rubbish, I'll tell them politely and professionally what they need to change, and if they continue to be rubbish, I'll fire them. Most of the women I have worked with seem to have the same sense of humour, skin-thickness and social skills as the men. i.e. if you are flat out rude and abusive, they get upset.
There is no need for for abusive leadership styles, irrespective of whether the team members or male or female.
Not everyone has the power to fire everyone they have a personality conflict with. You apparently are CEO and sole investor of your company.
Not at all. Just a lowly Software Development Manager. Company of roughly 50,000 worldwide (not an IT company).
I think you missed my main point -- that being rude isn't usually helpful, and you focussed on the firing bit (which was simply an aside).
Ahh, but the "firing bit" sounds like the key -- it's easy to tell someone to stop abuse when you have the power to fire them. It's less easy when it's someone at the same level or a superior that has the power to fire *you*.
The whole point in having friends is that they are around for you regularly. You beat up a bully, and instead of just the bully regularly attacking you, you have the bully and/or all their friends regularly attacking you. In a hierarchical environment, you even have unrelated people now against you for trying to beat the system and not just taking your beating. If striking back actually stopped you from being bullied, you were exceptionally luck - but you say you were picked on by "a lot of people" and your method perhaps stopped two specific people, so it sounds like your approach did not work.
I went to a boarding school a few decades ago. Bullies with well-connected parents and not on any sort of scholarship were untouchable. I recall one bully being tied to a radiator and beaten unconscious by several of his victims in unison. Most of those vigilantes were expelled. The problem was the school for not dealing with many of the bullies even when they knew exactly what was going on and knew that victims had no escape.
Bullies exist as long as those with the greater power tolerate the bullies. That's always how it works, whether on the playground or in the workplace. The stereotype of the weak bully who only picks on those who won't fight back is feel-good nonsense and applies to a small proportion of the world's assholes. The effective bullies will pin you down and choke you, metaphorically or literally, for daring to assert yourself. They have dealt with uppity little shits like you a hundred times before.
Exactly. And it's not only in a professional environment. There is a lot of situations in society and family that require to have some emotional control. Ironically most modern society have the biggest difficulties to pass the messages from a generation to next one. Maybe different humans need different experience without emotional control to understand why it's so important to have it. I used to think that's something we all learned while we was children. I now think I was wrong.
It's worth clarifying; I am an exceptional communicator. I can and do motivate others to achieve their best.
However. I find the required communication methods necessary to properly interface with most women exhausting. Necessary criticism must be delivered in such a way that takes far longer and requires far more redundant communication. Most men, however, are far easier to deal with. These are, of course, generalities.
That you don't have the same reactions suggests you are a far more natural communicator than I, for which I'm envious. So you are very probably right; it is a "me" thing.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Great point. Now, in a community as diverse as the whole world, where there is all possible perceptions, exactly how do you plan on defining "professional", oh wise one? Frankly, the kernel got along just fine before Sara, and it will get along just fine without her. Her belief that everyone is going to look at who posted a particular post, try to figure out what her particular emotional needs might be, and adjust their communication style accordingly is fuckwad level arrogant. By her own admission nobody is singling her out for special treatment. It seems that is what is really bothering her. I'm sure she is a fine woman. That being said, I'm sure she'll find a FOSS project that suits her emotional needs, but expecting the LKML to change to suit her is indeed, over the top fuckwad level arrogance.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Got it in one. Sharp is trying to impose her own preferred communication style on an existing community, to make all of them cater to her desires in every communication. And yet she claims she's the one being bullied.
You can argue that all day ... in another thread. We are talking about the LKML here. Nobody is claiming it is full of such people; not even Sara Sharp is claiming that.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
The world doesn't work in any one way. There are all sorts of different companies, communities, and development teams. Women should do the same thing men do: if your workplace or project culture isn't a good match, you leave without making a big fuss. Simple as that.
Yes, that's fine, and then all but the assholes will leave and you'll end up with a really toxic environment. That's not something to be proud of and more importantly, I think it's a long-term recipe for failure.
like the SJW's in Green Inferno?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
But who decides what is toxic and what is merely communication pointing out people's mistakes?
It's a judgment call, but you have to decide what a reasonable person could honestly think is inappropriate and go from there.
I doubt there's a single competent corporate manager who would not discipline someone who said things like this at work. And if there were, I'd hate to work at that person's company.
Linus is too busy to hold everyone's hands to make them feel special. Maybe she has untapped potential that could revolutionize Linux, but more than likely, she's just a plebeian trying to see what it's like to work with the elite. Some of it is also a culture issue. Linus comes from a culture where you don't sugar coat everything. If she doesn't like it, she can fork Linux or make her own kernel. Extremely skilled people tend to be rough around the edges.
Terse, yes. Contains the word "fuckwad", no. Personal insults are neither professional nor efficient.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
I've had people talk to me like this. After I slept on it, I thanked them for their honesty. I'll NEVER make that same mistake again.
Pretty sure the word "fuckwad" is over the line for practically all people. That's not "any sort of criticism" at all; it's just a personal insult.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Linus is describing a false dichotomy. Deciding not to curse every other sentence is not the same as lying and manipulating. The intent of cursing and swearing IS to bring emotion into the conversation. If you want an unemotional and logical response (fix what is broken), then don't introduce emotion into an exchange that doesn't warrant it.
I realize that coarse language in many situations is just part of the culture of the group and is often devoid of any real meaning or it could even be part of what is meant to be a warm exchange. But in a technical exchange it is wasted bandwidth at best unless the situation really warrants it.
I have a young teen and part of our deal with him is that he can have a smartphone with the understanding that we as his parents can check what he is doing on it any time. Teenagers don't always use the best judgement. Anyway, the texts exchanged with his friends are full of swearing. But even teens are smart enough to recognize that would not be an effective way to communicate outside of certain situations.
Yes, contributions will correlate with aggressiveness more than skill or ability. The code and quality will suffer, and eventually be extinguished.
Learn to love Alaska
Sometimes if you call out the bully you end up in the hospital. Sometimes if you call them out, they end up on the ground and you walk away. More often than you accept, the former happens.
Learn to love Alaska
Says the anonymous coward....
Nope, that's when the assholes finally get some work done because they can say what they mean rather than spending all their time trying to walk the nonexistent line between "hurt feelings" and "not getting your point across"
The Linux community has a hard time attracting talent precisely because the people in charge have essentially zero skill in interpersonal relationships
You don't need interpersonal skills as long as you have good communication, existing talent, and a highly desirable product. Coddling the riff-raff will kill Linux faster than scaring them away.
The dog needs petting only after you kick it. I generally see emotional petting only come after an insulting and inappropriate comment. A woman who politely asserts her opinion, in exactly the same way as a guy, is likely to be met with a comment like "your time of the month?" And yes, after that, she leaves the group, and petting is required to get her to reconsider playing with such a collection of people.
All it takes is having the men not be deliberately rude, and the need for emotional petting disappears.
Learn to love Alaska
...in the adjacent thread on the favorite nerd TV show.
Yeah, if a faggot wants to work construction, the faggot had better get used to all he faggot jokes told. Or, the inconsiderate bigots could just keep their mouths shut, but I can see how the inconsiderate bigots everywhere would object to that.
Learn to love Alaska
Professional behavior doesn't differ by gender. Even the words should be the same.
I never have to treat the women I work with differently because of their 'emotional state' or any gender issue.
I suggest that this is true because you instinctively treat people well and act in a professional manner. You may in fact be treating men and women differently without thinking that you are.
But the point is not that it's a problem, but that it's right. You're treating people as they would like to be treated. You're being considerate. You're keeping things on a professional, respectful plane.
If everyone did that, on both "sides" (as if there should even be "sides"), there would be few issues. And more productive work would definitely get done because the workplace would present a desirable environment conducive to doing work instead of having the destructive distraction of dealing with problem people.
Face bashing is "active aggressive".
it sounds like your interpersonal relationship skills are still on the school playground...
oh wait, are you still in school?
So he creates an argument made entirely of strawmen, and wonders why doe doesn't get taken seriously?
Linus should grow a thicker skin. If he really didn't think criticism was valid, he shouldn't get so upset about it.
Perhaps you should try to figure out why people are calling you a fuckwad. If it is because you are a fuckwad, you might consider working on that. If it is because they are the fuckwad, why do you give it any weight at all?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Why do all the best comments come along right after I've used up mod points?
Yes, the "connected" bully, one who operates from a supporting cultural base, is all-powerful, but today the bullied have a new weapon today in social media with pervasive camera technology. Now someone on your side who sees you being tied to that radiator can surreptitiously produce video that can be shown to the administration with the threat of "Expel me, and this goes up on YouTube. And no, this isn't the only copy."
You need to look up the phrase "behind your back"
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
We code monkeys argue, curse, bitch and moan over our code. But it's just the code, it's not personal.
If she can't handle what equates to "rough housing", which the competitiveness and debates that ignore political correctness, nobody is going to debate a topic politely, i.e " you are wrong good sir...may I offer a gentlemanly rebuttal pip pip" then she definitely needs to 'Git' out of the mix.
It's organized chaos and from that chaos a better product forms.
Holy shit. I mean, holy fucking shit. You truly are a fuckwad.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
The stereotype of the weak bully who only picks on those who won't fight back is feel-good nonsense and applies to a small proportion of the world's assholes. The effective bullies will pin you down and choke you, metaphorically or literally, for daring to assert yourself. They have dealt with uppity little shits like you a hundred times before.
The part where they won't fight back is nonsense. Some won't and some obviously will.
The spirit of this stereotype is nonetheless true. Bullies are bullies precisely because they are weak. They may not be physically weak, but they are emotionally weak. Their defective personalities are usually a result of past trauma. The bully at your school who got beaten didn't come out on top. He's a shitty person who probably has no real friends.
So no, fighting a bully isn't always the best idea, especially if you are not good at fighting. This doesn't mean that we should never fight back against bullies.
The problem was the school for not dealing with many of the bullies even when they knew exactly what was going on and knew that victims had no escape.
Maybe the school had a "really good" excuse. Maybe the school felt bullied by the well-connected parents of the bullies. /s
Bullies are a dime a dozen. It is more common than not that properly dealing with a bully will involve more than simply reporting them to the proper authority. This is why being able to stand up for yourself becomes such an important personality trait.
Fighting back doesn't have to be physical. Maybe you could cyberbully him back on facebook.
I think it's a shame. But like I wrote, I just avoid that crowd. I really have better things to do in my life. "Funny" that your first assumption is that I am the fuckwad, though.
Perl Programmer for hire
I don't doubt that there are some patterns of human behavior that can be analyzed and predicted, but generally I don't take every social science theory as gospel.
Come to the FreeBSD team, I am sure they would love to have a talented programmer.
To quote Linus about "professional"
Because if you want me to 'act professional,' I can tell you that I'm not interested. I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because THAT is what 'acting professionally' results in: people resort to all kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their normal urges in unnatural ways.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So... Are we still hating on GNOME or are we celebrating their outside the box thinking now? Because I've got a few pitchforks I'm wondering what to do with.
As a man I'll take issue with that. Some of us actually prefer a civil work environment as well. This isn't about men vs. women. It is people who never learned how to hold back when they're about to be an asshole vs people who realize they can do better things with their time. There's always a middle ground, but based on her work history I'd say she gave it a shot but others never matured.
