Why This Hacker Stood Up Against ‘Verbal Abuse’ in Linux Land
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What wonders me most that where was all this crowd now blaming Linus on Sarah's lines before she decided to complain of something what 'she' doesn't like. Is it all that Linus is the bad guy overnight because one female hacker complained that she doesn't like his way of management?
You need to drop the 'female' part of your comment, and then re-evaluate what you're saying. This has little to do with her being a female, but everything to do with Linus being a jackass. As myself and others on this thread have said, you can be forthright and direct, WITHOUT being abusive. And you'd better believe if he (or ANYONE), acted that way towards me, I'd certainly have a problem with them, and tell them so.
His 'way of management' is not the issue: no one doubts he gets things done. It's the manner in which he speaks to people. NO ONE deserves outright disrespect, unless they display it towards YOU first. For example, say you submitted a piece of code/patch to a project I was managing, and after examining it, a small problem was found. Now, pick which one you'd like me to say publicly:
Hey, this piece of code you submitted has problem XXX, which you need to fix. Here's how it was found, so correct it and resubmit.
I have seen better code from a retarded monkey. Can you not even read, dumba**? Programming basics, FOLLOW THEM...the bug is obvious to anyone with half a brain, so get it fixed, or f**K off!
Both are direct and bring a problem to you. NEITHER is politically correct or laden with the 'sugar-coating' that he apparently despises. One is professional and one makes it sound like you're 13 years old.
And back to your comment about her being a female...would YOU appreciate someone talking to your sister/mother/grandmother/aunt that way? Your daughter? If you don't want that for yourself, don't expect others to want it either.
Quote:
I'm pretty sure those couple of developers whom Linus abused, didn't really take it personally at all and must have understood that Linus actually abused their way of working, not them personally, even if it seemed like.
Oh? And how are you 'pretty sure'? They may not have said anything, and may have just said "You know what? Linus can kiss my a**...I'll work on another project", and the Linux development team lost a talented programmer because of his attitude. The guy may have emailed him personally and told him so as well.
I agree but we all have our days plus the older some get the crankier...
"Linus being a jack#!s. ... WITHOUT being abusive." lol (i yell at my sister for spanking her 2yr old kid after hitting someone, then she says "whatever" now he gets time-outs )
Last edited by jamison20000e; 07-26-2013 at 11:38 AM.
It's the manner in which he speaks to people. NO ONE deserves outright disrespect, unless they display it towards YOU first. For example, say you submitted a piece of code/patch to a project I was managing, and after examining it, a small problem was found. Now, pick which one you'd like me to say publicly:
Hey, this piece of code you submitted has problem XXX, which you need to fix. Here's how it was found, so correct it and resubmit.
I have seen better code from a retarded monkey. Can you not even read, dumba**? Programming basics, FOLLOW THEM...the bug is obvious to anyone with half a brain, so get it fixed, or f**K off!
Both are direct and bring a problem to you. NEITHER is politically correct or laden with the 'sugar-coating' that he apparently despises. One is professional and one makes it sound like you're 13 years old.
I invite you to read the exchange that led to this response from Linus Torvalds on the LKML. It went something like this:
Developer: I'm getting some really odd errors from my application with the latest kernel. I've discovered that certain ioctl calls seem to return a totally nonsensical error code under certain conditions. Here's a patch that seems to fix the issue.
Kernel maintainer: Is your application choking on the new error code? That doesn't sound like a kernel regression. I think there's a serious bug in your application.
Linus Torvalds: No, there isn't. He just told you the kernel returns the wrong error code, and it does, because of your totally broken commit. It makes absolutely no sense to blame that on an application. You've broken userspace with bad code, which you know perfectly well we should never do, and now you have the gall to blame the application? Shut up and fix your bug!
One could argue that a certain level of disrespect was shown before Linus decided enough was enough.
There have been a lot more articles about Mr. Torvalds supposedly abusive behaviour than there have been actual incidents. It all boils down to Linus being extremely direct and occasionally using profanity, which is bound to offend some people.
You need to drop the 'female' part of your comment, and then re-evaluate what you're saying.
I suppose that's true, but I think there is room for those bothered by Torvalds' rudeness to be all the more bothered if he won't spare some politeness even for the women he works with.
I initially wondered if language might play a role here: I understood Torvalds speaks English fluently, but I wondered if he might have never bothered to master more polite speech in his non-native language. But I just found out he lives in Oregon (before which, I had supposed he lived in his native country), so he's probably too steeped in English-speaking culture to have this excuse.
