His feelings about two of the "sides" of this argument are so recognisable. I'm generally in favour of going out of my way e.g. to make minorities feel more welcome to compensate for the natural tendency to make them feel less welcome. However, the nastiness of some of the people in "my camp" pushes me away from it and makes me reluctant to openly support that cause.<p>In effect, they're really counterproductive, and the only reason Linus is now openly on "their side" (for lack of a term that better describes what I mean), is because the "other side" <i></i>also<i></i> was really nasty, pushing him away from them.<p>It took a while for me to realise what privileges I have had that some others have not. The first step to realising that was being open to that even being possible, and shouting contests do not encourage that.<p>I'd love it if Linus' approach here would lead to less-heated discussions and actual insights on the subject, but the hate and vitriol I've seen spewed in his direction after his announcement doesn't make me hopeful...
<p><pre><code> > I'm still not exactly the most empathetic person.
> But I'm hoping I can at least 'fake it until I
> make it'.
</code></pre>
This is great!<p>If you ask me, "faking it" is really just as good as "actually" being a more helpful or empathetic person.<p>What do you think "actually" being a helpful or empathetic person is like? It's basically just continually expending the effort to be helpful and empathetic.<p>Let's say my brother calls me up on a Saturday morning. He needs help moving some furniture. Do I really feel like doing that? Fuuuuuuuuuck no. Will I say "yes" anyway? Probably, because even though I'd rather play tennis or sleep or play video games I want to help him. So I will consciously expend the effort to go do the good thing for him.<p>Am I being "actually" good there or am I just "faking it"? I don't really think there's a difference. Nobody really wants to spend a day off moving furniture for free.<p>Same thing with reviewing a pull request. I am not known as a caustic reviewer, but that's because I spend the effort to try and make sure I'm not caustic. What is the difference between me consciously expending the effort and Linus consciously expending the effort? (I mean, y'know, besides Linus being 1000x more productive and talented than me) Is one of us more "authentic?" I would say there's no difference.
I'm probably a person with not so great social skills. I'm a person of color.<p>I do not need SJW's to defend me. Please do not destroy our culture.<p>All of a sudden this movement to add "diversity" and other crap is just not right. I agree there is some casual racism/racism for the sake of racism in the community, but I am personally not even bothered and it has never affected me (I ignored them and they stopped and some of them now are my close friends). When I joined the industry, I felt a bit unwelcome, but just in a months no problem was ever there. I saw that people had a different culture then me, so I just over few months I adapted the same culture subconsciously.<p>The maintainers should always value merit over "diversity" or "women in tech" agendas and other stupid similar things. We're not a playground for your political agendas.<p>My personal contributions have been blocked several times, but it never bothered me. I did what I loved, and my contributions were committed after trying for a few times.<p>Instead of wondering why my commits weren't merged and blaming on xenophobia/racism/fascism/blameism/bla bla bla , I decided to look at the patterns of commits that were successfully accepted.<p>Every community has a different culture so if you cannot adopt what everyone is following, maybe this industry is not right for you.
IMO the most interesting part - especially relative to the discussions I've seen right here - is near the end.<p>"But if people at least realise that I'm not part of the disgusting underbelly of the internet that thinks it's OK to show the kind of behaviour you will find if you really have been reading up on the 'discussions' about the code of conduct, then even that will be a really good thing."<p>Yes indeed, if you look at many of the anti-CoC comments (e.g. in the "killswitch" thread) you get to see a lot of that underbelly. There are people who will oppose any kind of general rule restraining behavior, because that would prevent them from exercising their own more personal and arguably more subtle kind of coercion against those they don't like for whatever reason. The other alternative is for an even bigger bully to keep them in line, but I shouldn't need to explain how "might makes right" is even more problematic. Linus is deliberately stepping away from that bigger-bully role to give the alternative a try, but in the above excerpt he makes it pretty clear that he thinks there's a problem to be addressed. The creeps should consider themselves on notice, whether there's a CoC or not.
