Linux 4.19-rc4 Released As Linus Temporarily Steps Away From Kernel Maintainership

[muncrief]

"We should focus upon a beings ability to process and utilize not only fundamental and precisely defined arts such as reading and writing, but also the much less precise art of being human."
SearingTruth

[humbug]

Being demanding, being tough and being able to reprimand people, having high standards are all fantastic traits.

However when it crosses the line into being tyrannical it's not a good long term solution. Because then too many people will feel resentful and they will bring you down eventually.

[Templar82]

I hope he is OK, I fear there is more to this than meets the eye.

[caligula]

The funniest thing is, when the tumblr / PC SJWs win, Linus will be the only developer they'll kick out of the kernel project. So that they could replace him with legions of less capable (maybe even coding illiterate), but more politically correct juniors. After all, these days the kernel is so big that it just continues to improve no matter what you do, it can't be stopped. That leads to a situation where the management of the project can focus on renaming master/slave terminology and other offensive language without risking the whole project. Maybe even switching to a new language if there are some problematic keywords in C.

[xiando]

I hope he is OK, I fear there is more to this than meets the eye.

He's probably kidnapped by SJWs who took control over his e-mail account so he appears to be alright while he's in reality locked up in a SJW re-education camp. He won't break so they will eventually be forced to kill him and make it appear he's still alive with CGI video footage.

[bridgman]

Wow, the comments to on these few threads have been eye opening. So many fucking idiots who seem to think being decent to other people is a bad idea, and gave it the label of "politically correct" (an idiotic term made up mostly by extremists and racists).

I'm surprised that even bridgman one of the developers at AMD has such views as well. The scope of the problem is much bigger than I thought.

If you have time, please go back and read my comment again, and consider whether you owe me an apology. Both of the scenarios and responses I suggested would result in Linus not sending emails which the recipients felt to be inappropriate.

That said, in nearly all successful organizations, whether they be business, social, governmental or <other>, you will typically see a different conversational style used within small cohesive groups (where everyone knows and trusts each other) than what you see in broader communications where you don't personally know all of the recipients. Within the small groups discussion tends to be a lot more stripped-down and blunt.

In both cases the conversation is what you would consider "decent" (without personal insults and certainly without anything that would count as threats or harassment) but in smaller everyone-knows-everyone groups you don't need to worry excessively about protecting other people's egos and about pausing while you come up with enough nice things to say to balance out the fact you disagree with something they did/said/proposed.

As I said in my comment - if Linux is offending people inside the small group of top-level maintainers then he probably needs to change behaviour... however if his conduct is acceptable/preferred within the top-level maintainer community but problematic outside that community then partitioning communications may be a better solution than making discussion within the maintainer community less effective.

Nothing that I or anyone else supporting Linus has said in any way condones what a reasonable person would call insulting, harassing or threatening behaviour.

There is a grey area though, in cases where Linus feels that a maintainer has not done their job and wants/needs/expects the maintainer to change their behaviour. If you have ever been on either side of that situation you will probably have noticed that the line between "explaining that the maintainer did something wrong and needs to change their behaviour" and "insulting the maintainer" is a fairly narrow one. It is also where others are most likely to mis-interpret criticism of ideas as criticism of individuals and take personal offence when none was intended or offered. My impression is that most of the criticism of Linus's emails falls into that "learning opportunity" category, but that is just from casual observation not careful study.

Anyways, hope you understand what I was trying to say. There is a big difference between saying "I disagree with your idea" and saying "you suck and don't deserve to be here" but some people do hear the former and interpret it as the latter. I think most people would say that making sure you are polite and respectful when saying "I disagree with your idea" is expected from everyone, but soft-pedalling your comments about ideas in order to avoid upsetting people who interpret your criticism as personal insult is where you cross the line from "being decent" to "being politically correct".

I am a big fan of being decent (and hopefully my 11,000-odd posts here reflect that) but not at all a fan of being politically correct.

[CochainComplex]

...To all Linus Worshippers: Yes indead Linus did a great favor to the world by initiating Linux. But on the other side Linux wouldn't be this powerfull if a lot of volunteering people wouldn't have put their work into this project. So this endeavour should be respected. And don't forget even if you are a skilled programmer your first commit to the Kernel might not be very nice. Most probably the second or third. If his rant is stopping you after the first attempt because of shear disrespect a potentially good kernel developer is lost.
Strict policy yes, but not disrespect. Somehow I got the feeling that people admiring his behaviour are taking some kind of nerd revenge ....oh who is the bully right now?

[profoundWHALE]

...To all Linus Worshippers:

I'm confused because either this includes no one on the forums or everyone and I can't tell if serious or not.

[nanonyme]

I to be honest respect Linus a lot for doing this. Whether or not he has been speaking unjustly isn't really the core of this.
This shows he actually has been thinking what he has been doing and admitting he may have made mistakes and that he wants to take time off to do personal improvement.
I think that is a sign of a good leader.

[bridgman]

So this endeavour should be respected. And don't forget even if you are a skilled programmer your first commit to the Kernel might not be very nice. Most probably the second or third. If his rant is stopping you after the first attempt because of shear disrespect a potentially good kernel developer is lost.

With respect, the debate is not about whether Linus is making insulting comments to individual new developers - if that has ever happened (I don't remember ever seeing it but it might have happened) it would be a problem and I don't think there would be much disagreement.

The issue here as I understand it is that Linus is speaking bluntly to his "inner circle" (the top level maintainers) on a public mailing list, and that other people reading the posts are being offended on the maintainer's behalf even if the maintainers are fine with it.

Typically feedback to individual developers comes from further down the maintainer hierarchy, and everyone goes out of their way to be helpful and encouraging to new contributors.