I've seen Linus handle people numerous times who are learning or do not claim to be experts and he is always respectful, civil and a lot less blunt.
Not to mention the fact that when Linus is shitting on people it's often because they broke something for the "user"[0].
Lennart is not this way, he breaks userspace, he breaks norms and has a _huge_ ego. He conducts himself as if him and his crew are the only good programmers in the universe.
That is quintessentially _not_ the same as Linus.
[0]: User is a broad definition here, but it covers userspace programmers.
Either the environment is civil and professional or it is not. You can't say, "It is UNLESS..." and then mention something that could conceivably happen in the course of a normal working week.
>times who are learning or do not claim to be experts
That makes no sense. If _Linus_ thinks you should know better is not the same as "they claim to be experts". According to you, who has claimed to be an expert and demanded that Linus should listen to them?
>and has a _huge_ ego.
Sounds a lot like Linus Torvalds.
>I have an ego the size of a small planet, but I'm not _always_ right
>I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First Linux, now git.
>I'm always right. This time I'm just even more right than usual.
All direct quotes from him.
>I've seen Linus handle people numerous times who are learning or do not claim to be experts and he is always respectful, civil and a lot less blunt.
People who are sometimes rude to others can also be sometimes nice to others. This is not surprising in the least.
It might be a quick way to blunt innovation in both. Or not. I dunno; people are complicated.
Also to that point... I've heard that Linus will grind you into the sidewalk for breaking userspace. I'm not sure that is the same thing that we are talking about.
I'm also not sure how accurate what I've heard is on the matter, but I think we absolutely can pick and choose which assholes are OK – the assholes that contribute to progress are favored over the assholes that impede it (for example, you may choose a different metric)
If you have a strong opinion and you back it up with facts, that's not just your opinion, it's an argument. If you have a strong opinion and you don't argue with facts, and you're not interested in opinions to the contrary, even when they are presented with strong facts, then you're just an asshole with an opinion, right? You can be inflammatory (I've heard that this is not just Linus, it's a national characteristic of Finnish people, and probably other nationalities too... again take with a grain of salt)... you can be an inflammatory asshole, but if you still present a coherent argument with solid facts and a sound rational basis, you may still advance the state of the art in spite of alienating some people.
This is a false choice. We can choose our battles as we please.
I'm not specifically trying to defend anyone's "retroactive abortion" comments but, there is a stark difference between reading a comment that says you (op) should be retroactively aborted, and reading a comment that says with some subtlety and nuance that you have made a bad decision and should be ashamed of making a bad decision.
The main difference? Impact. Agreed it's not a positive impact if it causes you to be totally humiliated and leave, rather than causing you to re-evaluate how you arrived at the bad choice and do better next time. But a poignant message should be making an impact, that's what makes it effective.
These people are primarily responsible for writing code, they may not be skilled at nuance or subtlety in English language, and they may view exercises of those particular disciplines as significant time-wasting sinks that they've spent too much time on with too little ROI. (From experience, I know I often write too much, and say too little!)
I feel like you're pushing an agenda & have discarded any possibility of listening to other points of view, or modifying your position. I recognise it as 'listening in bad faith'. I didn't say I liked being inconsistent or tribal, you are putting words into my mouth in an attempt to discredit my position as irrational.
It's still a false choice: I can choose how I spend my time, and I can spend it in a way that I think is effective.
You can choose how you spend your time. But that doesn't mean you can choose how people evaluate that time and if it's fair or not. This is a direct consequence of your own point!
This thing where you suggest I listened in "bad faith" but your point is dancing around the definition of "can" seems pretty bad faith to me.
If I understood your argument correctly, your position is that both Lennart and Linux exhibit aggressive, egotistical, “asshole” behavior. This makes them equally bad and thus condemning Lennart more that Linux is unfair.
I recognse this style of argument as the Continuum Fallacy: that if two things fall into the same scale of badness, then as a whole they are equally bad.
I disagree with this argument, and think it is possible for someone to complain & take action against one problem without being obliged to do the same against another similar problem. I also think that people can choose which problem to address, and do not necessarily have to only address the most egregious issue.
As I understand it, your complaint is that people complain about Lennart’s antisocial behaviour but remain silent on Linus’. I think that, since this topic is regarding systemsd, people will take about Lennart, and as the topic is not about the Linux kernel, people won’t talk about Linus. So, there may be lots of comments addressing Linus’ behaviour, but I wouldn’t expect to see them here.
Finally, I think the thing that makes Linus more acceptable than Lennart is that Linus is open about mistakes and has grown a developement community which encourages collaboration, and his outbursts are directed at changes which don’t match his expectations (which are fairly well established: run tests, check for merge conflicts, etc.).