Linus and other kernel devs have done some really damned cool things. But they also got really lucky getting to stake out a place where they don't have to give a shit about basic workplace behaviors. Too bad they didn't decide to grow up a bit more because I think Linux would have gone much larger places by now had the childishness of key people not turned off many other people from jumping into development.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
I don't necessarily have any disagreements, but perhaps others do.
Unfortunately the blog post doesn't mention any specifics. I wouldn't be surprised if every little critique is being taken as "toxic". The post as a whole has a blame-everyone-but-me attitude and it's not very constructive itself.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
The Linux kernel has been around for a long time, and Linus has been abrasive and rude for all that time. So there is little empirical support for your belief.
"When I'm president, Linux will be absolutely stellar, and we'll get rid of the LOSERS who have no idea how to relate to anything but a computer."
- Donald Trump
We need an objective, concise, and unambiguous language to communicate with eachother. In fact we have many such languages right in front of our noses, and they are languages that our community already understands very fluently (despite claims by some of complete retardation of others) . Programming languages!
And by "civil" you mean a work environment where if you say anything even vaguely critical you get jumped on for "tone", an argument you can win only if your social standing and/or position within a corporate hierarchy is sufficiently higher than the person you are criticizing. Geeks, typically being low ranked both socially and within corporate hierarchies, tend to lose all the time in such an environment; it's no wonder they refuse to create it on their own. What Sharp misses is that in this particular environment, those she criticizes have far more social standing and position than she does, so she cannot win this way.
I suspect that your ability to read what I wrote and infer what I did not imply might make you the fuckwad. Don't they have if statements in Perl?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Stop being such a fucking baby. Boohoo the PC nazi's are being passive aggressive to you and you don't know if you are doing a good job? (world's smallest violin playing)...
Sorry, that was inappropriate.... Maybe you should be more mature. Yes your work may require you to act more professionally, and you may not like it, but that's because not everyone appreciates your direct speaking style. (world's most regular-sized violin)...
I'd actually consider doing it if:
1. Slashdot was more than a social setting (it is not).
2. I believed for one moment you were serious. I do not believe it. I think you're trying to make a point by creating a false equivalency.
You think programming languages lend themselves well to concise, and unambiguous communication? Let me guess. You don't actually know any programming languages, do you?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You are clearly a piece of shit.
Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can do more permanent damage. Stockholm syndrome, being groomed, being broken down and molded, these are all this that can be achieved by words alone. Maybe Sarah took these things to heart and was incompatible with that environment, and it's healthy for her to express that. Nobody is expecting everything to change over one individual but she is not out of line in speaking her mind.
Twinstiq, game news
Never worked with a man, have you? Men are just as likely to take something personal, hold a grudge, be hurt by someone else's behavior.
Play Command HQ online
I can assure you that Shara code is fine, just read it, it's open source.
I also share the view that too many maintainers are brutal for nothing, and unable to express there view in a professional way.
I experienced this no later than last week with 2 very simple patches after reporting 2 bugs. The first was minor but a developers asked me to submit a patch and that started a fight between two others developers. The second one is critical. I proposed a patch that was no view as acceptable, so i do a better one with many others proposals. I got a brutal reject without any hint on how to solve the problem. The bug will probably stay for years, since it's already affect almost any kernel since years.
So yes the LKML is a toxic place where it's really not fun to post an contribute.
whooosh!
Every situation is a bit different. Do I prefer civility and kindness? Absolutely. What happens when you take advantage of my good nature? I really don't have a choice but to change tactics. Probably not the first time, but I'll let you know I won't tolerate it again. Have I been accused of being a bully because someone only heard a more abrasive part of the conversation? Absolutely again. The funny thing is that I rarely, if ever, see those people jumping on the chopping block. People that jump in to help the screw up on their own time happens in the movies, but we don't live in movies.
As an example, iff you are a manager and you are working 10 extra hours a week because one of your people is continually messing up, for how long will you continue to be kind? Your personal life relationships start to suffer because of this person? How about when the rest of your team is also putting in 10 extra hours a week because the person is a real mess? Your boss is chewing your ass daily because you are late with a deliverable? The other 20 people on the team are upset because they can't seem to go forward. Nobody can get frustrated and tell that person causing issues to STFU, even if they attempt to pass the blame? Everyone needs to be kind to their "feelings" even though they are making a job miserable for many people?
TFA has nothing to do with bullying, it's about trying to get people to do what needs to be done. I'll add it's about unrealistic expectations where people don't vent in the workplace (or at least do not vent the same way as you). You may not think that the Kernel is a big deal, but it's Linus's whole life. He built it from scratch and makes his livelihood from the project. You can't really compare his perspective with an argument with a co-worker. It's more like seeing a master architect yell at a welder for fucking up a seam and not fixing it after being asked to fix it. Shit happens.
*steps off the soap box*
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Have you ever posted to the LKML recently ? I do. And I can assure you this is actually a stress to get something right on it without getting attacked for nothing or completely ignored. The LKML was no so extreme 15 years ago. Shara was absolutely right to react to the abusive attitude. And yes a professional attitude require that you control your emotion. Only peoples that abuse of there position can lost control without consequences.
Is Linux successful? Debatable. It has success in limited uses,
These limited uses being "pretty much everything outside the desktop".
Servers, embed, high performance computing clusters, smartphones, robots, home appliances, etc.
And new uses still pop up on a regular basis.
Hardly a niche.
Though you probably are proud of explicitely using a non-Linux OS on your computer (Mac OS X ? Windows ?), fact is that you probably interact with a dozen of Linux powered device each day without noticing.
Linus accomplished a lot, but what groundbreaking thing has he done in the last 20 years?
Yeah, the guy has done nothing more that the Linux kernel in he's life. He's a one trick poney.
It's not like he would be ablto to do anything else like starting a distributed source control management (DSCM) that in practice almost replace any other SCM.
Oh, wait...
Without Linus to create Git, you probably wouldn't have had communities like GitHub emerge nowadays (or they would have tried to built on much less optimal technology. Github is born out of the specific feature that with git, forks/merges/rebases are cheap - a specific feature that Linus needed to build in order to be able to use git for the kernel work).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
How do you know they didn't?
More likely it is the nature of email/online communications. It's much easier to be nasty when you don't have to see the other person. There's also tone, etc. If I call a friend a rude name when we're together they know that I'm joking. Smiley faces don't cut it, especially with people that you don't know well.
I used to work for a woman who was a horrible bully. When she turned it on me I had a similar comment to her and she never did it to me again - but I did see her doing it to others. As you say, most bullies are really cowards.
The sweetest part of quitting a bully boss? Watching him stumble around trying to figure out how to replace you and offering you a raise if you'll stay.
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
So I'm waiting for someone at a major corporation that does substantial open source development to file a hostile work environment suit against their company if they are required to do kernel submissions. That would *quickly* result in a change in attitude if a major contributor decided that it was potentially litigiously expensive to contribute.
And I'm talking Intel, IBM, RedHat, or even Google, all with massive presence in the US, where this type of behavior would be considered completely unacceptable.
I'm sorry, this is like working for a vulgar cousin or uncle. Fine for small business and family shops, completely unacceptable outside of that type of environment.
www.christopherlewis.com
Fun fact, I communicated with aforementioned biologists via email (and later Facebook) before we met IRL [1]. There never has been any need for calling each other rude names. On the contrary, most of them are so extremely polite that now and then I feel uncomfortable. I can't even call myself an amateur arachnologist yet they have always treated me with respect, and replied to my questions without all the "U n00b" and "U 1user" attitude I constantly see in IT.
I am a member of several Facebook groups (on arachnids, on orchids, etc.) and most of the time the discussions are friendly and polite. The total amount of abrasive attitude one can find in the comments to a single Slashdot posts between people, even excluding ACs, I haven't seen in all those groups together for years. Oh, and there are plenty of females in those groups. Maybe that's no coincidence?
[1] Another fun fact, I met my wife online, also.
Perl Programmer for hire
My current work on userspace graphics enabling may require me to send an occasional quirks kernel patch, but I know I will spend at least a day dreading the potential toxic background radiation of interacting with the kernel community before I send anything
My wife and I did some extensive work to learn how to avoid expressing disrespect to each other.
One day I complained to her that she'd made me swim in a sea of toxic disrespectful judgments all day.
What I learned from the professionals was that using hyperbolic labels like "toxic" is also disrespectful. It's better to just stick to noting that you felt disrespected by a particular statement or statements until the message gets across - assuming the other side is working on learning to avoid disrespect. If they aren't, you identify the disrespect for them, notify them you aren't going to tolerate it any more, and then enforce boundaries to make sure you aren't subjected to it any more.
Another thing I learned is that people who are in an abusive relationship (including disrespect) tend to become abusers themselves.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
The problem starts at the top.
What I have seen: Someone submits a fix that does not quite work. Linus reverts the commit with a long diatribe on why the user is stupid for what he did. The end result is work was done, but nothing is produced. And, the developer likely gives up.
What could Linus have done instead:
* He could have modified the commit so that it does work.
* He could have sent the submitter ideas on how to fix the code.
* He could have opened an off-line dialogue discussing solutions to the problem.
* He could have had better test procedures so that the submitter would have know there was an error in his commit.
* He could have added a test case so that this commit error does not happen again.
Lots of productive things he could have done instead.
By what mechanism? None of these corporations controls Linus; Linus cannot be (successfully) sued for contributing to a hostile work environment somewhere else. If some corporation doesn't want to contribute, they won't get what they want in the kernel; Linux and Linus will weather it just fine.
Ugly and fat https://www.flickr.com/photos/saharabeara/19083403420
If Linus really said that, then the situation is even worse than I thought. Linus seems to be way more out of touch than I'd given him the benefit of doubt for.
I've been in plenty of workplaces where acting professionally didn't result in backstabbing, passive aggressiveness, and so on. In fact, that's probably the very definition of a non-professional workplace.
The entire point of a team is people giving up some of their own personal goals in exchange for the rewards that are made possible by acting as a group. Otherwise what's the point? Let's say someone does something you don't like. Do you (a) proceed to verbally assault them until they leave and never come back, or (b) do you give reserved, on-topic criticism, and praise if they carry out your suggestions, resulting in them being a better worker and the project carrying on forward? The worst-case scenario is that they don't learn from their mistakes in which case you respectfully tell them to leave the project. It's that simple.
That entire Linus quote should be a representative example of what happens when you have no clue how to lead. People should print it and hang it up on their office walls as a good example of what has gone wrong with the Linux community.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
Anonymous coward, there are only two ways to learn something:
1. Learn from your own experience.
2. Learn from other people's experiences.
Sometimes it's impossible to do (2). You can't learn to drive by reading a book. But when it's at all possible, (2) is vastly preferable to (1) in terms of time and effort.
No one could ever hope to personally accumulate all the experiences necessary to be a leader on their own. You have no CHOICE but to learn from others.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
It's not a binary between "coddling" (by which I assume you mean making sure no one's feelings ever get hurt) and "being a relentless fucking asshole." It's possible to strike a balance.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
Technical expertise is a justification for hostile behavior. Just reading the statement shows how obviously idiotic it is. Just imagine that this was operational in other situations: your auto mechanic, pharmacist, grocery checkout clerk, all insulted you because you didn't know as much as they do about their work. This actually happens with police, where they can arbitrarily make a mountain out of a molehill, or vice versa, and this is one of the reasons we are seeing so much upheaval now that it's ending up on video.
