Thoughts on Linus's Recent Departure from Linux?
It's nice that he's taking some time off to work on stuff. No one deserves to be cussed at or worse because some technical contribution like a patch isn't quite up to someone's standard. We're all human and there are better ways to treat people.
No one deserves to be cussed at or worse
i dont entirely agree. as a rule, its a good rule to say that. but we are talking about the kernel, where a "well intended" patch done to poor standards is not technically better than hacking countless computers at once-- which could have life-and-death consequences.
i am very harsh on the practice within the puppy linux community of putting in countless idiotic pings to websites like google just so some stupid app can tell if its got an internet connection (subject to race conditions at that, but thats not the problem.) this makes puppy useless for dissidents using tor. and theyre apathetic about it. the solution? dont use puppy. but that doesnt teach anything.
i also firmly believe that in general, education is too punative and creates a visceral fear of learning. so its not like every lesson can or should be taught by being mean. quite the contrary.
its not the way linus treats kernel maintainers that bothers me. the rest of the world? perhaps. some people deserve a dressing down for introducing serious problems into the kernel. good things we take for granted, we can attribute to SOME of those outbursts. one of the major problems with treating people that way however, is it can be habit-forming and apply more often when not warranted than the times where it is. and that shoe probably fits linus pretty well. but if you introduce a flaw into the kernel that can get some chinese protester killed, yes-- someone should at least swear at you and call you an idiot, because you did a stupid dangerous thing and you should know better.
this sort of abuse is far too common, and it is reinforced by people with power who have double standards-- and thats definitely wrong. so i mostly agree with people who say as much.
on the other hand, the brain is wired to recall drama and violence more than most things (up to a point where its already way overdone and tries to block out traumatic experiences.) so gkh will not have an unhappy life, but we will all recall the dressing down he got from linus. not just as a warning to gkh, but as a warning to us about gkh, and as a warning to others who might stake their reputation on doing something to the kernel that is very much akin to years-long sabotage, whether deliberate or not.
and gkh is probably going to have the job that linus has now, this is a passing of the torch complete with hazing ritual. and we are going to miss linus. i really dont like him as a person, at all. we could still do worse for a maintainer and in the long run, we probably will. thats a lot more important than this tiny announcement.
in general though, theres a lot more room to make and fix mistakes without abuse. going the other direction and making people entirely unaccountable for introducing serious flaws would be a grave mistake, and be careful this doesnt turn into another "openrespect" (https://web.archive.org/web/20140507205045/http://slated.org:80/respect_freedom_not_pragmatism a meme for disregarding accountability/criticism towards open source types that crops up every few years-- more recently lundukes "divisive politics are tearing open source apart!")
https://mako.cc/writing/hill-when_free_software_isnt_better.html i deeply admire mako hill and hes a free software voice, for comparison.
open source regularly pushes that idea that everybody should be nice, that people are too mean. what they really mean is that free software shouldnt criticise corporations. this one-sided call for being "nice" never stops the comments about neckbeards and autism-- they arent intended to. they arent anything but a silencing tactic aimed at one side of a debate. conflating free software with open source allows them to speak for people they disagree with. open source isnt being harmed by division-- open source itself is a divisive political effort to disrupt (and discredit) free software.
someday we may prove that faking "nice" causes worse damage than being mean. if we are talking about exploiting people, pretending to help/care/be nice carries the exploitation of humanity a whole lot farther than direct violence alone. china is one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, but it simply cannot get away with being china without the propaganda that says it exists to take care of people. fake benevolence is one of the greatest diseases of mankind, and it needs to censor criticism and manipulate opinion to sustain itself. "everybody be nice" is a great way to shame people for making a valid criticism against worse things than rudeness. use with caution.
between the two, id rather bryan lunduke take time away. his comments are far worse than torvalds. it starts to get ugly around 55:16 https://invidio.us/watch?v=radmjL5OIaA (t= doesnt seem to work on invidio.us)
dont just downvote-- downvote and tell me why. i wont come back at you for it-- i even tried to upvote someone the other day and couldnt (not enough karma or blocking the wrong js, who knows-- i cant vote.)
before i made the above comments, i was guessing based on a lot of experience and the only thing ive heard about this is on this forum.
now im looking around and other people are making similar connections. what issue do you take with what i said? was it unfair? was it incorrect? do you simply disagree? at least do me the courtesy of explaining your side of it. an anonymous dislike doesnt give me much to go on.
