Torvalds has earned his privileges as much as any developer alive or dead. In fact, if his abstract power ranks up there with Fortune 500 CEOs and national leaders, I'd say he deserves his privileges more than most of them as well.
He's stated that GCC 4.9.0 is doing some "seriously crazy shit" as a response to a bug report on the Linux kernel mailing list.
He at no point has insulted the GCC developers, the submitter of the bug, or anyone else who regularly reads the LKML.
I'm not sure why you see defending the Linux kernel code against a problem in GCC 4.9.0 (with exact examples of why GCC is breaking the standards) is exercising any privileges, other than those granted by being the creator of Linux.
I personally think that Linux, Git and recently, Subsurface definitely justify his behaviour here. If you want to argue with him, send him an email. He'll be glad to reply. Otherwise, don't complain about his behaviour on HN. It's the internet equivalent of talking about people behind their back.
It's not about whatever privileges he has, but his aptness for possession of those: I claim that he is not a good leader for Linux, acting irresponsibly, humiliatingly, and inconsiderately. He acts like a dictator, spewing derogatory and impolite phrases around, and people he targets do not have any chance to defend themselves as an army of people volunteer to defend him with childish arguments almost immediately, as if they were organised. A project this crucial to our communities functioning cannot be lead and represented by Torvalds, I say. And this shaves 15 karma off of my HN account -- not that I care the slightest but -- as if it was spamming or whatever, and not a criticism of an important figure in tech world.
Actually, the people he targets do have a chance to defend themselves. What many neglect to mention is that he doesn't blow up at everybody, but only at respected developers (kernel or otherwise) who he expects to know better.
Torvalds' management is one of the major reasons for Linux being successful, and sane. Look at the contemporary Linux userspace: it's in an absolute state of chaos, constant reinvention, poorly documented and composed of all sorts of brittle and baroque libraries.
I give you an upvote for reasonably stating your point, and introducing some very valid points.
I agree that his brash tone, as portrayed on HN, is detrimental to the development of the Linux kernel. I would also posit to say that there would be many examples of him encouraging and helping kernel contributors, but they don't make good headlines.
I think that Greg Kroah-Hartman is actually doing a damn fine job as the stable branch maintainer, and anything Linus says should really just be taken as the passionate words of someone who doesn't want to see their creation diminished.
I'm hoping this is at least partly a troll, because it misses an incredibly important fact - Linux belongs to Linus, he owns the trademark, he is the dictator, and he can literally do anything he wants with the project including shutting it down, walking away, and leaving the world to fork it and carry on.
You may well consider it important and fundamental, but that gives you exactly as much right to decide how to run it as any other piece of private property (which is zero, if I'm not being clear). The fact that he chooses to give away the output has no bearing on anything.
I no longer develop any software, I have lost my interest in tech and these bunch of comments are probably the last ones of mine on HN. Also, I do not need Linux or Unix like I needed before, so I won't even install Linux if I get a new laptop. Why would I, you would wonder, bother who runs Linux. The only reason is I unwillingly empathise with people, those who have words to say him but remain silent because they have to make a living and they make it by getting paid to contribute to Linux, and those who have created software that made FOSS possible and have no obligation to bear Linus' filthy language. You can think that I am a troll, and I can think that Linux belongs to Linus as much as the USA belongs to Washington.
It wasn't exactly well defined in the parent post, but I assumed that he was talking about Linus' rude and condescending way of expressing himself as a privilege.
> He's stated that GCC 4.9.0 is doing some "seriously crazy shit" as a response to a bug report on the Linux kernel mailing list.
> He at no point has insulted the GCC developers, the submitter of the bug, or anyone else who regularly reads the LKML.
I'm not sure how his remarks about GCC can not be insulting to its developers, but each to their own. It's hard to deny the condescending tone of lacing your rant with things like "Lookie here," though.
> I'm not sure why you see defending the Linux kernel code against a problem in GCC 4.9.0 (with exact examples of why GCC is breaking the standards) is exercising any privileges, other than those granted by being the creator of Linux.
Unsurprisingly, he goes on to explain the problem matter-of-factly in a way that I'm sure would have gotten his otherwise completely valid point across on its own, but I'm not sure how his disparaging tone and language contributes to this defense.
> I personally think that Linux, Git and recently, Subsurface definitely justify his behaviour here.
I'm not sure how any of those things could possibly justify his tone and language, so I'm going to assume that we aren't talking about the same thing here.
> If you want to argue with him, send him an email. He'll be glad to reply.
I have no interest in arguing with him.
> Otherwise, don't complain about his behaviour on HN. It's the internet equivalent of talking about people behind their back.
I'm not complaining. If you care to read my initial post in this branch again you will notice that I am simply saying that his accomplishments don't justify his manner of speaking. I'm willing to admit that there could be some other factor that does, but I simply can't see the justifiable connection between engineering something like Linux or git and treating people badly, and this is not a criticism towards him as much as it is of the idea that his accomplishments somehow justify this behavior.
Besides, you are talking behind his back as much as I am, which isn't a great concern to me because he is a person of great public interest, posting these things in a public mailing list.
It'd be better if he knew some manners though. I can't believe the amount of people who will most selflessly throw themselves between Linus and criticisms.
Some of us have worked for corporation where all problems were sugar coated in nicely sounding phrases. They got hidden so nobodies feelings are hurt and criticized person did not even recognized there is a problem with his work.
The whole system becomes dysfunctional in its own right.
And some of us have worked for businesses where everyone is so busy being aggressive and showing how much of an alpha male they are that nothing gets done and all the customers are scared off. Not to mention potential employees.
Whether or not Linus admits it, the same thing is happening with the kernel (wrt to contributors, the "employees" of an open source project). I know system developers who could make valuable contributions to the kernel but who refuse to work in that kind of atmosphere. And I can hardly blame them.
So, if we can't work in sublime subtlety, we better become savage barbarians, as if “balance“ was hostile to civilisation. To not insult and to not swear is not to speak in “sugar-coated phrases“.
There is a difference between sugar coating and showing a basic level of respect. Clearly expressing valid criticism without resorting to vitriolic language is something most people will have to work on, but as you say, it's very important for a functioning workplace.
Sure, I'd love to see Linus be more civilized in his criticisms. As it happens, nobody is perfect and I think Linus's imperfections are laughably trivial compared to many other people's.
Breaking out the strong language is a clear way to separate the technicality from the opinion. People respond to taboo words differently than mundane ones.
If he was designing a video game, your assessment would be viable. As it happens though, Torvalds writes code that makes half the world function reliably; some would say his exceptionally direct attitude has served him well in this endeavor.
He writes code that helps most of the servers running important code function, lets remove linux totally from the computing environment and you wouldn't even get a DNS request through let alone a webpage returned.
Professionals come in various shapes. Torvalds is not the most polite man in the worlds, far from that. However, he achieved a lot, whether because or despite of it. So, yeah he reserve respect and deserve to be called professional. Although not to be called "the most polite man".