Technical issues should be discussed using emotional language. Emotional language is the opposite of rational discussion, and it makes incorrect reasoning much more likely. Why engage in behavior that leads to less trustworthy results?
The person who prevails in an emotional argument has the best technical answer. Again, this is completely ridiculous. Sometimes there is no clear best solution. If the ultimate decision is based on the ability to prevail in an emotionally based environment, then the outcome is biased towards argument skill and away from technical issues. Clearly there is no correlation between being able to win an argument and being technically correct.
It's programming culture, get used to it. That's a circular argument that can be used to justify any bad behavior: racial discrimination, ethnic cleansing, rape, religious violence, by substituting something else for "programming". At best it could be construed as an unreasoned defense of the status quo in software development. Given how notorious software is for being late, over budget, bug ridden, incomplete or nondeliverable, stating that programming culture is OK is to set the bar really really low.
I personally have seen vast amounts of time wasted in useless argument. It's routine to see people fight over meaningless points because nobody was willing to back down. I've seen men almost come to blows. I have seen projects crippled because everyone was forced to take sides. There are times when there is actually technical agreement, but the fight continued anyway. I have wasted years of work time because of this kind of behavior during my career.
So what'sreally going on here? You have a bunch of guys who claim to be guided by technical excellence who are defending a culture guided by irrational emotional behavior that often delivers bad results.
There is an obvious answer: it's not really about the technology, it's about unbounded ego. The real goal is power and personal dominance. Coding is just an excuse.
This conclusion is supported by looking at the common attitude in the supportors of a culture of hostility. According to them, they are each and every one the best programmer in the room, they never make mistakes, they win by their coding skill and ability to browbeat their inferiors, and my implication they are respected and feared by their co-workers. Now ask yourself: how likely is that all these guys are that level of uber-geek? The only reasonable answer is that there is a lot of self delusion going on here. If the culture of hostility worked with all those manly programmers out there, one would assume that there would generally be a lot better software out in the world. Somehow that just doesn't seem to be happening.
Why is Snark Required?
You may not like it, but skilled people are rarely people persons. Want to be PC, then don't expect a whole lot of talent. Can't have your cake and eat it to. Most smart people cannot stand irrational people. And when you try to become a peer in a group of elite, you will be judged for every mistake, harshly. They don't have time to waste. Keep up or get out of the way.
I didn't read every post she ever made. I read a bunch of the 2013 thread. Her position there is completely reasonable. Linus' POV is reasonable too. He doesn't want to bother with being nice. He's doing his thing and plenty successful. And she's giving up because she's ineffective at making the difference she cares about. That's a reasonable response. It looks like she thinks she's failed and that really sucks for her. Apparently, "you should be blunt, not offensive" doesn't hold much sway with these kernel guys.
The thing is that at the end of the day, we make this stuff to make our lives better and have fun. If you let yourself put someone down while you're doing your special thing, then you're throwing away opportunities and making everyone involved a little deader. No one is born with this wisdom. It takes reflection and effort to really get it. It took me a long time to figure this out and I'm going to spend the rest of my life bumbling thru the business of living it.
When people (like Linus) lash out at someone else, we do it because it's really deeply built-in turf-defending, domination-style interaction. It's totally natural. We all are hardwired to do it. And it's not the only option. Once you truly realize and train yourself to remember and honor that the cost outweighs the benefits, that kind of behavior mostly just goes away. "Should" gets you just about nowhere. No one ever lived their life well because they should. They do it because they grok the way that really works for them and makes their lives exciting and fulfilling. (NB: putting someone down can be a release, and it can make you feel safe or tough, but it's not what makes you feel good about life--because guess what: if you keep calling everyone an idiot, you find yourself surrounded by idiots.)
Kernel hackers are amazing people. I'm so glad that they give us this stuff and I love what they do. They're great the way they are. We're all born jerks and it's going to come out sometimes, and it's really not a problem. Life goes on, jerks and all. What's exciting is that there's an opportunity to figure out the thing where you recognize what's great in people. You recognize that you get to choose the way want to be and there's so much more value in living life on those terms than imagining that you have to tell your collaborators that they're stupid.
The good news is: either way, hey, free kernel!
There are points where the people you are coddling will still think you're a fucking asshole, if that's what you mean. The happy medium where you are neither coddling people nor having them consider you a fucking asshole... that doesn't exist.
It sounds like the real bullies were the school administrators. The victims should have beaten them to death and left their bloody corpses in the nearest public square as a warning. It's a shame that money always trumps justice.
While I don't deny those kinds of comments exist, I'm not including those examples in my generalities. Furthermore, they tend to be rare. At least in professional environments I work in.
The emotional petting I'm referring to is more inline with offering constructive criticism. When someone is fucking up and not correcting it themselves, it's up to the team leader to address it. With men I have found this is as simple as "You're doing this wrong. Here's how it should be done". Tried that exact same approach with women in my younger days to much different results. Tears were common, also anger. I made sure I delivered the criticism in the exact same tone, same words. Didn't matter.
With women, I've found you have to build them up. Focus on areas they're doing well in first, then deliver the criticism. Then talk about it some more. Then maybe talk about their strengths, then circle back around to the criticism. We go from a 2 second correction to a 15-30 minute conversation where I have to remember to "be nice" the entire time. Like I said, exhausting.
Now, please bear in mind I'm speaking in generalities. Some men need that fluffing too, and I know a handful of women who prefer bluntness. But in my experience, the above stereotype can be relied upon.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I called a boss a "fuckwad" before. Yelled very loudly actually. Of course he was a "fuckwad" and was fired soon after I quit.
He was really a nice guy and I used to hang out with him at happy hour. He was just incompetent and screwed up a lot of people's hard work then blamed it on others to upper management. I felt really bad about it (and was the only time in my life that I yelled at someone), but nothing else seemed to work.
Oh, that is without question.
It's all that much worse because I'm right and I know it.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
You don't have to be nice, but be respectful. The problem is Linus has cultivated an environment where there is no respect for a person for just being a person. He only respects people that agree with him and think the way he does. Basically, it's an easy way to rationalize being an asshole and it being okay.
You can't make everyone happy, and that's not what this is about. This is about not objectively being a fucking asshole, which Linus Torvalds is.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
Most serious devs on the Linux project get paid to work on it. This isn't some weekend hobby project by a bunch of enthusiasts. Especially, the Linux Foundation pays its devs very well, and the various contributors from IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Google, and other companies get paid to work on Linux as part of their jobs. There's also a number of PhD students and so on who work on the kernel as part of their research.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
I worked with a guy like this. It was the hardest I ever worked at a job before, but he was exceptionally talented and I learned so much from the experience and slowly over a few years the derogatory comments lessened and occasionally turned to praise. I came out a much better person and found the honest but brutal feedback refreshing. If I suck at something I want to know about it and how much I suck. I'm ok with that, I know I have limitations, but they're hard to self judge. You can't fix what you don't know is broken. It's not personal, it's wires an tubes.
Welcoming Sarah Sharp and Selena Deckelmann to our [ADA Initiative] advisory board!
smilies are for reetards
Female dev's outburst against Torvalds was planned
smilies are for reetards
The individual variation on this metric dwarfs any trends along gender lines.
You're also missing the "will shout in your face with invective and insults" versus "will act professionally toward you" axis, which is what we're concerned with here. Shouting in people's faces is much more gendered.
Your solution fails miserably when your dealing with someone who is passive aggressive. It's like punching jello.
Cheap storage VM.
Is Linux successful? Debatable. It has success in limited uses, but has never grown beyond these uses. It is a feature, not a product. Linus accomplished a lot, but what groundbreaking thing has he done in the last 20 years?
None of which has much to do with the kernel. I doubt there's a single feature you can point to and say "because the kernel is missing/mis-implemented this, people will not adopt linux". The lack of adoption of linux in userspace, if it is due to any technical reason at all, is to do with problems in the userspace tools.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
How can anyone at a level where they can (and do) make contributions to the Linux kernel not know what they're getting themselves in to. This is like walking into a biker bar dressed like Richard Simmons and complaining that the Hell's Angels are looking at you funny and walking out upset. Torvalds is infamous for tearing people new assholes for submitting imperfect patches, among other things. He's probably not alone in that attitude. I'm not trying to justify or explain the attitude, but shit, people should know it exists by now and be prepared for it.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
I didn't see any part Sarah's post that brought gender into this, and it immediately people started making assumptions of such.
I might be misreading, but think you think I'm siding with status quo. I'm saying *everyone* is seemingly emotionally involved in it - not just some poor girl getting upset at pronouns. They all should leave feelings out of it. (though if it's a private club and they all enjoy being jerks then um.. carry on and don't breed?)
/pol/ would be popcorn-worthy.
While humans cannot avoid action without someone somewhere taking offence at it, this is also not a justification to seek to offend. Saying "you're being a fuckwad' is hardly a neutral response. I cannot associate chan-culture dialogue with 'professional'.
On second thought, I can, and picturing a G8 Summit where they speak like they were out of
Interesting. While most of the other managers at my company view me (and have commented as such on my peer reviews) as an extremely professional manager. Yet a woman is the ONLY employee who has actually burst into tears in my office.
You in any industry that cannot be discussed by me in polite terms. But you know that, and I'm not ready quite yet to tell you to find respectable or honest work. It's mostly not illegal, and of not proven illegal then I will not further condemn you.
I don't doubt it's an unforgiving place. The price of failure is tangible.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Try reading first sentence as 'You work in an industry...'
This keyboard is almost as bad as m.slashdot..
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Ah yes, the Ender Wiggin style of conflict resolution
Sometimes you think that it doesn't matter who's right or wrong, but that you just need to get out and into fresh air as soon as you can even if the other person "wins". Life is too short to insist on winning all the arguments.
You don't have to throw the first punch though. Ignore the bully and then if you get in a fight, you can fight back. If the bully doesn't fight then you successfully stood up to him or her.
It's nothing to do with women. I'm a guy and I have no interest in being part of these "communities" for precisely this reason. I also run an engineering team and if anyone came to work with this kind of attitude they'd be out so fast their head would spin, I don't give a flying crap how good they think they are.
It seems to me as if a lot of these OSS groups suffer from the same problem with self appointed Masters of the Universe as Wikipedia.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
And both men and women can and do get called into the HR office so that they can be told to grow up and be professional. Just because women can be mean is no excuse for preemptive meanness.
So it's political correctness gone awry merely because you can't say "this is garbage" or "the fuck is this"? Holy crap you are one messed up AC. This isn't political correctness, this is basic interpersonal interaction developed over thousands of years. If you need to get along with someone and work as a team, you can not bully them or insult them or it will end badly. When you are at work it is no longer about YOU, it is about your coworkers, your company, getting the work done, etc.
Just practice this. Say "this looks like a bug" instead of saying "this looks like shit". It gets to the point of it being about solving the problem instead of it being a power play. The only reason you want people to know where they stand is because you're treating the workplace as a competition to see who can come out on top as the alpha dog. Stop treating it like a competition and start cooperating. If you can't, then there are anger management classes you can sign up for before you are the one who gets fired.
