Back in the days of shareware, around 1985, I wrote a program called TXT2COM. It was a simple way of turning a text file into an executable. All a user had to do was run the converted com file and the text file appeared on the screen with full scrolling, search and save. I had my name and phone number embedded in the program.
My first problem was when someone converted the Constitution of the United States into a COM file, but made some typos. I got hundreds of calls.
Then someone converted a entire library of gay porn text files which resulted in some uncomfortable phone calls to my wife while I was at work.
I released another version without my name and phone number, but the damage was done. I can still find my name embedded on com files in old archives.
The program was eventually bundled with an edition of "The Art of Computer Programming" by Donald E. Knuth. He used it to wrap some of the text files on the disk that came with the book. He paid me with a signed copy of the book and a very nice letter.
Basically this guy is talking about the "first PC virus" called "Brain." 25 years after the virus first appeared (2011) finds a street address in Pakistan in the source code, goes to that address, and the malware authors are still there.
Knuth is such a class act. I don't think I've ever heard a negative story about him. Contrast him to, say, the harsh laguage Linus Torvalds routinely engages in or the many stories pointing out Steve Jobs' unfriendly side. I'm not 100% sure if you have to be a jerk to get ahead in life and lean towards 'yes' on this but when I see guys like Knuth, I wonder if nice guys do win sometimes.
>TXT2COM
As an 80s BBS kid, I thank you for this. I'm sure I used this many times over and never considered the author. I think this was commonly used to package text files for download back in the day.
You're confusing being a jerk with communication styles and cultural differences. You'd never hire anyone from the American inner city, from parts of Scotland and Ireland, parts of New York, and similar. Some very nice people talk loudly, swear, and use politically incorrect language.
This is part of the reason some URMs can't get ahead in US corporate culture.
Yes, Linus does swear a lot, and uses aggressive language. That's part of his style, his culture, and how he communicates.
No, he is not a jerk. The reason Linux beat the BSDs is because Linus is a very nice guy. He created a community which, despite the harsh language, was very welcoming, and willing to mentor new people. The BSDs created elitist, closed-off communities, which were unwelcoming to newcomers.
If you made a mistake, the BSD communities would write you off. The Linux community would tell you what you did wrong, and how to fix it, even if they used harsh language to do so.
The Linux culture is also quite meritocratic. It doesn't matter how you communicate, or how incompetent you were a year ago. If you're doing good technical work today, you're welcome. More than other cultures, arguments are taken at technical face value, not by who makes them.
> You're confusing being a jerk with communication styles and cultural differences.
I disagree. We always can simply claim 'it's a cultural difference' as an excuse, but that doesn't make it true and it doesn't make the behavior acceptable. Mature people in every culture look to show respect to others. If someone insulted me and said that, I'd think they were irresponsible and a bit slippery.
I've lived in some of the places you mention, and my experiences don't match your descriptions. People, as they are are everywhere, are generally polite and respectful. They may have some different ways of doing it, but those fundamentals are universal in my experience.
People naturally and quickly divine social norms from those around them.When I travel internationally, I learn and respect the social rules of the places I go. On a sports team, perhaps we pat each other on the butt; I don't do that in an office and say 'it's a cultural difference'. I may kiss familiar women on the cheek to greet them in my culture, but I wouldn't presume to do it in others. Travelers who don't learn the local norms are called "ugly", as in 'the Ugly American". Even entering a new work environment, I learn the social norms; those who don't look incompetent and rude.
How long have the people cited in this thread been in the professional IT culture? If they didn't have their positions of authority and instead had a boss in a company, my guess is that they would very quickly find a way to be polite. My guess is that they are polite with their spouses and kids; their in-laws, etc.
I think it's disingenuous to try to appeal to what you see as the norms of "professional IT culture" when Linus founded the Linux community, and with it, its culture. I think invoking the "Ugly American" concept when discussing this is interesting because saying that Linus and the Linux community should conform to "professional IT culture" at large seems emblematic of that mentality. Linus started a community and gets a disproportionate influence in setting its norms as a part of that.
That comment seems to assume that if enough people do it, it therefore is a good idea. Not all behavior is relatively the same; good and bad don't depend on what the majority likes to do. Lots of people in the business world are condescending toward women; that doesn't make it good or acceptable. In a different context, civil rights exist to protect the minority from the majority.
My point in the GP was that the claim of 'cultural differences' isn't valid; we all learn and adjust to new cultural norms easily, and very few cultures, if any, have the norm of disrespect.
Your arguments are internally inconsistent. Up one level, you argue that newcomers should adapt to the norms of different cultures, rather than expecting everybody to conform to their own expectations (fine). rpcastanga points out that Linus is behaving according to the norms of the linux community culture, and by your own argument newcomers should adapt to that culture rather than demanding Linus conform to "professional IT culture". You then turn around and complain about the fallacy of "if enough people do it, it therefore is a good idea". See the contradiction?
As far as I can tell you have not successfully argued that Linus / the linux community have no norm of respect. Other commenters have pointed out that the community does in fact have norms of respect, but that those norms include a clause along the lines of "if you bullshit and command a position where you are expected to know better, you may be bluntly called out on it".
