An oldie, but a goodie

  • Kevin@lemmy.worldM
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    37
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I don’t think it’s necessarily a celebration of abuse. I agree that he’s obviously way out of line sending this email.

    I think Linus is (was) a complete asshole who lacks interpersonal skills, and this email exemplifies his character. To me, this post shows the mentality of some developers (and leadership) in FOSS and why some folks find it difficult to contribute to open-source software. This post opens up the discussion on that.

    FWIW, I’ve received zero reports on this post itself. But I’ve received reports on abusive comments in this post, which I’ve promptly removed. This community is more/less self-moderating and if the post receives a significant positive vote ratio, I don’t think it should be removed by me. It brings an important discussion to the table regarding acceptable behavior in software development.

    • Vqhm@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I’ve never had a negative experience contributing to open source.

      I’ve also been to scrums where everyone is equal, and we have to be very PC, about explaining “processes” and “best practices” to people that break the build pipeline every single day. Eventually I just coded error handling and guard clauses into everything so no one could screw anything up by not following the documentation being a cowboy. That is a best practice, sure, but you’d be surprised by how people break things even after being warned not to do a very specific thing.

      A cowboy that fixes things always 24/7 can be a maverick and talk shit.

      But in todays PC world you can also be a cowboy that breaks everything always and spends weeks fixing something they themselves broke…

      I wish I could say the things Linus said instead of just putting people on a performance improvement plan.

      Sometimes being angry is appropriate. When I am I step back and try to figure out solution where the fuck up can’t happen again and no one gets hurt.

      I’ve seen people be VERY angry and even hands on working in jobs where fucking up can kill people.

      I’d rather see anger than people dying. Did Linus go too far here? Probably, but there is a time and place for anger and being direct.