Last edited by newbiesforever; 07-26-2013 at 11:02 AM.
I invite you to read the exchange that led to this response from Linus Torvalds on the LKML. It went something like this:
Developer: I'm getting some really odd errors from my application with the latest kernel. I've discovered that certain ioctl calls seem to return a totally nonsensical error code under certain conditions. Here's a patch that seems to fix the issue.
Kernel maintainer: Is your application choking on the new error code? That doesn't sound like a kernel regression. I think there's a serious bug in your application.
Linus Torvalds: No, there isn't. He just told you the kernel returns the wrong error code, and it does, because of your totally broken commit. It makes absolutely no sense to blame that on an application. You've broken userspace with bad code, which you know perfectly well we should never do, and now you have the gall to blame the application? Shut up and fix your bug!
One could argue that a certain level of disrespect was shown before Linus decided enough was enough.
There have been a lot more articles about Mr. Torvalds supposedly abusive behaviour than there have been actual incidents. It all boils down to Linus being extremely direct and occasionally using profanity, which is bound to offend some people.
While the gist of what you posted is correct, the actual thread shows a good amount of disrespect towards that person. It goes from Mauro asking a question, and qualifying what he said with "at first glance", to Linus:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Torvalds
Mauro, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
It's a bug alright - in the kernel. How long have you been a maintainer? And you *still* haven't learnt the first rule of kernelmaintenance?
If a change results in user programs breaking, it's a bug in the kernel. We never EVER blame the user programs. How hard can this be to understand?
To make matters worse, commit f0ed2ce840b3 is clearly total and utter CRAP even if it didn't break applications. ENOENT is not a valid error return from an ioctl. Never has been, never will be. ENOENT means "No such file and directory", and is for path operations. ioctl's are done on files that have already been opened, there's no way in hell that ENOENT would ever be valid.
> So, on a first glance, this doesn't sound like a regression,
> but, instead, it looks tha pulseaudio/tumbleweed has some serious
> bugs and/or regressions.
Shut up, Mauro. And I don't _ever_ want to hear that kind of obvious garbage and idiocy from a kernel maintainer again. Seriously.
I'd wait for Rafael's patch to go through you, but I have another error report in my mailbox of all KDE media applications being broken by v3.8-rc1, and I bet it's the same kernel bug. And you've shown yourself to not be competent in this issue, so I'll apply it directly and immediately myself.
WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE!
Seriously. How hard is this rule to understand? We particularly don't break user space with TOTAL CRAP. I'm angry, because your whole email was so horribly_ wrong, and the patch that broke things was so obviously crap. The whole patch is incredibly broken shit. It adds an insane error code (ENOENT), and then because it's so insane, it adds a few places to fix it up ("ret == -ENOENT ? -EINVAL : ret").
The fact that you then try to make *excuses* for breaking user space, and blaming some external program that *used* to work, is just shameful. It's not how we work.
Fix your f*cking "compliance tool", because it is obviously broken.And fix your approach to kernel programming.
Sorry, but that's a control-freak. I wouldn't care if Linus was paying me six-figures a year out of his own pocket, that gives him ZERO RIGHT to talk to me like that, and he would NOT get away with it if he did.
Read that above exchange, and tell me the point couldn't have been made without the abuse. If Linus and Mauro had ongoing issues, that's the time to pick up the phone or meet face to face and say things like this.
He said that?? That's ridiculous! It's so blithely abusive that poor social skills can't account for it--the behavior is sheer arrogance. No wonder many are upset.
Last edited by newbiesforever; 07-26-2013 at 11:09 AM.
While the gist of what you posted is correct, the actual thread shows a good amount of disrespect towards that person. It goes from Mauro asking a question, and qualifying what he said with "at first glance", to Linus:
He was "asking a question"? More like he was making ridiculous excuses and tried to blame it all on Pulseaudio.
This is about an experienced kernel maintainer making the worst kind of newbie mistake (which is no big deal), and then failing to own up to his mistake and take the bug report seriously (which is a big deal).
You may not care much for his tone or choice of words (neither do I), but everything Linus says in that mail is totally correct. A change was made in the kernel that was not only likely to break userspace applications (which is a blatant violation of policy), but also contained an obvious, major bug.
