this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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    An oldie, but a goodie

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    [–] [email protected] 553 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    I feel it's equally important to point ot that Torvalds recognized his toxic behavior, apologized for it, and took steps to rectify it.

    In an email to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, which also addresses the kernel update of Linux 4.19-rc4, Torvalds writes: "I need to change some of my behavior, and I want to apologize to the people that my personal behavior hurt and possibly drove away from kernel development entirely."

    "I am going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand people's emotions and respond appropriately."

    [–] [email protected] 268 points 11 months ago (1 children)

    That was seriously admirable. From memory he actually did improve quite a lot after that as well.

    [–] [email protected] 117 points 11 months ago

    I've heard he's not perfect but he doesn't lose his temper anymore and has only gotten better with age. I respect anyone who can self reflect and introspect and come out a better person.

    [–] [email protected] 106 points 11 months ago (8 children)

    Yeah, shouting at your subordinates in public is utter bullshit.

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    [–] [email protected] 42 points 11 months ago

    I'm really glad you added this, that was pretty awful to read.

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    [–] [email protected] 373 points 11 months ago (60 children)

    Not going to touch the general toxicity as it's something Linus has already apologized and worked through with professional help, but I love the attitude when it comes to responsibility.
    Far too often it's easier to blame someone else for error.

    "No this is our problem, and I'm ashamed you're trying to blame someone else for it" is respectable take

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    [–] [email protected] 193 points 11 months ago (10 children)

    So I recently had a conversation with some who though Linus Torvalds (kernel) and Linus Sebastian (Linus Tech Tips) was the same person.
    That was a pretty funny and confusing conversation.

    [–] [email protected] 145 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Imagine Torwalds doing reviews of old CPU coolers and completely losing his shit 🤣🤣🤣

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    [–] [email protected] 151 points 11 months ago (22 children)

    Yeah, those mailing lists used to have some quite funny stuff; my favorite so far is smth along the lines of "whoever thought this was a good idea should be retroactively aborted".

    But, on the other hand, damn it's toxic. Should've really sucked to work on the kernel back then.

    [–] [email protected] 130 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I was curious as I couldn't help but laugh, but damn dude. That is rough. Hilarious looking at it now, but I feel bad for whomever was at the receiving end.

    Of course, I'd also suggest that whoever was the genius who thought it was a good idea to read things ONE FUCKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte should be retroactively aborted. Who the fuck does idiotic things like that? How did they not die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?

    [–] [email protected] 45 points 11 months ago

    That's some quality venom.

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    [–] [email protected] 130 points 11 months ago (19 children)

    Like, I get how it's funny, but I would hate to get this kind of shit from someone I respect. Would really mess me up, personally

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    [–] [email protected] 122 points 11 months ago (39 children)

    Honestly, I maybe get why some people are too sensitive to work in such conditions, but from my professional experience, I’d much rather prefer getting angry mail explaining why my actions are stupid, than everyone being nice to one another but the codebase is utter garbage and everything falls apart, which happens a lot in private companies.

    [–] [email protected] 93 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    What if I told you that you can have constructive discussions without being verbally abusive?

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    [–] [email protected] 52 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

    You can be polite or just straightforward and still get your message across.

    "We don't blame bugs on user programs", "This is not an error code that should be used here", "Your coding standards may have relaxed over your tenure, be sure to maintain quality code.", etc. I get the annoyance, but you can be firm without yelling, especially in a professional environment.

    Edit: Seeing the full context of Mauro's message (posted below), I can see why Linus took this tone. Mauro was being pretty condescending to a dev.

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    [–] [email protected] 121 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (12 children)

    Absolutely awful shit and I would be ashamed for decades if I acted like this to another person.

    Really shows the worst of him here. It's rare that he becomes this toxic and humiliating.

    [–] [email protected] 155 points 11 months ago

    To his credit he undertook sensitivity training and is a much, much, better communicator now.

    He used to channel the whole juvenile angry-but-gifted programmer crap, accepted (eventually) the criticisms and did the right thing: changed.

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    [–] [email protected] 113 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (11 children)

    Ugh, having been on the receiving end, this type of belittlement is the worst, and breeds resentment, factionalism, and a host of other toxic elements in the workplace.

    Irrespective of the validity of his critique, prima donna developers are the worst and I would start looking for jobs elsewhere because programming is already stressful enough, don't want to start worrying about the people.

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    [–] [email protected] 111 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    He's the Gordon Ramsey of programming. THE KERNEL IS FUCKING RAAAWWWW!!!!

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    [–] [email protected] 107 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I like the discussion this has generated around toxicity and professionalism, but I'm still very amused by the fact that he censored himself in the last line after not doing so for the rest of the message.

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    [–] [email protected] 98 points 11 months ago (38 children)

    What a toxic ass message. If he was my boss I would not tolerate this. It's weird how many dickriders here are defending him here

    [–] [email protected] 88 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (6 children)

    Jose1234, SHUT THE FUCK UP!

