So you want to censor everyone who doesn't buy into your flowery child talk? Fuck that. Cursing is a perfectly fine means of setting emphasis and I sure as shitpissfuckcuntcocksuckermotherfuckertits am not going to surrender that just so some shithead I don't even care about can jack off to his or her little control fantasies.

You don't like that? I couldn't really give less of a fuck; You're supposed to be a tech person, write a few sloc to filter profanity out or something but don't get on my nerves with that shit.

And yes, that was offensive and I am fully aware of that. That was also exactly what I was going for.

I have to concede that abuse is never a good thing, but since you seem to be seeing profanity as a problem I'm not sure we could agree on what exactly constitutes an 'abuse'.

EDIT:

It was (correctly) pointed out that censoring communication was not mentioned or even necessarily implied in smtddr's comment so this might not apply to said comment. That said, this still reflects aptly what I think about censoring away profanity.

Do you have one single way of expressing yourself? Do you use profanity 100% of the time? Do you automatically reject all feedback on how you express yourself? ... On how you write code? ... Or how you interact with your colleagues?

Because, from your comment, that's how you come across.

All feedback can be made to be useful, even if you end up filtering it out early.

True that, I will try to get a bit less triggerable about this.

Do you have one single way of expressing yourself? Do you use profanity 100% of the time? Do you automatically reject all feedback on how you express yourself? ... On how you write code? ... Or how you interact with your colleagues?

No, of course not. I have however come into contact with quite a few people who tried to censor me before, that might be the reason why I'm so easily "triggerable" with this.

Swearing all the time is not equivalent to talking like an adult, despite what you might think.

People communicate in different ways (and with different "curse-densities") and that is completely fine. What isn't fine is trying to get everyone to conform to a certain way of communication that you personally think is agreeable.

Diversity is to be cherished, not frowned upon. It makes for a more interesting world, and I am not willing to lose that just to make my environment have a few less sharp edges.

I don't need nor am willing to be rolled up in bubble wrap for what somebody calls my "own safety", which then isn't even determined by myself.

If the effect of not censoring yourself in this regard is to work in a much less diverse environment, which side is going to give? Honest question.

And a good one, too. The honest answer is: I don't know. I think this is highly contextual. At least I can't make a generalized decision for that. If the "less diversity" bit for instance means incorporating a 'No Nazis'-rule then the choice might be clear while in other cases it might be much more nuanced. As a rule of thumb I am against limiting someone's freedom until there is no other way around it. I would for instance only vote for a 'No Nazis'-rule if there would be a real problem with Nazis without that particular rule.

If, however, we are still talking about the case of censoring out profanity, you know my opinion. The people who are filtered out (or constitute the "less diversity") are the sort of people who get offended by me making use of a basic freedom (the one of speech). I am not interested in meeting people like that - frankly I hope they stay as far away from me as fucking possible.

This is similar to the reason of why I am against anti-discrimination rules at hacker cons; They are liable to be abused at some point while not providing anything of worth.

The sort of abuse they are supposed to prevent are reason enough to throw someone out even without those rules. Any major abuse is reason enough to get thrown out of a hacker event, or really any event.

The argument I have heard a few times for anti-discrimination rules is that girls get hit on all the time. I was kind of flabbergasted when I first heard this. I mean I can understand that it gets on ones nerves, but kicking someone out of an event because they hit on somebody really is not the right thing to do. If you don't want to get hit on there's a plethora of ways to communicate that in a non-verbal fashion, like wearing a wedding ring or - less subtle - wearing a shirt that says "I don't want to get hit on" or something, you get the idea…

I can use profanity in a peaceful manner to set emphasis and if someone feels attacked, denounced or otherwise mistreated they can just talk to me. Seriously, I don't bite and if I see your point I will act accordingly. Even if you are offended by someones actions that doesn't mean that they are unyielding dogmatic assholes - Just give them the benefit of the doubt and try to reason with them. And if it works you might've just broadened your personal horizon, maybe even made a new friend.

You'd think a community consisting of some of the most intelligent people on this planet would manage to have a proper communication culture, but in many aspects we are clearly lacking. I hope for this to change and of course discussions like this are a great first step towards doing so.

This is interesting. My instinctive reaction to someone trying to censor me is pretty damn negative, and I can swear like a sailor. On the other hand, what you wrote reminded me of a super sweet, gentle guy that I worked with once who was just genuinely freaked out by my profane manner. From a different country, deeply religious, etc. etc. I found out from a third party that the guy was weirded out by the way some of us carried ourselves, since the guy was a gentleman and wouldn't/couldn't say anything.