I am a translator!
between the two, id rather bryan lunduke take time away. his comments are far worse than torvalds. it starts to get ugly around 55:16 https://invidio.us/watch?v=radmjL5OIaA (t= doesnt seem to work on invidio.us)
It was funny to see the LAS hosts act surprised by Richard Stallman's statements - Stallman has always stated that he considers developing proprietary software unethical so I'm not sure why the hosts were surprised. He clearly explained why the "feed your kid" argument is flawed (most Americans are not software developers and yet still find ways to feed their kids). The worst part was the hosts' complaints post-interview about Stallman not providing ways to move from a proprietary business model to a free software based one - they never even bothered asking him about this and yet they somehow expected him to discuss it despite the never ending argument about needing proprietary software to "feed children" which Stalman tried to end by agreeing to disagree but the hosts refused to relent.
that was actually the second worst interview with him and stallman. the comments he made on the one i was thinking of (i thought it was the same interview. that was 6 years ago) were even worse.
the most recent (last year?) interview he did with stallman, he was much better behaved. believe it or not, im not trying to single out any individual. this is just an example. im not saying it makes torvalds bad attitude ok if someone else is worse, just that people tend to focus on any individual more than the context of the comments. i dont like torvalds, but its the lack of integrity that bothers me, not his choice of words-- his willingness to throw all of free software under the bus, not his rudeness per se, that i think is worse.
and since this change of heart wont change any of that (for him or the others that do it) this is non-news to me, except for the implications for gkh taking over (in the long run.) thats news. and i love how all of this is made into one story (by open source, mainly) when the bigger story is sort of flapped out softly so that it isnt heard as clearly. look at my hand-- dont look at what im doing, look at the hand... torvalds is sort of throwing himself under the bus too. but really this is about the linux foundation. its not about anything else at all. hes being smart, just not in the most obvious way. and that doesnt make me a fan.
>open source isnt being harmed by division-- open source itself is a divisive political effort to disrupt (and discredit) free software.
This!!!
EDIT: After watching the Lunduke argument, I agree with you as well. Lunduke introduced a red herring argument about feeding his kids which was effectively baiting Stallman into saying something he shouldn’t have said.
I think rms should have stuck with the argument that feeding your kids does not justify immoral acts. He SHOULD NOT have gone into a strange, anti-natalist argument that people should not have children for environmental reasons. But that’s just Stallman: he’s a wild card. Gotta love him.
theres always a strong case for being strictly on topic, and theres always a huge temptation for a renaissance geek (the geek version of renaissance man) like stallman to touch on sometimes-loosely related topics. "oh you think feeding your kid is as reason to deny software freedom-- not everyone assumes you should even have kids!"
im very sympathetic but it didnt do much to strengthen his argument which was reasonable (if against norms, but whoever said norms were reasonable) on its own. incidentally, staying on topic will help you a lot if you email stallman regularly. he responds to nearly everything, so its never intuitive how much going off topic is going to cost him. in person (just a guess) he is more like his interviews.
even though he will flat out tell you that not having kids is a good idea when you already have one, he seems less motivated by either spite or selfishness (or even partisan politics) than just about any person ive ever spoken to. he just cares about issues-- everything else is tangential. i dont mean this 100% literally, as if he doesnt care about people. he just approaches it differently.
Oh ok. I have emailed him before. I’ll have to remember that in case I ever talk with him in person.