After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

Posted Sep 20, 2018 12:08 UTC (Thu) by jrigg (guest, #30848)
In reply to: After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker) by Wol
Parent article: After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

> filling your conversation with unnecessary, meaningless in the context of the sentence, rubbish (typically obscene) words, shows you up as an immature jerk.

Yes, it does, but that isn't the same thing as swearing occasionally when sufficiently annoyed. Most people I spend a lot of time around wouldn't be offended by the occasional use of swear words, especially where serious provocation is involved.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

Posted Sep 20, 2018 12:44 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link] (8 responses)

People you spend a lot of time around wouldn't be offended by the occasional use of swear words, especially where serious provocation is involved. Would they be offended by frequent use of swear words directed personally at them without serious provocation? Because that's what happened on LKML and that's what we're talking about.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

Posted Sep 22, 2018 16:56 UTC (Sat) by tbird20d (subscriber, #1901) [Link] (7 responses)

I disagree. Do you have an example of a person in the Linux community who has had "frequent use of swear words directed at them personally"? I don't know of any (well, maybe Kay Sievers?) Linus' swearing seems to be sporadic, and mostly directed at senior developers or maintainers (with some notable unfortunate exceptions). It's also a small percentage of his messages, despite the impression given by the article. Any random individual is much more likely to get a curt but firm response from Linus, rather than swear words and abuse. That doesn't excuse the times that Linus does use swear words, it just puts it in context. Overall, I haven't seen a pattern of abuse towards any single individual, from any single individual.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

Posted Sep 25, 2018 11:34 UTC (Tue) by ceplm (subscriber, #41334) [Link] (6 responses)

Ulrich Drepper of glibc fame. Linus is and always just has been just a beginning apprentice in the department of offending others, Ulrich is the master.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

Posted Sep 25, 2018 11:37 UTC (Tue) by ceplm (subscriber, #41334) [Link]

Of course, Ulrich is also smarter than most of his critics combined. Other trait he shares with Linus.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

Posted Sep 25, 2018 16:17 UTC (Tue) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link] (4 responses)

> in the department of offending others, Ulrich is the master.

Is this sort of gossip even necessary...

From my experience it is rather unfair and incorrect. While sometimes rather blunt in written communication, I found him to be very kind, patient and quite helpful.

It is a mistake to overlook these qualities in fellow hackers just because they weren't overly emotionally considerate in a few of their internet comments. From a couple of comments around here* I've got an impression that some take that as a license to dehumanize them.

*Much more so from the Twitter messages pointed to from them. Perhaps that's because Twitter's character limit encourages people to strip down their thoughts to simple-minded judgements?

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

Posted Sep 25, 2018 20:48 UTC (Tue) by ceplm (subscriber, #41334) [Link]

No, perhaps, you are right and it is not necessary.

First of all, I truly acknowledge, that particularly Ulrich is really exceptional smart guy. I have had one experience where I still believe I was right and he was not (and although he never admitted, but later the change I was suggesting silently went into glibc), but I have many situations where seconds after he learned about the question he quickly dismissed it, and author of the idea only after long time (a year in one case) understood that Ulrich was actually right and he was wrong.

However, this is not the point of this thread. I still hold that polite conversation (which is IMHO more important than any CoC) should be always centered *ad rem* and not *ad personam*. It is almost always correct to say that *something* is completely stupid idea (of course, coherent reasons for such judgment should be always provided), but it is never right to say in such discussion that *somebody* is stupid.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that some of the quotations mentioned by the Newyorker article are completely out of line in this area (and of course, I can find you similarly inappropriate in my opinion statements from Ulrich and others). I used to be lawyer, so I am used to rather rough treatment, and I can give whatever I get.

However, if we want to make our project friendly to newbies (and girls), and I want, it is better to go out of your way to keep discussion clean of *ad personam* arguments. See, Guido's efforts which really led to Python conferences having most ladies around (I was shocked when PyCon CZ '18 had at least one third of ladies, if not more). I cannot say that it would lead to decrease of quality of code, more like just contrary. More eyes make more bugs shallow and it doesn't matter which toilet uses their owner.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

Posted Sep 26, 2018 10:02 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Uli is one of those people who is completely, almost shockingly, different in person from his written communication on the Internet. In person I agree with your assessment -- but most of his communication with new glibc hackers was on the net, and *that* was definitely not kind, patient and helpful. Impatient and brusque to the point of unhelpfulness is actually an *understatement*. It definitely drove people away; not only new glibc hackers, and not only people who weren't already extremely thick-skinned (case in point: davem). It led to the creation of mailing lists and entire *forked projects* whose sole reason for existence was that Uli was not involved.

That's... not really how to build a community, or how to keep development thriving once you're gone.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

Posted Sep 26, 2018 11:20 UTC (Wed) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (1 responses)

One thing that I've seen repeatedly in written communication is that someone who's naturally brusque but not unhelpful and who has a cultural background that is biased towards brevity and brutal honesty over circumlocution and pleasant language appears to be a brutal evil monster over e-mail, IM, etc. I could well believe that this is true of Uli - in person, he sees the cues that tell him that his language is slipping over the line and corrects back to where he wants to be, while there's no such cues on the Internet.

Worse, correcting these people on the Internet often backfires badly - instead of coming across to them as replacing the cues they subconsciously follow in person, it comes across as harsh criticism.

After Years of Abusive E-mails, the Creator of Linux Steps Aside (The New Yorker)

Posted Sep 26, 2018 20:17 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Yeah. Solve this and you've probably solved the troll problem and saved civilization. It's probably quite hard. :/