Of course I started behaving more carefully around him, and a little more carefully in general. He was always nice to me and a very, very skilled worker, someone I respected, so it would have seemed churlish to me to do otherwise.

> If you don't want to get hit on there's a plethora of ways to communicate that in a non-verbal fashion, like wearing a wedding ring or - less subtle - wearing a shirt that says "I don't want to get hit on" or something, you get the idea…

I believe the onus is entirely on the guy who is trying to be charming (if that's what we're talking about, as opposed to simple catcalling sorts of harassment) to notice when the object of his wit does not reciprocate with a smile and a kind word and to move the fuck on before his behavior gets creepy. I suppose I'm agreeing with you, as not smiling is a pretty clear form of communication - no rings or shirts or pepper spray are required.

I'm not sure what we should do with the guys who aren't clever enough to pick up on such signals but I'm open to a Soylent Green sort of option. (attending the average hacker event seems like a punishment all its own to me, so I'm useless for envisioning rules for something like that. Punish them by making them attend more hacker events?)

This, I believe, is the wrong way to go about it. To me this seems like some sort of culture clash and in my opinion staying silent is the wrong way to go about this.

If I notice someone getting offended by my profanity I just tell them that they were not the target of that profanity and that I have no 'beef' with them. I haven't ever met anyone with whom this was a problem. I usually make a pretty good case for open communication, depending on sobriety of course. ;)

I believe the onus is entirely on the guy who is trying to be charming (if that's what we're talking about, as opposed to simple catcalling sorts of harassment) to notice when the object of his wit does not reciprocate with a smile and a kind word and to move the fuck on before his behavior gets creepy. I suppose I'm agreeing with you, as not smiling is a pretty clear form of communication - no rings or shirts or pepper spray are required.

I think the point of the "getting hit on all the time sucks"-argument for anti-discrimination rules was that even if all the guys who hit on a girl stop it after (instantly) seeing that she isn't interested it would still be a lot of input which "sucks". So the case many people skeptic of anti-discriminatory rules saw was that a girl gets hit on all the time and even if they all do so in a civil manner, the one unlucky guy who represents the 'final straw' to that girl then gets kicked out. The examples I put up for showing that you're not interesting were aimed at communicating that before you get hit on. A rough analogue for this might be a spam filter - You don't have to manually decide whether or not something is spam by reading it, you don't have to read it in the first place. :P

Harassment is obviously a reason to warn somebody or - if they repeatedly harass someone - kick them out of the event. That said, I think 'catcalling' is very nuanced, couples or people who know each other for $random_reason can catcall each other in play and fun, you can also do it in a sarcastic/parodic fashion etc. The only thing I'd generalize about catcalling is that you probably shouldn't do it to someone you don't know (and of course not to someone of whom you know that they don't like it).

But in general I think pretty much everything I said here can be succinctly shortened to "Be merry, have fun and if you feel there's a problem - talk about it - just don't do it behind someone's back."

I'm perfectly capable of expressing everything I might express with profanity, without profanity. I'm now conscious of the fact that I'm a lot more persuasive if I take half a second to edit myself. The whole thing was a valuable learning experience.

> I think 'catcalling' is very nuanced

Interesting. I'd only ever use the word to describe the kind of rude behavior that happens between strangers on the street.

> the one unlucky guy who represents the 'final straw' to that girl then gets kicked out.

I wonder. The implication is that the guy said something which in isolation would have been completely within the bounds of good taste and then got kicked out. I bet this never, ever happens.

> But in general I think pretty much everything I said here can be succinctly shortened to "Be merry, have fun and if you feel there's a problem - talk about it - just don't do it behind someone's back."

That seems well-intentioned but entirely utopian to me.

Of course, from a social engineering standpoint that makes complete sense. But the point is that around my peers I don't need to edit myself; I do when I have to (I for instance swear a bit less in the presence of my boss), but I always take it with a grain of salt. I don't want to edit myself, I like being free in that sense and think that freedom of speech is something that first and foremost starts with yourself.

Interesting. I'd only ever use the word to describe the kind of rude behavior that happens between strangers on the street.

Might be, I'm not a native speaker so what I'm thinking about might still fit under the label of flirting, but I can't really say that I know the terminology 'normal' people use to talk about social interaction.

I bet this never, ever happens.

