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How New, Polite Linus Torvalds Points Out Bad Kernel Code (phoronix.com)
Linus Torvalds "has shown already for the new Linux 4.20~5.0 cycle he isn't relaxing his standards but is communicating better when it comes to bringing up coding," reports Phoronix, adding "So far it looks like Linus' brief retreat is paying off with still addressing code quality issues -- and not blatantly accepting new code into the kernel as some feared -- but in doing so in a professional manner compared to his past manner of exclaiming himself over capitalized sentences and profanity that at time put him at odds with some in the Linux kernel community."
AmiMoJo quotes their report: Last Saturday he took issue with the HID pull request and its introduction of the BigBen game controller driver that was introduced: the developer enabled this new driver by default. Linus Torvalds has always frowned upon random new drivers being enabled by default in the kernel configuration driver. [H]e still voiced his opinion over this driver's default "Y" build configuration, but did so in a more professional manner than he has done in the past:
We do *not* enable new random drivers by default. And we most *definitely* don't do it when they are odd-ball ones that most people have never heard of.
Yet the new "BigBen Interactive" driver that was added this merge window did exactly that.
Just don't do it.
Yes, yes, every developer always thinks that _their_ driver is so special and so magically important that it should be enabled by default. But no. When we have thousands of drivers, we don't randomly pick one new driver to be enabled by default just because some developer thinks it is special. It's not.... Please don't do things like this.
Phoronix also describes another "kernel oops" testing Torvalds' patience, in which Linus responded tactfully that "What makes me *very* unhappy about this is that if I'm right, I think it means that code was literally not tested at all by anybody who didn't have one of the entries in that list."
AmiMoJo quotes their report: Last Saturday he took issue with the HID pull request and its introduction of the BigBen game controller driver that was introduced: the developer enabled this new driver by default. Linus Torvalds has always frowned upon random new drivers being enabled by default in the kernel configuration driver. [H]e still voiced his opinion over this driver's default "Y" build configuration, but did so in a more professional manner than he has done in the past:
We do *not* enable new random drivers by default. And we most *definitely* don't do it when they are odd-ball ones that most people have never heard of.
Yet the new "BigBen Interactive" driver that was added this merge window did exactly that.
Just don't do it.
Yes, yes, every developer always thinks that _their_ driver is so special and so magically important that it should be enabled by default. But no. When we have thousands of drivers, we don't randomly pick one new driver to be enabled by default just because some developer thinks it is special. It's not.... Please don't do things like this.
Phoronix also describes another "kernel oops" testing Torvalds' patience, in which Linus responded tactfully that "What makes me *very* unhappy about this is that if I'm right, I think it means that code was literally not tested at all by anybody who didn't have one of the entries in that list."
That should be impossible with just a few written words, right?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Stop focusing on the PERSON, it is IRRELEVANT to the quality of the code.
I miss the old Linus.
That's the stuff that matters.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Uh oh, he's using asterisks... this can't last.
https://regmedia.co.uk/2015/07...
ah, feel better already. Gotta let that out or it builds and it builds and it builds and ... Trump.
Since when did Tux grow a set of tits?
Stress is unhealthy none the less. Deep breathing exercises works for me :)
[($)]
Linus Torvalds is a parent to 3 daughters. Nothing makes you grow up and be patient more than being a parent. lol
Europe and the planet stop fossile fuel and DON'T ENABLE THIS SHIT BY DEFAULT IN THE KERNEL. PÃRKELE!
So some idiot does not even compile the code and does a pull request?
Person like that shouldn't just get yelled at, they should never be allowed to touch code again.
I think he took his month off to develop an AI that replaces his swear words with non-swear words surrounded in asterisks.
Compare 2010:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2010/5/20/218
This is just unbelievable SH*T: ...
First it says "only ask if EMBEDDED", and then it says "default to Y if
not embedded".
Why? Why the hell did somebody decide that everybody and their pet dog
should get that totally uninteresting driver, whether they want it or not?
I realize that every single developer thinks that their driver is the most
important thing in the universe, but come on! This kind of thing is
totally inappropriate, and to make matters worse, it looks like there are
a few commits that won't even compile because the whole file wasn't even
added until later.
