this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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Potentially hot take: I wish that more free and open source project leaders had the same "no-bullshit" attitude as Torvalds. It's a great way to cull out entitled people who put their own feelings over actual contribution, thus having negative impact over the project.
And every single other alternative to this behaviour would lead to worse outcomes, either to the project or the patch submitter.
I don't disagree.
I just wished he stopped making it personal. There's a huge difference between calling a person stupid and shitty versus calling the implementation stupid and shitty.
He rants, points out the flaws, calls the contributor a moron, and you have to waits a few emails before Linus actually provides a teaching moment. That kinda sucks.
It really does drive people away. I'm not good enough for the kernel, but there's a project I could contribute to as part of my job but I don't because there are mean folks there. My first contribution there was met with cursing.
Looks like you have not been a part of any Linux community before 🤔...
My opinion is that it is:
I didn't call your approach stupid because I don't think that it's stupid, even if I disagree with it.
If the message wasn't delivered, there's a high chance of further interactions that might create drama in the future. The quote in the OP is an example of that - in the original context there's an "AGAIN" that shows that it was not the first time that Steven Rostedt submitted a patch with the exact same issue.
So I believe that, even if you might get less drama now because the message wasn't understood, you'll end getting it later anyway.
Also, Torvalds' message does promote growth, if read fully. Even with the "your code is garbage", he's still explaining:
atomic64_add_return()get_next_ino()and other VSF functionsit's just that the quote picks the spicy bit and leaves the boring carb behind.
This was not directed towards the Linux community. It was directed towards a Google engineer. The community is the ones that you're indirectly proposing that deserve worse software for the sake of that part of Google's corporation.
And "worse" is not just a matter of "oh, I got a kernel panic. Damn. Reboot." It's actually serious shit; that kernel code will end being used in things from medical applications to sending Ingenuity to Mars. Worse code might literally mean "we detected your cancer too late, last time you were here the MRI wasn't working".
He is not even getting personal in this case dammit. I concede that getting personal (he does it sometimes) would be over-the-topic, but in this case he's insulting the code, not the person.
Torvalds' style is an outlier but so is the kernel. And the kernel being an outlier suggests that harsh criticism actually works.
Most of our [we = human beings, including you and me] production is garbage, even if acknowledging this offends our sensibilities.
It's almost like you guys [you + people across this thread] want to believe that only the carrot is effective. The stick is also effective, even if you don't want to believe that it is.
Dunno if you noticed, but this is actually ruder in hindsight.
And odds are that, if he did it the way that you're proposing, people would complain again that he's being rude, and expect him to mince words even further.
He did it before, during, and after bashing Rostedt.
It will fall on deaf ears
It's garbage.
There's many ways to point out the issues with the patch without being a jerk. The patch wouldn't have made it in either way, and maybe there could've been more useful conversations about the concerns (re: tar) that were brought up in the previous message.