It is naive to claim you can tell which part of Linus is and which isn't contributing to the success.

For one, I think it might be possible Linus's no-nonsense attitude is for the better of the organization as people who can't work with it are leaving causing Linux developers, on average, to be more no-nonsense and also able to coexist better with other no-nonsense people.

But, it is my conjecture only. We would never know how Linux would fare if Linus was another guy.

> It is naive to claim you can tell which part of Linus is and which isn't contributing to the success.

Wasn't the other person doing exactly the same, just on the "pro-asshole" side of the argument?

It is probably easier and more defensible to look at a thing that is, and say "why is it this way" than to see something that isn't and ask, "why isn't it the way I want it to be?"

These are logically not the same structure of argument. I'm not making any character judgements about people involved in this discussion, or on the LKML either for that matter.

It's possible to have a no-nonsense attitude without being offensive.

As others have pointed out, that's speculation.

I have trouble understanding why it bothers people so much that Linus is rude sometimes. You don't have to interact with him if you don't want. You can even contribute to the kernel without interacting with him. Whatever he's been doing has been working for going on 3 decades now, I don't see a burning need to change it because it bothers some outsiders.

There's this weird sense of entitlement. People want to elbow their way into this long-running and successful project and start telling everybody how they ought to behave. They think they have the right to contribute on their own terms without bothering to understand the project culture, and think it's everybody else's responsibility to make things easy for them and behave in a way they approve of.

If you really think the LKML is too toxic and hostile, to the detriment of the project, then feel free to fork it and start up a parallel project without the problems you see. Surely your friendly corporate-style culture will attract more contributors and soon you'll have the more successful kernel, right?

Personally, I like having somebody in charge of the core of the OS who's so concerned with correctness and hygiene that he gets upset when they're violated.

The main problem for me is the old "fish rots from the head down" effect -- when the rude and entitled behavior comes directly from the top, it's no surprise when everyone else starts acting like that and gets at each other's throats. It should be obvious by now where this weird sense of entitlement and refusal to understand other people's culture is coming from.

>feel free to fork it and start up a parallel project without the problems you see

Most Linux distros are basically already doing this. They all have their own patchsets. It's well beyond correctness and hygiene at this point, if you actually look at the changes that are being disputed, it already falls a lot more in the "cultural differences" category.

So the LKML has been rotting from the head down for...30 years? If the result of that is Linux, maybe the rot isn't as bad as you fear.

The cultural differences that cause distro forks are debates over free-vs-libre, what belongs in the kernel vs userspace, and standardization issues, not (afaik) "we won't submit this to the upstream kernel because we don't approve of the way they talk to each other there". And I think it's very important for the core kernel devs to hold the line on those issues.

I think the kernel developers got on pretty well for all those years and managed to put a pretty good product together, despite the big rotten head. And Linux distro maintain patchsets, but they're against mainline, that's a very salient difference here. They still start from whatever upstream publishes, they're not so upset by swearwords that they took a snapshot at Linux 2.4 and only add their own code on top of that.

The point there is, while some negative attitudes may not be preventing other projects from using the code, they do prevent the project from growing, and it leads to fragmentation, which I believe they are seeking to minimize. So something has to give.

That's fair and I don't disagree. Personally I never tell anyone to fuck off, but humility prevents me from assuming Linus is wrong for doing it.

> I have trouble understanding why it bothers people so much that Linus is rude sometimes.

Can people actually point to instances where he was rude?

Well...I like Linus just fine as kernel maintainer, but I remember a dozen times (over 2 decades, to be fair) when he was, uhh, very direct. It's often not as aggressive as people make out, but he can definitely get a bit mean when people keep making the same mistakes.

>Telling people to "fuck off" isn't required (nor desired, in my opinion).

I'd agree with this for 99% of the time. There's a small 1% of the time though...where sometimes people really need to be told to fuck off.

You can watch a few conference talks where folks really go to town on Linus for his bad behavior.

On GPLv3 lots of calls for Linus to stop supporting GPLv2

"How do we get you to stop..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaKIZ7gJlRU

And the list goes on and on. That said, his decisions seem to have worked out amazingly well. At some point I can imagine getting tired at having to repeatedly defend your views.

>his decisions seem to have worked out amazingly well.

As someone who regularly deals with bugs and inconsistencies in Linux, I wouldn't say so. For me personally, I just want to be able to fix the issues, and would rather not spend the time bickering with someone who has some kind of personal vendetta about something that I don't know about. I try hard not to dump my baggage on other open source maintainers, I hope others can do the same.

You can tell people to "go away" politely (yet firmly). It is an art, but it can be done without vulgarity.

Your ego is showing. At some point you'll be the incompetent one in the room. Remember, when you're told to fuck off, it's cool as fuck.

While I don’t necessarily agree with the GP, there’s a huge difference between humble incompetence and arrogant incompetence. Everyone starts out incompetent, but that’s fine as long as they don’t repeatedly shove it on other people. Incompetence, without the self-awareness or humility to avoid wasting other people’s time? Maybe getting a verbal slap on the wrist is exactly what’s needed…

It may feel cool and that's probably all those bosses that keep threatening to fire their employees think, too.

It works for Linus because of special circumstances that are not easily replicated.

First, Linus is the creator of the project. He is also competent AF (borrowed your jargon here).

Second, people understand Linus is doing this solely out of care for the project. If you look at history of his outbursts you will notice a pattern.

Third, Linus tends to be right.

Fourth, Linus has and had since almost very beginning celebrity status and people tend to approve of eccentric behavior of celebrities more.

Fifth, Finns are blunt seemingly as a matter of national identity, and so in that sense Linus isn't even very remarkable.

Maybe that's a sign that you are an incompetent team member and communicator.