And this piece of shit was made _mandatory_?
Get a grip, people. I'm not pulling idiotic crap like this. Some quality
control before you ask me to pull, for chissake!
2018:
We do *not* enable new random drivers by default. And we most *definitely* don't do it when they are odd-ball ones that most people have never heard of.
Yet the new "BigBen Interactive" driver that was added this merge window did exactly that.
Just don't do it.
Yes, yes, every developer always thinks that _their_ driver is so special and so magically important that it should be enabled by default. But no. When we have thousands of drivers, we don't randomly pick one new driver to be enabled by default just because some developer thinks it is special. It's not.... Please don't do things like this.
This is clearly developer behavior which Linus just HATES, but now he has to be polite in expressing his disdain for it.
I expect Linus to be committed to the looney bin in a matter of months.
If you want a healthy productive community, the correct way to handle repeated violations of policy is to document the policy and direct people to it when its violated.
If instead he said, you have violated our driver enablement policy, documented at link, then everyone one involved in the offending change making it in would have a much more pleasant time correcting their behavior and also have the opportunity to learn about such rules in advance easier.
In the software industry, it is standard practice to take repeat issues like this and document then in your best practices document along with examples and justifications. Its better for everyone involved (less work and stress for people like Linus, less being singled out and less feeling like they are being targeted by the contributors).
Personally I find that the canonical policy documentation is in Linus's head to be a bigger issue than his attitude. There is more to being fostering a positive developer community than not speaking in a rude way: you actually need to be inclusive/transparent when it comes to forming the policies, and in this case having a written best practices document everyone can read and discuss when they have disagreements rather than suffer a personal attack for an authority figure would make this a much better experience for most people.
At least that's my personal take coming from from the big company cooperate software engineering environment. I've dealt with this kind of feedback before, and it always feels like "my arbitrary opinion that you don't have access to says you should stop being wrong". I like it much better when a perceived mistake is instead address with the question of how we can help future people from making the mistake (ex: new documentation) or how I can help myself from making similar mistakes (ex: direct me to existing documentation). Its the difference of attitude between you messed up, vs how can we learn from this to improve the system so less people fall into the same trap you did.
We all have assholes, some just prefer giving rather than receiving anal.
This seems like a case study that can determine whether it is more important to be right or be polite.
So, was he right? (check yes or no)
Did he discriminate against someone? (check yes or no)
Did he sexually harass someone? (check yes or no)
Was he polite? (check yes or no)
One of these questions does not seem nearly as important as the others. Can you guess which it is?
We have found his twin brother. (See, the twin is NOT always evil =)
He still can't just say:
"Drivers are not to be enabled by default. Disable and resubmit."
Nope, he's STILL gotta go on a passive aggressive sarcasm-fest. Fuck that guy.
What about that? Damn social justice warriors.
You sound worried. You should be worried
If the right person complains that they felt excluded, it won't matter. Once you hold up inclusiveness as a virtue, all bets are off.
I'm confused. I thought not being able to tell people they are morons meant he had to bend over and accept any sort of crap code into the kernel. But reading through this, I'm almost getting the impression that it's possible to maintain quality without being a prick about it. What am I missing?
I don't think so. I think he will just learn to be cutting and harsh in a polite way. It is not that hard to utterly destroy somebody while staying perfectly polite and seemingly not even getting personal at all.
In fact, Linus demonstrated here that he can do this. (Yes, AmiMoJo is not only an SJW, but also deeply stupid...)
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
No over-the-top belittling or cursing. But it still unnecessarily long/repetitive, contains multiple bolds/underlines, belittles a user/team, and is impolite. So while it is an improvement, couldn't he have just said something like:
"The BigBen Interactive driver was merged with the driver enabled. We generally do not enable new drivers by default, especially those that are more obscure. Please refrain from enabling new drivers to help keep the kernel more robust and stable. Thanks!"
I don't know, I find the sobbing and screeching of incels and Nazis to be quite a catchy little tune.
Step up and be a leader, or dont bother running a project. And for the rest ( women,TG, whatever ), step up and show some guts, and skills, and stop whining its 'unfair'.