> Up one level, you argue that newcomers should adapt to the norms of different cultures
My point was that newcomers can and do adopt norms quickly and easily. Therefore, bad behavior isn't due to 'cultural differences'; those are easily overcome.
> Your arguments are internally inconsistent
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. I'm afraid I am, myself, internally inconsistent. It's glorious. You should try it.
I agree with you in general, but the 'Torvalds swears' thing that sparked the GP's comment, it is such a trope. He actually is a nice guy and has spent a lot of time patiently explaining things to people - it's just that those comments don't get plastered across gossipy tech websites.
Furthermore, if you think that bosses of companies are polite, you really need to work at more companies, because there's quite a lot of variance. There's a lot of bosses out there with very rough manners. And hell, in some places it was (still is?) someone standard to take business meetings at strip bars.
Similarly, I once worked support at an agricultural telemetry start-up, and swearing was part of the job. Our clients were mostly farmers, and swearing (if they were swearing) helped put them at ease and let us get on with the job.
Linus doesn't swear because it's "his culture." He swears to put people down. There's a difference between using harsh language casually to talk about something, and using that kind of language to talk down a person or their work. Linus does the latter. Not only that, but he openly admits it.
I don't understand why there's confusion on that score. He knows what he's doing, he knows it's dickish, he does it anyway because people let him, and legions leap to his defense for it. It flabbergasts me, to be honest.
That's why he's a jerk, and that's why it's unacceptable.
Unacceptable for communication in a professional setting in North America or Europe. I don't buy the argument that it's acceptable to behave as he does in the workplace in Finland any more than it's acceptable in the US or any other such country.
It's also just generally a disrespectful way to treat other human beings, and that is pretty universal, actually.
But to be frank, I think that context was perfectly clear in my post.
I'm an Armenian living in Texas and his communication is completely acceptable to me. If anything the standard American corporate professional speak pisses me off when matters get serious. Why don't we embrace that different things work for different people and there is no communication standard to be imposed per continent or even culture?
I think you're conflating corporatespeak/not being direct with being rude. Compare these three statements:
"There's a problem with the function you wrote. I need you to fix it tonight."
"The function you wrote is non-optimal for our goals. Please reconsider and reevaluate when you get a chance."
"You fucked up that function. Fix up your shit NOW."
The first is "standard professionalspeak." It's clear, direct, gets the point across. It isn't rude. The second is worthless corporatespeak. The third is rude and dickish. It's also how Linus tends to communicate.
I agree the second is not great, but would you really prefer the third to the first?
My point is that you can be totally direct and clear about what must be done without being nasty to the person doing the work, and that is the ideal. I don't think there are many cultures that would prioritize being mean over being direct, but if yours does, I'd be curious to understand what advantage you think that confers.
Further, if we're going to embrace different communication styles, then I would say the onus is on people to learn to communicate inoffensively, not to learn to accept offensive communication.
The third statement would have been totally acceptable in my last team's slack channel. We all respected each other as both friends and developers so language of that sort was absolutely accepted. Sure, as an outsider it might seem brusque but for someone familiar with the team it was clearly camaraderie.
Talking about language without context is meaningless and so I try not to judge Linus off of a few publicly available emails. My Australian friends will refer to each other with language that is shocking to me as an American, but I acknowledge the context aound it and don't write them off as assholes because of it.
It's not "a few public emails." It's many, many examples over many, many years from a massive, high-volume email list that represents the bulk of the work done on the Linux kernel.
It's clear from the very public, recurrent fallout from Linus's behavior that it is not a matter of camaraderie or simple outsider misunderstanding. I agree, context matters. It's precisely because of the context that this language is not tolerable. The LKML is not a private Slack channel for friends.
Absolutely, among friends, such talk is generally tolerated and isn't a sign of rudeness or disrespect. My friends and I do the same thing in private channels. But in public in a professional setting is not at all the place for that.
Compared to how many emails he sends in total, it is barely even a few. By and large, you will not find a more friendly maintainer. If you keep ignoring him while trying to get something into his project, he will get rude.
And this is the funny thing about it. Even the people he "explodes" on usually get a lot of friendly "stop" messages from him well before any inflammatory message comes out. Only real exceptions I can think of is that he will meet an insult with an insult. Which, ironically, can go a decent way to making everyone else feel safer in the environment.
Edit to add: I do want to quickly add that as much praise as I can offer Linus in this regard, Knuth really is on another level. I do not intend to compare them.
There's a common thread here: if you already know for sure that someone has respect and/or affection for you, harsh language from them just reinforces that, precisely because talking that way to a stranger or acquaintance is hostile.
Someone living in Finland (Europe) I always would take the third comment over the first one. In the first one, someone passive-aggressively orders me to finish fixing my stuff today. What if the fix is complicated and takes a week?
To me "fix up your shit NOW" is more open-ended, and if the fix takes me a week then that's perfectly fine.
Wouldn't be HN without someone taking something far too literally to the detriment of the original point.
How about if we modified the first comment to say "I need you to fix it ASAP"? I can't honestly believe that you'd much rather take someone shouting at you and making you feel bad about yourself, than a direct manager who ALSO speaks his mind, but can do so in a controlled, adult manner.