Linus had to waste his time getting involved in what should have been a trivial issue, because the kernel maintainer responsible couldn't be bothered to properly look into it and what's more, didn't take a bug report (with a working patch!) from an Intel developer seriously. Mr. Torvalds had to exercise his authority when it absolutely shouldn't have been necessary, and that made him angry. That doesn't really sound like someone with control issues.
He was "asking a question"? More like he was making ridiculous excuses and tried to blame it all on Pulseaudio.
This is about an experienced kernel maintainer making the worst kind of newbie mistake (which is no big deal), and then failing to own up to his mistake and take the bug report seriously (which is a big deal).
You may not care much for his tone or choice of words (neither do I), but everything Linus says in that mail is totally correct. A change was made in the kernel that was not only likely to break userspace applications (which is a blatant violation of policy), but also contained an obvious, major bug.
Linus had to waste his time getting involved in what should have been a trivial issue, because the kernel maintainer responsible couldn't be bothered to properly look into it and what's more, didn't take a bug report (with a working patch!) from an Intel developer seriously. Mr. Torvalds had to exercise his authority when it absolutely shouldn't have been necessary, and that made him angry. That doesn't really sound like someone with control issues.
Don't get me wrong...I ABSOLUTELY agree with the accuracy of what he said. He is/was correct in putting the bug where it needed to be. The issue I have with it, is his behavior.
I could certainly put the blame where it needed to be, correct the person, and get things done, WITHOUT being abusive, as I'm sure you could. Do I understand getting angry? Certainly....been there MANY times, and will be there many times more. But behavior like that would lead me to think he's just either a control-freak who wants to dictate EVERYTHING, or someone on a power trip who thinks he's irreplaceable. He isn't. Is he important to Linux? Absolutely. Will Linux development stop dead if he was hit by a bus tomorrow? Nope..wouldn't even pause at this point.
This may have been his idea, and the results of a lot of his hard work, and NO ONE disputes that. He's worked very, VERY hard, and is a very talented individual. He wants to blame it on being 'direct' and 'forthright', but can you honestly say that you think he'd put up with it if someone talked to HIM in that same manner? That he'd 'appreciate' it? How about someone talking to his wife/kids like that?
Do you think Linus would thank a schoolteacher who told his kid "SHUT THE F**K UP...I've told you how to spell this word five times, and you're clearly incompetent. I don't ever want to hear garbage like that coming out of your mouth again. Fix your spelling test, and your approach to studying", and have the teacher say "Oh, I was just very angry...but I was being honest, so it's ok!"
Sounds to me like a repeat offence that led to a boiling point. I would have had to lead the guy aside after work and ask, what is your problem.
Absolutely...and that's what I said above. You don't do things like that in public...you pick up the phone, meet face to face, etc., if there's an ongoing issue. If you can't resolve it, you ask that person to step aside, thank them for their work, and get someone else.
It's called society and that society should have the moral, ethical traits. One should be responsible for their actions. Do no harm!
Linus can be a drama queen with the way he handles situations that he feels are not warranted or errant. Shock and aw that most will not reply or waste time doing so while others that do have the above traits will help to improve the situation(s). I am not saying PC is valid but that one can help correct the problem when a problem does exist. Political Correctness(PC) has nothing to do with the on going discussion. Society(1) is the important factor here for the Linux community since we do want to achieve to service others with the freedom of use without restrictions. Since Linus is indeed the father of the Linux kernel, one would think alienation by a leader would not be part of this culture. Sadly, it seems Linus will not change, too many enablers(1) exist.
A few seeds for thought;
Quote:
"Knowledge of mankind is a knowledge of their passions." - Disraeli
“Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.”- Thomas Hobbes
“Light is the task when many share the toil.”- Homer
“Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred in the company.”- Swift
"Beware the fury of a patient man." -Dryden
"Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passions or it will control you." -Horace
"Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, every one should be serene, slow-pulsed, and calm." - Ingersoll
I have enjoyed the on going discussion(s) within this thread. Some good viewpoints and analysis.
Last edited by onebuck; 07-26-2013 at 01:33 PM.
Reason: typo
Hi,
It's called society and that society should have the moral, ethical traits. One should be responsible for their actions. Do no harm!
Agreed...I know I can be (and AM) terse in responses, especially when people show a lack of effort of their own. But name calling, cussing, and belittling are a different thing entirely.
BTW: the Dryden quote has been one of my favorites.
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now he gets time-outs 
)
