Bluntness doesn't increase the information content of a message, it's just a way to force one's message through. Everything that can be said bluntly can be said politely, and usually to greater effect.

I'm always confused by people who defend Linus style because it isn't just blunt but often plain insulting for no apparent reason at all.

There are many problems with this. Apart from antagonizing people as already mentioned, if someone is constantly screaming they lose the ability to modulate how serious they actually are. You can rarely tell whether Linus is legitimately upset because he seems almost always upset. It's better to default to politeness if only because if you're actually upset at least I know that I need to pay attention.

Some people really appreciate the blunt communications style. Some people don't. I personally believe one should be able to appreciate all communications styles, because it provides you access to more information. Ignoring something smart because one got bad feelings from how it was said strikes me as rather puerile.

> I personally believe one should be able to appreciate all communications styles

Wut? Some communication styles are just "harassment", including Linus'. One can put up with it, but appreciation? BS. Linus is worse than Kalanick.

It is about culture. He comes from a background where people say what they think without trying to make it sound nice.

Many times i think in my mind about something: this is just stupid. He says it out loud. That is the difference.

If one can see behind the rude attitude, there is plenty to learn.

I like people like Linus that say directly and without filters what they think, if some work is crap they say it, if someone needs to be insulted they do it, and sometimes is useful (look at NVIDIA for example, since Torvalds insult they improved Linux support).

And these kind of people tends to be more appreciated than those who are politically correct, for example just look at Trump.

Linus is rarely blunt (i.e. to-the-point and without sugar-coating) and almost always resorts to irrelevant personal attacks that add little to nothing to the discussion. It's rather unfortunate that so many people look up to him, despite his serious personality flaws. Perhaps its because we all have this fantasy of being Dr. House; the brilliant jerk whose always right. Linus's rants typically contain only a sentence or two of actual information, with the majority of his email being devoted to a level of emotional immaturity that would result in a fist-fight in the real world.

Edit: To give him some slack, maybe there was some charm, years ago, in a community project being run like a typical vitriolic usenet board (think an early 90s version of 4chan or reddit). It's quite anachronistic today and in the context of what Linux now is, with professional developers.

> It's rather unfortunate that so many people look up to him, despite his serious personality flaws.

It's as unfortunate as you decide it to be. A lot of engineers and scientists love reading Linus (and watching House) because it reassures them that an argument's worth can transcend its delivery. The world is full of successful, socially competent salesmen. It's great that we have role models that aren't that.

This is a common sentiment, but I disagree.

In technical discussions, rudeness and informativeness are orthogonal. There is some information that is not polite to convey (such as information about someone else's personal/physical characteristics) but that information isn't relevant to technical discussions. Sometimes there is a choice as to how rudely one wants to convey a particular fact, but that is indeed a choice that reflects more upon one's desire for politeness or rudeness than it does any actual constraint on the transmission of factual information.

Rudeness is inferred or "felt" by the other party, and really worrying about peoples feelings or emotions is like worrying about which direction the wind is going to blow today because emotions have the ability to be extremely irrational. Perceiving something as "rude" ultimately comes down to the individual who is being told the information as interpreting it as rude. In this case, anything can be viewed as "rude" under the right microscope -- in fact Linus has brought up this very point multiple times in a sort of a "individual liberty" light. If you take feelings out of it and focus on the information -- Linus is either right or wrong. Something either sucks or it does not suck, for example. We can talk about how he might be wrong -- maybe it doesn't suck here's point x y and z refuting his a b c on why foo system suck.

You can certainly choose not to converse with Linus, just like I choose not to converse with overtly politically correct people who may take offense / report little thing, I personally don't have time to worry about if what I said "might" come off as a certain way and really I wouldn't want to be in that situation anyways -- It is exhausting to always have to editorialize what you are going to say in today's hyper-sensititve-filter-bubble-one-worldview monocultures.

> Rudeness is inferred or "felt" by the other party

Not really. When you attack/insult someone, instead of attacking his ideas, it's pretty much universally accepted that you're being an asshole. It's not a matter of debate, interpretation, feelings or political correctness. In his first reply Linus is being an asshole and there is no justification about that. Those who defend him should note that even he realized that and apologized.

> If you take feelings out of it and focus on the information -- Linus is either right or wrong

That's absolutely not true, and in fact the main issue here is that Linus is very much driven by feelings and not focusing on information. I don't think anyone can seriously argue that adding this to a conversation adds any value:

“Who the f*ck does idiotic things like that? How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?“

“If you work in security, and think you have some morals, I think you might want to add the tag-line 'No, really, I'm not a whore. Pinky promise'“

And on and on

Eh, it's not that hard to be polite enough. If you focus on the facts without puffing them up with extraneous value judgments, there's no occasion for "really worrying".

Instead of saying "X sucks" or "Whoever thought of X deserves a time-traveller to retroactively induce their abortion", the discussion is better served anyway with something like "X has problem Y; Z is better because of these benchmarks/ tests/ metrics", because then supporters of X have a concrete argument to be convinced by (rather than simply cowed/shamed by) or argue against.

Without agreeing or disagreeing, I find it amusing that so many people are talking about it in this thread without any concrete examples. You could be having something Linus said in mind, and others will have other things he's said.

It looks like you're all talking past one other.

> Rudeness is inferred or "felt" by the other party

This just isn't completely true at all. People can most definitely be intentionally rude to others.

Communication has always been a two-way street.

I definitely agree, but I don't think communication is complete on the internet. True communication only happens live (in my opinion of course). When you communicate using only text, a lot is left out, therefore what many people have done on the internet since the early days is discard any inference into mannerisms, or "rudeness" or read into sentences with malcontent and just focus on the content. I guess I learned to do this at an early age on the internet and maybe have "thicker skin" but I am just really surprised at how easily offended people can get at Linus (and just in general on online conversations), when the medium itself is such a shell of actual communication.

It is possible to be informative and succinct without being an asshole - these are orthogonal to each other.

funfunfunfunction puts this particularly well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYzt71o2IvQ

It is quite possible to be blunt while still being polite and professional, Linus is rude as well as blunt, which is unnecessary.

Have you actually read some of his messages? He is mostly very nice and patient with new people but he can be harsh with experienced people who should know better in his opinion. He also almost always attacks the idea, not the person and explains his rationale. I'll take someone like him any time over a lot of corporate people who regularly go through their politeness rituals without ever making progress.

And I think the history of Linux proves him right. It's phenomenal that he has been able to keep it together and thriving for so long. That's a pretty rare achievement.

Mostly very nice is irrelevant. Being an asshole a tiny fraction of the time is still unnecessary and counterproductive.

There's not just Blunt or PC, though. One can be polite and respectful and still get their point across very effectively.

I do too. However, it is a false dichotomy that it has to be one or the other.