Anyone else get a chuckle that out of the myriad of relevant quotes, the author selected, "He... once [described] an Intel fix as 'complete and utter garbage'".<p>Good for Linus, I'm happy that he's not looking to adjust his technical expectations:<p>"technically wrong is still technically wrong, and I won't start accepting bad code just to make people feel better about themselves."
It's interesting that Torvalds describes himself as "not a people person", when he's a gifted communicator who has been tremendously successful at managing the community around Linux over many years. His current refinements are making a great thing even better.
If not for this guy - we wouldn't have Linux.
I'd much rather work with honest person that can tell me how he really feels then nice spoken liars.
<i>>But if people at least realise that I'm not part of the disgusting underbelly of the internet that thinks it's OK to show the kind of behaviour you will find if you really have been reading up on the 'discussions' about the code of conduct, then even that will be a really good thing.</i><p>And here is a perfect example of why so many people are alarmed by his CoC adoption. This. The idea that community leaders must make <i>institutional</i> changes to signal that they - personally - arent's "the disgusting underbelly of the internet". Pause and think about it.
I question the professional experience of those suggesting that continuing to be an asshole is the preferable situation here ("but at least he's <i>HONEST</i>"). That would simply not fly at my company.<p>It is absolutely possible to be kind when giving honest and constructive feedback and criticism. Empathy is a skill this industry needs to develop.
I would like to see a scatter diagram with 'technical contribution' on one axis and 'CoC contribution' on the other axis, for all people involved.
I don't need my computer tools to define my political/spiritual beliefs. In fact, I think Torvalds adopting something like this in relation to Linux is a deep betrayal of a hacker ethos.<p>I will be keeping my eyes peeled for alternatives that understand the division between spiritual beliefs and "forced agreement with an assertion by participation" that uses religious terminology that has quite a different meaning to me. So far, hurd and is promising.
Here we go normalizing verbal abuses to just "not being polite enough". This culture is now so pervasive in our industry that people are wearing their rudeness to their fellow coworkers as a badge of honor. I have seen incredibly meek guys on the outside turn into monsters as soon as they get into their roles of lead devs or tech leads.
Repeat after me - "Kindness is cool."
This is something that has always bothered me about Linus. There are other extremely gifted programmers out there that don't seem to need to resort to this kind of persona. I always enjoyed hearing John Carmack speak because he is extremely smart and knowledgable and he doesn't look like he has a superiority complex.<p>But the real problem with Linus is the example he sets. I am not a kernel dev, so I don't know the validity of his rants but I assume he is mostly right. But this certainly sends a message to less-talented developers that it's okay to be a dick when you are right.<p>Ultimately I feel that the most important thing I have learned as a developer is to never associate your ego with your code. I've done that in the past and take great pains to not repeat it. Don't look at your PR as some great work of art that should be perfect. If both sides of the code review treat it as a collaborative process then you can both learn something from it.
The idea of faking it until you make it is exactly what Linus needs. Most of the point of communication is for the other person, especially giving feedback on patches. We all need to vent but we shouldn't vent at the people below us in an organization. Venting is for a counselor, and maybe a close peer? And it's ok if he's frustrated with people, he just shouldn't take it out on them.<p>Maybe he could find someone to get his own frustrations out to, while only sharing the productive, practical code related aspects with his developers.
I feel that Linus makes a good role model in the sense that he has real-world communication problems that he both recognizes and is attempting to overcome. This is not an easy thing to do and a lot of people undermine this reality.
"fake it" isn't even necessarily. Just finding new ways to express the same thing that is received differently and a different approach the sender takes when sending. It's all about learning skills and how to deploy them best.<p>That's not to say it is EASY, but it isn't a monumental change IMO. It's just a personal API change ;)
I’m all for civility, but we (tech culture, primarily Silicon Valley) are starting to move past civility, towards expecting everyone to self-censor and walk around on eggshells in order to avoid even potentially offending someone. I’ve worked with my share of unpleasant assholes, and am glad that professional, civil conversation is back on the menu, but the pendulum is still swinging. Worried about where it will end up.