I think a lot of nerds essentially turn into the bullies that they hated growing up. Or in video games they turn into the jocks that used to beat them up. The difference is that those bullies and jocks sometimes actually learned stuff while growing up, the bullies may have learned that they spent a lot of time in detention and had few friends, and the jocks learn that good sportsmanship is integral to the game. So now you have nerds emulating the worst behavior they saw growing up but without the teachers and coaches trying to correct the behavior problems.
Many of those bullies as kids have grown up to be well adjusted adults. That's because their personality flaws were corrected over time, or they realized life was no fun without friends, they spent a lot of time talking to counselors and therapists, etc. This doesn't happen when the nerd becomes an asshole as an adult.
not just for the question of how a contributor should be treated, but also for the question of how a leader should act.
If a leader is able to get world-beating results by being an asshole, then so be it. That leader has beaten the world, and I am not going to quibble with success. If a leader is an asshole and subpar output is the result, then by all means, tell them to treat their team differently.
Team dynamics are a complicated thing. You just don't fuck with a winning team. If they are using four letter words all the time and sacrificing live chickens at midnight, but the results are running circles around everyone else, I for one do not want them to stop, even if it would save a chicken's life.
At the same time, if they are doing all of these things and the results are uneven or poor, then by all means, change the behavior.
In this case, I'd say that the results of Linux kernel development speak for themselves. And if you just don't belong in the culture, then go somewhere else. If the culture starts to be counterproductive, give the world a great, big "I told you so!" and collect your profits on the book deal. But otherwise, to expect people to fuck up a successful operation for your feelings, for manners, or for high-minded ethics concerns is just bad juju. It's not lawyering or doctoring, ethical concerns are not front and center. It's software. The goal is that it works and works well, and in fact that's the highest ethical aspiration *of* software, given the many critical ways in which it gets used in today's world.
The value to the users is first. The comfort of the developers is second. If the culture and development process are working well, get the hell out of the way if you don't like them. As this person has done. So—problem solved.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Yes, we're still hating on Gnome because it is technically poor and long outlived its intended purpose, which was to force QT to go to a free license. Nowadays Gnome's sole purpose is to be a big stick used by Redhat to beat up other, more deserving and technically better projects, the poor long suffering user being caught in the middle.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
You didn't mention the embedded devices. How many Linux computers do you think the average person has running in their home, even a Linux hater?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Is Linux successful? Debatable. It has success in limited uses, but has never grown beyond these uses.
Android is a Linux fork. It's in a lot of pockets and a lot of homes.
Android is not a Linux fork, Android is Linux.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I am a geek, but I do own businesses which employ other geeks, on several continents
Now, as a geek I know what we geeks are capable of, good, as well as bad
And I can tell you this one thing - no matter which continents, geeks are geeks, and our 'geekiness' is 'toxic' to those with thinner skin - we geeks like to compete, and whether you like it or not, the thickness of our skin has become one of the 'legitimate competitive category'
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I am glad Sarah decided to look for projects that suit her personal and professional style better. I suspect though that the project is filled with developers who can never be their best in subdued, politically correct culture. When people care that much about code, they sometimes can not be impartial when they think something bad is being done to it.
To each their own. It's trivial to fork Linux kernel and work on your own interesting things, all the while benefiting from the work done by rude bastards who took it from a school break project to ubiquitous presence in the last two decades.
"This is not good work."
"This shit sucks."
Same content. Same feedback. One is professional. The other is caustic and erodes morale pretty quickly. It's not a matter of "PC nazis". It's a matter of being respected and respectful.
As opposed to make programmers, the not mytical at all Jabba the Hutts.
'make clean && make programmers', for when I finally develop sentient AI. The first thing I'll create will be an army of contract programmers who'll do my work while I get some sleep :-)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
But... isn't communicating a different way with women is a distinction based on gender (aka sexist behavior)?
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
This doesn't happen when the nerd becomes an asshole as an adult.
Victim-blame much?
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
One of the few effective appeals to authority I've run across. Good job! (That was serious - not sarcastic)
no it isn't, it shows a lack of social skills. being assertive is different to be a ranter
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
i have never had a 'nice' successful boss. they were all in the 'management by perkele' league. that includes my wife.
the mindless misogynists are crawling out of the woodwork. i'm sure Linus wouldn't be an arse to his Mother or wife or daughter.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Words are just words. Only actions matter. But people are lazy and zealous fighting of expletives is a way good way for a lazy manager to look productive. Everyone will still swear when they feel the need and manager will discipline selectively to achieve his political goals.
"But if your code is shit, well that's a whole different story." only if you are a repeat offender. you don;t attack someone for a first offence, you point them in the correct direction.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
being assertive is a skill that the people who defend the status quo do not understand. Why should, as you put it, people with "sensitive needs" drag themselves down to the gutter of this level of communication? Why can't the others drag themselves up a few levels, it would probably attract a load more talented people to the pool.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Please have a look at your comment. It appears to be just the communication style which is discussed here, it appears to intend to intimidate people to stop what they are doing. This is not meant funny, I just think we all have adopted this kind of talking way more than we even know.
Or maybe it's because people like you think making massive generalizations of 51% of the population is perfectly acceptable. Hint: It's not. Not all women think the same, just as all men don't think the same. Old-fashioned, lazy thinking such as yours is the real danger, as it festers, builds up, and becomes something ridiculously toxic, where anyone speaking against it is labeled with whatever easy badge you can pin on them in order to simply ignore the reality that maybe you are an antisocial bigoted fuck...
Women trash talk just as much as guys and are (on average) no better or worse at it. Some will be worse at it, some will be better at it, just as with guys.
Grow up. The future implores you.
Excuse me, but having a penis or a vagina does not have anything to do with considering anyone calling me a "fuckwad" to be offensive, rude and unprofessional. I am male, but I will not interact with anyone on that level. Maybe that is acceptable in where you grew up or with some people that you are interacting with; however, you need to be aware that for most other people, regardless of their chromosomal setup, this type of interaction is not only offensive, but also a sign of your lack of general competence and intelligence. A "stay away" flag, if you will.
And yes, if you need this type of interaction to do anything productive, if you are unable to either express the same without being offensive or parse a comment that does not include the word "fuckwad", then it is you who has a problem and it is a much more serious problem than scaring away smart and professional individuals, whatever their genitals may be.
Can you point to a specific example of her mocking or abusing people? I read her post, it was very carefully written so as not to do that, and not to make it a gender issue.
You are reading your own prejudices against someone you consider to be an "SJW" into this.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
... communication and wording are far from professional in the kernel team. Most core-devs would be dismissed on their style of interaction alone if applying to any serious professional elite position. Imagine applying for an astronauts programm with Linus style of talk for instance. He wouldn't stand a chance.
Of course, professionally, Linus is right just about 100% of the time and also can rightfully be super annoyed if some dimwit wastes his and everybody elses time, but the discourse in the kernel team is notably imature at a measurable pace. That includes Linus. Such, that it actually makes it into the news.
He'res an example, the first line a Linux quote from memory:
"You're so dumb you couldn't find your mothers tit as a baby"
vs.
"This is a very very stupid idea and A,B and C are blatant beginners mistakes and no one on the mainline will even attempt to merge it. I suggest you look into your stuff more thouroughly before sending out pull requests and perhaps redo your review process. This is the second time and if this happens again I'll ask X to take your branch out of branch YZ. Your wasting my and everyone elses time. Stop that. - EOM"
See? The second line is about the most shaming rundown you can get as a professional or elite kernel dev. It's actually more harsh then the first. ... But it is way more professional.
Bottom line:
I can totally see why she left the kernel team.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Saying "the fuck is this" about my work is highly counter productive. My response will be "what the hell is wrong with you, don't you understand it?" and then the debate will focus on your inability to comprehend what I'm doing or communicate professionally with your co-workers.
If you be nice you will get positive results. If you be an arsehole you will get nothing but people being arseholes to you. They won't want to work with you in future either, you will end up isolated because you didn't learn to play nice with others.
If you don't understand "well, we'll have to rethink this approach", if you don't appreciate someone telling you that work has to be re-done and aren't able to ask a follow up question for clarification, that's your problem. You are a bad communicator, you need people to get angry with you to understand their technical criticisms of your work.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Where I work we try to operate a "no blame" culture as much as possible. SJWs will go nuts hearing that, assuming it's some kind of feminazi take-over where criticism = abuse and is not allowed, but it's actually good engineering practice and improves our products.
People are responsible, of course. But when something goes wrong, we don't stop to assign blame or berate the person responsible. They know they screwed up, and laying in to them won't fix it. We look for solutions, and we involve everyone, including the screw-up who probably has a good understanding of the issue or would benefit from receiving one. Because of that staff stay here longer, build up knowledge and skills, and our products improve.
There was a story from years back about this. Engineer made a mistake, cost the company $1,000,000 to fix. The engineer was surprised to find that he wasn't being fired, and asked his boss why. His boss said, "are you kidding? I just paid for $1,000,000 of training for you!" Stopping to blame that person and make them feel worse than they already do accomplishes nothing, other than slowing down their efforts to fix the problem.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
" Now it seems it's enough that someone said something that hurt your feelings. " people get divorced for being mentally/emotionally bullied especially when it becomes systematic. Women in this arena has the additional additional problems of having to deal with misogynists and small minded people who hide behind their keyboards.
"Equating speech to physical violence is a very dangerous trend that will not end well." - you framed this statement very badly and in a way that suits an opinion which seems to not to take verbal and mental abuse seriously. "Speech" is benign not the same as "verbal abuse".
that said, i don;t know why people take any notice of trolls, i don;t take any notice or care what people say if i don't who they are or if i do know them and don't respect them. Most trolls, if they had a woman at home, wouldn't speak to them like that, it'll be "Yes, mum", "No, mum", "I've brushed my teeth, mum", "I'm ready for school, mum"
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
You can substitute "female" for "male" in that statement and get the same result.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
It's not about harsh criticism for mistakes or being overly sensitive. It's about simple abuse for no reason. What does calling someone a "fuckwad" actually achieve? How is that criticising the code on a technical basis?
Ever notice how Slashdot posts that make reasoned arguments get modded up, while ones that consist "you gay fucktard" tend to end up at -1?
If you need to vent your anger take up a martial art or play some CoD like everyone else, don't take it out on people who are trying to help you by contributing to your open source project. Just because there are a lot of people who will put up with your abuse does not justify it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.
That's usually said to children who have been hurt by words, and it's nonsense. It's telling them to suppress their emotional response entirely, which isn't healthy. Mental illness is just as real as physical illness, and it's often caused by not processing emotions.
The reason that things like solitary confinement or threatening violence work and are considered torture is because even if there is no physical harm there is still very real harm being done.
It's not weak to process such things. If other children are being nasty to your kid, instead of telling them to ignore it you should talk to them about it, explain why what they say is stupid and untrue, help them work through it and come out emotionally stronger and better able to deal with their emotional responses internally. Suppression is just toxic masculinity at its worst, and doesn't lead to a healthy mind.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Women, on the other hand, will do it behind your back and will be far more vindictive about it.
Trolls aside, this is one of the most misogynist posts I've seen on Slashdot for weeks.
