Linus Torvalds is Taking a Break from Linux Development

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Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, announced that he's taking a break from Linux development. While he's a prolific contributor to Linux, Linus is also known for being rather outspoken, to put it mildly. In the announcement, he apologized to community members his personal behavior may have hurt or driven away. Linus says he is "going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand people's emotions and respond appropriately."

This is not some kind of "I'm burnt out, I need to just go away" break. I'm not feeling like I don't want to continue maintaining Linux. Quite the reverse. I very much *do* want to continue to do this project that I've been working on for almost three decades. This is more like the time I got out of kernel development for a while because I needed to write a little tool called "git". I need to take a break to get help on how to behave differently and fix some issues in my tooling and workflow.
 
I'm mixed on that.

On one hand, Linus could benifit from being a bit milder when calling out people, but on another hand, when he get to that point, from what I read, he usually tell politely both in private and in public that it's not a good idea and why, and only escalate to insulting through the mailing list when the other person persist in commiting code that he does not want in linux for a reason or another (Case in point, the secureboot saga with Matthew Garrett, where Linus actually repeatdly told him no multiple times, until he had enough)
 
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I'm mixed on that.

On one hand, Linus could benifit from being a bit milder when calling out people, but on another hand, when he get to that point, from what I read, he usually tell politely both in private and in public that it's not a good idea and why, and only escalate to insulting through the mailing list when the other person persist in commiting code that he does not want in linux for a reason or another (Case in point, the secureboot saga with Matthew Garrett, where Linus actually repeatdly told him no multiple times, until he had enough)

agree, screw being PC, if they're not going to listen privately then do whats best for everyone and publicly shame the hell out of them because it's obviously the only way shits going to get done.


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The Linux community is famous for being Toxic and Hostile, if that is going to change it has to start at the top. Good for Linus for recognizing his own deficiencies and taking steps to correct them before an incident occurs.
 
A lot of engineers types are ADHD, especially the better ones, so this is no surprise. Good luck Linus, I have a feeling this won't be easy for you.
 
The Linux community is famous for being Toxic and Hostile, if that is going to change it has to start at the top. Good for Linus for recognizing his own deficiencies and taking steps to correct them before an incident occurs.

It is simply this; the core of the linux community are highly skilled professionals and they will not tolerate pretenders or fools. Consider the fact that many contribute their time and talent free of charge. There is no crying in kernel development just like there is no crying in baseball.
 
I have long said that the unprofessional behavior and irrational outbursts of Linus Torvalds have been a detriment to the Linux project.

Don't get me wrong, I am very appreciative of the work that Linus has put into the kernel, but I also acknowledge that his behavior has set the tone for the entire Linux community in a way that is harmful to greater adoption.

How many people - over the years - has his attitude pissed off to the point where they are no longer contributing to projects like these? How many businesses have decided not to work with open source because they don't need that liability? You can't be successful if you drive away talented people that you need.

He is a genius when it comes to kernel development, and during his break his talent will be missed, but no amount of genius excuses a tyrant. It didn't for Steve Jobs, and it doesn't for Linux Torvalds. There is no place in any project, in any business for a tyrant.

That said, the first step in addressing a problem is recognizing and accepting that you have it, and I wish him luck in coming back and operating even more effectively by being respectful of the people around him.
 
It is simply this; the core of the linux community are highly skilled professionals and they will not tolerate pretenders or fools. Consider the fact that many contribute their time and talent free of charge. There is no crying in kernel development just like there is no crying in baseball.

He contributes on the reakworldtech.com forums sometimes. It's always pertinent and on the money but its delivered in a tirade. Fun and informative !
 
I think he suggested coding himself an email filter that would simply remove or replace all the !@$% he adds. Perhaps that with a phrasing filter would be good enough.

I would like to think that is what he is doing in his time off.

So instead of getting;
"Some Security people are fucking morons"
They get
"Some people are pretty smart for security people"
 
It is simply this; the core of the linux community are highly skilled professionals and they will not tolerate pretenders or fools. Consider the fact that many contribute their time and talent free of charge. There is no crying in kernel development just like there is no crying in baseball.

I disagree.

Absolutely no one is skilled enough to excuse poor manners and being a tyrant.

You catch more flies with honey, as they say.

No one is suggesting that he roll over and accept code or architecture he disagrees with. He is the most talented at kernel development there is, and he should - for the best of the project - have high expectations.

His tone is the problem.

The number one rule of leadership is that you praise in public, but criticize in private.

When you rely on people volunteering their time you can't afford to piss people of. Heck, you can barely afford to do this if you are paying them.

People will and do leave, and not just incompetent ones. Having a professional demeanor is very important if you want to maintain a skilled and well working team.
 
Torwalds always needed to take a chill pill so that is not what annoys me, what does is however the idiotic update of the code of conduct statement.