The way I see it, the whole point of communication is that people use a medium (like speech or writing) to get each other on the same wavelength. If in my head I'm thinking "I fucked up this function. I probably need to fix up my shit NOW", and the next person's reaction matches it, we are on the same wavelength. We can thus be more than the sum of our parts.
If he/she instead goes "There's a problem with the function you wrote", and in my head I need to go through the gymnastics of "I think he/she's basically saying that I fucked this function up and I need to fix my shit now", that adds a bit more effort to our communication.
Same is true in the reverse example of course.
Which is why people need to work with the right people, and there's no one-size-fits-all, especially when it comes to something as intricate as inter-person communications. Culture fit is real.
There is a scale of insincerity to rudeness. I've been in cultures where each of those is considered respectful and reasonable.
The onus is very much on corporate America to accept diversity. Right now, the only persons of color who are hired are ones who have mastered the culture, for example. That doesn't have much to do with technical skills. That's almost the definition of discrimination.
Respect has to do with how you feel towards a person. People can read through the language used, and as unprofessional as "Fix up your shit NOW" may sound, the details of body language, tone of voice, and facial expression can make that disdainful, angry, respectful, or any of many other things, depending on how you read it.
If I do shit work, I want people to talk me down for it. And I don't think I'm alone in that, either.
Just as you don't like being talked down to, I don't like it when people don't put me in my place for the sake of my feelings.
Your argument is shit. (Another Linus quote) And here's why.
"I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think otherwise. Yet they do.
People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost hours of work, if it just results in what I consider to be a better system.
And I'm not just saying that. I'm really not a very nice person. I can say "I don't care" with a straight face, and really mean it."
-- Linus Torvalds, 09/06/2000, LKML
"I like offending people, because I think people who get offended should be offended."
-- Linus, 2012.
Linus Torvalds on why he isn't nice: "I don't care about you."
He's saying that if you want to join the team, you should have a thick skin. It's his prerogative as project leader. Maybe in his view there's a correlation between thick skin and the abilities required for a kernel hacker.
"doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost hours of work, if it just results in what I consider to be a better system."
The objective to make a solid kernel is above your feelings, his feeling and anybody else's feelings.
"I don't care"
Same as above: the kernel is above you.
Maybe the harsh language is a good filter. I'm sure there's less politics in the organization with a direct language vs. euphemisms for everything. Kernel programing is harsh.
You're reading a completely different hidden message in three separate sets of quotes spread out over a decade. At no time did he reference the kernel. Your idea is not clear, it's invented. And this idea you're pushing, that you have to be "tough" to develop for the kernel, is macho bullshit. It's software, not rugby.
Although IMO self-deprecation is often also self-depreciation, for some liberal interpretation of that word in this context, but I doubt that's what you meant.
Clear evidence of his self-deprecation is in the word that most of us say every day: git. His second major project was named with the philosophy "I named the first one after myself, so why not the second one?"
There's this bizarre thing going on on HN, reddit, and other tech sites. We saw it with Linus and we see it again with Trump. Suddenly, all these people are making excuses for terrible behaviors and outrageous claims. Usually following a "he didn't really mean that" playbook of justifications like "productivity" or "politics" like either excuses acting like a child.
Why are we afraid to call people out on the shit they say? Is this some new level of political correctness? Or do we just see these people as something to project onto and dismiss anything counter to that?
No idea, but it seems we live in strange times where a man's own words are ignored for feel-good conclusions that have no merit or basis in reality.
If you want to join the marines, you'll be screamed at, verbally abused, and generally pushed to your limits. It has to be that way, they are training 18 year olds to run to the sound of gunfire and perform under fire and the threat of death. You must put up with it or you do not belong in that group.
At the other extreme, if you want to join your local flying club, you can expect to be treated courteously. If anyone treats you like an asshole, the problem is with them rather than you. It can be that way, because the group is not trying to achieve anything extreme, its just for enjoyment and largely social.
If you want to join in the white hot stream of activity surrounding one of the world's most important pieces of software, its not going to be like your flying club.
Its not quite the marines either, but it is a place where very complex stuff has to get done, urgently, absolutely correctly, in the face of hundreds or thousands of interjections and "what about" from more or less well-meaning contributors who just don't have or get the big picture in the same way the core of the group does. (Talking about Linus here, not Trump :)
Sometimes, such an environment functions better with a culture of abruptness and "take no shit" is built.
Its very unfortunate for anyone who aspires to join such a group that they have to put up with that. But sometimes we have to acknowledge that that "terrible behaviour" is part of what makes the group work. Not all clubs are suitable for all people.
It's software. Software. Programming. There is no tough mentality required to write good software. You do not have to be a dick to write good software. Ever.
I disagree. Some software projects require a tremendous amount of communication to accomplish any task of any measurable importance. If there are three reasonable people involved in this communication, being a dick is probably not required. If there are tens of thousands of individuals involved, you will either be forced to be less than polite to some of them or you will not accomplish anything.
Politely saying no takes time and effort, especially if communication isn't your strong point. If I'm walking down the street, I'll probably be pretty polite to the first homeless guy that asks me for a dollar. By the time the hundredth flags me down before I'm even halfway to my destination, I'll have boiled that initial polite response down to "Fuck off."