Can we please stop modding up the "men = rational, straightforward, easy to deal with, women = irrational, devious, back-stabbing" trope? 9 times out of 10 the comment containing the trope disproves it anyway.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
One of the reasons large software projects, developed over many years, fail is that there are so many cooks participating in the making of the broth. There will always be someone who "knows better" than to follow the rules set in place when the project originally started. The project grows into a large ball of spaghetti, and nobody knows where it starts and where it ends.
Linus deserves a Noble Prize for keeping such a large project going strong for so many years, and that without any of the developers being his employees. Yes, the threat of being fired does prevents some of the cooks from spoiling the broth.
And then there are people who thrive in a political environment, and software development is very political. Some developers are very good at assigning and deflecting blame, and the larger the ball of spaghetti, the better they do.
Linus did not want to see his project fail this well-known way, so his rude comments are very much a necessity to keep the "know better" blame assigners/deflectors in line. So far the approach has worked fine.
In turn, this has created an environment where people who prefer to play the politics do not feel comfortable. And just as many people quit their jobs because they cannot put up with the politics, so do others quit from places where being political does not give them a competitive advantage.
I am reproducing Linus' words here (https://adtmag.com/blogs/dev-watch/2014/04/linus-torvalds-rants.aspx) :
"Because if you want me to 'act professional,' I can tell you that I'm not interested. I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because THAT is what 'acting professionally' results in: people resort to all kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their normal urges in unnatural ways."
Perhaps you can enlighten me on what that book is about? That is, once you're finished with your non-constructive insecure dribble.
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
You missed the point. The point is, there are PC places where you can't say either. Just saying "this work is bad" will get you an appointment with HR.
Is There Anything Good About Men?
Dog is my co-pilot.
There is no stress that you don't put on yourself. If you were ignored, there was a reason. Have a nice day :-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I doubt it. Have a nice day! :-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
That is a really great "whooosh!" you've got there! Have a nice day!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Explain to me why a critical bug that completely hang the system with probably any distribution kernel since years is ignored for a good reason ? Happen to me no less than last week.
That's usually said to children who have been hurt by words, and it's nonsense. It's telling them to suppress their emotional response entirely, which isn't healthy.
It's said to children to teach them not to suppress their emotional response entirely, but to help them learn restraint, and the difference between verbal sparring and physical assault. It's the basis of civilized society. People are allowed to have disagreements, arguments, and even yell at each other, but it is NOT okay to escalate those disagreements into physical altercation. That's why we prosecute people for assault when they "throw the first punch" - they have initiated violence. We teach our children these concepts early.
The reason that things like solitary confinement or threatening violence work and are considered torture is because even if there is no physical harm there is still very real harm being done.
Those are also physical assault, and actual violence. Threatening violence is assault, and can be criminally prosecuted. Ditto for kidnapping / false imprisonment.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Their name. It's the most favorite sound to a person.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You need to look up where I work.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Wrong, it's about being able to identify what you need to say and do to a particular person in order to get that person what you need or want them to do
And you are the ultimate authority on what Linus Torvalds needs or wants. Got it.
There is a very good argument to be made that Linus is a very bad manager.
Are you better? Make more difference to the world than Linus did, and you might have a "good argument" to be made that you are better.
Then you will find that there are very few people alive who are better "managers" than Linus. Yet he is a "very bad manager".
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Yeah that Android - what a flop.
She didn't impose her expectations. She complained. Then when nothing improved, she left.
Ne mæg werig mod wyrde wiðstondan, ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman.
Wow, that reads terribly. I forget; what are the attributes to be judged as being a 'fine woman' again?
You see. That is why being nice to people in these situations doesn't work. You mistook my "have a nice day", for "Hey I'm a friendly guy! Feel free to ask me to explain things to you!. While asking for the explanation, you didn't follow basic question asking etiquette. Why don't you actually do the work, post your question after reading esr's FAQ uncluding the actual context necessary to answer the question, and see how that works for you?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I don't give a flying fsck where you work, but have a nice day!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
We disagree about which direction is "up" and which is "down". IMO catering to the neediness of the special snowflakes who insist on anything which might appear be critical be couched in the most indirect terms possible along with ego-stroking to soften the blow is "down".
Kindness is rare to find nowadays. I blame the national mood.
You sir are brilliant.
You don't understand that the main problem is that the bug is ignored. Most of the actual maintainers are so busy filtering developers patches that there don't care anymore to user bug reports. Developers don't care either to the actual users as there make features that users don't actually uses.
Equating speech to physical violence is a very dangerous trend that will not end well.
You're right, because persistent verbal abuse is PSYCHOLOGICAL VIOLENCE which has much more devastating and longer term impacts than physical violence.
~X~
Good programmers spend more time thinking than programming. Yes, they have a lot of time to judge. Not to mention that judging is a lot easier than coming up with a correct answer.
Holy fuck I can't even begin to imagine how utterly shit Linux would be if Linus cared about the contributors' delicate feelings and sensibilities instead of the quality of the project.
Sarah is exactly right, and what she's talking about is precisely why I don't submit any of my patches and bugfixes to the kernel.
Which world would you rather be in, one where people are going to tell you exactly what they're feeling, good and bad; or one you're afraid of being honest and you don't know anyone else's true feelings either?
This is a false dichotomy. I live in a world where people (mostly) express their true feelings, good and bad, in a way that isn't taking a shit all over everyone else.
Sarah called Linus out many years back and Linus responded saying that her code quality is not up to par and then he proceeded to scold the dev that allowed he code into the kernel in the first place. I wouldn't say she is "talented", but she may be "good". One of the issues with kernel programming is good doesn't cut it, you want as near perfect as possible.
Funny thing about programming, 80% of programmers are below average because the above average skew everything so much. 20% of the people do 50% of the work. Do this twice and 4% of the people do 25% of the work. You can afford to keep out other programmers.
2016, the great talent exodus. Bit-rot takes over and everything goes to crap by year 8, Linux is no more.
amazing how many of you guys would prefer to live in a world filled with shitty assholes, treating everyone like a jerk. polite doesn't necessarily mean backstabber, and strength doesn't come from being rude -- it's just a sign of embracing your inner moron. you guys disgust me. in a world filled with hate and violence, it's nice and refreshing to work in a "professional" environment where people aren't utter dicks all the time, when people of various genders and ethnic backgrounds get along with each other. there's this prickish selfishness i find among you, where everything is a goddamned pissing contest. knock it off already. it doesn't hurt you to be civil to one another -- that's the real sign of strength, bros.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
fart fart fart fart
That is a weird response, did you actually write that? I would not know I run an automated version of Sarahs comment filter over it. Could you please write something that agrees with my point of view so I can give you a meaning full response (and build up my ego)?
For reference
As this is my blog, not a government entity, I have the right to replace any comment I feel like with “fart fart fart fart”.
Professional my ass.
The "trash talk" is par for the course and men think nothing of it.
No it isn't, and you work in a toxic environment. Or maybe you just think it's par for the course because it's you doing the trash talking?
Recent news: Priest in NJ arrested because someone saw him point a musket threatening a child wearing the wrong sports team jersey. Except the priest, and another person in the room, say the "musket" is a replica, never loaded or fired or even usable, and in context of the conversation it was all a joke to everyone involved - other than the person passing by the door and getting an out-of-context "snapshot" view of a man with a weapon just days after a mass shooting elsewhere. Lesson: Even the best people do things that can be misunderstood, and even saints probably looked like assholes now and then.
That can only lead to one logical conclusion.
That only people who aren't susceptible to butthurt fee-fees will continue on in a high-visibility, high-pressure project.
So what's the problem?
I lived for some years in Oz, and I can confirm that Aussies often show that they like you by having a dig at you. The correct response is to have a dig back at them.
In American terms, Aussies like to tease each other quite a lot, and it's considered entirely normal there.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
If I fuck up, feel free to tell me I've fucked up, and *how*. Don't waste my time beating round the bush for 20 minutes, or, even worse, for 3 or 4 emails that end up wasting a whole day or more before I find out that I did something wrong and what I did wrong.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
0. Where I work this has never been a problem or issue. Not in 10 years.
1. Such statements imply you have an antiquated and inadequate understanding of women. Please consider doing more research on this, outside your limited sphere of experience.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
This post makes it 100% clear that the context of those comments was friendly. My friends and colleagues (we're a bunch of researchers) have the same kind of exchanges, and it's the friendliest work atmosphere anywhere ever.
It takes a lot of malice to misinterpret it as "toxic."
I think Sarah Sharp is a jerk, and I don't mean that in a nice way.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Have you considered the possibility that you're ideas are terrible and simply aren't worth further consideration?
People like you get their way not because others are enlightened and see the value in your ideas, but because your disruptions are actually causing more harm than your terrible idea would cause.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Bullshit. There is this tired trope of the genius programmer who is not a "people person". Yeah those people exist. There are also lots of really good programmers who are perfectly capable of being professional, as well as dickheads who are just mediocre programmers (who still think they are amazing).
If anything I've found that the "people people" tend to be better programmers on average because they are not stubborn. They are willing to learn new things. And being civil to other people usually helps in learning new things, rather than being a prick who ends up being isolated.
Believe it or not, this works with everyone. Everyone, not just women, want to have their work acknowledged. I'm speaking in absolutes here intentionally -- no one is offended when you praise their work.
You just may find a tick in productivity when you offer your male subordinates some praise along with your criticisms as well.
Just treat people like people. Being "nice the entire time" shouldn't be "exhausting" unless you're an insufferable jerk with an undeserved sense of superiority.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Error! Please form your response in a form I can understand. For example: Object("whooosh!).assignAttribute(Great.modifier(Really)); Object("day").setCount(1).assignAttribute(Nice).command(have); LOL
Project much?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Note: I never said I didn't offer praise. Someone does something good, I encourage it. Leadership 101; positive reinforcement is more effective than negative.
That's not, however, what I was talking about.
When I do have to correct someone, men are usually easier to correct because I don't have to pad their egos first. I can deliver the necessary communication and we all can move on. Women? More work because I have to build them up enough to handle the criticism.
Note; I am not saying all women or all men. Just generally speaking.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Grunting and dick-waving are, to most people, on the "down" side of things. I also read "catering to the neediness of the special snowflakes" a bit differently. That's what the socially incompetent bullies do to make themselves feel better. Unfortunately, that's always at the expense of others. It'll cost you not only good workers, who either leave or never join, but also in productivity. No one works well when they're agitated, and good people know that working in a needlessly hostile environment isn't worth their time.
The rest of the civilized world understands that treating people with dignity and respect elevates everyone. You not only get more productivity out of your existing workers, but also attract talented people.
If it takes significant effort for you to act like a professional, you're not a professional. We don't need people like that in the workplace; they cause real economic harm.
Required reading for internet skeptics
ouch...
Oh, the plight of the white male! How horrible we have it! If only we had absurd majority representation in government and industry!
Oh, that unnamed group ... somewhere? ... that blames us for all their ills! Their unrelenting oppression threatens our very existence!
Required reading for internet skeptics
And you are the ultimate authority on what Linus Torvalds needs or wants. Got it.
Reading is about more than just recognizing words, my friend. Look at the meaning in the words in my last couple paragraphs, where I say he's free to do whatever he wants, he just has to deal with the consequences. If his major work goal is working from home in his bathrobe while yelling at people, great, he's going to attract workers who want a boss who works in his bathrobe from home and yells at people. I'm not saying he has to change anything, but he also doesn't have any right to complain about the quality of people that he works with.
