If you didn’t run code written by assholes, your machine wouldn’t boot

Generally speaking, I don't know why anyone could/would look at someone's skills and think anything other than "damn, they are good at that specific thing". If you apply any moral, ethical or role model paradigm to them, you will surely be disappointed. This goes for programmers, athletes, politicians and every other person in the world.<p>I don't think positive or negative of anyone until they prove otherwise, but I do note that I'm quite pleasantly surprised when someone with great skills turns out to be a genuinely nice person. Though, I am not surprised when they turn out to be assholes.<p>Bottom line, don't mix someones demeanor or attitude with their skills.

As I understand it cancer cells can only use sugars for energy. If you fast your body starts metabolising fat, releasing ketones. Normal cells can use ketones for energy, but cancer cells cannot. Hence, fasting could be a way to manage cancer. So at least one of the people mentioned in the post might not be a crackpot.<p>Here's a bit of academic work on the subject:<p>"The goal of the current study was to test the hypothesis that ketone bodies can inhibit cell growth in aggressive cancers ... all cancer lines demonstrated proportionally inhibited growth ... The results bear on the hypothesized potential for ketogenic diets as therapeutic strategies."<p><a href="http://cancerci.com/content/9/1/14" rel="nofollow">http://cancerci.com/content/9/1/14</a>

Evelyn Waugh's words capture this rather well and applies to a much wider field: 'Humility is not a virtue propitious to the artist. It is often pride, emulation, avarice, malice - all the odious qualities - which drive a man to complete, elaborate, refine, destroy, and renew his work until he has made something that gratifies his pride and envy and greed. And in so doing he enriches the world more than the generous and the good. That is the paradox of artistic achievement.'

What the author doesn't realize is that he, too, is being an asshole simply by dismissing all these people who have different opinions or a different moral compass from him. Calling someone a "gun nut" and trivializing the change from GPLv2 to GPLv3 doesn't automatically make them wrong.

I wonder if this explains why some of my best programming productivity comes when I'm totally pissed off at something -- for example, having to manually do a task for the nth time or <i>not</i> having fixed that bug yet. Eventually it gets to the point where I can't stand it and I pound out wonderful code. Perhaps it's a combination of that and implementing a solution to a "hair on fire" problem.<p>Maybe people who are rockstar hackers all the time have a little more piss and vinegar in them to fuel their coding.

I thought this was going to be a rant about the people who write BIOSes :-)

On the other hand, the author of the article, Rusty Russell is most definitely <i>not</i> an asshole. Really nice person and super kernel hacker. Good guy to meet if you get a chance.

There probably is <i>some</i> personality characteristic that is similar among great FOSS hackers that makes them volunteer their time. Maybe passion, curiosity, idealism... none of those are incompatible with being a nutjob or asshole.

A corollary is that people who have done nasty / unpleasant / illegal things, might actually be nice people who ended up in a situation they weren't prepared for or able to handle. Judging people is a very tricky business.

"Assholes"?? You don't know the half of it. Some of us are still running ReiserFS.

I'm almost sure half of the people who run my software on a daily basis don't agree with my political views. I don't think they care about that - in the same way I don't care whether a loaf of bread I just bought has been baked by a socialist baker or not.

Interesting. I was thinking about something the other day on my way home from university and it was nothing profound or new.<p>People often say things and appear to be what they say though only on face appearance and they do themselves believe it to be true. I then considered how someone's true character, beliefs and the like are shown in their actions and in their work - or rather, the things they create ...

People usually tend to construct a perfect image of a person they admire. For example, this is the case for many famous actors and actresses. Some of them play heroes and almost perfect people in movies. But these movie-good-guys in many cases turn out to be ass-holes-in-real-life.<p>Or consider some beautiful fashion models looking at you from covers of big magazines. People tend to transfer their beauty (which is only due to good make-up in many cases) to their personality. They construct an image of a perfect women usually forgetting the what they see is just a picture in a magazine.<p>When we meet people we admire in everyday life we can be badly disappointed by reality... unfortunately.

It seems to me that it's the point of open-source software : To allow anyone who can improve the software to do so, regardless of who they are and what they think.

What is considered as "good/ethical/moral" is relative...to individuals and time...few hundred years back, to even think that earth goes around sun, was considered not good/unethical/amoral by lot of folks...

This is almost like saying people good at getting a ball to the right place aren't always straight arrows.<p>Is it me or is this information already available in 5th grade?