I agree with this, especially since a lot of people will interpret politeness as being a sign that your decision is negotiable.
That polite "No, because of X, Y, and Z" rapidly turns into "I have made up my mind, no" and then into "This is not a fucking debate, so no, and fuck you." very quickly, especially if you're dealing with a constant deluge of stupid requests.
I'm not going to judge Linus for his outbursts, as obviously his method seems to work pretty well.
Has Linus Torvalds ever said anything offensive to you or anyone you know? It seems to me that the people complaining about his behavior basically don't have the standing to do so — they're attempting to police other people's interactions that didn't involve them.
(This is different from Donald Trump, where people have actually complained about being wronged by him, rather than complaining about an interaction between Trump and somebody else where neither party had any complaints. And this is ignoring how offensive it is to equate telling somebody to do their job better with sexual assault and racial discrimination.)
Policing other people's interactions without the consent of any involved party is pure paternalism. What you think is shit being flung might be Tootsie Rolls to them, and it is not our place to tell these people how they have to feel.
Consent is irrellevant. We have a society specifically to police each other. And because we suck at both policing each other and achieving consensus and cooperation, we have government.
In terms of profanity, if someone says "man, I had a really shitty day today", that's not really harmful and doesn't have significant consequences. But when someone says "you are a real piece of shit", that is harmful, and does have consequences. It doesn't even matter how the recipient felt. The giver had an intent of harm that was driven probably by anger.
It's the verbal equivalent to punching someone in the nose. The aggressor got angry and they wanted to inflict pain, in order to try to affect change to a scenario or thing they wanted to be different (that's what anger is). And regardless of whether the recipient was hurt, we as a society say that letting out your anger at someone in this way is not acceptable, that you are not allowed to try to injure someone, whether they felt it or not. Obviously our laws are a lot more lax about speech than about physicality, but it's the exact same concept just in different mediums.
A woman may receive a sexist comment and not be bothered. But we agree not to tolerate it, whether or not she was bothered by it, because the concept, and the intention, are simply not acceptable in our society. The point is not to tell her what to feel, but to enforce our moral values as a society. If you don't like that, fuck you.
The other day, I tried an underhanded trick in a board game and won, and my friend said something along the lines of "You are a real piece of shit." She was really frustrated that I'd managed to trick her like that, but I knew there wasn't any real hatred underneath and I took it as a compliment. Would you harass my friend for our friendly banter, since the fact that we are both 100% OK with the conversation is irrelevant?
This is a wonderful example of why human communication isn't only based on the semantic meaning of words. Flirting, sarcasm, irony - all would be lost to someone just parsing words, not being able to understand the finer communication on a subconscious level: Body language, rapport, etc.
I wouldn't be surprised if people who would call someone out on that language have a higher chance on being diagnosed with autism or sociopathy - which in itself isn't bad at all, but it helpts being aware that communication between humans is apparently perceived completely differently by different groups.
Yep. I would like to think I would be respectful in informing her I found her comment impolite, just like I would tell someone who said something sexist that their comment is unacceptable.
"naughty words" are not synonymous with "rudeness". You can easily convey a message of contempt for the recipient with flowery, polite words, just as you can easily convey a message of fraternal love with rough words.
If someone told me to mind my language over a casual board game, I'd tell them to fuck off. A friendly jibe is just a friendly jibe, regardless of whether it had the word 'shit' in it or not. Words matter, but far less than intent does - and the intent of telling someone to clean up their act in a casual setting is that they're patronising you.
We have a society specifically to police each other
Err, no we don't. We have a society specifically to co-exist with each other. Proactively policing each other actually reduces our ability to co-exist.
It's not about political correctness. It's about what these people make you feel, and how you respond to it. People want to believe that somebody whom they like on one score - Linus's technical achievements, Donald Trump's ability to empathize with the working class and the poor - are likable on all scores.
It's much like the classic literary 'harsh father' figure - he may beat you, he may be strict, he may never show love, but he provides for the family and he teaches you to be moral, so everything he did must have been good. The beatings must have had a purpose. It's hard for us to accept that good and bad exist in the same person, and that somebody who does good things may also do very bad things, not just discretely, but often at the same time.
He's very clear in that he doesn't care about how you feel. If you understand that, and also you're ok with the idea that kernel's code quality is above everything, then join the team, else just use the product... or not.
I think your approach is reasonable, but lots of people on HN do not take it, and suggest that people who don't like it are the ones who are wrong. That is, they genuinely think the way he behaves should be aspired to. I agree that I can't change it myself, but that doesn't mean I support it.
What you're talking about are ego defenses. And yes, it is in part projection. But the two cases are different.
When you see one person who is personally or socially powerful, and that person is a champion of one thing you strongly believe in, you will support that person in order to have that thing come to fruition, as long as the other things that person supports aren't too distateful to you. It's then necessary to defend that person so they can continue to be your champion - either out of ego, or purely to achieve your goals.
But when it's Linus, people don't defend him because they need to achieve something. They defend him mainly because of what he represents to them, and also for the work he does.