Basic human decency is receiving anal? Man, you really are insecure.
No, the actual problem here is he sugar-coated the fact that the submitter was a fucktwat who has no business developing kernel code. No doubt you also fall into this category, or you wouldn't be so worried about how such fucktwats get treated.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
That's not Linus; the real LT is in an alien pod.
That's Pod Linus
"Your ignorance seems to have no limit. Your opinions are idiotic. Your personal hygiene leaves much to be desired. Your family is ugly."
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
I told someone that I'm predicting Linus will release some custom AI he wrote during the break.
He got tired of version control and went off an wrote Git, so what's the chance he went off and wrote some filtering software that intelligently replaces phrases with grammatically correct (and PC/SJW compliant) phrases?
He hinted at this before his absence, so I'm gonna bet he installed a "circuit breaker" that prevents tirades from leaving his mailbox.
Taking it up your ass like a sissy, bitch :)
You're not really a man if you let insecure people decide for you what it means to be an asshole.
A cool thing about documenting standards is you can then translate that English-language documentation into a Git hook and it'll be checked *automatically* as soon as it's committed. The developer will be notified of the problem even before any other person sees it.
In engineering, if it's wrong, it's probably better not to build it.
Building something wrong, so it doesn't work and is perhaps dangerous, is not a success.
Dear Linus, invent cars or trucks for the drivers (in the kernel).
Come on. He wrote a filter to translate what he really wrote into "acceptable, rainbow, speech."
We all play with the speak like a pirate filter, right? Linus wrote a similar filter and fed all his most offending emails through it as a test.
Why else would he have taken a little leave from the project?
It's the only way... :)
Oh look, snowflake can't make the difference between "all men" and "assholes". I don't feel threatened in the least by what you cucks call SJW or feminists... maybe try not being an asshole?
Please stop eavesdropping on other peoples mailing lists you are not a member of and have nothing constructive to contribute.
Please stop invoking hyperbole and extreme cherry picking to manufacture a narrative suggesting Torvalds was somehow unhinged before and now he isn't.
Every day I pray AmiMoJo and all pour souls like him afflicted with SJW related mental disorders get the professional help they so desperately need.
Old Linus speak
"You're an idiot...."
Means fix it up and resubmit.
New Linus speak
"I think that there might be an opportunity for improvement..."
means your about to be fired (or barred).
Be very very wary of people that are very polite.
Just repeat after me. Serenity now.
They always give you free fluoride for a year after 're-education'. Oh I'm so sorry, did I offend anyone?!?!
Ah, see, that's where you've gotten things a bit mixed up. I am not a left-winger; in fact, the ones I've talked to are generally only slightly less appalled by the things I say than you are. They aren't as compassionate as they like to think they are, but even they usually think I'm too hard on your fee fees.
...is sometimes more terrifying.
I think AmiMojo is a very sick person with zero empathy.
Free Software world hero Linus Torvalds was forced either to resign from the Linux kennel project, or to act like a feminized soyboy, by blackmail. He fell for a honeytrap and was threatened with a #MeToo purge if he didn't resign. It's a corporate power grab, using "Social Just-Us" as a tool.
Hi,
Thanks for your article,
Good work keep it up.
https://www.be-practical.com/What-is-MERN-Stack-Development.html
No, it is usually much harder to write a perfect automatic hook, and if you did so, you wouldn't need to then document it at all (except for courtesy).
Oh fuck off. We do *not* enable new random drivers by default. And we most *definitely* don't do it when they are odd-ball ones that most people have never heard of.
Yet the new "BigBen Interactive" driver that was added this merge window did exactly that.
Just don't fucking do it.
Yes, yes, you always thinks that your driver is so special and so magically important that it should be enabled by default. But no. When we have thousands of drivers, we don't randomly pick one new driver to be enabled by default just because some developer thinks they are special. You're not. Don't fucking do things like this.
I think he will just learn to be cutting and harsh in a polite way. It is not that hard to utterly destroy somebody while staying perfectly polite and seemingly not even getting personal at all.