I think it's pretty unlikely, but possible. The point was that while (at least from my perspective) anti-discrimination rules don't do anything to enable a safe environment for minorities there is the potential for abuse. In my eyes those rules are snake oil, I think the TSA might be a somewhat fitting analogy if you think about their efficiency.

That seems well-intentioned but entirely utopian to me.

Of course it is, but that's not reason not to use it as a guideline and strive for its implementation. If you don't try, you'll never get there. You can probably already find multiple examples of me violating this guideline in this thread, but that doesn't stop me from at least trying to make the way I communicate better. :)

I generally associate overuse of profanity with laziness in word selection, but that's just me.

I agree with you on overuse. The only times where profanity has any impact on me is when someone who doesn't normally use profanity uses it for emphasis.

This may be a guy thing, and a clash in behaviour of the sexes. Guys are more prone to bursts of aggressiveness, gals more adept of moderate long term aggressive stances. Which one is more difficult to handle is largely a matter of opinion. Quick bursts are automatically solved immediately, leaving bruised egos, long term allows more time to manage the underlying reason. Just because Linus' stance is flashy does not make it wrong.

Unless you posit that aggression is never warranted. Then, we'll have to disagree. Aggression is a normal behaviour, artificial suppression leads to non healthy alternatives; it's better to lay problems out in the open and fix them than to sweep them under the politically correct rug.

I'm sure there's no perfect dividing line between non-aggressive/aggressive. But it's generally clear when something is nearer the extremes.

"Alice, that's completely wrong because X, this code needs to be rewritten from scratch following principle Y." "Bob, what is this retarded shit? You stupid fool, go RTFM and do it again."

I recently witnessed some programmer going to town, blasting out a supply cabinet. Hurling rage and profane insults at a supply cabinet just seems... uncalled for, to me. My personal evaluation is that the guy needs to learn to not let little things bother him so much. Though I doubt the supply cabinet was offended.

[1] Of course, that's not to say that my brothers are unintelligent (they're very bright). However, one of the most important life skills I learned in public school was learning how to get along with those "pleasant idiots," as you put it.

[2] And I'm not disagreeing that kernel dev requires a more authoritative leadership style than most pursuits, but it seemed that this conversation had dropped into speaking in generalities about life.

[edited the obvious typo]

Fortunately for me, I'm in a position to choose exactly who I work with. (Unlike perhaps this Sarah is.)

I'm just getting a bit jittery whenever someone tries to regulate free speech.

If you think I'm an asshole you are hereby invited to meet me at the OHM in a few weeks and yell at me. :)

However, don't conflate "tech type" with "high IQ/intelligence." The tech industry has the same percentage of idiots as any other, and our idiots aren't any smarter than those others' idiots just because they can scratch out a chunk of python or haskell or whatever.

It seems clear to me that you don't have contact with lots of women. Do you?.

It seems to me you are idealizing what you don't know about.

Profanity was not their forte(recent generations in some sectors could compete with men), but abusive speech is. They could be formidable verbal aggressors, specially between them.

The strongest verbal abusers I know all are women.

I Know a woman that was so socked that his father slapped her once, but now she is so verbal abusive with her children. I have seen it, and certainly if I were one of her children I would prefer a slap to this psychological pressure.

I was not interested in contributing any of our work (mostly netfilter related) back to the core precisely because I have better things to do with my emotional energy than engage with the aggressively toxic personalities of LKML.

That's one of the joys of open source, of course, doing your own thing.

In contrast I had a much better experience contributing to Postfix and Dovecot, where the benevolent dictators did not feel the urge to spew pages of vitriol in response to a blunder when a neutrally worded admonishment would do.

I've heard of plenty of people who prefer one language over another because of the nicer community. Eventually that should mean that projects with friendly communities are more successful.

Forking code essentially gives you the ability to take everything, and then move it in your own new direction. You leave behind only the parts you thought were "bad" or unprofessional or whatever.

Yes it is. Saying you can just fork it is like saying you can just move yourself and all your family and friends to another country.

You might be able to move yourself but moving any significant amount of developers is in practise impossible.

Perhaps you're saying that you can't take the community with you? That doesn't seem like a reasonable expectation. You can fork, and you can continue to pull from upstream, but you can't force people to use it.

So it's better to force that significant amount of developers to do your bidding? That sounds just a just a weee bit unreasonable, IMHO.

You're basically saying that you want the fruits of Linus's labor without Linus there to do it?