When it's Trump, people defend him because he's simply the most extreme choice possible. He makes you feel good, and that combined with anger becomes a positive feedback loop. He could murder someone and people would still find reason to cheer for it, not because they like what he does, but because of what he represents to them: extremism. (and now the thread is going to go down a political spiral... oh jeez, this poor thread)
>No, he is not a jerk. The reason Linux beat the BSDs is because Linus is a very nice guy. He created a community which, despite the harsh language, was very welcoming, and willing to mentor new people. The BSDs created elitist, closed-off communities, which were unwelcoming to newcomers.
I would challenge that notion that using an aggressive and diminishing language doesn't imply being a jerk.
Also keep in mind that BSD have legal challenges that GNU/Linux didn't so community is not the only reason why Linux won the popularity contest
> I would challenge that notion that using an aggressive and diminishing language doesn't imply being a jerk.
It's 100% a cultural difference. While you see it as personally aggressive and grating, a lot of people see "overly polite" language as a sign that you don't care about the topic being discussed and/or are trying to address an issue politically rather than by merits of a strong argument. Neither of these perceptions is really right or wrong, it just has to do with the perspective you have based on where you grew up and who you've interacted with the most.
From an engineering perspective it'd be optimal if everyone had the same universal expectations for how a conversation should be held, just like how it'd be optimal if everyone spoke the same language. People don't really work that way, though, and just like with languages we try to accommodate each other as much as possible and find middle grounds, etc.
Had a Program manager once who was the English Gentleman stereotype. No matter how ridiculously behind schedule someone was he could not confront anyone about it. He would just ask the same questions every week.
For six months I knew that we had a hardware driver problem on the target hardware that was causing the drive to be accessed at PATA speeds (3 MB/s max throughput stuck out from my time spent configuring Linux).
Finally, finally I convinced him to let me sit in on a call to the vendor (VxWorks) and in fifteen minutes we identified the problem and a feasible workaround. Old VxWorks, new bridge controller(?) backward compatible with one they DID support.
All because he couldn't say what needed to be said.
We got a nice 35% jump in the app after the next firmware upgrade.
My idea of the stereotypical English Gentleman as a program manager is someone who uses nice language and still makes it perfectly clear, after you have thought about it a little, that he's telling you to fuck off idiot.
We Americans are dense and don't always pick up on undertones of disappointment. Half of the program answered his questions as if they weren't loaded. It was painful to listen to after a year.
When you say "trying to address an issue politically", that sort of implies a context in which you're pushing back against someone else who's already employed a more "Linus-like" approach.
That's not what the parent comment was suggesting. Someone like Knuth isn't accused of valuing politics over technical merit because he simply addresses technical merit in a polite way. I'm not one of the people who cares all that much that Linus is an ass to people on a mailing list, but it's ludicrous to suggest that his being an ass on a mailing list is necessary to convey a technical point.
I love Donald Knuth but let's face it, from a productivity standpoint he's strictly below average.
He's a perfectionist and he seems to get distracted easily.
Like me, he seems to overly inured to the siren song of Force Multipliers (making other people more productive) and really should have spent more time practicing the craft.
If I had it to do over again I probably would have spent a little more time coding and a little less of it thinking in my late 20's to early 30's. It would make a broader group of people understand what I'm about. Especially bosses who don't understand that it would take three people to replace me, even though the majority of the team close more bugs than I do.
> I love Donald Knuth but let's face it, from a productivity standpoint he's strictly below average.
In fact, Donald Knuth is so below average from a productivity standpoint that there is an entire book published about books and papers that Donald Knuth published: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/cp.html
You just posted a critique of the most prolific living computer scientist as not productive and then proceeded to compare yourself to him. Who are you? More to the point, how did you get to be so delusional?
I wouldn't say it's universally necessary, just like it's not universally necessary to speak any given language to convey information. We just all have our own natural ways of doing things and it's not necessarily productive to try to get everyone to force themselves into the same mode of communication. We all have the tendency to view our natural modes as superior in various ways but I don't think we should let that tendency lead us to try to coral others into conforming to our norms.
The legal challenges were at very different points in their lifetimes. It's at least arguable that the legal issues associated with AT&T and BSD kept it from becoming as mainstream as it might have. (As did the somewhat splintered community.)
Linux OTOH was already well-established before the SCO suits.
I think BSD's biggest problem was all the fragmentation that they created for themselves, with FreeBSD and NetBSD and OpenBSD (and more).
BSDs legal challenges happened largely before Linux had any popularity, so the narrative that pins the blame for BSD's failure in the marketplace on its legal troubles seems hollow to me. The biggest lawsuit was settled in 1994, when Linux hit version 1.0 and Red Hat released its first version. FreeBSD 1.0 landed the previous year.
I don't really disagree. As you say, the legal issues with BSD had been largely resolved by the time there was a significantly growing market for x86 *nix. (It's also worth remembering that, at the time, a lot of people were assuming that market would just go to Windows anyway.)
I'm also inclined to think that fragmentation was a big part of why BSD didn't win out--not legal issues or licensing.
"You'd never hire anyone from the American inner city, from parts of Scotland and Ireland, parts of New York, and similar. Some very nice people talk loudly, swear, and use politically incorrect language."