"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite." WS Churchill
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
On the one hand we have this useful driver that seems to be working well enough. On the other they left the enable by default flag set, probably by accident as they had to in there for development. Is it really a good idea to reject the driver and tell them that they should stop contributing for what is a fairly minor mistake?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"Phoronix also describes another "kernel oops" testing Torvalds' patience, in which Linus responded tactfully that "What makes me *very* unhappy about this is that if I'm right, I think it means that code was literally not tested at all by anybody who didn't have one of the entries in that list.""
The sad part is, if I told somebody at Acclaim Systems that, the new management would fire me on the spot because it's against the executive office's policy to make offshored contractors feel bad about low quality or untested work. However, when said bug deploys into production five minutes after being committed to TFS and the public-facing application suffers an outage, the internal operations staff is held responsible for not bringing this issue, and a million others like it, to the attention of management. During the AAR meeting, however, nobody is to point to this issue as the source of the outage or present any solutions to resolve or avoid it, as that would be assigning blame and making the managers look bad for green-lighting untested code again.
Look, in my professional opinion, as bad as Linus screaming at people could be sometimes, there was always a way to avoid it - test your code and improve the quality of your work. That Linux has withstood constant assault for ~20 years and continued to improve is, in my personal opinion, a testament to strong leadership on the part of Linus. Without strong leadership, "management" takes hold, disinterested neglect sets in, covering up increasingly frequent emergencies crowds out everything else, and it's extremely difficult to right the ship's course.
As somebody living that nightmare of a project drowning in endlessly compounding stupidity, know that this path Linus is on will continue until nobody is allowed to challenge anything for any reason and Linux is rendered as impotent as any other project that is managed to death.
That isn't a minor mistake. If Linus had missed it in his review then it could have affected the stability of billions of installs of Linux because it was enabled by default. That is the problem with people like you: you don't want to accept responsibility and your mistakes and you want someone to "save" you and be nice to boot. Next time, review the code line by line before submitting it. Also, the developer probably enabled it by default intentionally, because most coders think their stuff is super important.
You know the good ideas ? Let's see how many billion devices run the operating system based on your policies.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Who cares? Linux is dead, anyway.
First the indignity of systemd.
Then Linus cucks on the code of conduct.
Then IBM borgs Red Hat.
Linux has become all the things people used to get involved with Linux to get away from.
Well I just bought this: https://idle.slashdot.org/stor... Need to use it without the glasses to forget that video and hopefully burn my retinas out
Why the fuck is this modded down? What the fuck happened to this world. This does not better man kind, this does the opposite. People need to learn to not take every little thing so personal. Neighbors don't even talk anymore, "friends" will turn their backs on somebody instantly to not get caught in the onslaught of hate to be cast in the direction of perceived "wrong". Grow up. What happened to being an adult, you people are acting like a bunch of 5 year olds.
A typo is a minor mistake, an off-by-one is a minor mistake. Adding an untested driver and setting it as the default is a canary indicating a lack of reasoning skills, like a surgeon who doesn't realize that washing your hands is kind of important.
Why is "incel" not considered a sexist term?
Well, actually, female incels exist. The term was in fact coined by a woman, describing her own condition. She had a disability which physically prevented her from having sex, but still had a functioning libido, and she founded a community of people in similar circumstances. The term is gender-neutral. Kind of tough to be sexist when you don't specify a sex.
Why are people claiming to be against hate, sexism, and exclusion so often filled with hate, sexism, and excluding others?
You leave us little choice. Nothing else has convinced you to grow up, so we are down to this.
Either politeness works and we all ought to be or it doesn't.
It doesn't work. You're the proof of that. So the rest of us continue being polite to one another while showing you the other side of what you do.
Not so much fun, is it? My question is, what makes you think other people feel any different when you do it to them? This is what happens when you become what you hate.
Modded down for laughing at a joke. Nice. Slashdot is filled with soft fucking cry babies.
You sound like a hypocrite douche bag.
Typical for a librard, do as I say, not as I do.
Ah. I see the problem. You think I'm a liberal.