Are you better? Make more difference to the world than Linus did, and you might have a "good argument" to be made that you are better.
Linus did not make his contributions to the world based on the strength of his management skills. His contributions came from other skills. Yes, I very well might be a better manager than him.
Then you will find that there are very few people alive who are better "managers" than Linus.
That statement is laughable. Being able to delegate and being a good manager are completely different things.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Say "this looks like a bug" instead of saying "this looks like shit".
The two are not the same.
Good code can have a bug. Shit code can be bug-free. You may want to refine your example because it's a bit ....
Would you treat coworkers like that? In meatspace? If someone called me a fuckwad in a way that wasn't obviously jokey/ironic it would be a huge problem to me. Being nice and civil is a much better way to get things done. Like, grumpy/curmudgeonly is kinda par for the course but that's totally different.
Isn't that kind of the point? Do you expect everything to be sugar coated for you? Would you feel any better if I in my most serious possible way said :"At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it." instead of me just calling you a fucking idiot?
No I ask this seriously as someone who has used it before. I have called someone a fucking idiot at work, in front of their co-workers. They were not meant to feel good about their almost indescribable stupidity to which they subjected others. I heard afterwards from another source that a few people were arguing about whether it was harsh or true.
Yet Linux is still going strong, and is slowly taking over the world.
Maybe the "backroom" world; but that is all.
And no, Android doesn't count as a "Linux".
It's not "violence" to berate someone or use colorful language or anything else.
It must be pointed out that nobody was berated in those mailing list exchanges. Absolutely nobody!
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Terse, yes. Contains the word "fuckwad", no. Personal insults are neither professional nor efficient.
I fully agree. You should not use the word "fuckwad" in a professional environment! Unless, of course, someone is actually a fuckwad.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Or stand up for yourself and get pounded to the point where you can be used as a doormat. You're automatically blaming the victim here.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If his major work goal is working from home in his bathrobe while yelling at people, great, he's going to attract workers who want a boss who works in his bathrobe from home and yells at people
Probably. Or else his goal could be to get great software created and made useful and available to lot of people, in which he is one of the most successful people ever.
I'm not saying he has to change anything, but he also doesn't have any right to complain about the quality of people that he works with.
He has a right to complain about people he gives the opportunity to truthfully write in their resumes about contributing significantly to mainline Linux kernel. Or the opportunity to have their hardware be supported well out-of-the-box on kernel that he personally brands. Note that you have a right to "complain" about him here in spite of not giving him anything comparable to the above 2 things (opportunities) he gives to objects of his "complaints".
Yes, I very well might be a better manager than him.
Awesome, your great contributions to society by your people/self/time/resource management which you wisely keep secret, will inspire generations to come. Until that secret is revealed, unfortunately, Linus will be known as one of the most successful people/self/time/resource "managers" alive in 2015.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
For some strange reason, my communications style seems to get the point across without much offending assorted people on several different continents. I submit it as an existence proof.
Moreover, where do you get the vituperation? Ms. Sharp has a problem with the LKML, and it causes her a good deal of stress. Instead of just bugging out, she tries to get people to change, which strikes me as a responsible thing to do. When that doesn't work, she leaves. Doubtless the kernel will do just fine, but I wasn't aware that we had so many F/OS developers that we can afford to throw them away.
For every Ms. Sharp who at least tries to talk about her problems with what she experiences as abuse, there are probably ten more or so that just walk away without doing anything that'll get them bad-mouthed on Slashdot. That's what companies selling to the public at least used to think: that every complaint letter was representative of ten other people who just walk away and quietly buy from their competitors. The LKML could be driving away a lot of talented people, and we'd never realize it without someone who mentions it on her way out.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"Your code is a piece of shit" is a perfectly apt comment. If the code is a steaming pile, it's a steaming pile, and you can't polish a turd. But you shouldn't take that as a personal attack - you are not your code. Especially outside the Open Source world, we're often rushed to produce code to some arbitrary deadline, and it's often crap code as a result. Acknowledging that straight-away "yup, it's total crap, I hope to be allowed the time to do it right" is very effective, and might actually get you that time!
The personal attack, beyond the code, that's different. But I've seen that from people I respect when someone has a pattern of writing bad code, and just can't seem to learn. That's the thing about this industry: the compiler gives 0 fucks about your feelings. Customer support gives 0 fucks about your feelings. The guys stuck maintaining your code years from now give 0 fucks about your feelings. Fuck your feelings. Learn to write good code when given the time to do so, and learn to mark crappy hacks as such with comments when you're rushed by management, so others can see right off that the code isn't supposed to make sense, but is instead a hack job that should be replace at the earliest opportunity.
And if you think any of that is harsh and uncaring, try being an artist sometime. You have no idea.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I just RTFA. I saw nothing about violence. I saw nothing about moderating technical criticism. Would you care to point out where Ms. Sharp said anything like that?
Ms. Sharp found dealing with the LKML to be highly stressful because of personal attacks. A technical mailing list has got to be blunt about technical matters, which Ms. Sharp was fine with. It isn't necessary to get personal. I'm calling your arguments crap and uninformed, but I'm not saying anything about you as a person. There's a difference, and it's easy to learn what's on which side of the line.
Ms Sharp is doing the community a service by explaining why she's leaving the kernel group, rather than just leaving without providing any feedback. If the LKML is to be personally abusive, that will have consequences, and it's well to be shown what those consequences are.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Nobody is asking Linus to hold hands or to refrain from being brutally honest with people's code.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That's when the assholes devolve into their own little cliquish culture. It drives away people who are perfectly comfortable with being told their code is crap and their whole idea is stupid, which is what is actually needed.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You have completely failed to describe any woman I know who considers herself a feminist and/or in favor of equal rights.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I just RTFA. I saw nothing about violence. I saw nothing about moderating technical criticism. Would you care to point out where Ms. Sharp said anything like that?
It's in the last link of the summary, when she tried to change the LKML to be more to her liking:
Verbal abuse != violence. Physical intimidation might be, and a credible threat of violence can be assault - but I don't think Linus has ever actually done that.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Probably. Or else his goal could be to get great software created and made useful and available to lot of people, in which he is one of the most successful people ever.
The issue is not whether or not he is successful, the issue is whether or not people want to work with him based on his management style (or lack thereof).
Linus will be known as one of the most successful people/self/time/resource "managers" alive in 2015.
100% of that statement is your opinion.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/da...
http://www.business-management...
Here's an interesting graphic:
https://www.themuse.com/advice...
From the very top:
"An effective manager isn't tyrannical. They don't command unnecessarily, micromanage, or instill fear. A successful manager can be approachable, amicable, or even downright compassionate. These managers lead teams of satisfied employees, which reduces turnover and boosts morale and productivity."
Here's a question for you: if Linus is such a fantastic manager, then why are there so many stories about people getting fed up with the behavior of him and others on the LKML and deciding to leave? Why is the LKML known as an abusive place? Does that sound like the result of a great manager?
That graphic lists several qualities cited by employees as the most important component of the manager-employee relationship. Those qualities are trust, fairness, patience, respect, and open communication. I'll grant that the LKML is probably pretty good at open communication, although even that is arguable. Those other qualities are absent from the management in the LKML.
Linus can be found on various lists of most influential, but I'll challenge you to find him on a list of the best software project managers.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Comments directed at arguments, work products, or similar things are pointing out people's mistakes. Comments directed at people personally can be toxic, and are best avoided. There is very little subjective about it. There are people who can't take criticism of their work, and I really don't like such people. In something like the LKML, it's probably best to drive them away. This is not what Ms. Sharp was complaining about.
For example, I find your argument stupidly wrong. I'm not saying that you're an insensitive idiot.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
>Suppression is just toxic masculinity at its worst, and doesn't lead to a healthy mind.
This is a pretty toxic comment too, implying that it's all masculinity's fault and treating is as a foregone conclusion that the alternative is "healthier".
It seems we just can't dissociate ourselves from attacking others we disagree with, whether we choose to couch our words or not.
I don't think you have a full appreciation of what a hedge fund does. A hedge fund is little more than "investments managed by math geeks". We're a mutual fund with brains. Our primary goal is to manage portfolio risk. The problem with the financial industry as a whole is that Congress has shirked its responsibility in regulating it. And the economic reality is that the SEC is grossly underfunded and incapable of doing its job. It needs to be able to hire people as smart as those working for the companies it is charged with regulating. It is populated with lawyers, not people with a deep understanding of finance and risk. The first change that should be made is to re-enact Glass–Steagall. Don't get me wrong, the financial industry as a whole deserves your derision. There are a lot of bad actors -- including our Congress. But hedge funds in general are pretty innocuous compared to the big banks. Those are the guys happily gambling with taxpayer money.
Like mentioned in another comment, that's Linus' false dichotomy. Just leave the "U fucked up, n00b" out of the message. I assume that people are mature enough to beat them up themselves when needed.
Perl Programmer for hire
Sarah called Linus out many years back and Linus responded saying that her code quality is not up to par and then he proceeded to scold the dev that allowed he code into the kernel in the first place.
notable that he only lashed out at her when she called him out on his childish antics, but was fine with her work up to that point.
Funny thing about programming, 80% of programmers are below average because the above average skew everything so much. 20% of the people do 50% of the work. Do this twice and 4% of the people do 25% of the work. You can afford to keep out other programmers.
But if you exclude the other 96% of the programmers, who is going to do 75% of the work?
The issue is not whether or not he is successful
Success is of course not an "issue", success can issue out of good management.
the issue is whether or not people want to work with him based on his management style (or lack thereof).
This may or may not be an issue depending on his goals. We can only guess at his goals. If creating great software that touches many users' lives is the goal, people wanting to work with him is an issue only if it interferes with the goal. Since no one attracts much better talent at a lower cost and yet develops a large software product that arguably touches most lives most positively - goal doesn't seem to be interfered with at all.
If his goal were to climb the mount Everest, his coding, ranting , philosophizing etc. is all very bad management of himself, others, and any resources.
100% of that statement is your opinion.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/da...
http://www.business-management...
Business leaders? Why don't you bring up a list of greatest astronauts and show Linus doesn't show up in the list. Or the greatest farmers? Or the fastest runners? People with ears of sharpest hearing? That would have as much relevance as this - which is unknown. Unknown because the goal is not known. If the goal were to become fastest sprinters, he has failed miserably for all I know. If the goal is to be (one of) the greatest business leaders, he has failed according to forbes etc.
So as before you want to tell him his goals, followed by contradicting yourself later to say he can have any goals he wants?
Here's a question for you: if Linus is such a fantastic manager, then why are there so many stories about people getting fed up with the behavior of him and others on the LKML and deciding to leave? Why is the LKML known as an abusive place? Does that sound like the result of a great manager?
Is his goal to minimize the people getting fed up of him?
but I'll challenge you to find him on a list of the best software project managers.
And you hereby order Linus to have this goal of being on a list of the best software project managers?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Linus is deliberately taking an absolutist stance though, because he's king. Reducing common polite interpersonal discourse to "lying and backstabbing" is a logical fallacy. You can certainly be blunt without resorting to school yard insults. That so many in this thread are calling this woman a "whiny bitch" is very depressing. I've lost some respect for the slashdot community today.
Unlike some folks, I'm not especially squeamish about a few mere words.