The previous one was clear, concise and to the point, it promoted inclusivity and made it clear that feedback positive or negative was to be expected. It also explicitly states that abuse, threats or discomfort is not acceptable behavior. The new statement however has a lot of more PC-aware fluff words that are superfluous and non inclusive compared to the original statement.

When did the PC statement become more important than the content itself.
 
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When you rely on people volunteering their time you can't afford to piss people of. Heck, you can barely afford to do this if you are paying them.

Although I agree with you... and yes manners are always a good thing.

To be fair kernel developers these days are some of the highest paid programmers in the world. :) Most of the ones he has dropped public F bombs on are employed by the big tech companies. I'm not saying an Intel engineer making 400k a year deserves too get F bombs dropped on them more then someone working in their spare time... Just pointing out that the common view of Linux developers being no life coders that work as system admins by day and code the kernel all night is a myth. According to the Linux foundation last year 14% of kernel changes where submitted by programmers working on their own time. So 86% of the submissions are coming from people being paid to work on the Linux kernel.

I don't know perhaps that makes Linuss tirades even worse... as often he is going off on people who are not in a position to even defend themselves from their cubical at Google/Intel/AMD/Samsung/IBM/ARM/TI/Facebook/Amazon/Nvidia ect ect. He's often swinging at people that can't swing back.
 
agree, screw being PC, if they're not going to listen privately then do whats best for everyone and publicly shame the hell out of them because it's obviously the only way shits going to get done.


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This is kind of beside the point, but I need to point out that this is also the only way to get things done with a lot of companies. You know, like when someone posts this ridiculous horror story with their tech support on reddit and/or hardforums, including chat logs, timestamps, pictures, etc? And it gets a lot of people (like me with ASUS for example; I will only buy them as a last resort now) to have second thoughts about buying the product or whatever it is you provide. Fast forward a bit later, some person from higher up finally swoops down on your case like a hawk and everything gets resolved.

It's silly, but the system usually is at least a little broken.
 
Good leaders have to be dicks sometimes. People do their best work under pressure and it takes a strong leader to see a vision through to completion.
 
I disagree.

Absolutely no one is skilled enough to excuse poor manners and being a tyrant.

You catch more flies with honey, as they say.

No one is suggesting that he roll over and accept code or architecture he disagrees with. He is the most talented at kernel development there is, and he should - for the best of the project - have high expectations.

His tone is the problem.

The number one rule of leadership is that you praise in public, but criticize in private.

When you rely on people volunteering their time you can't afford to piss people of. Heck, you can barely afford to do this if you are paying them.

People will and do leave, and not just incompetent ones. Having a professional demeanor is very important if you want to maintain a skilled and well working team.

All of what you said is good sense, however linux is his baby and it became a roaring success. Can't help but see a correlation between single minded asshat and stellar achievement in your field.
 
I prefer the way he is.....seriously. The problem, as I see it, is the other way around. It was the basically same with Einstein, or any other that has an understanding that is not that comprehensible to the many; but Jobs was nothing but a dick fart that was a complete asshole and took many other's work for his credit. He [Jobs] was a dick plain and simple,but Linus is not-people just see him as a dick because they cannot understand him and do not want to. They want him to conform....this is the true issue.
 
I don't give slack to ANY person who is an Arrogant ASS. He is one of them and in know for his holier than thou attitude. SuSe had an office in Oakland Calif in Jack London Square back in the early 2000's (remember I was a tech reporter ;) ) The people working for SuSe were way cool explaining things to a nub to me. I saw the great potential of Linux back then.

But I also saw the type of people that really did not give a shit about the average Joe wanting to make a change towards Linux. This mentality cost millions of dollars and years of wasted time.

Holier than thou attitude? I'm the wrong person to piss off. I shelved my report and like many others just said "Screw this noise I just want something that easily works" And the excuse of Engineers are "different"... Most of that is a god damned excuse so they can get away with things.

I've have a technical writer on my payroll (because I'm a Neanderthal with a keyboard) and we both seen how engineers act and communicate. Most of them are normal people like the rest of us. Now in this day and age there is no room for that sort of egotistical mind set if you want to sell and/or gain market share in your economic sphere of influence.

He needs a hard boot upside of the head with a hard dose of reality. Meaning:

Linus is not a nice man and his actions over the years helped delay the overall heath and growth of Linux.

It is good that he must have someone told him that he's and Ass and this must stop for the sake of his work.

He's at least smart enough to know they are right and I "hope" he does some real hard soul searching as well as those holier than thou people still in that community does so as well.

Otherwise Linux will still be nothing that Micro$haft has to worry about.

Yup spoken like a "True... Hardcore... Capitalistic Pig.... But at least I can laugh at myself and remember where I came from and how I got here.

And with that I give you these 2 songs....