Being born in New York (City), still living close and working there, I have to smile at the distinction between "American inner city" and "parts of New York". It just reinforces our attitude that there is New York and then there is everywhere else!
Stop talking nonsense. The first version of Linux came around 1991-1992, with a plethora of GNU programs to be used on it. The oldests of the current open-source BSDs were released 1993. That's why Linux got any success at all.
Knuth is a one man shop. Torvalds is leading the biggest open source project in the world, and Jobs was leading one of America's largest corporations by market cap. Leading is different than writing.
Nowhere did willhslade say that it does. He said that comparing Knuth's style to Torvalds's isn't very enlightening because they are fundamentally engaged in different activities.
Comparing Knuth to Torvalds and saying "look, you don't have to be an asshole to be a great leader" is like comparing Usain Bolt to Dean Karnazes and saying "look, you don't have to be really muscular to be a great sprinter." The comparison is pointless because Karnazes isn't a sprinter just like Knuth isn't leading major software efforts.
Find a successful leader of a large-scale piece of software who doesn't have a reputation for being an asshole and use them for the comparison.
To be clear, I'm also not claiming that a leader has to be an asshole. I agree with willhslade that Knuth is not a meaningful counterpoint to Torvalds, though.
>The comparison is pointless because Karnazes isn't a sprinter just like Knuth isn't leading major software efforts.
That makes sense, except that OP said "You don't have to be a jerk to get ahead in life", he didn't mentioned being a leader. The followed commenters brought the leadership point into attention and then subtly implied that there is more correlation between being a jerk and a leader.
I was replying to cesarbs, who literally said "Being a leader does not justify being an asshole."
Edit: And yes, the conversation pivoted to being a leader because that is a critical difference between Knuth and Torvalds which seems very relevant to this sort of comparison.
From what I have read Bezos always had a minimal role in the technical management of Amazon other than yelling at people to work harder and micro-managing how amazon.com looked. I have not read anything about Ellison but cannot imagine he has been involved in managing Oracle the database vs Oracle the corporation since the late 1980s.
> It's a survival mechanism. Not everyone has the time or ability to be nice to everyone they have to deal with in a position like Torvalds'.
Flaming someone on a mailing list takes as much time as being nice to them. If it was about time then Linus could just ignore or dismiss things without going out of his way to type up insults.
> Flaming someone on a mailing list takes as much time as being nice to them.
Not if you take into account the time saved by (strongly) discouraging people from wasting your time in the future.
> If it was about time then Linus could just ignore or dismiss things
No, you absolutely cannot do that. If you ignore people on software projects, they do not go away. They just get more convinced that they're right, which means getting more shrill and insistent.
You don't tolerate them but want them to tolerate others.
TBH, I'd be totally fine if Linus ranted over my code because that's the way he is and I don't believe in community that tries to isolate an individual because he/she doesn't have a popular mindset.
The whole "you're tolerant so you have to tolerate intolerance!!1!" thing is not some clever loophole, it's just a weak attempt to justify why people shouldn't be called out for being unpleasant/bigoted. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tolerance#Paradox_of_tolerance
The "intolerance" Popper talked of preventing was this:
"In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols."
So his justification for this was founded on a prevention of violence. We already have this in the USA, for example, in that we forbid incitement to violence, fighting words and the like. So unless you can show some strong nexus between these statements and actual, physical violence of some kind, you can't use Karl Popper as a justification.
On the contrary, it's calling out the blatant hypocrisy and utter lack of self-awareness of those who claim to be tolerant and embrace diversity ...except for those people and views they personally happen to disapprove of. Tolerance is not a meaningful concept when it only applies to those you happen to like already.
It's not a wild west when you call people out because they are unpleasant. In modern world (as I see it) you create a competition and public follows best one.
That goes both ways, though, right? There are people who are isolated in the community because of the actions of hyper-critical people. The presence of people like Torvalds is isolating to others.
I mean, sure, you may think that Torvalds provides more value than the people he isolates, but either way people are getting isolated.
Thanks, I got your point, and I don't value Torvalds over other people, but I value his kernel engineering skills over other people's kernel engineering skills.
You know, if it has to be our decision whom to isolate, why not create a competitive community and vote for it with commits, instead of destroying the original community by removing Linus out of the office?
People confuse directness with being an asshole. If your results suck, saying they suck isn't being an asshole. If you feel that something is horrible, sugar-coating it to make sure you don't hurt someone's feelings is unauthentic.
Here's the difference...
When someone says "your product sucks, throw it away" .. with the INTENT of causing that person to feel bad, thats being an ashhole.
If you tell them that their product sucks because you genuinely feel that way, and you're simply communicating authentically, then you're not being an asshole, you're being authentic.
Here's how you can tell the difference. The former in that example get stuck at best in middle management in low-quality companies... the latter finds themselves at the top.
Guess what: being an asshole is in the eye of the beholder.
If someone says I'm an asshole, I don't get to tell them they're wrong. It's how they feel about me, regardless of whatever I or anyone else feels.
The absolute best I could do is say that they're alone in feeling that way.
Lots of folks thought Steve Jobs was an asshole. You can say "well he was just direct" but that doesn't take away how they felt about him, or what their opinions are.