I've been told "Dude, you fucked up" more than once, and I expect to be told so again in the future. The only expectation I have in that regard is that if someone says that to me, I better have actually fucked up.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
This may or may not be an issue depending on his goals.
Well, it is an issue, it's the issue that I'm talking about. It's the issue that is the subject of the thread to which you're replying. I don't care if he personally sees it as an issue or not. I'm not talking about that.
Business leaders? Why don't you bring up a list of greatest astronauts and show Linus doesn't show up in the list. Or the greatest farmers? Or the fastest runners? People with ears of sharpest hearing? That would have as much relevance as this - which is unknown. Unknown because the goal is not known. If the goal were to become fastest sprinters, he has failed miserably for all I know. If the goal is to be (one of) the greatest business leaders, he has failed according to forbes etc.
You are spiraling out of control. This is what you said:
Linus will be known as one of the most successful people/self/time/resource "managers" alive in 2015.
Do you have any evidence that what you say there is anything more than just your opinion? Is Linus on any list that you can cite that would help back up your claim? Stick the the point.
Is his goal to minimize the people getting fed up of him?
HIS GOAL IS TO MANAGE A SOFTWARE PROJECT. THIS IS WHAT HE DOES. IF THAT IS NOT HIS GOAL, THEN HE IS WASTING HIS TIME.
WTF man, this is a discussion about whether or not the LKML is a hostile environment (which it is), based largely on the poor behavior of Linus and other senior maintainers (which it is), and you're going off on some random abstract tangent about personal goals. He is the self-proclaimed "benevolent dictator" of Linux, he is the only person with absolute authority to decide which changes get merged. And you want to go off on some random tangent about personal goals? HIS GOAL IS THE DEVELOPMENT OF LINUX. This is not a secret!
And you hereby order Linus to have this goal of being on a list of the best software project managers?
OK, I'm done with this conversation. Have a great day.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
It's the issue that is the subject of the thread to which you're replying. I don't care if he personally sees it as an issue or not. I'm not talking about that.
Let me get this straight.
1a. People send pull requests to Linus.
1b. Linus didn't ask your advice here.
2a. Linus "complains" about the pull requests.
2b. You "complain" about Linus here.
3a. Yet you say Linus doesn't have a right to "complain" about those pull requests, even if other people initiated the pull requests.
3b. Yet you have every right to "complain" about Linus here, even though Linus is not asking your advice here.
And on top of it, you are defining the issue about *his* behaviour, even if you acknowledge that Linus may not "personally" see it as an issue. So you are the benevolent dictator of Linus Torvalds' life?
HIS GOAL IS TO MANAGE A SOFTWARE PROJECT. THIS IS WHAT HE DOES. IF THAT IS NOT HIS GOAL, THEN HE IS WASTING HIS TIME.
And as his benevolent dictator, a few posts ago you defined his goal to be something to do with bathrobes. Now that you have changed his goal, he will correct his behaviour to be aligned with his goals. Until amicusNYCL changes Linus' goals for him, of course.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
He's the victim, and he always will be...
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Enroll all your female employees in Bitchtracker.com
So your staff gets a warning email every month. If they synch up you will also get company wide alerts. Just go fishing.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Dogs _need_ petting at all times.
Mine sometimes does bad things just so I yell at him, then he can get a forgiving...
People that need petting are just like dogs. They need constant reinforcement.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
But do you need it? Do you need people to tell you you've fucked up?
Perl Programmer for hire
Reinstituting G-S would be a huge fix. Does any politician have the balls? Carly? The Donald?
Ok, any politician that's electable? Carly? Cruz? No Democrat . And neither will Bernie.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
No, you don't have it straight yet, I don't think you will either. It's like I'm trying to describe what a scenery looks like and you're arguing about which cheese is better. Have a great day.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
In an IT address to a middle eastern country a person asked will we ever achieve greatness.
Women on one side and shielded from the men
The response was a blistering observation of segregation and second class citizenship of women in their society
"not if you only use 50% of your workforce".
http://www.citizenwarrior.com/...
Personally being an male I would rather work women. My findings across multiple disciplines, is that they bring a fresh perspective to an
already male overburdened workforce.
Its these types of attitudes that drive feminism
just my penny's worth
no matter how good it is, it is human nature always wants to make things better
No. You don't understand. You asked me a question, providing no context, and expected me to accept your claim that " a critical bug that completely hang the system with probably any distribution kernel since years". Of course, I have been using the kernel for years, using many distributions and it never hangs on me, so I already know you have no idea what you are talking about. I offered you an opportunity to do some basic reading, learn how to properly ask a question, and then ask that question. You refused to do even that basic legwork. That is why you are ignored. You have no idea what you are talking about, are unwilling to learn, insist that you are right, and refuse to follow even basic direction. If you want to prove me wrong, read the fscking FAQ, learn how to ask a question, provide the actual post content, and I won't even have to reply. 20 other people here will explain to you why you are wrong. Have a nice day!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
That's a dubious claim, because you have offended the fuck out of my sensibilities many times over the years.
And that is a perfectly acceptable loss, because it has the intended effect of driving off 1000 idiots for every 1 talented person. They don't need every talented person, just a quorum.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Wait, is this actually a thing?
Yes.
I (a European) thought this was just a stereotype, spinning off the "stupid American c*nts" trope. TIL.
Its a stereotype that has its roots in reality; its not remotely universal (of course), but plenty of these idiots actually exist in the wild.
Just breaking someone's nose is not enough.
Doing even that much is enough to get the attention of the police, and get you into real trouble. Losing the bully and facing assault charges isn't much of a win...
Clam down. I can assert you that the bug is very real. I build embedded Linux systems since more than 15 years, I do pretend that I know what I am talking about.
I lived for some years in Oz, and I can confirm that Aussies often show that they like you by having a dig at you. The correct response is to have a dig back at them.
In American terms, Aussies like to tease each other quite a lot, and it's considered entirely normal there.
exactly! we see a lot of the same trouble with americans (not all) but definitely a group that has trouble culturally adjusting. My wife had a hell of a time adjusting too when she moved to Australia. For the first year she was constantly offended when I had a dig at her or when someone else did, thankfully I finally got her over that and now she just fires right back at the person with a smile.
Why do you have a right to complain about Linus?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
AC beat me to it. Like it or not this is a gender issue, it's a reflection of the toxic effects of SJWism on women in real world practice. Sarah is perfectly willing to be mocking, abusive, and disrespectful to anyone she disagrees with when she's in a position of power and nobody can fire back, but put her somewhere she can't silence disagreement or worse still somewhere she'll get just as good as she gives and this is the result.
She wants to be able to mock and deride anyone and everyone she disagrees with, but not have the same done in return to her or even have people disagree with her in a way she finds unpleasant. She's acting like offended royalty, bristling at the commoners that dare presume themselves her equals and speak to her in a manner not befitting her self-given stature.
This is what happens when you raise people on a combination of put-downs and disempowerment mixed with unconditional affirmation and shallow gender jingoism. You get a bully with big ego and a glass jaw, someone who thinks they're better than everyone else because they think they've had such a horrible uphill battle their whole lives but in reality can't actually handle actual adversity or even mere unpleasantness when they finally encounter it. And of course since nothing is ever their fault, nor is anything ever under their control, they externalize all their difficulties and negative feelings onto an outside source.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
that adult life isn't just the permanent continuation of high school and its power relations?
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
Actually, the normalization of aristocratic behavior, piety toward superiors, and flowery bourgeois non-statements are a cultural disease of the English, and in this incarnation hasn't been around for longer than the Magna Carta in any case. Don't ascribe to merit what was quite well documented as being accomplished by mass murder, mass starvation and elite arrogance.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
There was a time when it wasn't necessary for IT people to play dandy games.
1. Who eliminated our Tom Smitkowskis and to whose profit?
2. Why is imperialism even remotely cool?
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
> This isn't empowering women. This is arguing that they are weaker than men far more profoundly than any MRA red piller gamer gater misogynist could ever hope to accomplish.
No, *labeling* something as "weaker" makes it weaker, which you just did.
When you can't cut it in the real world and have very little of value to contribute.
Mental illness shouldn't be ignored just because it's a woman displaying it. She's not merely a cunt, she's got issues.
What's the difference if Linus calls something "crap" rather than "contribution of limited utility"? I think it's acceptable that he uses right and direct language to express his frustration. Anything else would be dishonest. The very difference between normative language and non-normative language is arbitrary and I think it should go. Actual lkml posts doesn't reveal anything other than Linus sometimes using expletives, that's not enough to actually make environment toxic. People are just lazy and judge only by individual words without seeing full picture.
Men and women have different general preferences for communications style.
Tell that to Matthew Garrett and Con Konvilas who also both left after getting fed up with your supposed "male communication style".
You're in the minority on this - you do not talk for all males,
Do you appreciate the irony of speaking for all males and telling someone how they don't?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Men and women have different general preferences for communications style.
Tell that to Matthew Garrett and Con Konvilas who also both left after getting fed up with your supposed "male communication style".
You're in the minority on this - you do not talk for all males,
Do you appreciate the irony of speaking for all males and telling someone how they don't?
I was careful not to speak for all males - see the word "generally" there? Ever wonder what it means?
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
So you refuse to say what the bug is, but want us all to rest assured that it is a major issue that nobody is actually experiencing. Got it. It truly is a great mystery why they ignore you on the LKML. Now either post the actual bug along with your analysis or shut the fuck up and go back to pretending that you know what you are talking about elsewhere. You are wasting peoples time, asshole.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Okay Mr. SJW, you can point to a single example of Sarah mocking or being abusive and disrespectful? I'll add that it should be outside the LKML, since being on there you have to fit in with the general tone of the place to get anywhere, but you did say "when she's in a position of power".
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You were speaking as much/as little for one whole gender as the previous poster.
I like how after declaring men and women generally communicate differently you completely ignored my comment pointing two men who have left over the same problems.
You are intellectually dishonest and suffer deeply from confirmation bias, not to mention being a poster child for the backfire effect.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You were speaking as much/as little for one whole gender as the previous poster.
Nope, I took care to insert the word "general" in there, which you may have skipped over in your haste to respond. You should attempt as much care when reading as I do when writing.
I like how after declaring men and women generally communicate differently you completely ignored my comment pointing two men who have left over the same problems.
Lots of men have left. Ulrich, Alan Cox. In the offline world people leave too, you know. The great thing about *this* particular organisation is that it is completely voluntary. You can say that the invisible green men told you to leave - still doesn't mean much. It's all voluntary.
You are intellectually dishonest and suffer deeply from confirmation bias, not to mention being a poster child for the backfire effect.
Personal attacks, attacking me personally and not my argument... you *do* realise that you're responding in a thread titled "[...]be more sensitive", right? Where's this legendary sensitivity when you need it?
Perhaps I should swoon now :-)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
"It's people like YOU who make work environments toxic. Get out." people like you are just trolls who hide behind their keyboard
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Lots of men have left.
But not all. This is therefore not just a problem with the way women communicate.
not my argument..
You ignored what I wrote: you had no argument to attack.
Perhaps I should swoon now :-)
huh?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Lots of men have left.
But not all. This is therefore not just a problem with the way women communicate.
not my argument..
You ignored what I wrote: you had no argument to attack.
Perhaps I should swoon now :-)
huh?
Oh, wait, you do not remember what you said?