WarPigs


and

Space Lord - The Uncut Version
 
The Linux community is famous for being Toxic and Hostile, if that is going to change it has to start at the top. Good for Linus for recognizing his own deficiencies and taking steps to correct them before an incident occurs.
Nah, we're only toxic and hostile towards Windows users. Which admittedly is most of the world... :D
 
I wonder who would be the bigger asshole, Linus Torvalds or Steve Jobs? I think I've got more respect for Linus.
 
Prime example of the community right here in this thread. The creator says he has been incorrect and needs to work on it and Linux nuts in here reply with "I don't see it as an issue"... Well, you know what, it is an issue. Previously people on the outside have been saying it and it's been falling on deaf ears, maybe now that the fucking creator has admitted it the rest of you will sort your poor attitudes out.
 
Linux nuts in here reply with "I don't see it as an issue"...

Yeah, I bet you've never seen anything like that before.
I'll agree that the tiles you showed in the start menu were definitely ads, there isn't really any way it could be seen otherwise, however I don't really see the concern with the ad you are showing here.

u-mad-bro.jpg
 
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WTF really...reads like a dang religion. :meh:

"We understand that working in our field is a privilege, not a right. The negative impact of toxic people in the workplace or the larger community is not offset by their technical contributions."

Ouch.

The toxic environment is what has set me off from learning to use Linux. And that's just the support from forums and users. And it appears as though this toxic behavior stems from the top down. Here's a tip- if you'd like to reach more people and truly make a difference with your open source software, change your community expectations and behavior. It's more than just a few bad apples. It seems to be a required cultural choice.

I literally cringe when I read support boards related to open source OS alternatives. Pick a distro, doesn't seem to matter. The elitist approach reigns supreme, and it pushes away new users. Especially those of us and most of the world, which has grown up in a Windows OS world.

This really cements in my opinion, the reason Linux does not grow. And it appears the issue starts at the top.
 
"We understand that working in our field is a privilege, not a right. The negative impact of toxic people in the workplace or the larger community is not offset by their technical contributions."

Ouch.

The toxic environment is what has set me off from learning to use Linux. And that's just the support from forums and users. And it appears as though this toxic behavior stems from the top down. Here's a tip- if you'd like to reach more people and truly make a difference with your open source software, change your community expectations and behavior. It's more than just a few bad apples. It seems to be a required cultural choice.

I literally cringe when I read support boards related to open source OS alternatives. Pick a distro, doesn't seem to matter. The elitist approach reigns supreme, and it pushes away new users. Especially those of us and most of the world, which has grown up in a Windows OS world.

This really cements in my opinion, the reason Linux does not grow. And it appears the issue starts at the top.

I find Linux users are more apt to help you after you know what you are doing. If you come to them and say something doesn't install and you have xyz issue, you get flak, but if you come in and say you have tried these 50 things with no luck, they help. Maybe it peaks their interest as well, or more likely, they see someone who has tried to fix their issue.

The problem with that approach is where is a new person supposed to START? if they aren't familiar with command lines, or often in Linux it there's an error when running a program nothing is displayed .. it just doesn't open. So what are they to do? Being told to RTFM on something you aren't familiar with, especially when it comes to locations or settings or files or how to edit them or what programs ARE the editors.

Just my experience and I use Linux nearly daily. The difference I have is I MUST fix an issue when I find it. It may even take me days to do so, but most aren't going to waste that kind of time and will just move on. The addition of the toxic snark comments vs helping just pushes faster.

You can add all the features you want to a program/OS, but it you don't have people using it, what's the point?
 
Prime example of the community right here in this thread. The creator says he has been incorrect and needs to work on it and Linux nuts in here reply with "I don't see it as an issue"... Well, you know what, it is an issue. Previously people on the outside have been saying it and it's been falling on deaf ears, maybe now that the fucking creator has admitted it the rest of you will sort your poor attitudes out.

Or maybe they won't. Almost everyone I personally know who is part of this community
I find Linux users are more apt to help you after you know what you are doing. If you come to them and say something doesn't install and you have xyz issue, you get flak, but if you come in and say you have tried these 50 things with no luck, they help. Maybe it peaks their interest as well, or more likely, they see someone who has tried to fix their issue.

The problem with that approach is where is a new person supposed to START? if they aren't familiar with command lines, or often in Linux it there's an error when running a program nothing is displayed .. it just doesn't open. So what are they to do? Being told to RTFM on something you aren't familiar with, especially when it comes to locations or settings or files or how to edit them or what programs ARE the editors.

Just my experience and I use Linux nearly daily. The difference I have is I MUST fix an issue when I find it. It may even take me days to do so, but most aren't going to waste that kind of time and will just move on. The addition of the toxic snark comments vs helping just pushes faster.

You can add all the features you want to a program/OS, but it you don't have people using it, what's the point?

Your first line sums it up best. I wouldn't be asking questions if I knew what I was doing. Nor would anyone else. That's exactly what many people will point out who will admit how toxic the Linux community is toward new users.
 
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