Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy [LWN.net]

Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy

Posted Jul 17, 2013 19:43 UTC (Wed) by jensend (guest, #1385)
In reply to: Ingo posted a very interesting message on this thread by dlang
Parent article: On kernel mailing list behavior

Ingo is deliberately conflating conflict and insults, immediately from the get-go.

Yes, of course honest and open disagreement is vital. And even if you're honest and open, if you're insufficiently blunt the communication can be inefficient.

But that can be done better without abuse. Throwing in a bunch of f-bombs and calling the other person names doesn't make the conflict more open and honest or even more blunt. Sarah isn't advocating that core developers stop telling others that their patch is awful, that their approach won't work at all, or that they've completely misunderstood the kernel development process. She's saying that all of these things can be said without telling people "SHUT THE **** UP!" and calling them idiots.

It's quite trivial to change a couple lines of either of the emails Sarah linked in a way that makes them no less blunt but considerably less abusive.

It's conceivable that someone could still try to make a case for abuse- something along the lines of "Linus does this so as to be sufficiently awful and repulsive to scare off people who would waste his time; if he stated his disagreements more simply we'd have more development process scaling issues." But I don't really buy it.

to post comments

Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy

Posted Jul 17, 2013 20:11 UTC (Wed) by biehl (subscriber, #14636) [Link] (7 responses)

"to scare off people who would waste his time"

That is my pet theory. I think swearing is Linuses "No brown M&Ms".

Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy

Posted Jul 17, 2013 20:29 UTC (Wed) by Tobu (subscriber, #24111) [Link] (4 responses)

It's part of the argument (emphasis mine):

Yes. And I do it partly (mostly) because it's who I am, and partly
because I honestly despise being subtle or "nice".

The fact is, people need to know what my position on things are. And I
can't just say "please don't do that", because people won't listen. I
say "On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle", and I mean
it.

And I definitely am not willing to string people along, either. I've
had that happen too - not telling people clearly enough that I don't
like their approach, they go on to re-architect something, and get
really upset when I am then not willing to take their work.

Sarah, first off, I don't have that many tools at hand. Secondly, I
simply don't believe in being polite or politically correct. And you
can point at all those cultural factors where some cultures are not
happy with confrontation (and feel free to make it about gender too -
I think that's almost entirely cultural too). And please bring up
"cultural sensitivity" while at it. And I'll give you back that same
"cultural sensitivity". Please be sensitive to _my_ culture too.

[…]

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Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy

Posted Jul 17, 2013 21:36 UTC (Wed) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (3 responses)

I agree with Linus' point about on the internet no-one can hear you being subtle. In fact, in real life people sometimes don't hear you either. For some reason a flat "no" is sometimes too subtle.

I'm surely not the only person who has had to maintain bad code that was committed because everyone was being too polite.

I can completely understand his point about not having that many tools at hand.

Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy

Posted Jul 18, 2013 9:43 UTC (Thu) by willnewton (guest, #68395) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm not sure I do. Ultimately he can choose not to pull your changes, what could be a stronger tool than that? I don't see why that would have to be accompanied by verbal abuse (not that it usually is of course).

To be perfectly honest I think a bigger issue for new contributors is apathy and indifference. Most new contributors if Linus were to flame them would go out and get a framed copy!

Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy

Posted Jul 18, 2013 10:24 UTC (Thu) by Tobu (subscriber, #24111) [Link]

Pulling or not pulling is binary. If most of the work in a pull request is useful or necessary, there's pressure to accept the pull request. For someone who has to take hundreds of pull requests, they need to shape the work that gets sent to them by documenting their expectations very clearly, being even more clear when those expectations fail to be met, and if warranted, flaming publicly so others may learn. Documentation/ManagementStyle also mentions ways to diminish the personal impact of flames which is their obvious downside (make them humorous and over the top, reserve them to people who should know better, don't be sanctimonious, spread the love and learn to apologise).

The initial topic of the linux-stable thread was expectations and policy for -stable and late -rcs. The policy was strict in both cases, but people were sending a rather higher volume of insufficiently tested non-regression work to Greg; at which point something to the effect of will I need to shout at people? came up.

Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy

Posted Jul 18, 2013 16:46 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

You can be unambiguously, unsubtly clear without going on the attack.

I certainly would not argue for passive-aggressive behavior; be clear, but don't be rude.

Perfectly reasonable, unambiguous responses to bad code or even bad patterns of behavior from a contributor:

"I don't want to see code like this ever again."
"Don't ever break userspace. Ever. It's never OK."
"I'm seeing the same set of mistakes in many pieces of code from you; please understand the problem better before sending any more patches."
"You should know better than this."

Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy

Posted Jul 22, 2013 20:45 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (1 responses)

( for the people for whom kernel code is more interesting than pop culture:

In his autobiography _Crazy From The Heat_, David Lee Roth explains why the touring rider for Van Halen's first big 24-semitrailer stadium tour included, buried down around item 126 or so, something like "a bowl of M&M's in the dressing room reception area, with no brown M&Ms".

The *reason* for this item, which looked pretty goofy, and of which much light and fuss was made when it leaked to the public -- and which the band never admitted to at the time, *because it would then stop working* -- was that theirs was the first tour with lots of really heavy equipment rigged way up over top of tens of thousands of audience members, and they were thoughtful enough to realize that if they killed a substantial number of those because someone had not done their job properly, no one would ever do that kind of tour again -- quite aside from it ending their careers and possibly putting them up for manslaughter charges.

So they put the Brown M&M rule in the rider, and that gave them an easy way to check whether the promoter had properly read the rider, and implemented everything on it. They did, in fact, once come in and find brown M&Ms in the bowl, and they stopped everything and did a full inspection of the rig... and as I remember it, did find some dangerous practices, which they had corrected before showtime.

So things like that may in fact have non-obvious but desirable side effects, which drive why they exist. If you need more on this, go watch GI Jane, and find out how hard it is to become a SEAL. And why. And think about how many places the Linux kernel is now. And how many places it's going. )

Not so interesting- fallacious irrelevancy

Posted Jul 27, 2013 21:55 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

So, being vicious to people in a working environment[1] is acceptable because of, uh, Van Halen and brown M&Ms, and also Navy SEALs?

Sorry, not really seeing the connection here.

[1] which has never happened anywhere I have ever worked to the degree it happens on lkml, and I worked in the City of London, a famously vicious place