I whole heartedly disagree. Being angry (and making it known) at someone who broke the “first rule of kernel development” and then tried to hide that fact is completely accepted. Attacking said person with personal insults isn’t. I don’t see any of the latter here, compared to Linus’s past reactions to similar situations anyway.

What I meant is this ~ Linus is able to express himself just as well as before, but with different language, without using swearing.

Actually, instead of hot like before, this Linus is cold. Instead of raging, he coldly expresses his disappointment. In some ways, this feels more brutal than his old style.

Criticizing the mistake as "complete garbage" is great. You don't even need to read anything more to sense Linus is annoyed like he always is when shit hits the fan like this.

Ah! Then I rescind my “disagreement” part.

Your other comments around that time seemed to be critical of his current behavior, but I see you are correcting that now.

I agree with your sentiment, but in this case it’s not a personal attack. Linus, the person in charge, has standards for how certain choices should be made. The prevalence of Linux makes any breaking changes dire.

Linus identified that there was an unacceptable action taken and Is being stern so that there can be no ambiguity in the future as to what the accepted action ought to be.

> but in this case it’s not a personal attack

I believe that’s what I said, no? Maybe my phrasing wasn’t clear, but I said “I don’t see any of the latter here” with latter being “personal attacks”.

> Linus identified that there was an unacceptable action taken and is being stern so that there can be no ambiguity in the future as to what the accepted action ought to be.

Completely agree with this sentiment.

I would appreciate this level of candor from my collaborators in an engineering environment.

He seemed more polite than usual.

Most of Linus post are polite, but the one that are shared are the other ones. If you want to trigger him, just break the kernel ABI and then defend your decision, this never fails.

Anyway, it looks too polite, like he is filtering the email using a "polite" version of the "simple" English writer by xkcd https://xkcd.com/simplewriter/

Yet he still makes exactly the same point as when he's screaming profanity at Mauro for the same reasons.

Maybe a CoC and some time off for Linus wasn't all that bad after all...

If I’m understanding you correctly, you are saying the time off allowed him to realize he could get the same point across without being as caustic as he was previously with Mauro. If so, I’m not sure why you are being downvoted.

That's precisely what I mean.

I assume the downvotes are coming from those who disagree with the CoC.

Well, yes.

He was both polite ~ yet criticizing. His expressed his annoyance in a great way.

"Complete garbage" is polite for Linus, compared to his old style. Still brutal, yet effective.

Linus is something of genius when it comes to criticism, whether he's swearing and venting, or coldly and bluntly saying the above to make a point.

He seems just as pissed as he ever has been when trusted maintainers have fucked up.

He's just more choosy about his wording.

Nevertheless, he gets his point across very well:

> Yeah, this is complete garbage.

> Eric, your behavior is entirely out of line

> There are no excuses.

> I will not take any pull requests from you until you have made it clear that you comprehend this very fundamental issue.

Now, Linus may not be explicitly swearing ~ but it comes across in the very same annoyed manner.

Best burn here is him flatly telling Eric that he won't be pulling anything from him until he fixes his attitude.

> Best burn here is him flatly telling Eric that he won't be pulling anything from him until he fixes his attitude.

It's not the contributors personal attitude that's in question here but his attitude towards breaking user space, so it's not even ad hominem or anything.

> Eric, I want to make this 1000% clear: there are no user space bugs.

> If it used to work, then user space was clearly doing the right thing.

> The fact that you tried to several times claim it was buggy user space is a serious breach of trust.

I find Linus' wording remarkably polite. Surely you're not suggesting that Linus should accept breakage of user space out of sheer politeness?

Erm, no. I was never suggesting that. Maybe I expressed myself imprecisely, then.

What I meant by attitude is exactly what you meant ~ the nonchalant attitude towards breaking userspace, and thinking that it's okay if no-one notices.

Which is when Linus gets the most pissed of all.

Linus was polite, yes, but he expressed his anger and disappointment in a great way. Feels more brutal than his old style, actually.

> Linus was polite, yes, but he expressed his anger and disappointment in a great way. Feels more brutal than his old style, actually.

Yea, it's even stronger without the swearwords.

> Linus hasn't lost his touch,

I misread that comment of yours as "Linus is still being too rude".

Yes, before he sounded like a moody hacker you had to appease to get your code accepted into his pet project, now he comes across as the head of a multinational corporation who just ended your career.

Except that he hasn't ended Eric's ability to hack on the kernel, which is a big difference.

Basically, Eric might be forced to go through others, who will examine his work for pulling quality.

If Eric can prove that he's changed for the better, Linus may well start pulling from him again.

Linus isn't some evil dictator ~ he's just trying to make a point that quality matters.