You're right that the libs have a severe problem when it comes to actually following the principles with which they inculcated a generation. But I am no liberal to claim that there is no one true path: false paths exist, and yours is the falsest. I'm not going to sit and preach that all viewpoints are equally valid: yours is merely the most invalid of all. The libs taught us all that no one deserves to be bullied, but they also taught us to that bullying and ostracism were the same thing, and this is not so: they are not, and some people do deserve to be ostracized, and you are among them.
No, I'm not a liberal. I am the parents and grandparents you disappoint on a daily basis. I am the traditions you pay lip service to the idea of upholding, but can't be bothered to actually put in any effort to uphold. I'm the duties you tell yourself you can't perform because that is easier than performing them. I am the people the libs replaced, protesting even back then that they were going to unseal people like you, and they didn't believe, but lo and behold, here you are. I am the people who kept your cage shut from the inside, and I now I am the people who will push you back in and lock ourselves in with you, just to make sure that you never, ever get out again. Because letting you run wild isn't worth any political goal.
It's modded down for being an obvious troll. My own response to it was modded Troll too, and this is fair: I really was trying to make a constructive argument, but I admit that I chose deliberately trollish wording as part of illustrating that point.
Protesting fair moderations is not looked on kindly by the staff. I suggest you stop.
The best *campers* are *happy campers*
Dude ^
Also, the developer probably enabled it by default intentionally
Perhaps by way of company policy of leaving a backdoor in?
This is something, that the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant pointed out. It's possible to be just as cutting without using swear words. Look only at Dr. Ford from Westworld.
Ahh yes, do as I say not as I do. You people are sickening.
Hold on; did you just admit that I'm hurting you? Imagine that. And while you're at it, here's some more food for thought: how do you think other people feel when you do these very same things to them?
See, it's not quite how you're phrasing it. This is "do as I say, not as you". I merely provide a reflection of what you do in a way you would understand.
...he was busy writing a filter app that he runs all his communications through before they get sent/posted. That way he can still curse like before but only his new persona comes through the other end of the filter. Pretty smart if you ask me.
After Linus' recent return to have someone do this kind of crap seems like Trolling. WTF?
The question is, how will he react when someone tries something like (and I know this is over the top): /* Begin-Safe-Space */ /* Checking for NULL Pointers is triggering for me, /* End-Safe-Space */
So I won't do it. */
*ptr = 0;
And still calls people fucking morons! Just with the officially p.c. word police approved words!
So the only change is that he's now talking like a dishonest sleazebag too. "Good" ole US-American tradition, I guess.
PROTIP: It is irrelevant what words you use, to say something, for *saying* it.
How The openness of your tone only tells one something about how honest and trustworthy you are. And about the oppressive fake p.c.ness of the world you usually live in.
That's the main problem we Germans have with you US-Americans. We wouldn't even trust you to be open and hence honest about how your day was. Everything is fake. Politics, Eiffel towers, tits, ground beef, emotions and human relationships.
But congratulations on ruining somebody from the most direct no-bullshitting-around peoples on the planet. (Finns, Scandinavians, etc.)
You could never hurt me. Be it mentally or physically. While at the same time you try to intimidate weaker people as you failed to do in the post above. People like you aren't worth the air that you breathe. I'm a rather good judge of character, prison does that. From the few posts of yours I have read in this thread... You seem like a two faced "friend when you're around" type person.
You could never hurt me. Be it mentally or physically.
You do realize that's basically the biggest tell for being hurt, right?
While at the same time you try to intimidate weaker people as you failed to do in the post above.
Hold on; now you've gone on to admitting that not only am I hurting you, but I'm stronger than you?
Imagine that. And imagine these, while you're at it: how should I feel about this? And how should you feel when you do the same things to people weaker than you?
People like you aren't worth the air that you breathe. I'm a rather good judge of character, prison does that.
Blah blah blah Navy Seal yada yada 130 confirmed kills etc. etc. gorilla warfare [REDACTED]king end you.
See how easy that is?
Besides, I submit your palling around with and knowingly acting as enabler to incels and Nazis as evidence that you aren't actually a very good judge of character at all. Especially for someone who claims to have been in prison.
From the few posts of yours I have read in this thread... You seem like a two faced "friend when you're around" type person.
Because I don't acquiesce in the face of abuse from you and your buds? That's not loyalty, that's Stockholm syndrome.