Yes. The discussion shouldn't even be taking place. It is a waste of time. That's why the parent qualified Linus as the leader of one of the most important human endeavors of the last century.

Most project managers do not behave like Linus. There's a whole world full of people who "act professionally." Linus is not one of them, and contrary to some of hand-wringing I've seen in this thread he is not inspiring hordes of foul-mouthed abusive managers to go out and oppress poor developers.

How quickly people forget the Polio vaccine. I don't think Linux qualifies in the top 10, and hyperbole doesn't really help the conversation.

Is that so? The issue is manners on a mailing list. Qualifying Linux as a top-10, top-100, or top-1000 accomplishment or whatever definitely seems like quibbling when we're comparing it to a complaint that won't even be a historical footnote.

It's quite easy for an open source project to just waddle around and start blindly accepting things random developers contribute with no real decision or filtering process (cough PHP). They may verify the code's not buggy or that it at least does something that could be of use to someone, but they generally don't care if it fits in with the overall design and goals of the project.

Having someone who has the complete vision in his head, who's also extremely technical and knows what changes are good and bad, is absolutely invaluable.

At lunch I said, "That's a good fucking burger." Female coworker says, "Goddamn right it is." This doesn't have anything to do with gender - it's about culture. Some people can handle profanity in the work place. The rest can fuck off. </joke> The rest can get a job somewhere more professional.

Linus is leading. So challenge his leadership, follow the man, or get out of his way.

Yes, Linux has remarkable importance mostly because its installed base (IMHO it doesn't offer any innovation from an OS perspective, other that being stable enough and free)

However, that doesn't give Linus a free card to be abusive and rude. Yes, not being polite and being insulting is indeed being unprofessional, there are ways to say things and in most cases insults is the wrong path.

"If there's one thing that nobody can dispute, it's that Linus knows how to get shit done"

Yeah, Romans and Egyptians knew how to get shit done too, but we call that slavery in these days, so it is not precisely a good thing.

People are literally sitting around bitching and moaning that they can't play with a local, volunteer-staffed sunday afternoon basketball league because they don't like the people doing the volunteer staffing and organization.

You have absolutely NO right to demand that volunteer organizations began, ran, and maintained by other people change their behavior to suit you. The only time there is any duty created towards you is when (a) you are absolutely dependent on them for something, by their own doing, (b) they are forcing you to interact with such folks, (c) various other versions of coercion.

You do not get to dictate the behavior of every freely-assembled group of people which takes no action to coerce you to join them. You don't get to dictate the behavior of every group of people you might conceivably want to join.

This is some of the most entitled whining I've ever seen on HN.

No, I didn't. OP implied that because Linus knows how to get things done his behaviour is excusable, then I gave a counter-example in which that statement is false (at least in my opinion, there exists people who believe in slavery)

>"You have absolutely NO right to demand that volunteer organizations began, ran, and maintained by other people change their behavior to suit you."

"I" have no right to demand that (and that's the reason why I didn't). However, email's author has the right to ask for respect if he is feeling offended by his lead. Your phrase seems to imply that because is a volunteer group is OK if his leader is abusing, but for the people affected is actually worse because they are giving up their time and they are being offended by the project lead.

>"This is some of the most entitled whining I've ever seen on HN."

Well apparently if you don't like something you are free to go away, that was your argument right? In any case I think whining is acceptable in a discussion (which I think is this part of the site about but you are free to prove me wrong)

I am yet to see him abusing anyone. Verbal abuse mentioned is just swearing in aggressive tone of voice. How the word abuse got attached to expressing being pissed off is a mystery to me but I think it involves american lawyers.

No, he doesn't. If your boss or your client would talk to you in that tone you would call it verbal abuse. There is no such thing as a jerk free card, you can always be one but that doesn't mean is excusable.

"I am yet to see him abusing anyone. Verbal abuse mentioned is just swearing in aggressive tone of voice."

This is not the first time that we see this kind of emails from Linus so it is not exactly a new thing. I don't know where are you from that this is considered OK. I am a Venezuelan living in Canada and in both countries this is considered abusive, so it is not only in USA.

Are you referring to the email we just read? Because I find nothing at all offensive or inappropriate about it. A forceful dressing down to be sure, but not disrespectful.

I think this line is important:

I'm not polite, and I get upset easily but generally don't hold a grudge

It may look like masochism, but people who work with a "benevolent dictator" know what they are in for. We don't need to be "protected" and if you don't like it, just don't come, the same way I'm not going to play with soccer players because I don't play soccer.

