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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.
I miss the old Linus.
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.
They very well could be, at least in the future. Just imagine that anytime someone really wanted to say fuck, they just added some asterisks around the modified text instead. Eventually everyone figures it out to the point where asterisks are just read as someone cursing out you. Maybe it even ends up being a part of the language if it's popular enough over a long enough period of time. If you can't say "fuck" people will just find a new way to convey the same sentiment. Banning words does nothing to change the people or situations that gave rise to them in the first place. Eventually asterisks just become the new way of expressing that someone has fucked up.
/. enough times to look up what the fuck (sorry, I'm not really about the asterisks) it was supposed to be about. Maybe that meme dies like so many others probably until it gets censored and replaced with something else. I don't know when this started, but at some point, surrounding text in multiple set of parenthesis became an anti-Semitic remark, when prior to that it would have just been nonsense or a weird choice of formatting.
I think there's actually a relevant example of this online now where apparently surrounding text in multiple sets of parenthesis is supposed to be an indication that the thing in parenthesis is a Jewish plot or something like that. I've seen it on
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
> and not particularly professional
A crack-whore is a professional. All "professional" means is that you get paid to do work. "Amateur" is someone who does it for the love of it. I'd rather sleep with and amateur than a professional any day.
"Professional" is one of those weasel-words that gets used to control and manipulate others rather than having any real useful meaning (beyond the above). For me, as soon as someone uses the word "professional" I know they are a worthless piece of shit and I can simply ignore them as they are irrelevant to anything that actually matters.
Go be a whore (professional) and leave the work to the amateurs!
What did he do for the other 29 days?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Most of the last paragraph but especially the first sentence of it, was passive aggressive insults. He "nicely" said "you aren't fucking special, stop acting like it". It's unwarranted. Did the submitter try to claim to be special? Maybe they just didn't know the policy, maybe the default flag was a typo, maybe it was just an oversight. Regardless, the diatribe at the end is unnecessary. He also dismisses the user's product as unimportant. I don't think Linus's product is all that important either but I don't go around telling him that. Everyone thinks their product is important, stating you don't think it is, is just being a dick. Linus has always acted like ANY mistake was a malicious attempt to murder his children. All he needed to say was "Our driver policy states drivers are not to be enabled by default. Please correct your code and resubmit." No insults. No ambiguity. Clearly states the reason for rejection.
Talking about how other people aren't special implies you think you are unless you explicitly exclude yourself, which he didn't. It's just an exercise to stroke his own ego and show everyone who's in charge. If he were *REALLY* in charge, he wouldn't have had to take a vacation and we wouldn't be arguing about this article. See, I can do it too, and boy does my ego feel better!
All "professional" means is that you get paid to do work.
If that was the only meaning of the word no paid person could act unprofessionally and no volunteer act professionally. I think you miss how often "being a professional" means sucking it up and doing your job regardless of your personal feelings or abusive/irate behavior. Think being a defense lawyer for scum or a customer service representative that just got blasted with a curse-laden tirade. Or simply trying to keep objective standards and be a neutral judge even though one is a beer buddy and the other is not.
Can it be weaponized as a shield against retaliation or to goad people into acting unprofessionally and punishing them for it? Sure. A lot of people are abusive towards CSRs because they know they can't respond in kind. And if they do tilt, you can report them and they get reprimanded or fired. Which is why many have found their own secret ways to take revenge or give them bad karma. Voluntary professionalism is pretty much always a good thing, it's acting with respect and integrity. Imposed professionalism sometimes means being the doormat.
This is of course equally true in corporate politics, people will invoke professionalism to keep others from playing dirty tricks while playing their own dirty tricks. Nobody's claimed being professional means you always win, sometimes you have to either get down in the mud and wrestle the pig or walk away. And sometimes the game is just rigged so that you can't win. It's more of a personal standard, I won't stoop to that level.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
In engineering, being right is essential and trumps everything else
Spoken like an armchair engineer.
Woe betide the engineer who ignores human factors.
Being polite is professional but optional.
Generally no. If you get your ass fired for being an insufferable asshole, it doesn't matter how right you are because no one will hear your rightness. Like a poor engineer you ignored the human factors.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Americans. Do you all want to become like the Germans? Or the Japanese? Because that's what you will become if you go down this path.
These are cultures where nobody dares to speak honestly, and everybody becomes over-sensitive about what the other person ACTUALLY thinks about them.
i appreciate your position on this, but, I have to disagree for these reasons:
* "Professional" has been overloaded with so many "meanings" at this point that it has become a useless word. It can mean anything depending on who is using and in what context. That is what I mean by "Weasel Word". Used in the way you describe, it can mean something useful, but, that is generally not the way it is used. An innocuous example of the overloading of the word: "Educated Professional" / "Uneducated Professional" - Can the second exist? If not, then isn't the first phrase redundant? If it can, then wouldn't "Professional" being an indicator of "Education" make it a contradiction?
* Use of words "willy nilly" isn't the issue. The issue is use of words as a way to coerce and control well beyond any natural right to do so. The people throwing out the word "professional" all the time are attempting to control the speech of others well beyond their right to do so. Many want to demand the right to control which words others use because they have been brainwashed from the time they were a child to believe that certain words are magically "offensive" and certain words are mysteriously never offensive. This couldn't be further from the truth. Words are not offensive or not offensive. One can not offend. One can only take offense. Anyone can decided to be offended at anything. "Offense" always has, and always will be, used as a means of control and manipulation to keep the narrative in favor of the power structure and prevent ideas that run counter to whatever the current power is from taking hold and spreading.
* For doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. I want a "competent" and "thoughtful" and "dedicated" instance of one of those. I could care less whether or not they were formally educated and/or recognized as long as those other things are true. For example, if a doctor learned by reading a bunch of medical texts on their own, or even, rediscovered proper techniques on their own, I'd be happy with that "Doctor" regardless off "education". "Professionalism" just wouldn't be a consideration at all. If I am paying them for the service and they are competent and helpful, great. If they are doing it for the "Love" of it and they are competent and helpful, even better. I could care less whether they were a "Professional" (paid) or "Amateur" (for the love of it), as long as my problem were addressed. In fact, I believe that "Professionalism" in this context actually makes it so it is harder to get problems taken care of. For example, anyone should be able to provide legal or medical services. If they're good at it, they'll get more customers. If they are not, they will fail as a business. Whether or not they have been certified or attended a particular school may or may not correlate with this, but, barring anyone from attempting to practice is where the word "Professional" has been misused to create an artificial shortage and make it so that those on the margins are less able to afford even minimal services. Also, as we know, "Professional" does not make ANY guarantees whatsoever when it comes to Lega/Medical matters for example. In fact, they are two of the few "Professions" where you pay (exorbitant amounts) regardless of whether or not they actually solve your problem. As a "software developer" if the software I create doesn't work, I don't get paid. A doctor or lawyer (and many other "Professions") are paid even if they can't deliver results. So "Professional" seems to mean in this context, "Someone who gets paid to do a job whether or not they are actually able to deliver on that job". Interesting, isn't it?
* For actors, dancers, and other artists, I have rarely seen a "Formally Educated" artist that is superior to people with actual "talent" who have zero education unless they themselves were particularly talented. Most "educated" artists are mediocre at best from what I can see and only accidentally do particularly talented i
That's not the issue at all. The question is whether they should enabled by default. The kernel development policy is not to do that with new drivers, unless there is some compelling reason to do so.
The driver in question might be the finest driver ever written, but the policy exists because the kernel development team is huge, and if everybody did things their own way the result would be chaos.
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