Or that famous email telling everyone not to poach "his" employees. As if he has ownership over then like a feudal lord over serfs. Oh and that email ends with not very veiled patent lawsuit threat for anyone who disagrees? And you guys complain about your wages and working hours?
Maybe don't deify the guy who worked against you and your interests his whole career.
Oh, there's definitely a hermit vs ceo aspect here, but I really doubt it justifies being an anger prone leader with no filter. There are many leaders who aren't like this yet somehow they do okay and on the flipside many academics who are one-man shops who are massive jerks. I suspect tech draws in certain personality types (DIY types, aspies, loners, etc) who really never developed the social skills needed, didn't really do much teamwork when younger as tech is often a hermit's game, and fell into a position of authority and went with the default of bullying, which clearly gets results, but doesn't make for the best work environment.
I find myself dealing with the same struggles at work. I can't believe how slow/stupid/careless so many of my co-workers are, but snapping at them is ultimately counter-productive and more than likely bad for my career. Frankly, I don't considering myself a good team player and I lean towards the hermit approach often. If I was the boss, who knows, I'd probably be a terror.
I interviewed Knuth several years ago [1] and found him to be just as classy in person as his reputation suggests. An article I read in preparation for that interview described him as someone who made you feel smarter by simply interacting with him. I found this to be true as well.
>Remember, though, that my opinion on economic questions is highly suspect, since I’m just an educator and scientist. I understand almost nothing about the marketplace.
Can you imagine guys like Musk, Kurzweil, Hawking, etc saying such a thing. It seems like its very in vogue to be a "man of everything" and "expert in all things" right now. Hawking writes about AI even though he's done zero AI research or any AI software engineering. Kurzweil sees himself as an expert in aging and medicine even though he holds no M.D. Musk is an endless source of 'big ideas' many of which are highly questionable and well outside of his wheelhouse of rocketry and cars.
What a humbling response by Knuth. We can't we have more people like this?
It's important to keep in mind that they live in two opposite contexts.
Knuth lives a more or less "monastic" life; he practically doesn't need to deal with anybody, while Torvalds is strictly entangled with an entire community.
While this of course doesn't entirely justify both behaviors, the two contexts are certainly very influential on them.
Logged in to upvote your comment, hopefully you won't be disuaded by downvotes. Maybe this whole "deal with my being unpleasant" thing stems from people seeking to justify their unwilingness or inability to practice self-control. Whatever the reason it is detrimental and worthy of being opposed to. It's one thing to be unpleasant to people who are obstinate. It's another to be unpleasant to people who are ignorant. And yet another to be rude to people who you simply disagree with.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but I WANT Linus to be "rude" to SENIOR devs who should know better, because it's better to be rude than to ship code that results in critical infrastructure getting pwned, or worse, somebody to die.
I actually fear the day, when somebody more polite gets in and lets it known, (unintentionally, of course), that shitty, rookie code is now fine, that being lazy and not treating the trust that has been placed upon you by being a subsystem maintainer for the most important software project of the 21st century - if you don't consider that an important enough responsibility and are willing to embarrass Linus, who put his trust in you, then yeah, I don't mind him being rude.
I would mind if he was rude to first time contributors fixing a typo, that's not who he's rude at.
He can't fire these people as such, many of them work for sponsors who pay his salary and he has no direct control over them, so being rude is one of his last resorts - especially since it's hard to express just how hardly displeased over email WITHOUT being "rude".
> You can reject patches and give feedback without being an asshole about it.
He does give feedback, if you take a look at LKML he's only "rude" to the repeating offenders, not those who make a one-time honest mistake, but rather to those who got too comfy to actually review the code they're sending to Linus as "reviewed".
I am not saying Linus is always right, but if you actually follow his reasoning, it makes a great amount of sense.
I think ldfdr made a good point in his sibling comment that deeming something as "unpleasant" is highly tied to your personal perceptions of what civility is, etc, which is generally rooted in your culture and where you grew up. I think we have to work to understand each other as much as possible and understand people come into conversations with different expectations. I think with someone like Linus we also have to realize that as a community founder he has a disproportionate influence in setting community norms, and people who want to get involved will tend to naturally gravitate towards his communication style. You wouldn't go to France and demand that everyone speak English all the time; we have to work to accommodate each other, and part of that is not assigning value judgements to a communication style.
part of that is not assigning value judgements to a communication style.
I disagree with this kind of pluralism. Communication style and skill matter deeply, but styles aren't simply "different but equal". In the current context, it's easy for technical people to dismiss everything but the "content", usually a kind of reductio ad absurdum to "technical content". But communication, by definition, involves the audience's perception. If your communication style inhibits your audience's understanding or even their willingness to listen, then you are simply a bad communicator.
Case study: some years back, I was heavily involved in hand drumming. A really excellent master drummer had recently immigrated and settled in my area. The community was very supportive, but the local students had a serious problem with him: he was an abusive asshat as an instructor. This was definitely a cultural style, one that was the ubiquitous norm in his home culture, particularly with a large body of children as the primary students. But it was absolutely off-putting to enthusiastic, self-motivated Western adults who were there to learn. They weren't making mistakes because they were lazy or dumb or inattentive, but just because they were new. Fortunately, community members realized this, supported him, and he switched his style in record time... to both his own and his students delight. His own skills and his ability to mentor were never in doubt, but his communication style utterly destroyed his ability to actually communicate effectively.
