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The New Yorker on Linus Torvalds (newyorker.com)
Linus Torvalds announced on Sunday that he was sorry for how he treated the community over the years. Torvalds, 48, said he planned to make some changes to how he conducted himself, and on that part, he said he would be taking some time off from Linux kernel development work. The New Yorker has published a story on Torvalds today in which it notes that it reached out to Torvalds days before he made the big announcement. From the story, which may be paywalled for some readers: Torvalds's decision to step aside came after The New Yorker asked him a series of questions about his conduct for a story on complaints about his abusive behavior discouraging women from working as Linux-kernel programmers. In a response to The New Yorker, Torvalds said, "I am very proud of the Linux code that I invented and the impact it has had on the world. I am not, however, always proud of my inability to communicate well with others -- this is a lifelong struggle for me. To anyone whose feelings I have hurt, I am deeply sorry."
Torvalds's response was conveyed by the Linux Foundation, which supports Linux and other open-source programming projects and paid Torvalds $1.6 million in annual compensation as of 2016. The foundation said that it supported his decision and has encouraged women to participate but that it has little control over how Torvalds runs the coding process. "We are able to have varying degrees of impact on these outcomes in newer projects," the statement said. "Older more established efforts like the Linux kernel are much more challenging to influence."
Linux's elite developers, who are overwhelmingly male, tend to share their leader's aggressive self-confidence. There are very few women among the most prolific contributors, though the foundation and researchers estimate that roughly ten per cent of all Linux coders are women. "Everyone in tech knows about it, but Linus gets a pass," Megan Squire, a computer-science professor at Elon University, told me, referring to Torvalds's abusive behavior. "He's built up this cult of personality, this cult of importance."
Torvalds's response was conveyed by the Linux Foundation, which supports Linux and other open-source programming projects and paid Torvalds $1.6 million in annual compensation as of 2016. The foundation said that it supported his decision and has encouraged women to participate but that it has little control over how Torvalds runs the coding process. "We are able to have varying degrees of impact on these outcomes in newer projects," the statement said. "Older more established efforts like the Linux kernel are much more challenging to influence."
Linux's elite developers, who are overwhelmingly male, tend to share their leader's aggressive self-confidence. There are very few women among the most prolific contributors, though the foundation and researchers estimate that roughly ten per cent of all Linux coders are women. "Everyone in tech knows about it, but Linus gets a pass," Megan Squire, a computer-science professor at Elon University, told me, referring to Torvalds's abusive behavior. "He's built up this cult of personality, this cult of importance."
I've had a personal epiphany
oh yeah and there may possibly also be a story about me and this subject coming out in a major publication in a few days too
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
The name TorValds has possibly appropos meanings in Norwegian and German. In Norwegian it means "many threats" or "much daring" according to a raw text translation. (presumably it's more nuanced and related to Thor if you are Norwegian).
In German it text translated to a "Array of building openings" or a "forest of Doors". Which I think sounds like a description of "Windows" on an office building.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It seems more and more certain that Linus has indeed fallen to one of the "honeypots" and is being blackmailed.
I hope nothing bad happens to Linus. Other lives have been ruined by the suspected group of people.
So? Linux has likely become successful exactly because of the behaviour of the developers. There's no 'fluffing' anything, it's simply good enough to go in, or shit and shouldn't be in. Linux has succeeded, and is in great shape and this has been the way since it started and likely the 'behaviour' has contributed to that directly.
If that's what it takes for this to keep succeeding, should it change? Probably not.
Being arrogant makes you more likely to do something big.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
I'd like to see at least a couple of proofs of this egregiously dubious statement.
... I have to ask, does this mean you can suggest women are more influenced by abusive behavior, and that's not sexist?
Plenty of people out there see any sort of strong self-confidence as "jerk behavior." In fact the more insecure the individual, the more hopelessly assholeish your confidence will appear to them.
Summary is confusing. It's talking about Linus's straight-forward or aggressive behavior and is then talks about women being discouraged from working on the kernel, as if those are related. But is there actually sexism that has been demonstrated within the kernel dev community, or is it just implied that women are less capable of working in high-stress or tense situations and that men need to act more fluffy?
