Torvalds isn't wrong, and I'm almost certain he didn't mean, "...and therefore everyone should quit GitHub immediately." but people will interpret it that way. And on the off chance he did mean for everyone to quit GitHub, he's then ignoring a cornucopia of value that GitHub provides unrelated to his expertise as the creator of git, which I don't think he's arrogant enough to do, anymore.
What would you rather see? That he just avoid expressing any opinion that might make people question your status-quo? Muddy his own message by weighing down his emails with hedging and qualifying statements that are - at best - superfluous to his target audience?
I'd love it if one of my juniors was tuned in enough to read this and realize there is more to git than github. And maybe they even start learning how to use that tool beyond the lowest common denominator of git knowledge that most people skate by with.
Of course it might mean steering them away from a rash decisions like misinterpreting this email, or wanting to leave github just because someone pointed out it wasn't perfect. But that's what makes them junior. It's my job to make them better than that.
>which ends up being a lot of work for no material gain for my org.
If you would just paternalistically tell them no, or would give a mentoring answer but don't see the value in that, then there is a workplace problem to address. Either you're hiring too junior for what you're willing to support on the team, or you need to reconsider your role within the team.
If he can roll out a kernel and distributed version control system, listen to him. Otherwise, it's time to have the talk about cargo culting.
Maybe Torvalds is just as positive as he is negative and the whole reason why you think that he's someone who's "unsurprisingly negative" is because that's the content that everyone is passing around. If this was just another of his normal comments you wouldn't even see it posted.
When he has a list of complaints, that is his strong reaction. And why would he need to go stronger?
If he uses his strongest reaction for normal work-day issues like drivers and interface design, where does he go for any potential existential community issues we face in the future?
If something comes up that threatens the future of Linux, and he swears and threatens as usual while trying to warn people about it, nobody will care because 'ah yeah that's just normal Linus'.
He uses personal abuse against people. Not sure that counts as 'threatening'.
Really we should always challenge any kind of abuse.
But you're also arguing that he needs to be able to get scarier when necessary, which is a weird thing to argue at the same time?
No I'm not. The opposite.
If the only tool you know how to use is abuse, then when you need more all you can do is abuse more and more, to the point where you are literally encouraging people to kill themselves.
If you learn other tools you can use them instead when needed and they have an impact.
If I heard Mister Rogers say something was extremely serious I’d stop and listen because he’s a calm and reasonable person. If I heard Linus telling another person to kill themselves I’d think it was him being terrible again but I wouldn’t take notice of what he’s trying to say because he uses that kind of abuse for minor things anyway.
"If", yes.
Is your argument that because he put abuse into emails, that he must not know any of those other tools? I don't think you've justified that argument.
He could use the same tools anyone else could, in those situations.
And you're still saying that he might "need more" in certain situations, and I don't think he does. He doesn't need to instantly catch your attention via acting unusual. Much like Mr. Rogers would do just fine at telling you about something serious if he used his normal voice / normal presenting voice.
And yeah, it was more effective. You just have to remember the topic is your code not your person - they are 2 entirely different things. i.e. Brendan Eich is a wizard but javascript started out as a smoking pile of shit.
In The graphing calculator story Ron Avitzur mentioned the other devs saying "It doesn't even suck" which was the highest possible praise.
No he definitely attacks people's person.
"You're a moron."
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/17#issuecomment-56599...
This is just the tech crowd equivalent of a tabloid at the supermarket checkout isle, Tom Cruise is secretly a ferret-lover, read all about Bob’s torrid affair with Mallory!