So yes, I'll agree that cultural understanding is really important for both the communicator and their audience. But there's a line to be drawn at outright abuse. Just because it's the norm elsewhere doesn't make it acceptable anywhere. Some approaches to communication are simply more effective than others. Failing to realize the human impact of your communication style on your audience, or worse, realizing that it's negative and doubling down on it, make you an ineffective jerk.
> If your communication style inhibits your audience's understanding or even their willingness to listen, then you are simply a bad communicator.
It's certainly not that simple. This only makes sense if your goal is to communicate in a culturally-agnostic manner, which is not something you can reliably do. It's like flag burning: you can't really communicate the same point better in another way. It at least makes some sense to tromp on people's emotions in a context where you are trying to teach them that their emotions are an obstacle to success.
It is important for the teacher to understand the student, but it is arguably more important for the student to understand the teacher.
I think you're reading too much into what I'm saying. I'm not trying to argue that there's some total ordering on the set of communication styles (whatever that might mean), and/or that there's some kind of "ideal" communication style.
But sometimes an asshat is just an asshat. There are boundaries of negativity past which it's basically never productive to cross, and telling people who've received that kind of behavior that they should just grow a thick skin ... is pointing the finger the wrong direction.
Unless you're teaching philosophy or some sort of self-help seminar, IT'S NOT YOUR JOB to teach people that "their emotions are an obstacle to success"
Linus' rudeness is not culture but an abandonement thereof. For being influential he should only be held to a higher standard. His bad example should certainly not be followed. Sincerely, your friendly non-native English co-speaker.
Has Linus ever been rude to you? Have any of your friends complained about taking the brunt of his rudeness? If so, that would be really interesting. From what I've seen, there is basically nobody who has actually complained, "Linus was rude to me." It seems to be a meme that consists almost entirely of putting words in other people's mouths.
For what it's worth, coworkers have pointed out to me how much of a bully Linus has been. I'm not sure it matters that the bullying wasn't directed at them. Bullying is still bullying.
To put it another way, would you want your manager to speak to you how Linus spoke to Mauro? Even if it was deserved?
We have civility rules on HN for a reason, for example. I don't think civility is artificial in the ways that Linus is saying. You can be courteous to someone you're in command of.
So the only example we can find is when a senior dev, that should rightfully know the rules of kernel development by heart, is pulling not just one but two rookie mistakes within a short time span? And we do not expect Torvalds to fly of the handle at that?
I wouldn't want my manager to speak to me the way Linux spoke to Mauro. I also wouldn't want my manager to tell me to program in Java. I also wouldn't want people to do to me a lot of the things they do in the bedroom. But as long as they don't do it to me, and the people who are doing it are freely consenting, I do not consider it my place to tell them what they may or may not do.
At what level are these people freely consenting? They want to change the kernel and there's only one main linux kernel. So they deal with the bullying gatekeeping and abuse. The idea that they all love Linus's antics is ridiculous.
For those that just click the first link and think that it might be a one time tirade. I have a good friend that has had to deal with him extensively and he sounds like a belligerent a-hat all the time.
I'd just like to note that in some interactions I had with Linus, he was very polite, when he had some reasons to be impolite. I think the blunt interactions are almost always to do with things done by people who should know better.
It's much more newsworthy that Linus was rude, than that he wasn't. News is biased. Who knew!
He did set the norms, but it's not like he's a godlike being with infinite wisdom or something. If people in his community don't agree with the norms he's established, there's nothing wrong with trying to buck those trends. I would not compare that to going to France and insisting that everyone speak English. Rather, if enough people in his community dislike the examples he sets, then in the analogy, Linus is the person who is demanding everyone speaks English. Community norms are heavily influenced by community leaders, but ultimately community norms are whatever the community consensus is, regardless of the leadership.
None of this is assigning rightness or wrongness to anyone, it's just group dynamics. If he drives people away, he may be OK with that. It may even be his desired outcome. There's nothing wrong with him running things the way he sees fit, and there's nothing wrong with other people thinking he's an ahole and going their separate ways. I'm much more sympathetic to the latter than the former though. In my experience, leaders who are too focused on getting people to respect their authority above all else tend to be the "B's" in the "A's hire A's, B's hire C's" management cliche.
Woah! Talk about a blast from the past. I used your program a ton back in the BBS/DOS days to show little stories I wrote and instructions and other silly things a high school geek would do. Thanks for your work!
My first problem was when someone converted the Constitution of the United States into a COM file, but made some typos. I got hundreds of calls.
Then someone converted a entire library of gay porn text files which resulted in some uncomfortable phone calls to my wife while I was at work.
I released another version without my name and phone number, but the damage was done. I can still find my name embedded on com files in old archives.
The program was eventually bundled with an edition of "The Art of Computer Programming" by Donald E. Knuth. He used it to wrap some of the text files on the disk that came with the book. He paid me with a signed copy of the book and a very nice letter.