That implication sounds more sexist than how the kernel dev community has operated.
Of course it's somehow unthinkable to draw the conclusions that fewer women work on the kernel because fewer women want to work on the kernel.
I always though Linus was a bit of a douche bag, but really, a lot of intelligent people who achieve "fame" or success relatively young are. I think the same personality type that leads to the dedication needed to create something as important as Linux, also tends to create less than stellar human beings.
You need a lesson on douchebaggery. Coders like Poettering are douchebags. His code will fuck up everything that others do and he maintains that it is working as designed. Not a bug. Won't fix. EVERYONE ELSE has to work around his assholery. Linus puts up with none of that shit and will tell you to your face that you suck and your code sucks. That makes him abrasive but definitely not a douchebag. The fact that others have to retreat to their safe spaces after being called out for shit work does not constitute douchebaggery on Linus' part. Do your best work and you won't be called out. If you can't do acceptable work that won't get you called out, maybe you aren't kernel developer material.
Do you think that, maybe, people with anti-social psychological makeups are drawn to a field where they don't really need to talk to anyone to accomplish something?
Most people would consider me to be a nice guy. Maybe a little off in one way or another, but I'm affable. That doesn't mean that I *like* to talk to people. I'm working from home today. I'm going to write code for nine hours straight without talking to another human being (besides occasionally looking at /. ) I'm perfectly fine with this.
I work with marketing, services and support people who can't stand not talking. They constantly come around and talk to other people about stuff, not necessarily work related. I don't mind it, but I'd rather not.
I work with people who come off as jerks if you would meet them in passing, but I understand their mindset. They don't like talking to people. It's not that they hate you, they would rather not interact with you.
This is the central disconnect, I think. People who are - I guess you can call them introverts - would simply rather not talk to other people. It's not that they don't like women, or minorities, or any other specific category of people. They don't like talking to *people* All inclusive. That doesn't make it OK. That doesn't make them not jerks. But understanding their mindset is important in dealing with them.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
1) He created the Linux kernel, which is one of the most essential pieces of software in computing today. Everything else sits on an operating system, which is the thing which interfaces with the hardware.
2) He created a wholly new management method and workflow, for this open source, distributed development process.
Casually brushing these two points aside, like he's some unremarkable CEO, doesn't do the man's achievements justice.
Once things are created, people take them for granted, like a kernel or a country.
Of course it's women
It's hilarious that hardly anyone cares thst he was mean to men, it's the WOMEN that must be coddled.
This is obviously a patronizing move, but "progressive" ppl are stupid, so they can't see that
Actually, unless you're coding for yourself, it really does.
Just getting the actual requirements out of clients/bosses can take hours, you have to be able to handle input (and criticism!) from co-workers, and then there's the inevitable complaints about problems real or imagined when you're done.
Linux's elite developers, who are overwhelmingly male, tend to share their leader's aggressive self-confidence. There are very few women among the most prolific contributors, though the foundation and researchers estimate that roughly ten per cent of all Linux coders are women.
So women are the same as men, and if you don't think so, you are a knuckle dragging sexist.
On the other hand, women are so different from men that they bring magical special goodness to a project. So we need to do whatever we can to bring them in.
Linus didn't "build up this cult of personality, this cult of importance", he actually built one of the most important pieces of software on the planet. People respect and accept his behavior because he delivers. Nobody ever forced anybody to work with Linus.
If you don't like someone, don't work with them. If you don't like a company, don't buy their products. If you don't like who an open source project is run, fork the project and do better. Stop intruding into other people's business.
It's a choice I exercise frequently.
And by all available, reasonably hard facts, it is because women in general want to become engineers significantly less often than men. Stop complaining, let women decide what they want to do in life and accept that! And no, it is not discrimination, harassment or "the patriarchy". It is just that women are fully capable human beings that can make their own decisions on what they want to do in life.