Let me refresh your memory: in a thread about hostile communications, in which you are arguing that the communication is too hostile, you write this:
You are intellectually dishonest and suffer deeply from confirmation bias, not to mention being a poster child for the backfire effect.
Nice going there, being polite in your correspondence - you ever think that maybe you're part of the problem? You trash talk like the rest, but blame everybody else for chasing away women... Nice.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I never insulted you, so keep it for yourself.
Already told you AC beat me to that. I see you're keeping up with your tradition of pretending anything contradicting your femsploitation narrative doesn't exist.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
And the kernel is way bloatier than necessary because the kind of people who enjoy cleaning that kind of crap up tend to get disparaged or ignored, and just walk away.
Bloat is like Godwin's Law. When someone doesn't have a clue the word bloat gets into the conversation.
I suggest you go to her blog again, and CTRL-F for "Fart". Then read the sentence that comes up. Then come back here, take out the foot that's firmly implemented in your mouth, and proceed to apologize to the class.
Sarah Sharp is a person of no consequence who tried to Tone police a whole community and is now throwing a kindergarten level tanthrum because people just told her to shove it.
You don't insert yourself into a community and expect the entire culture to change to suit you. You adapt to the new community.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
She's arguing for a more professional communications style. If anyone spoke to (or emailed) me at work the way kernel developers are frequently quoted as communicating with one another on the lists, I'd pass the message on to my boss, and expect them hauled up in front of HR if they carried on. What's more, I've seen this happen (once, in my more than 20 years of professional experience.)
Anyone posting on Slashdot that they think this is normal, or that it's somehow how males normally talk to one another, is in for a shock when they graduate from whatever high school they're from and attempt to get a degree and/or a job. Office or academic politics is often vicious, but you accuse a co-worker of sexually gratifying a corporation in email, and you can expect consequences, at minimum a talking to, and quite possibly (job) termination.
I cannot believe so many here think this is normal behavior, or even acceptable. Yeah, we're all obnoxious assholes on Slashdot, but that's because we're not working together here and we're letting off steam.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Yes, but if the lawyers tell Intel that it's employees cannot contribute to the Kernel *as a work requirement* anymore, what does that do to the Kernel?
www.christopherlewis.com
You insulted him many times in that discussion, but refusing to answer his very simple question. He asked you to explain the bug. You have failed to even provide that basic response to him, basically completely disrespecting him the whole way and insulting our collective intelligence.
And we should not insult you back ? Double standards much ?
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
"This is not good work."
"This shit sucks."
Same content. Same feedback.
Err... not really. "Not good work" is not the same as "this shit sucks". "This shit sucks" means it's downright bottom of the barrel bad and is never going to be even be considered for usage, not if anyone's life depended on it. We'd let entire star systems we reduced to a single ash before even thinking of looking at using it.
"This is not good work" just means it's not good. It can be passable, it can be bad, but usable, it can be used in the case of an emergency if we have nothing else to work it while you work on something better.
Garbage is garbage. It goes in the garbage. "Not good" is still a pretty large scale. Is it passable ? Just barely usable ? Usable if we have nothing else ? Downright unusable ? Which is it ? Too vague.
"This is garbage" is 100% clear. Clarity > Politeness. If you can't preserve clarity and remain polite, then screw politeness. The receiving person will be mad for a time, but at least he'll know where you stand.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Let me refresh your memory: in a thread about hostile communications
This is your typical intellectually dishonest method of arguing: you like to conflate wildly different things and present the result as a black and white issue.
The LKML is a technical mailing list to facilitate kernel development.
Slashdot is a forum to facilitate arguing.
The thing is, at this point you've either admitted that you're so stupid you can't tell the difference between the two or so dishonest that you'll pretend to know there is no difference when you actually know there is.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Plonk
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
No, I do not insulted him, sorry.
And the question is not about if the bug hang the system or not. The bug hang the system very clearly in a perfectly reproducible way. I will not disclose it here for obvious security reason. Anyway, in that case I was very disappointed by the reaction of the multiple maintainers concerned (the bug is a problem between several layers), while some others developers agree on the bug and even signed-off the proposed patches but can do nothing because there are not maintainers.
There is no difference, except that "crap" is faster to write, gets the point across faster, and gives a better description of the reviewer's thoughts. By criticizing something, rather than someone, you're staying on the correct side of the line I talked about.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Thanks - missed that.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Same reason you have a right to argue with me.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
At my first job, 30 years ago, experienced people were bullying inexperienced people, just because they had a little bit more knowledge.
This is WRONG in the first place. He has not bullied any inexperienced person.
Aww, all I saw around the web is people's yelling about how bad Linus this week, from whom never really actual read what the context of his comments, whom he talked with, etc.
(Links of conversations of Linus, Google, Slashdot, LKML) You may or may not agree with him, but you've brought the wrong experience on him.
Just read all these comments, I think Linus is right to choose straight speaking, when "professional communication" will spend you much more energy on Internet. But he has rule:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/Doc...
Chapter 5: Things to avoid
Your post is not wrong after all, but not about Linus himself.
Sarah's opinion only has value if she's cute.
There, I said it.
Time to watch "12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer again."
One of the reasons why I moved away from several Linux machines was because no matter what scheduler I used, disk IO always slowed the system down to a crawl. It's supposed to slow, but not like that. I mean the mouse was jerky, applications would stop responding...this with a single set of cp commands, let alone when I ran out of RAM and the beast started swapping in and out.
I was told to get an SSD. I switched OSes and it got better all of a sudden. Weird. 8 years down the drain.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
Then why doesn't Linus have a right to complain about contributers to Linux kernel?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Let me refresh your memory: in a thread about hostile communications
This is your typical intellectually dishonest method of arguing: you like to conflate wildly different things and present the result as a black and white issue.
The LKML is a technical mailing list to facilitate kernel development.
Slashdot is a forum to facilitate arguing.
The thing is, at this point you've either admitted that you're so stupid you can't tell the difference between the two or so dishonest that you'll pretend to know there is no difference when you actually know there is.
Lovely - when you do it "context matters", when others do it "they are hostile".
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Lovely - when you do it "context matters"
Yes context does matter, which is why you're a fool for pretending it does not.
"they are hostile".
Ah this is the point where having lost the argument thoroughly you simply resort to making up stuff that I never said. My arguments with you always end this way. At the point you simply start making stuff up, I generally consider the argument won.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Lovely - when you do it "context matters"
Yes context does matter, which is why you're a fool for pretending it does not.
"they are hostile".
Ah this is the point where having lost the argument thoroughly you simply resort to making up stuff that I never said. My arguments with you always end this way. At the point you simply start making stuff up, I generally consider the argument won.
You always consider your argument "won" - even when you don't actually "win" anything :-) Unfortunately for you the thread is still here for all to see your pointless and repeated insults arguing about why other people cannot insult. LKML is, after all, a voluntary association, just like /.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
You always consider your argument "won" - even when you don't actually "win" anything
The point whee you give up on any semblance of reasonableness and start simply making up stuff that you claim I've said---any reasonable person would consider the argument won.
Basically if you've got nothing left but lies you have lost.
HAND.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You always consider your argument "won" - even when you don't actually "win" anything
The point whee you give up on any semblance of reasonableness and start simply making up stuff that you claim I've said---any reasonable person would consider the argument won.
Basically if you've got nothing left but lies you have lost.
HAND.
Luckily my posting history is available to all; never once made up a thing. Of course, this is not the first time you accuse me of making something up, so, yeah - I'm used to it. After all, in this very thread you say that I claimed stuff that you did not claim - and this thread itself shows no such thing :-)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Of course, this is not the first time you accuse me of making something up, so
Tell you what: prove I said it.
I'm waiting...
SJW n. One who posts facts.
From her reactions to what was said I think she is too sensitive to interact with anyone who does not share her exact viewpoints on everything.
Equality does not mean walking into a group and telling them how they have to act to accommodate your irrational reactions to their culture. Equality means treating others as equals, not attempting to make others communicate among themselves according to your pathetic sensibilities.
This is exactly why Linus is one of my heroes.
They weren't even talking to her in the first place. She butted in on their conversation. To help this there would have to be a system to block the emails that could offend. Fortunately there is, it is called unsubscribe, and she helped the community a great deal by finally using it.
Everyone except any particular counter-example your opponents can dig up?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Even if you lose, as long as he knows he was in a fight, he will think twice about doing it again.
In most fights, both participants get hurt. That is really all you have to do. You don't have to be Bruce Lee.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Equality does not mean walking into a group and telling them how they have to act to accommodate your irrational reactions to their culture.
Equality also isn't a kind of snack cracker. This is why I said that the parent didn't understand equality.
Equality means treating others as equals,
That's part of it, yes.
not attempting to make others communicate among themselves according to your pathetic sensibilities.
This, again, has nothing to do with equality. This is why I said that the parent didn't understand equality.
The second part is about behavior. This whole "discussion" is a lot like dealing with teenagers who don't understand why their expect to conform to particular norms. "Why can't we loiter here? What's the harm?" or "We're just ____. What's the big deal?" They simply can't understand that their behavior impacts others because they're still so self-centered. It's why we treat teens like children and not like adults.
See, we live in a society that does not accept the kind of behavior you're defending. You should expect to be scolded when you behave like an unruly teenager. That's how kids learn to live in a civilized society.
You only think people are trying to force you to behave because you feel a little shame when you get scolded.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Like I described several posts ago, IF his behavior drives off good developers who don't want to be yelled at, THEN he can't really complain about not having good developers. That's what all of these words mean:
Look at the meaning in the words in my last couple paragraphs, where I say he's free to do whatever he wants, he just has to deal with the consequences. If his major work goal is working from home in his bathrobe while yelling at people, great, he's going to attract workers who want a boss who works in his bathrobe from home and yells at people. I'm not saying he has to change anything, but he also doesn't have any right to complain about the quality of people that he works with.
It would be like me walking into a fancy bar full of beautiful women while wearing a shirt that says "Show Me Your Tits" and then complaining that no women want to talk to me. I don't really have much of a right to complain about that if I'm being blatantly offensive towards them, do I? Linus can do whatever he wants (and, clearly, he does), but if his behavior drives off talented developers then he has no one to blame but himself. That's my point. He doesn't have to change. I don't care if he does change. He just needs to live with the consequences of his behavior, like everyone else. Some people choose to behave professionally so they can work with other professionals, other people decide to behave however the fuck they want, dick sucking and all, and be surrounded by whoever wants to put up with that. I don't really care which of those Linus chooses, I'm just stating which one I would choose, and I also think that his criticisms of what it means to be a professional are completely wrong.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
How about you deal with the consequences of what you post ?
1.
he also doesn't have any right to complain about the quality of people that he works with
Is not compatible with
2.
IF his behavior drives off good developers who don't want to be yelled at, THEN he can't really complain about not having good developer
While both arguments are weak, pick one of the above and then I'll address it.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
I'll choose option 3: you can take whatever I typed out of context and say whatever you'd like about it. Go nuts. Have a good one.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
In posting this, you ended up taking option 4: the straw man argument. Because I'm not interested in taking statements out of context. I do try to keep posts very short because you go off on a tangent using any less important stuff I post which only has a supporting role in my argument.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
When I'm too busy congratulating myself over what I've perceived as a clever achievement to notice a flaw that should have been obvious to me (and it does happen), I sure as fuck do.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.