From Dictionary.com, a boss is:

3. a person who makes decisions, exercises authority, dominates, etc.: My grandfather was the boss in his family.

So, for the people who is working on the linux kernel project, Linus is indeed their boss.

If my client was rude and I wasn't ok with him I'd stop responding to him. That's the beauty of freelancing. You don't have to work for people whoose behavior doesn't suit you.

In my opinion swearing doesn't make you a jerk but jerks don't get free pass. They offend some people and get less respect and cooperation from them. That's the social price. No law necessary.

Abuse at workplace is much wider subject. First thing is that there has to be relation of power. Linus has no power over people who he swears at. They can freely choose to never interact with Linus again at any point in time at no loss to themseves or their loved ones. Heck, they can even take all the stuff Linus did, copy it and work on that instead.

Anyone who works with Linus does so freely and can stop at any time they choose.

Furthermore, applying today's morale standards to civilizations thousands of years old doesn't strengthen your point as well as you think it does.

Or on a more serious note:

Sarah's involvement with the project gives her the right to voice her opinion. If people work together on an open source project and have a disagreement over management styles and professional conduct, this disagreement needs to be addressed instead of ignored.

In addition to the discussion on the mailing list, there will apparently be a meeting in meat-space as well that's going to involve cookies and brownies of questionable origin, so they are dealing with it.

Nothing more to see here, and the internet at large can move along - rallying in support of a the semi-mystical Linus that cannot do wrong is misguided and unnecessary - I'm confident he's able to fight his own fights...

There are some extremely dedicated people who are prepared to put up with his tantrums to work on the kernel. I'm not sure that's the same thing as knowing how to run an effective team. He's at the top of a hierarchy but he doesn't run most of the activities in it, he doesn't even interact in a meaningful way with most of the people in it.

What are examples of Linus not interacting "in a meaningful way with most of the people in it"?

And because of that, it's entirely possible to be at the head of an organisation made up, primarily, of far better people than yourself.

Heck, it's highly probable that's going to happen if you fall far beneath the average in social skills and have significant leverage along some other axis. Nice people will generally refuse to work with an arsehole - but every now and then someone will, (maybe because they have thicker skin than the average, or value your leverage more, or come in for less of your flak.) So, the people who are nice and will, for whatever reason, put up with you tend to end up filling those positions because no-one else can do so effectively. If they're nasty, then no-one will be more likely to work with them than they are to work with you and the problem recurs one level down - except this time you need to find people'll who'll work with five (or whatever the size of your immediate project team is) arseholes rather than one to make the project work.

This all, of course, depends on the alternatives that the people at the base of the hierarchy have. In situations where the people can't go elsewhere it often seems to be very much a case of, 'You'll take it and like it, if you know what's good for you.'

Does any of this mean Linus is bad at running teams? No. But it does mean that he's not necessarily any good at it just because the system's giving reasonable output. The naive model of a hierarchy as something in which all the influence flows from the top down is nonsense.

Also, while I admire what he's done, let's lay off the hyperbole for a bit. "..one of the most important human endeavours of the last hundred years"? Really? That's laying it on a bit thick there. But hey, you're entitled to your opinion too.

Some people link Job's success to his attitude. But his attitude didn't make him successful, it was his vision and ability to convince people.

That said, I think Linus is fairly professional in the core of his communication. Just because you swear doesn't mean that the message you're passing along isn't.

It beggars disbelief that some posters here can't see that torvald's insults add noise to his critiques. He states the issue, then ads in a bunch of pointless aggression. It seems like being honest succinct and to the point is most efficient. If your undies are truly in a bunch, you could add a comment at the end along those lines.

No. Let's have just a modicum of perspective. That's not to belittle Torvald's achievement or contribution to computer science, but on the scale of importance generally it's way down the list.

Yeah, he's earned a free pass to be a dick. That's how it works, right?

If I gave examples of other very successful open source projects in which the project maintainers act courteously, would you change your mind?

Because he's a rock star who continuously proves it with results, Linus can say and do whatever he wants. He's earned it, and most people will not only tolerate his abrasiveness, but they'll accept it.

Many people who might be very good at what they do but are not rock stars think they can act like Linus, Crockford, DHH or [insert grumpy tech icon here]. Personally, I think that's a mistake, because "pretend rock stars" just end up being regarded as overrated tools.

Seriously?

He did not invent Unix, more like wrote a famous flavor of it.

Someone like Dennis Ritchie would get the credit for that not Linus.