As a result, you will have significantly less female contributors in any larger tech project, whether in leadership position or more hands-on position. Again, stop complaining about this, it is by choice and it actually shows that women these days make their own decisions regarding what career they want. Implying that all these women that decide not to go into engineering are weak, oppressed little children that cannot make their own decisions or run away crying as soon as some hasher words are used (as is frequently done by "feminists") is one of the most misogynistic and repulsive things I know.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You can be both; a good coder and a good person. Being deficient in a healthy human emotion shouldn't be a badge of honor.
I think that some people get interested in tech because they haven't learned how to interact with people, for whatever reason. People are arguably more interesting than computers, but they are also more frustrating. I was raised by a single mother who avoided life. She didn't have a social life, so I didn't learn to interact with humans as a child. I had to figure that out on my own, and without the influence of the scruz geek scene I could easily have ended up as an incel white supremacist since I scarcely even saw a person of color until I was a teenager. I was even raised to be a homophobe, not so much by my parents, but by the kids around me at school to whom "gay" (&c) was an insult.
I'm still not much of a programmer, although over the years I've picked up the basics, but I always had a keen interest in computers. Finally, a complex system to which I could learn to relate without help! All I needed was the documentation, and time. I got involved before the explosive growth of the internet, so I participated in BBSing. And the tone of messages in forums was adversarial and snarky, so I learned to be adversarial and snarky long before I learned to be caring, or forgiving. I learned to respect technical skills before I learned to respect personal skills. That led to work as a systems administrator, but it didn't lead to happy relationships.
I work in medicine, and while many fail at empathy, at least there is a focus on it.
What? Must not be in the US. Here, the focus is on profit, and on treating people like machines. Get them in and out of the office with as little actual human interaction as possible.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why isn't everyone perfect?? I'm sure everyone at The New Yorker treats everyone fairly and this Linus Torvalds guy is a horrible monster outlier. Or maybe it could just be men that are focused and practiced enough to be kernel/device driver programmers didn't take time hanging around a bunch of people who share their feels on snapchats every 5 seconds. Maybe instead of going out with a group of friends to the bar last night he was in a dark room with glowing monitors until 3am ironing out a bug or 30 and responding to emails from other devs doing the same thing across the world. It takes sacrifices to be a certain type of person. Not everyone is meant to be social and friendly and courteous because that takes time and effort away from I dunno launching an entire Kernel project that represents your entire life's work.
Yup, I'm happy to be an idiot that's spent tens of thousands of hours contributing to various open source projects. I'm glad there are thousands of other people that feel it's more important to contribute to society than acting like a greedy asshole. I will remind you that linus did work for free for many years before linux foundation was created to support linus. I don't agree with how linus treats people or his poor communication skills, but he earned his position. Very few programmers have made such a big contribution. Even though I hate GIT and curse it daily, the work he's done since the early 90's is why he deserves that salary. I remember using slackware and was lucky enough to see linux grow. Compare linus to say steve jobs, Jobs was a bigger asshole and couldn't code himself out of a paper bag!
I know quite a few female engineers and some scientists. None of them have a problem with being called out when they screw up. All of them do it to others as well. And all of them can very well distinguish between a personal insult and language directed at their work but not at them. I don't think any of them would have any problem with the style of Linus or the kernel core team.
Incidentally, I had some interactions with the core Linux team from some bug reports I made and I found them to be very focused, but in no way arrogant or insulting or the like. They just have a lot to do and a lot of responsibility and really want to get the job done well. I fully approve of that attitude.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
No, no...Poettering is a cunt.
1) Not everyone you perceive to be an asshole is an asshole. Cultural differences play a big role here. Where I'm from, being blunt is appreciated and when we visit the US we perceive everyone as being 'fake'. (Which doesn't mean Americans are in fact fake, but it goes to show the significant difference.)
2) Being empathetic does not make you a good person. Some people, and among coders perhaps more so, do not empathize. At best they can be taught emulate empathy.
3) Your obliviousness to the above suggests your own empathy isn't as great as you believe it to be either. In fact, you come off as quite the asshole.