    [–] [email protected] 53 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

    Fix your fucking comment and don't ever blame OP.

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    [–] [email protected] 88 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    First of all, this is horrible and no one should talk like that.

    But it's funny that he censored the word "fucking" as if that crossed some line

    [–] [email protected] 42 points 11 months ago (1 children)

    To add context:

    Linus only reacted this way to people who really should have known better. This isn't a "here is my first ever patch, I read all the rules and I hope I didn't break any" situation. The person he is chewing out is a kernel maintainer. They are someone who is experienced and trusted and Linus was rightly angry that this poor quality work was submitted.

    However... Linus has also worked a lot on himself in the past few years, fully acknowledging that he shouldn't behave this harshly when someone fucks up. If the same situation was to present itself today, he would be much more professional, but would probably still be a bit angry and you'd know about it.

    Linus is a flawed human being, but credit where it is due, he has worked on some of his character flaws.

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    [–] [email protected] 88 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    I like that Linus is so strict on not breaking user space because this obviously aids with compatibility and it's probably a big part of why rolling releases work.

    But I sure hope Linus' eventual successor won't be toxic and...cringe. It's hard to take someone serious when he's raging this much.

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    [–] [email protected] 84 points 11 months ago (49 children)

    It's disgusting that this post has not been removed, has a 96% postive vote ratio, has over 1K upvotes and is sitting at the top of All after almost a day.

    This isn't a Linux meme. It's a celebration of abuse, abusive behaviour and abusive people.

    All the people ITT condoning or making even the slightest accommodations for this behaviour ought to be ashamed and need to take a good, long look in a mirror.

    What are the moderators of this community thinking? Are you reading this stuff? Do some of you agree with any of it?

    Of all the things to celebrate about Linus and Linux this is not one of them.

    There is no value in leaving this post up. There is nothing to be learned or gained by revealing just how gross some supposed Linux supporters may be.

    Does anyone ITT seriously think this is how Linus or Linux developers want to be remembered and celebrated for their dedication and decades of toil?

    Do you think anyone that's been on the receiving end of this kind of abuse on the job or in the home wants to jump onto Lemmy today to see this celebration of abusive and awful behaviour.

    There are no excuses to be made. It doesn't matter that this happened many years ago and that Linus has managed to overcome behaving like this. The post itself is now the issue.

    The many comments that have made even the slightest excuse for this kind of behaviour are awful and damaging to the reputations of Linus, Linux and the Linux community.

    [–] [email protected] 41 points 11 months ago (1 children)

    I don't read it as celebrating abuse. clearly there are better ways to correct peoples mistakes. As adults I think we all recognize that. I assumed the upvotes were because Linus is setting the high expectation that we don't see from Paid OS and Paid software. He is defending the philosophy of the next kernel should not destroy all the downstream work people put in. I'm currently working at a place that sells 3rd party software. It is an expensive product and touted as backward compatibility for 40+ years, and their newer versions have taken a F@©k Y0U approach to users. People with decades of files are now getting screwed and the software company turns down regression and bug reports and wants them submitted as feature enhancements. LOL WTF. I wish I could share this letter with their developers and management.

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    [–] [email protected] 73 points 11 months ago

    This is hilarious to read from outside, but I am definitely not speaking like this to my colleagues

    [–] [email protected] 70 points 11 months ago

    Damn that was probably very hard to read for Mauro. This is something you never want to receive as Mail in your job. On the other hand it is good that Linux priorities fixing the kernel instead of letting other developers fix your code.

    [–] [email protected] 65 points 11 months ago (16 children)

    This email should have stayed in Draft for a few hours and then come back to remove all the expletives. At least Mauro has something to hang on the wall of his crapper.

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    [–] [email protected] 58 points 11 months ago

    looks like every day is a great day to not work on the linux kernel

    [–] [email protected] 53 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    This is why Finland is most happy nation in the world

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    [–] [email protected] 48 points 11 months ago (13 children)

    As many seem to have overlooked itb this is from more than a decade ago.

    And to those setting "not being toxic" == "being vague":

    Suggestion if you're in a situation: separate the subject discussed from the person and, to the contrary to what is said in some other posts, be very specific!

    Improvised example:

    Hey all,

    patch xyzz and its aftermath communication is unacceptable.

    It's content is not to the standards we have set here (explain).

    Even worse, in the communication aftermath we blamed behavior of user space applications for bugs that are within our domain instead of owning up.

    The bugs within the kernel will be focused on with highest priority by a, b and myself.

    For the communication: (consequences). As explained the patterns shown here are unacceptable.

    I have decided to no longer have x as a kernel maintainer on our team/enforce pairing for all communication/set up stricter consequence catalogue. Any specific action,really...

    Not perfect as it's very early here, I haven't slept well and I'm not deep into the topic.

    Just remember to separate subject to be discussed from person(s) acting please.

    And always remember: bad communication is really easy and a lot of managers trained that their whole life! ♥

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