There are a lot of us like Linus. The easy solution is not emotional counseling, it's an assistant/editor who can tone down his public comments. This is not a new problem.
I think this comes across as incredibly nuanced and thoughtful.<p>Often we only see the outer surface of what people are actually like, and make judgments on their character based on that.
To the person who said (since deleted or moderated) that Linus changed because "they" had dirt on him : his daughter signed the "Post-Meritocracy Manifesto" and is into "intersectional feminism" so I think a more pragmatic answer is that she convinced him to change.
I don't understand, what forced him to have to change his behavior? As far as i know he has the highest authority of linux kernel. To me he his kind of guy who can say fuck you, my way or highway. Which i admire that.
As someone who doesn't give a damn about other people so I treat everyone (except family and the few friends I have) with the same curtness, here's hoping what Linus said here is just an "extra mile" thing (but even that sets a not necessarily good example). I never insult anyone, but I'm also never friendly to anyone, beyond a perfunctory smile when buying something from a cashier for example.<p>I'm similarly short on text. Linus saying that he could be more polite tells me that even that is not "PC" enough and, if so, that's a problem. Nobody is owed any friendliness or niceness, just acknowledgement, and even that only if the other person needs us.<p>In short, I thought he just needed to stop insulting people, but that that aside, there was no problem with his communication, apparently that's not the general consensus. Or I'm hoping I'm reading the situation wrong.
Something I don't think he has internalized yet is that it's not about "politeness" or "cursing." It's about <i>abuse</i>, which is still possible while being polite and without cursing.
I remember looking at Linux's angrier style maybe 15 years ago (I would have been 22) and not being bothered. Someone made a stupid mistake and was getting a bollocking.<p>Looking at it as a 37 year old last week, I'm surprised a grown man needed to be so aggressive. You can destroy the opinion or the behavior using reason without the aggression, which distracts.<p>I like that Linux is changing this, though I do have concerns about the CoC being used for political purposes (eg, recent harassment of Ted Tso).
> That has now been replaced by a more detailed Code of Conduct - which retains the acronym, but attempts to be more inclusive and eliminate insulting and derogatory comments and behaviour.<p>To include only this short paragraph about the new CoC and omit any reference to the huge controversy this have generated in the community is extremely biased reporting on BBC's part.
I think the explanation for Linus' behavior is this: when he looks at works that he believes are technically wrong, he's probably displeased, frustrated and afraid that other contributions with the same technical issues might go through unnoticed.<p>As a result, he sometimes insults the code and the person, probably because that relieves those negative emotions, "compensates" for the pain he had to endure reviewing the technically wrong work and makes his opinion as loud as possible so that the likelihood that other contributions have the same issues is minimized.<p>The solution is for him to be more emotionally accepting of the fact that some people are technically less skilled and some contributions are not well done and just accept the negative feelings without having to insult others to compensate, while also expressing better when he feels that a mistake should be carefully avoided in the future as it might otherwise happen again.
I'm far from perfect and have made plenty of poor comments.<p>IMO, these happen when there is an underlying organizational problem. It's not tolerance of bad behavior that's the problem, tolerance of bad behavior just means that the organization is unwilling to address the real problems.<p>In my direct experience, I was part of an organization that didn't train newcomers in process or define clear divisions of labor. The organization made no effort to accommodate it's need for uninterrupted programmer time.<p>As the organization fixed its <i>management</i> problems, I got less feedback about these kind of remarks. It also helped that when these kinds of remarks happen, management realized it is not doing its part to direct the organization well.
The article literally quotes him out of context, then prints his full email showing they quoted him out of context, and hopes you won’t notice????<p>He didn’t call the Linux community “a morass of nastiness" ... he was referring to Twitter mobs.<p>How could the article get that so wrong?