As Linus gets pretty much called out every time he is an asshole by, ahem, some special interest parties, it seems he is actually very rarely an asshole.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Current social norms assume that diversity is universally beneficial for any organization working on any project. While it is obviously true for any human-facing organization, it is less clear that infrastructure projects like Linux would benefit. While diversity can be beneficial, its not without its drawbacks and costs that should be considered. For example, uniformity makes it easier to standardize or build consensus. Diversity can lead to increase of in-group formation, politicing, and turf wars.
The question that should be objectively examined, but is likely impossible to do so in a current political climate, is whether increasing diversity of the Linux contributors would lead to a better Linux kernel. Empirically, merit-based approach worked well up to this point and it isn't clear that it should be replaced by diversity-based approach. It is conceivable that all-white, all-male, all-antisocial, all-hostile group of kernel developers would produce the best possible kernel.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. — George Carlin
In corporate America, so much of being part of a business involves learning to suffer fools. In some way I am envious that, for this little small corner, someone gets to run the experiment of what happens if you stop playing the participation trophy game and refuse to sugar coat things to idiots when they do something really wrong.
But, it's one thing to tell people they're wrong and wasting your time bluntly. It's another to rip someone a new asshole, making sure they know you think they're being an idiot, which is very much Torvalds' style. I'm sure most people have met someone who rules by fear rather than leadership. These overly-emotional assholes are often fools themselves, but Linus is the rare form of asshole who happens to be smart and have solid logic behind the emotion. That makes me think twice about it, but doesn't exempt him from criticism for shitty leadership. I'm glad he's acknowledged the err of his ways -- there's a lot of room for him to improve while still offering blunt efficiency.
I knew this was a hit piece!
Please go look at who's behind the sadistic COC , yes the feminazi troll who caused Linus to fall on his sword: Coraline Ada Ehmke, , she's a real peach!
- a fully signed up member of the patriarchy.
That was before the age of Codes of Conduct. Now the squeaky wheel not only gets the grease, but gets the presumption of wrongdoing on your part because they were ever squeaking in the first place.
. . . and promote and value excellent contributions, or you can care more about someones' feelz above all else. Linux just chose the latter, initiating a well-known downward spiral of complaining and inevitable technical stagnation that's been seen many times before once these CoCs are introduced into open source projects. At the end of the day, these two things are mutually exclusive, thanks to the everything-offends-me-and-if you-don't-agree-you're-a-misogynist-racist SJW brigade. This is the logical conclusion of weaponizing CoCs which target straight white males from the get-go, particularly those authored by people who hate the idea of meritocracy.
Guess what? The real world doesn't give a *fuck* how you feel, especially in unforgiving disciplines like engineering and tech. Life ain't fair, and 99%+ of the people contributing to Linux don't give two shits about social justice one way or the other. Open source is *not* a social movement! Those people are there to code -- well -- and because they're adults they can handle a rant or two every one in awhile and even a nasty, well-deserved public undressing, and they don't need one of these batshit-crazy CoCs to tell them how to behave. The simple addition of "Don't be an asshole" would've addressed the specific concern without throwing the baby out with the bathwater while giving power to those who don't necessarily deserve it.
biology
Whoa, there, Sparky. Let's not get all crazy and talk about biological differences between the sexes. If you work at Google, please report yourself to HR so that you may be fired.
so that number will include repetitions and other people's craps, and as such it does not accurately measure the magnitude of the defendant's crime. I believe that the inquisition should be repeated with more scrupulous zeal.
And remember, even though he says that he's sorry, we're still talking about a male here, therefore he's not to be trusted: he could start again uttering mild profanities at any time.
So you are only an asshole on Slashdot then, because only an asshole would argue that Linus has been out of line. Anyone who has actually invested the necessary time to have a clue would have seen his talks and interviews. He isn't an asshole; he is in fact quite humble for a guy who literally improved the state of computing by an order of magnitude beyond the pathetic state it was in when "great guy and philanthropist" Gates was fucking everyone over. E-mail is simply a piss poor communication method when you don't know the person with whom you are communicating. I can say "You incompetent baffoon" in a way that is ascerbic, or in a way that is not. And frankly, when Linus rants he is generally justified in doing so. This is a sad set of events, and the kernel code *will* suffer down the road as a result. Go back Linus ... You have been bamboozled by incompetents who know their code is sub-par and want to put on their resume that they "participated."
