Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off

Re:Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off by int_19h on Sunday September 16, 2018 @08:59PM (#18002329)

"Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untravelled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty," "meaningless," or "dishonest," and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best."

That's Robert A. Heinlein, hardly known for being a social justice activist.

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Re:Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off by coffeemug on Sunday September 16, 2018 @09:03PM (#18002350)

There are different ways to oil the machine, I'm not throwing out the baby along with the bathwater in naivete. Lots of cultures encouraged being direct, were insanely productive, and oiled the gears in a different way. The current cultural trend is just fashion, it will pass, but things will get worse before they get better.

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Re:Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off by int_19h on Sunday September 16, 2018 @10:37PM (#18002761)

And once again, being direct is orthogonal to being polite.

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Re:Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off by jlawson on Sunday September 16, 2018 @11:17PM (#18002911)

Heinlein wrote "honorifics and formal politeness". I interpret this as things like saying "please", "thank you", and other straightforward ritualistic decorative words - not as actually changing what you're actually saying to avoid hurting feelings.

There's a big difference between reformatting the message and changing the message.

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Re:Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off by int_19h on Monday September 17, 2018 @12:45AM (#18003263)

What's described in the comment I responded to is exactly "reformatting the message" - you still communicate the same thing, ultimately, just in a way that allows the person on the receiving end to save face.

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Re:Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off by skriticos2 on Monday September 17, 2018 @09:04AM (#18005516)

This reminds me of employee work reviews in Germany when they leave, that are mandated by law to be positive (not kidding).

The result is that it spawned a new code language for HR people (there are dictionaries) that "translate" the review.

Everybody is polite..

For instance the level of praise in with the various points indicates a scoring.

Here are a few examples:

He showed understanding for his work. -> He did not do anything.

He did all the work with great diligence and interest. -> Eager, but not very efficient.

He tried to do his job justice. -> The will was there, more unfortunately not.

He has used his skills. -> He did what he could. That was not much.

Here is a Google Translated page about it: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...

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Re:Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off by mmirate on Monday September 17, 2018 @11:25PM (#18012238)

And of course, things like this only erode language semantics over time by making more and more words and phrases seem sarcastic; we have "/s" but there is no reliable marker of non-sarcasm (cf Poe's Law).

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Re:Linus Torvalds apologizes for his behavior, takes time off by marmot777 on Monday September 17, 2018 @02:10AM (#18003588)

Yes, that's right. They haven't been in enough situations to see the good that civility can do and the wreckage that incivility can leave in its wake. I'm not speaking specifically about the Linus situation here but more as a general observation that most people have when they've been out in the world for more than a few years.

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