The only functional change out of this whole drama is that now every project will eventually come to be run by SJWs.<p>Looks like the main change that the COC will introduce from previous status quo is that anyone anytime can be Brendan Eiche'd out of an open source project whereas previously the understanding was that you could accept code contribution from Alex Jones himself as long as the code contribution to project itself was reasonable.<p>Edit: I should add that I'm a non-white person. Shameful that adding this piece of information might bring some more credibility to my input.
Fair enough, honestly. As someone who's broadly sympathetic to his managerial style, I totally understand the desire to distance himself from those in the 'underbelly of the internet' who use an 'anti PC / SJW' stance to (poorly) mask their own bigotry.
tl;dr<p>> "Will everybody be happy? No. People who don't like my blunt behaviour even when I'm not being actively nasty about it will just see that as 'look, nothing changed'. I'm trying to get rid of my outbursts, and be more polite about things, but technically wrong is still technically wrong, and I won't start accepting bad code just to make people feel better about themselves."
Its confusing. Linus is ok to have the post-meritocratic COC at the same time will not accept the code that is low quality code. So he is saying you can have all the COC but i will not follow it.
Does anyone else find it weird how so many people can think Linus is utterly brilliant and thoughtful, can agree with him on almost everything he's done and said up to this point, but fall back on the belief that he's been conspired against and corrupted when he says things like:<p>> "...I may have my reservations about excessive political correctness, but honestly, I absolutely do not want to be seen as being in the same camp as the low-life scum on the internet that think it's OK to be a white nationalist Nazi, and have some truly nasty misogynistic, homophobic or transphobic behaviour. And those people were complaining about too much political correctness too, and in the process just making my public stance look bad.<p>> "And don't get me wrong, please - I'm not making excuses for some of my own rather strong language. But I do claim that it never ever was any of that kind of nastiness. I got upset with bad code, and people who made excuses for it, and used some pretty strong language in the process. Not good behaviour, but not the racist/etc claptrap some people spout.<p>> "So in the end, my 'I really don't want to be too PC' stance simply became untenable. Partly because you definitely can find some emails from me that were simply completely unacceptable, and I need to fix that going forward. But to a large degree also because I don't want to be associated with a lot of the people who complain about excessive political correctness."<p>I dunno, maybe if he was being brilliant and thoughtful for all those years, he's still... being brilliant and thoughtful now?
His quotes about political correctness are pretty interesting. Basically that neo-Nazis have tried to brand themselves as “just practical people against excessive political correctness,” but really that’s just a facade covering their true hate and racism. But now, if you’re ACTUALLY just someone who’s against excessive political correctness, you risk being associated with neo-Nazis.<p>I’d consider myself pretty left-wing - for compassion towards others, very strongly against racism, sexism and homophobia, very pro immigration and multiculturalism. Still, I do often find current levels of political correctness a bit much - like if someone uses he/she, they’re almost never intentionally being anti-trans, so who cares? Or simply many on the left flying into outrage too easily. But it’s hard to express these views now, because neo-Nazis have been putting up this facade of “just against political correctness,” when in fact there’s real hate behind it. And now many on the left take any deviance from political correctness to indicate a neo-Nazi. Not a great situation, and certainly not one that encourages people to have productive conversations/disagreements.
> Because I may have my reservations about excessive political correctness, but honestly, I absolutely do not want to be seen as being in the same camp as the low-life scum on the internet that think it's OK to be a white nationalist Nazi, and have some truly nasty misogynistic, homophobic or transphobic behaviour. And those people were complaining about too much political correctness too, and in the process just making my public stance look bad.<p>> ...<p>> But if people at least realise that I'm not part of the disgusting underbelly of the internet that thinks it's OK to show the kind of behaviour you will find if you really have been reading up on the 'discussions' about the code of conduct, then even that will be a really good thing.<p>So the obnoxious Manosphere who are the most (only?) vocal critics of the new CoC forced his hand in the first place. How fittingly ironic.
Some people are true leaders; some people are true bullies. This is a free world, you can choose your role. I'm choosing to stay away from bullies.