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Being anti-social and lacking empathy doesn't make you a better coder, it makes you an asshole. You can be both; a good coder and a good person. Being deficient in a healthy human emotion shouldn't be a badge of honor.
I work in medicine, and while many fail at empathy, at least there is a focus on it.
Linus is many things, but he is not a "tech-bro" in the modern valley sense. This seems orthogonal to the original discussion, as startup/Silicon Valley/Web 3.0 Culture is toxic for far more reasons than simply the kernel maintainer chewing you out if you try to commit really bad design flaws into it.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Linux Torvalds is an arrogant asshole. But, as usual, everyone is trotting out the same old bullshit "We ain't got enuff wimmins! He be scarrin' away all the wimmins!"
No. Just fucking no. Just fuck off with your stupid bullshit.
He is an asshsole to *EVERYONE*. He is insulting and demeaning to *EVERYONE*. Not just men, not just women. Everyone.
If you're terribly upset because Linux Torvalds was mean to you, not in person but *IN A FUCKING E-MAIL* then the real problem is you, not him.
Again, Linus is a humble guy and when he lets go it is deserved. Because Linus now says what you say doesn't make it true. It has always served a very important purpose, to wit, making sure dumbfucks don't come to the party. Being more inviting to dumbfucks will NOT work out for the better for anyone but the dumbfucks.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Some people can't be 'a good person'.
I will take this as a given for the purposes of this conversation, but I don't agree.
That doesn't automatically make them bad coders.
No, it doesn't, but that's a straw man. Nobody claimed it made them bad coders. The claim is that it makes them bad team members.
And sometimes, they are coders so excellent, that [...] you should really consider if it's better to try to change (or dismiss) the efficient asshole, or just have the complainers go seek their luck elsewhere.
Right. I completely agree with that. You could probably write some complicated mathematical equation that would permit you to actually quantify this, and make a logical determination whether it makes more sense to maintain the situation as it is, or make social changes.
However, this situation doesn't fit that description. What we have here is a person who can be a good person, as defined by their regard for the needs of others which is what we're really talking about here. And he appears to recognize the value in doing so. As others have pointed out in this discussion, Linus' primary job is one of management. He can manage more people (and more code!) by being polite than he can by being abusive, even if only because being abusive means that people who could be making a code contribution are going away and doing something else instead.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think you're confusing non-profit and charity. Non-profit simply means that it doesn't have a legal obligation to maximize profits for its shareholders.
Being confident, when you're also competent, makes you more likely to do something big.
Being arrogant makes you more likely to walk straight into a catastrophe because you're too much of a dick to question yourself.
Yes, a lot of people confuse them.
I'm sorry, from here Linux seems like a very very nice guy. Yeah, he gets super-pissed with people who waste his time. Of course he does. He's the effing kernel lead and if you didn't to your homework and keep on harping about the same bullshit although you should know better, especially if you're a paid engineer at a large famous and powerful IC company.
Yes, he uses explitives where he shouldn't and it makes him sound immature and childish and way less sophisticated than it should. Which is why he wants to improve. Kudos to him for that.
I'd take Linus as a teamlead over most others anytime. And if he were mad at me if look very carefully into what I delivered that made him made before I get back to him or simply blow it off as Linus being Linus.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
He is insulting and demeaning to *EVERYONE*. Not just men, not just women. Everyone.
IOW, from the article:
“He is an equal-opportunity abuser,” she said. Squire added, though, that for non-male programmers the hostility and public humiliation is more isolating.
From what I've seen, it's OK to tell a white male programmer "your code is crap". But if you want to criticize the code of someone from a minority, you need to be extra careful, because you never know when they take it as an insult against their minority group. It's pretty sad, because it used to be that "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog", and code was good because it was good code, not because it was written by a nice guy.
Still, there's an older and more general idea that if you want to play in the big leagues, you need to grow a thick skin. Linux kernel development isn't some neighbourhood hobby group where anyone can play. I just hope it continues be the big league in terms of code quality rather than political correctness. On that, Linus has a nice quote from 2013 in the same article:
“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.”
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.