I hope I have been clearer, and that this helps you make sense of some of the behaviour you have seen that you think is inconsistent/irrational.
The word you're looking for is "non-sympathetic." I certainly am that.
> This makes them equally bad and thus condemning Lennart more that Linux is unfair.
Parsing this, you've subtly mistaken my position. I'll return your gesture in kind: The Free Software as a whole is wracked with a plague of toxic leaders who copy the general lkml-style of aggressiveness, often promoting the fallacy of strictly-correct technological solutions and tying the production of such magical solutions to the capability of an individual as opposed to the capacity of the group.
In this context, the systemd project doesn't particularly stand out. It seems quite normal within a world that nourishes and rewards toxic social ecosystems.
Discarding Systemd uniquely is in this climate for Lennart's behavior is difficult to justify. You can argue his behavior is different and you yourself have a distinct objection to this. As I've said; that's your prerogative. You can in fact decide to give Linus a pass but not Lennart.
But I submit that this process of deciding who can be cruel and who cannot is inherently unfair. It's axiomatically unfair. To further extend that to the basis of technology decisions (that in most cases people far more expert than either of us in the specific field of linux distro maintenance) is to essentially undermine the very reasoning that supports the "meritocracy" that supposedly undermines this ecosystem.
You CAN draw a differentiation, I'm not denying that. They do subtly different things. I in no way defend Lennert's attitude.
If I had my way, I'd throw the lot of them out of their respective projects and install someone more level headed. I genuinely wish we could do that. For me, the good outcome is that people wake up and realize, "Wow, ALL these people are reprehensible and we should lose them all."
> I think the thing that makes Linus more acceptable than Lennart is that Linus is open about mistakes and has grown a developement community which encourages collaboration,
This is you, handing out a pass for bad behavior to Linus. Because "he can grow." Okay, sure. But I've been watching him since the start of the project. I don't think he's grown very much at all except where it financially benefits him.
I think this process of granting dispensation and refusing to censure specific people in the technology community is an epidemic of hero worship. It's an epidemic that leads us to small mistakes (bad mailing list management & tech decisions made against the advice of the principles we claim to cherish) up to large mistakes (Clinkle, Uber, and Github's management was all run with this principle at the fore, and it had disastrous results).
> I think that, since this topic is regarding systemsd, people will take about Lennart, and as the topic is not about the Linux kernel, people won’t talk about Linus.
A bold assertion, given that people are naturally drawing comparisons to that end outside this thread without prompting from me. I take this as evidence the cognitive dissonance of passing Torvalds and condemning Poettering weighs on people when they consider it, and they seek to rationalize it.
I would use this to describe someone who clearly didn't care about the other person's point of view; you seem to be completely ignoring what they said and misrepresenting them to be arguing for a case you have prepared a counter-argument for. E.g. when I say "I had a bad day" to my boss & they reply "tough, deal with it", they're not listening sympathetically; when they reply "you would have an easier time if you stopped creating so many bugs", then they're listening in bad faith.
> Parsing this, you've subtly mistaken my position.
I'm using a technique called 'active listening', where you repeat back to the person what you think they mean. This way, they can respond "yeah that's right", or "no, I see when I said <blah> it could be interpreted as <blah blah> but I meant <blah blah blah>". I think your response is using my misunderstanding of your position to score points & promote your agenda, instead of clarifying what you said so I understand it better.
> This is you, handing out a pass for bad behavior to Linus.
I didn't say that Linus gets a pass from me. I haven't mentioned any of my preferences regarding specific developers and their aggressive behaviours. My thesis is, "it's ok to call out a person on bad behaviour when other people also show that bad behaviour".
> Because "he can grow."
I didn't say that. If you're paraphrasing my statement, I meant the community has grown.
If you find my restating of my position—attempting to clarify it and put it in context—is "scoring points" then I only see 2 things:
1. Upon understanding it better you find my arguments more tailored to the argument and think this represents an unfair action.
2. You would rather I just agree with you rather than write honest responses. The idea that I have any standing TO disagree is evidence of "an agenda," an inappropriate thing to bring at all.
Not sure how a constructive conversation can continue, based on this.
I reject your premise. You reject mine. This conversation is only growing thornier and more tedious, and it's only out of respect to you that I have continued in good faith thus far. Perhaps this is where we agree to disagree and move on?
OR
We burn all those MLs into the ground.
Terrible culture in these projects is basically how everyone is conditioned to interact from the top down. We can't pick and choose which assholes are okay and which are not. We either push back on all of them to make a more professional environment or we accept this is what we want.